NucNews July 10, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- asia Nuclear Waste Looms As Challenge in Asia July 10, 2006 — By Michael Casey, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10831 GYEONGJU, South Korea — With royal tombs and a history dating back 1,000 years to the Shilla Kingdom, Gyeongju is a cradle of Korean civilization. But it's about to get a tomb of a different type. A hillside bunker overlooking the Sea of Japan is to become one of Asia's first permanent nuclear dump sites, ending South Korea's 19-year quest to deal with low- and medium-level waste such as contaminated clothing and old parts from its 20 nuclear power plants. It's costing the government nearly $320 million in subsidies to the town of 300,000 for voting to accept the dump, and it doesn't even begin to address the country's real problem -- 6,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel with hundreds of thousands of years to live and nowhere to go. As Asia goes nuclear in a big way to feed its appetite for energy, environmentalists are warning that the growing stockpiles could either be stolen by terrorists and used to make a bomb, or end up polluting the environment. The nuclear industry says a permanent solution will eventually be found and that the waste issue will not slow the growth of nuclear power in Asia. Temporary sites, they said, are safe. But only the United States and Finland have come up with permanent sites, and the one at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is years behind schedule and mired in legal disputes. One solution is to recycle spent fuel by extracting its plutonium and combining it with uranium. But the plutonium is weapons-grade and could fall into terrorist hands, warns the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists. Waste-dumping has rallied anti-nuclear forces in Asian democracies that allow them to function freely. Taiwan, which has three nuclear plants and is building a fourth, has been thwarted three times in its search for a waste dump. "The failure to find a solution to nuclear waste could slow the development of nuclear power in democratic countries," said Michael Yang, a National Taiwan University professor who follows the storage issue. "You already had so many demonstrations over the issue in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan." Australia, has no nuclear plants but has struggled for 15 years to find a permanent site for low-level nuclear waste from its medical, industrial and research facilities. It settled in 2004 on three potential sites in the Northern Territory, which is home to Aborigine communities as well as world-famous Ayers Rock, or Uluru. Authorities expect to choose a final site by 2007 and open it in 2011. "People are outraged," said Michaela Stubbs of Friends of the Earth Australia. Associated Press writer Stephan Grauwels in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report. -------- britain Government faulted for "hasty" nuclear review Mon Jul 10, 2006 (Reuters) By Adrian Croft http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=1313411§ion=news&src=rss/uk/topNews LONDON - Legislators criticised the government on Monday for being hasty in its review of energy policy and voiced concern about signs that Prime Minister Tony Blair had already decided to back new nuclear power stations. The Observer reported that the government, in the review expected to be published on Tuesday, would support the construction of a new generation of nuclear power stations while proposing measures to boost the use of renewable energy. The government is striving to meet its international obligations to tackle global warming while responding to the country's growing future dependence on imported energy. Blair has made no secret of his own view, saying in May that the replacement of Britain's ageing nuclear power plants with new models was "back on the agenda with a vengeance". "We are concerned about the manner in which this energy review has been conducted," Parliament's Trade and Industry Committee said in a report. "Throughout the process, the government has hinted strongly that it has already made its mind up on nuclear power," said the committee, which draws members from all political parties but is chaired by a Conservative. The committee questioned the "haste" of the government's review, noting it had taken six months compared with three years for the previous review. The committee did not take a stance for or against a new generation of nuclear power stations, but it said that, for the power industry to be willing to invest, there would have to be a clear government commitment to the future role of nuclear power, based on a broad cross-party political consensus. It criticised the government for failing to include the main political parties in the energy review. The Conservatives say new nuclear power stations are a last resort while the Liberal Democrats oppose them. The committee said the future "energy gap" might not be as severe as the government assumed because the life of some of Britain's existing nuclear power stations may be extended. PRIVATE SECTOR The committee said the government should make it clear that all the costs of building, operating and decommissioning new nuclear power stations would fall to private sector investors. The government's role should be to ensure that all sources of generation were treated "fairly" within the market, it said. The report said a policy to foster the construction of new nuclear power stations would also require: -- long-term incentives for investment in all low carbon technologies, designed to minimise the emissions believed to cause global warming -- a long-term storage solution for Britain's existing radioactive waste -- a review of the planning and licensing system to reduce the time needed to build nuclear power stations. New nuclear reactors could be built next to existing nuclear power stations, although rising sea levels and coastal erosion due to climate change could mean some of these coastal sites were not available, it said. The committee noted that, of the two main viable reactor designs, neither had yet been built anywhere in the world. There should be sufficient uranium supplies to meet any future British demand, it said. The structure of the British electricity market, dominated by a small number of large firms able to raise sufficient finance, could foster the building of new nuclear power stations if the government created the right framework, it said. ---- Labour and the nuclear lobby BBC Analysis By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News Monday, 10 July 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/5149676.stm Anti-nuclear campaigners like to portray the government as being in the pocket of the nuclear industry. How else, they argue, do you explain the return to favour - expected to be confirmed this week by the government's energy review - of an industry once written-off as dirty, dangerous and cripplingly expensive? The picture put forward by some critics is certainly a powerful one. It suggests the image of the hapless minister being schmoozed into submission by smooth-talking former party grandees now in the pay of nuclear multinationals. In the background there would be briefings with sympathetic scientists, fact-finding missions to exotic locations, dubious statistics advanced over the brandy and cigars. But how much truth is there in all of this? And how much influence do lobbyists on both sides of the nuclear debate actually have on government policy? Most industries and large organisations, including the BBC, use lobbyists. They are often former ministers or senior journalists, who have contacts in government and offer advice on how to influence policy. The lobbying industry has tried to clean up its act since 1998's cash-for-access scandal, which saw Peter Mandelson's spin doctor Derek Draper fired over his links with lobbyists, but it remains controversial. The Hansard Society last week launched an investigation into the role of lobbyists, under the title Friend or Foe?, questioning their influence on British democracy and asking whether they can be trusted. Lobbyists working for the nuclear industry, which employs 40,000 people in the UK, have always been well-funded, but since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were widely assumed to be fighting a losing battle. Sophisticated campaign But as the debate about Britain's future energy needs has intensified, the industry's reputation has been rehabilitated, with Labour politicians at least. "There has been a very sophisticated public relations campaign by the nuclear industry, using climate change, using energy security, saying that nuclear is now cheap and safe, and a few years ago the technology was dead in the water," says Andy Rowell of Greenpeace-funded Nuclear Spin website. There are certainly no shortage of links between the nuclear industry and the New Labour establishment. Since 2004, BNFL, the government-owned nuclear reactor operator, has used lobbyists Weber Shandwick to help it push the case for new nuclear plants. Fast-track planning Weber Shandwick's UK arm is headed by Colin Byrne, the Labour Party's former chief press officer and an ex-spin doctor for Prince Charles. French energy giant EDF has also been at the forefront of the campaign to change perceptions of nuclear power. The company, which operates 58 nuclear reactors in France and is already a big player in the UK electricity market, has said it is ready to invest in a new generation of plants in the UK, provided it gets the go-ahead from government. It has successfully lobbied ministers to introduce a fast-track planning process to make it easier to build new plants without lengthy public enquiries. Chancellor Gordon Brown's brother, Andrew, is EDF's head of media relations in the UK. One of the most well-connected nuclear lobbyists is Alan Donnelly, former leader of the Labour group in the European Parliament. Mr Donnelly's company, Sovereign Strategy, represents US engineering giant Fluor, one of the world's biggest nuclear contractors, which is currently vying for a slice of the UK's £70bn nuclear clean-up market - but like other US firms, such as Bechtel, also has an eye on future nuclear build. Kitchen row On its website, Sovereign Strategy, offers among other services, "pathways to the decision makers in national governments". Its board members include Tory peer Lady Maitland and pro-nuclear Labour peer Lord Cunningham, Tony Blair's former "cabinet enforcer" and the ex chairman of the Friends of Sellafield campaign. Lord Cunningham is also "legislative chair" of the Transatlantic Nuclear Energy Forum, an organisation founded and run by Mr Donnelly, that aims to foster "strong relationships" between nuclear power companies and governments. Tony Blair has spoken at events organised by Sovereign Strategy, including last year's North East Economic Forum in his Sedgefield constituency, where he was reportedly introduced by a Fluor executive. But it is Mr Donnelly's links with environment minister David Miliband which created a stir earlier this year, when the Sunday Times ran a story about the lobbyist paying £2,000 towards the refurbishment of Mr Miliband's constituency office. Mr Donnelly insisted he was acting in his capacity as the chairman of Mr Miliband's constituency Labour Party in South Shields. Both men have firmly denied any impropriety. Writing in the July edition of Public Affairs News, Mr Donnelly said the money had been declared - and he had given it because he has been a Labour Party member for 32 years "and the party workers needed the kitchen fixing". He wrote: "The crux of the story was this: That David Miliband would be so ecstatic with the £2,000 spent on his constituency kitchen that, were he fortunate enough to become environment secretary one day, he'd pull out all the stops to award one of our clients the contract to build a whole raft of nuclear power stations. "It was nonsense, but that's the way it goes." Peers' payment Sovereign Strategy has also been criticised by the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) - of which it is not a member - for having parliamentarians on its payroll, something the trade body prohibits in its code of conduct. "We pay them for their work because they deserve to be paid for their time," Mr Donnelly wrote of the two peers who sit on his board. He insists Sovereign takes its ethical responsibilities "very seriously", refusing to get involved in the running of cross-party parliamentary groups - some of which have accepted funds from lobbyists - as this "lacks transparency". He also defends his company's donations to the Labour Party which, he says, are "not on a 'cash-for-coronets' scale" and says that his company is not the only lobbyist to have funded the party. Lobbyists such as Sovereign and Weber Shandwick rely on their contacts in the corridors of power to impress potential clients and bring in new business. Green lobby But how much influence do they actually wield over government policy? And what about the role of the anti-nuclear lobby - groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth - less well-funded, perhaps, but arguably no less well-connected, and with a canny knack for grabbing headlines? There are many links between the government and the green lobby - although several former advisers are now firmly opposed to its policies. Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale, a former special adviser to Labour ministers Chris Smith and Michael Meacher, has been highly critical of the government's nuclear policy. Stephen Hale, director of the Green Alliance, who was a special adviser to Margaret Beckett when she was environment secretary, has also attacked what he called Tony Blair's "obsession" with nuclear power. And the government's independent Sustainable Development Commission, chaired by ex-Friends of the Earth chief Jonathan Porritt, has also been sceptical about nuclear. 'Old boy network' Because it is made up of voluntary organisations or charities, the green lobby can claim to have a certain amount of public support, which can help open doors in Whitehall. But it is not enough for green campaigners just to be seen as "nice people", argues Greenpeace's Jean McSorely - they must also have the stronger arguments. The pro-nuclear lobby has been clever in using environmental arguments, on climate change, and the security of supply issue, to push its case, she says. She believes Greenpeace has a stronger scientific case, but, she argues, it does not always get a fair chance to make it. "The access industry gets is just phenomenal compared to green groups," she tells the BBC News website. "Labour has often castigated the old boy network, the public school tie and so on, but they have a similar network. It depends who you know in the unions or ex-Labour ministers. "People may accept that as the way things are, but there needs to be more transparency." Blair advisers Having said that, she does not believe Mr Blair has been made to change his mind by the efforts of the pro-nuclear lobby - he was already a convert. It was Mr Blair, she argues, who in 2003 insisted on the door being left open for nuclear in the government's energy white paper, which proposed a large increase in renewable energy. "I don't believe Tony Blair has been influenced by lobbying. Both he and the industry have just been waiting for the right time to make their move", says Ms McSorely. Where the lobbyists come in, she argues, is in "shoring up" support among other Cabinet ministers, MPs and the general public, and smoothing away potential opposition. Industry voice Mr Blair is thought to have made the decision to hold an energy review - potentially paving the way for the return of nuclear - after a meeting last September at Chequers with his advisers and representatives of the nuclear industry. Those close to the debate believe it is these advisers - such as former BBC director general Lord Birt, industry adviser Geoffrey Norris and the government's chief scientific adviser Sir David King - who have most influenced the prime minister's thinking. Insiders argue that Mr Blair is more than capable of making his own mind up based on the available evidence and the nuclear industry also rejects the suggestion it is given special access to ministers and other decision-makers. With the industry employing 40,000 people in the UK, nuclear has a right to make its voice heard in government, argues John McNamara, of the Nuclear Industry Association. He adds: "It should not come as a surprise that we do as much as we can to represent the interests of our industry, like any other large industrial sector." ---- Nuclear to power ahead of renewables Experts fear that billions in government subsidies are set to go to the nuclear sector at the expense of green energy, writes Neasa MacErlean Monday July 10, 2006 Guardian Unlimited http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,,1817110,00.html?gusrc=rss Government announcements this week look set to overhaul our energy supply and lay down a new infrastructure that could last for the next half a century. A helping hand for the nuclear industry will be the issue that grabs the headlines. More likely to be missed in the tumult is the damage that could wreaked to much of the renewables sector. On the surface, the government will have many positive things to say about renewables. Wind, solar and marine energy emit few greenhouse gases. Since nuclear energy also emits little carbon dioxide, the government can lump nuclear and renewables together and claim that it will support them all in the cause of being environmentally-friendly. This green message will undoubtedly resonate better with voters than a statement that nuclear is preferred for its own sake. What will not be spelt out, according to some experts, will be the way that the lion's share of government assistance to the energy sector will go towards building a new nuclear fleet of as many as 10 reactors. Bridget Woodman of Warwick Business School said: "We will be moving towards a very large scale, centralised electricity generating system which could be set in stone for the next 50 years. There will be twiddly little bits of renewable development - but it will never be a mainstream option. It could be a pretty bleak day for renewables." Even parts of government itself are worried about the possible effects. The Environment Agency said: "We are concerned about the displacement effect that a large programme of investment in one capital-intensive technology like nuclear may have on energy efficiency and renewable technologies." The Sustainable Development Commission, the government's independent watchdog, said: "A new nuclear power programme could divert public funding away from more sustainable technologies that will be needed regardless - hampering other long-term efforts to move to a low carbon economy with diverse energy sources." Billions of taxpayers' money will go to the nuclear sector, probably disguised as tax relief and government guarantees, while there will be far less cash for renewables. The relative sizes of the sums available will also shape the priorities of government. "The Department of Trade and Industry will be much more concerned about how its billions will be spent than its millions," says Dr Woodman. Just as supermarkets have driven out corner shops, and the big banks have swallowed up their smaller competitors, so the nuclear sector will - unless there is powerful government policy to the contrary - cut off the lifeblood to the far smaller organisations that would represent the renewables sector. The renewables lobby appears even to have some problems in maintaining a distance from the nuclear industry. A spokeswoman for the British Wind Energy Association expressed optimism about the future and no concerns about a loss of investment: "We have confidence in the mechanism of the renewables obligation [a government rule that requires electricity suppliers to buy nearly 7% of their energy from the renewables sector]." The association appears, in fact, to be financed by the renewables arms of companies that dominate the worldwide nuclear marketplace. RWE, Siemens and E.on, for instance, are highlighted as "sponsoring members" on its website. What could the government do if it is serious about encouraging renewables? It could build upon existing mechanisms, such as the renewables obligation that requires electricity suppliers to buy 6.7% of their energy from the renewables sector, rising to 10% by 2010. Even though this is expected to represent an annual income of £1bn for renewables within four years, Dr Woodman thinks it is not enough. She also fears it might simply encourage the cheapest form of renewables - onshore wind - at the expense of the others. She wants us to emulate the Danes and Spaniards, who have set minimum prices that must be paid by electricity suppliers for renewable energy. Even homeowners thinking of putting a wind turbine on their roofs could then calculate how much they would earn by selling spare capacity to their energy supplier. "It would make [renewables investment] much, much less risky," says Dr Woodman. In Denmark - a world leader in renewables, along with the Netherlands and Switzerland - 3% of electricity came from renewables in 1991, but that figure had risen to 25% by 2004. Although the UK's target is for 6.7% of electricity to come from renewable sources, the actual figure may be only half that level. The Carbon Trust estimates that Britain is falling well behind its projected 2010 target - and that it may only reach 5% by then. Alistair Darling, the trade secretary, has made friendly noises about the renewables sector and it will soon be evident how much he is prepared to back them up with money and assistance. Significant infrastructure changes would also be needed, not least to make regional electricity distribution pipes work in two directions to receive energy from local sources, as well as supplying it. But if 117 years ago Bradford was able to finance its own electricity project (the country's first publicly funded scheme), and if London could spawn 70 electricity authorities in 1918, the potential clearly exists for far more local input than we have today. ---- Review says 'no need for nuclear' Monday, 10 July 2006 BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/5165482.stm An energy review published by the SNP has found that Scotland produces six times more energy than it uses. It also highlighted research which found Scotland has one of the best climates in Europe for using solar heat in buildings. However, the review said there should be a cap on onshore wind farms, although added that there was a "big future" for offshore wind farms. The SNP said its report showed nuclear energy was no longer needed. The review found that Scotland exports more than 10 times the oil, about six times more gas, and produces almost twice as much coal as it uses. It also said the country exports almost 24% more electricity than is needed to meet demand in Scotland, meaning the country is therefore not in the same position as the rest of the UK. Those behind the review concluded that previous assessments of the energy potential of the Pentland Firth may have underestimated the generation capacity from tidal power. They said that using turbines designed for deployment at a depth of 70m could exceed present UK nuclear capacity. It also said that at least 20% of transport fuels could come from Scottish-grown bio-sources and farm wastes. Professor Stephen Salter, who chaired the review, said: "Scotland is blessed with a variety of useable renewable and clean carbon technologies. "The review makes clear the potential for a clean energy future, but it is now up to the people and politicians to make the right decisions for our nation." Waves The report said tidal power was being underestimated Mike Weir, the SNP's energy spokesperson in the House of Commons, said: "This report is a real eye opener for anyone who believes Scotland needs new nuclear power stations. "Scotland is in a very different position from the rest of the UK. We must stand firm and reject a step backward to the nuclear age." Maf Smith, chief executive of Scottish Renewables, said: "We're glad to see that the SNP recognise the potential of offshore wind and marine energy, but concerned about sceptical comments on onshore wind, considering it is the stepping stone that will help Scotland make the transition to developing these emerging technologies." Dr Richard Dixon, director of environmental charity WWF Scotland, said: "This report presents an attractive and compelling vision of a prosperous, highly-efficient, renewable-powered and nuclear-free Scotland." However, Dr Dixon also raised concerns about the proposed cap on onshore wind farms which he said could hamper the fight against climate change. ---- Documents Show Cracks in UK Reactors as Blair Prepares to Push Nuclear Power Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Mon Jul 10, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20060710/wl_oneworld/45361361961152542226 SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 10 (OneWorld) - An internationally renowned nuclear expert is calling for nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom to be immediately shut down after government documents revealed they contain cracking in the bricks of their reactor cores. The documents, which were obtained under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, show that the government's Nuclear Safety Directorate (NSD) has identified cracks in the cores of up to 14 UK reactors, rendering them at increased risk of a radiological accident. In a report prepared for the environmental group Greenpeace, which has long been a critic of the continued use of nuclear energy, nuclear expert John Large called the cracked graphite cores "a central nuclear safety component." Large became famous in 2000 for helping the Russian Federation rescue the nuclear powered submarine, Kursk, after it sunk in the Barents Sea. "The core serves to moderate (slow) the neutrons initiating fission in the nuclear fuel," he explained. "Within it are formed about 330 vertical channels that receive stringers of nuclear fuel, it provides for the high pressure flow of the carbon dioxide gas coolant and, importantly, vertical interstitial channels for the entry of control and shut down rods and, if needed, the secondary and emergency reactor close down systems. For nuclear safety it is absolutely essential that the vertical fuel and interstitial channels remain closely aligned during normal service operation and fault conditions under which abnormal forces may arise across the core assembly overall and within the individual graphite bricks." Nuclear authorities in Britain reacted with calm, however. Representatives of British Energy told the BBC the damage was "known about, anticipated for, within the safety case." In general, one official said, "cracks will occur in some of the bricks as part of the normal aging process within the graphite reactor core." But inspectors quoted in the internal documents seem to tell another story. "There is significant uncertainty in the likelihood and consequences for core safety functionality posed by graphite component and core damage," the documents read. The UK government is expected to publish the long-awaited results of its so-called "Energy Review" on Tuesday, which will set the course for the development of the country's energy sector. The recommendations are expected to include a renewed focus on nuclear power. Greenpeace Executive Director Stephen Tindale expressed outraged after releasing the government files. "These documents don't just show the structural damage to nuclear reactors in the UK," he said. "They show the incompetence of the government and British Energy, who have known about these significant cracks yet have refused to do anything about it." Regardless, almost all scientists agree that the risk of a nuclear disaster are increasing annually as reactors--most of which came on line in the 1970s--pass their 20th and 30th birthdays. "The risks of a catastrophe change as nuclear reactors change, much like the risks for accident or illness change as people get older," explains Dave Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC. Already, there have been a number of "near-misses" involving American nuclear plants, Lochbaum says, including radioactive releases at Indian Point Unit 2 in New York, cracking in the nozzles at Oconee Unit 3 in South Carolina, and the failure of jet pumps at Quad Cities Unit 1 in Illinois. The Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant is currently being demolished because of multiple leaks. The Troy nuclear power plant in Oregon shut down twenty years early, after a cracked steam tube released radioactive gas into the plant, in 1992. Lochbaum says the flow of information on nuclear safety in the U.S. is better than in Britain, though, since all government reports are easily viewable on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Web site. The problem, he says, is that Congress has cut the NRC's budget, leading to a 20 percent reduction in safety inspections. According to the private firm Good Night Consulting, corporate-sponsored safety inspections are also down, meaning that as nuclear plants get older and more accident prone, they're being inspected less and less. "Aging reactors with less monitoring is a dangerous combination," Lochbaum says dryly. -------- business Investors to calculate nuclear returns BBC Analysis By Jorn Madslien Business reporter, BBC News Monday, 10 July 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5153368.stm On Tuesday, Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks is expected to make public Britain's intention to invite the private sector to build a series of new nuclear power plants. He will most likely argue that such newbuilds would not only be cleaner than fossil fuels, but also be a commercially attractive alternative that could be achieved without subsidies. And he will no doubt be met with a host of naysayers who will point out that that so far nuclear power plants have been hugely expensive to build, their running costs have been large, the bill for cleaning up after them is set to run into billions of pounds, and across the board cost overruns are common. But while the antis feel empowered by their arsenal of economic arguments, proponents insist costs have plummeted. And in truth, who is right depends largely on who does the maths, and how. Risks and rewards It may be tempting to think that the private sector would be perfectly capable of figuring out whether their involvement in the construction of new nuclear power plants is a good idea or not. But investors and companies, who carefully balance risks versus potential rewards, will only get involved if the government first creates a framework that dramatically reduces uncertainty. Therefore, given that the government will be eager to ensure that the private sector carries the financial and reputation risks of building and operating nuclear power plants, it will do all it can to facilitate investment. "They've got to provide the framework," says energy expert Mark Spelman of Accenture, a consultancy. Removing red tape by simplifying licensing and planning rules with regards to newbuilds would go some way towards mollifying concerned investors. Nuclear power production is nearly carbon free, unlike alternatives like gas, oil and coal, so raising the cost of rival energy generation from fossil fuel would also make nuclear investment look more tempting. Measures such as carbon pricing, emissions trading and polluter-pays style taxes would help "encourage investment in low carbon technologies", according to the Royal Society. Again, points out Mr Spelman, investors want a clearly mapped out framework. "People want to know where they stand," he says. Investors will also want to make sure that that the demand is there for the power they will be producing. Unlike fossil fuel plants, nuclear power plants cannot be mothballed during periods of low demand. It is therefore likely that nuclear plants will be held as part of diversified portfolios also containing oil, gas, coal, wind and biofuel investment. Safe investment? If private investors can be convinced they will be permitted to build the plants needed, it will then be time to consider the price of bricks and mortar. They will be looking at a catalogue of new generation nuclear reactors, on offer from suppliers in France, Germany, the US and Canada. "The suppliers claim that this new generation of plants will be cheaper and quicker to build, safer to operate through more passive safety systems, and enhance performance," observes Deloitte, a consultancy, in a report. But not so fast. Deloitte also adds that "there is no commercial operating data to support these claims at present". Major commitment New generation nuclear power plants might be cheaper to construct then they used to be, but they would still require a huge financial commitment. Mapping out a nuclear future One likely way forward, therefore, would be for investors to join together in a consortium that jointly decides on building a fleet of identical power plants - rather than each investor choosing different, competing reactor designs. Such a consortium, Mr Spelman predicts, is likely to be composed of major power generators such as British Energy, as well as RWE and E.ON of Germany and EDF of France. Investment banks would also get involved to raise the finance, he adds. p> The consortium model, then would take advantage of economies of scale - and it might also operate something like a monopoly, creating high barriers to entry into the market by rivals. The risk to reputations should the projects run into problems would also be shared. And a consortium would also be able to negotiate hard with reactor suppliers, who could find themselves in an all-or-nothing situation: the chosen reactor supplier would rake it in, while its rivals would be left out of the game. A fleet of identical power plants would also be an efficient way of using scarce manpower in the UK. Building the first plant would enable a single group of specialists to apply what they have learnt to the entire fleet. Upfront licensing costs for one design could be spread across each duplicate plant. "Nuclear suppliers have indicated that savings on subsequent plants can be between 10%-40% of the cost of the first plant," observes Deloitte. But even more crucially: huge cost savings could be achieved from dealing with just one type of nuclear waste. Politically, this would be crucial for the government, which would probably have to take on the responsibility - if not all the cost - of decommissioning and waste disposal. ---- French nuclear reactor maker eyes UK By Rory Cellan-Jones Business correspondent, BBC News, Chalon-sur-Saone, France Monday, 10 July 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5166142.stm In the French town of Chalon-sur-Saone, the world's busiest nuclear factory is building the components for a new plant in Finland. Electricity calculator: how would you power UK in 2020? If the UK Energy Review gives the green light to nuclear power, the French company Areva will be very keen to build its new design - the European Pressurised Water Reactor, or EPR - in Britain. Areva's factory in Burgundy has built a quarter of all the world's nuclear reactors, including the French generators that provide 80% of the country's electricity. But it nearly closed five years ago as demand for nuclear power dried up. Now it is expanding fast as many countries try to extend the lives of their reactors - or start building new plants - and it is handling orders from the United States and China as well as Finland. No subsidies It may be a modern industry but the Areva factory gives the impression of an old-fashioned metal-bashing business - cranes lifting huge lumps of steel, sparks flying as workers weld together giant sections of what will eventually be the steam generating equipment for a nuclear plant. The sections leave the factory on barges and make their way by river and sea to their final destinations. In another part of the plant a team is polishing the new reactor head for Sizewell B, part of the work Areva is already doing for the UK nuclear industry. The company - 97% owned by the French government - has appointed a former Royal Navy captain as its UK marketing director. Robert Davies says that once the UK government gives the go-ahead, Areva could move quickly to build a plant. "Given a fair wind it could be ready by 2017," he says. And Mr Davies dismisses the accusation that the EPR will be like previous generations of nuclear power plants, over-budget and behind schedule. "I put it as the difference between the Concorde and the Boeing 747," he says. "The 747 is an economic plane and we will build an economic plant. We do not require government subsidy." Learning curve What anyone who decides to build a reactor in the UK will need is clarity about the cost of dealing with waste. In Finland, the government has already decided to bury waste deep underground near the new EPR, which Areva has started building. But this project has already run into trouble. A year in, this £2bn plant is already nine months behind schedule after construction difficulties dismissed as "teething troubles" by Areva. The company says it will learn from its experience with this first EPR and from the new plant it will then build in Normandy. Long-term certainty French anti-nuclear groups says Britain should beware of getting into bed with Areva. "The EPR is very expensive and all the problems with waste have yet to be solved," says Philippe Brousse, who works for the "Get out of nuclear" network. Mr Brousse says a majority of the French now rejects plans to build new nuclear plants. Areva is convinced that nuclear power is enjoying a renaissance as the price of oil and gas soars and countries seek to cut their carbon emissions. But its potential customers in the UK will have to be confident that the economic argument for re-starting the nuclear programme will still look sound a decade from now. ---- Commodities Billionaire Jim Rogers Calls for Higher Uranium Prices Sarasota, Fla. 7/10/2006 1:36 PM GMT (TransWorldNews) http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?storyid=9063&ret=Default.aspx In a taped telephone interview, commodities bull Jim Rogers told StockInterview.com, "I see a great future for uranium and nuclear power.” Rogers sees opportunity in the uranium sector, saying, “Even if oil corrects, the price is going to stay well above most expectations. And eventually, it is going to go much higher than people (including me) expect. The same applies to uranium. Until somebody brings a lot of new uranium on stream, though, the surprise will be how high the price of oil and uranium stay, and how high it (uranium) eventually goes.” Rogers added, “There aren’t any big uranium mines being opened anywhere in the world… I would suspect it will take more than a decade to bring a new big uranium mine on stream. The huge stockpiles of uranium, which were built up during the Cold War are being used, are being depleted.” Rogers explained his bullishness, "Nuclear power is cheaper than many other sources of energy, and so it is having a comeback, if you will.” But he pointed out, “In many parts of the world, it never went away. The French never stopped using nuclear power. The Koreans never stopped using nuclear power.” Why the excitement over uranium?" Other people are now coming to nuclear power, "Rogers told StockInterview.com." The Chinese are going to build at least 25 nuclear power plants in the next fifteen years or so. Even in the U.S., some of the environmentalists are starting re-examine nuclear power because it is cleaner than coal, or some of the other carbon based energy sources.” Rogers said nuclear power can be extremely attractive, if controlled properly. Rogers said the uranium price would trade in conjunction with the price of oil. In a recent interview with Reuters, Rogers called for crude oil to soar above $100/barrel and stay high. Rogers wrote in a follow-up email to StockInterview," Oil will eventually go above US$100 during the bull market." In his email, Rogers added, "I have no price levels for uranium." ABOUT STOCKINTERVIEW.COM Stockinteview.com is a rapidly growing online news service, which provides investigative reporting, editorial, analysis and commentary of the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium mining, nuclear power, the environment and the natural resource industry. Over the past three years, the Internet news website has covered the nuclear energy renaissance, the worldwide uranium mining boom and the potential influence of alternative fuel sources on China’s dramatic economic growth. To read the complete interview with Jim Rogers, please visit StockInterview at http://www.stockinterview.com Contact: Julie Ickes Editor, StockInterview.com Telephone: (941) 929-1640 Email: editor@stockinterview.com http://www.stockinterview.com (SOURCE: StockInterview.com) editor@stockinterview.com -------- india First test-firing of new Indian nuclear-capable missile fails Updated 7/10/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-07-10-india-missile-test_x.htm NEW DELHI — India's first test-firing of a new missile designed to carry nuclear warheads across much of Asia and the Middle East was unsuccessful, the defense minister said. Although initially reported as a success by officials, the Agni III missile plunged into the Bay of Bengal short of its target, Defense Pranab Mukherjee told reporters late Sunday. Following the failed missile launch, an Indian rocket carrying a satellite for TV broadcasts veered off course and exploded after takeoff Monday, Indian media reported. The missile launch came as President Bush tries to push a civilian nuclear deal with India past a skeptical Congress. The deal permits India to keep making nuclear weapons, and critics say the pact could undermine the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Even though the deal does not cover missiles, the Hindu newspaper reported Monday that the top U.S. general, Peter Pace, gave Indian officials the green light to conduct the test when he visited India last month. The missile test reportedly had been delayed for two years by technical issues and fears of international condemnation. Mukherjee, who witnessed Sunday's missile launch, said India would press ahead with the Agni III program. He termed the failure a snag, but offered no other details. Indian media reported that the missile's second stage failed to separate after it was launched from Wheeler Island off the eastern state of Orissa. India's current crop of missiles have been largely intended to confront archrival and neighbor Pakistan. The Agni III, by contrast, is to be India's longest-range missile, designed to reach 1,900 miles. That would putting China's major cities well into range, as well as targets deep in the Middle East. It's also said to be capable of carrying a 200-300 kiloton nuclear warhead. "This is going to help in establishing the credibility of India's deterrent profile," said Indian defense analyst C. Uday Bhaskar. Still, he dismissed speculation the missile was designed with China in mind. "Any strategic capability is not aimed at any particular nation. To say it is China-specific is misleading," Bhaskar said. India and China have shared decades of mutual suspicion and fought a 1962 border war. But relations have warmed considerably in recent years as the two Asian giants have boosted trade and economic ties. India's missile program, together with its nuclear program and drive for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, is part of its ongoing efforts to establish itself as a world power. While past Indian missile test firings were seen attempts at saber-rattling with Pakistan, which would in turn test its own missiles, the Agni III test was seen as routine and intended to further India's missile program, which aims to eventually produce a long-range ICBM. India's homegrown missile arsenal already includes the short-range Prithvi ballistic missile, the medium-range Akash, the anti-tank Nag and the supersonic Brahmos missile, developed jointly with Russia. India notified Pakistan ahead of the launch, in accordance with an agreement between the two, said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. After Monday's rocket veered off course, authorities alerted emergency crews around the launch site in southeastern India, presumably in case the debris crashed back to earth, NDTV news television station reported. The nearly 4,800-pound satellite — named INSAT-4C — was to be India's 12th satellite in orbit. --- India tests missile able to reach Beijing July 10, 2006 The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19735333-2703,00.html BHUBANESHWAR: India has conducted its first test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile with the range to reach the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai. The Agni-III missile, which has a range of 4000km, was launched yesterday from Wheeler Island, 180km northeast of Bhubaneshwar in the eastern state of Orissa, defence officials said. In May, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the Agni-III, India's longest-range ballistic missile, was ready but that the country was observing "self-imposed restraint" before testing. Opposition parties criticised the delay, blaming US pressure. New Delhi and Washington reached a landmark deal in March that will have sanctions lifted on India's access to civilian nuclear technology. Sunday's test launch came just four days after North Korea sparked an international outcry by test-firing seven missiles. A Defence Research and Development Organisation source said the Indian test was successful. A snag in the booster rocket system of the Agni-III had been detected two weeks ago, delaying its test, he said, adding: "Now we have papered over the problem and hence the launch window was chosen as Sunday." The missile was tracked during take-off, re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and splashdown in the Bay of Bengal. The Agni is one of five missiles being developed by the DRDO under its Integrated Guided Missile Development Program launched in 1983. Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan routinely notify each other of missile tests. The two countries came to the brink of a fourth war in 2002 following a December 2001 attack on India's parliament by suspected Pakistan-backed militants. Islamabad denied any role in the attack. In January 2004 the two sides began a peace process that has led to a ceasefire in the divided Himalayan state of Kashmir. In May 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests, saying China was a security threat. The tests were matched two weeks later by Pakistan, which India says has received Beijing's assistance for its nuclear program, a claim denied by China. But tensions between China and India have abated in the past two years. Last week a famed Silk Road pass in the Himalayas was reopened after 44 years. ---- India shrugs off failure of long-range missile NEW DELHI, (AFP) Jul 10, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060710095412.styhh2xl.html India Monday shrugged off the unsuccessful maiden test of its ambitious nuclear-capable long-range missile, as red-faced defence scientists began trying to work out what went wrong. "For the launching of missiles like Agni this kind of problem is not unusual and there is nothing to worry about it," Defence Minister Pranab Mukerjee was quoted as saying by the United News of India news agency. The Agni-III missile, which defence sources say has a range of 4,000 kilometres (2,480 miles), developed problems after a successful take-off Sunday from a site off India's east coast. A defence ministry official quoted in a report on the Times of India website Monday said scientists were "minutely" examining data collected from the tracking stations. "While it would be too early to hazard a guess as to what went wrong, it would seem that a design defect prevented the second stage from separating," the official said. "Because of this, the missile couldn't maintain its intended trajectory and could stay aloft for only five minutes instead of the 15 minutes it was intended to." The Agni-III has two solid-fuelled stages and has an overall diameter of 1.8 metres (six feet). Scientists of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said more trials of the missile would be conducted in the coming months. "It was our first experiment with such a long range missile and in the next few days, we will analyse faults in order to rectify them," an unidentified scientist was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency. The test of the Agni-III missile had been postponed a number of times with reports citing pressure from the United States and technical problems. A highly-placed Defence Research and Development Organisation source told AFP on Sunday a snag in the booster rocket system of the missile had been detected two weeks ago but had been rectified. In May, Defence Minister Mukherjee had said the Agni-III, India's longest-range ballistic missile, was ready but that the country was observing "self-imposed restraint" before testing. Opposition parties criticised the announcement, saying testing was being delayed because of pressure from the United States. New Delhi and Washington reached a landmark deal in March that will see sanctions lifted on India's access to civilian nuclear technology. The Agni (Fire) is one of five missiles being developed by the DRDO under its Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme launched in 1983. The others are the land missile Prithvi (Earth), the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), multi-purpose Akash (Sky), and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra). ---- India Reports a Long-Range Missile Test By HARI KUMAR and DAVID E. SANGER July 10, 2006 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/world/asia/10india.html?ei=5088&en=6b32149e204ea99f&ex=1310184000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print NEW DELHI, July 9 — India test-fired its longest-range nuclear-capable missile on Sunday for the first time, government officials said. But although the missile was launched, it was unclear whether the entire test was successful, with at least one report saying that the missile had failed at some point in its flight. The launching has occurred at a time of rising international tension over North Korea's recent missile tests, and as the United States Congress is considering a civilian nuclear pact that the Bush administration negotiated with India. While the pact does not concern missile tests or other military activity, its critics say the Bush administration failed to obtain any commitment from India to stop producing new nuclear weapons fuel, or to restrict its production of new weapons. The test of the Agni 3 missile (agni means fire in Hindi) appeared intended to show that India's strategic arsenal could reach far beyond Pakistan and cover territory including China. The missile is reported to have a range of more than 1,800 miles. The Defense Ministry said it had been launched from Wheeler Island, off the coast of Orissa State in the Bay of Bengal, and had taken off successfully. But later, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted an unidentified military official as saying that the missile had developed troubles, perhaps in the firing of its second stage, and had not completed the test successfully. A Defense Ministry spokesman, Sitanshu Kar, would not comment on the report other than to say, "The missile took off successfully, and the rest of the data need to be analyzed, in a day or two, to come to a conclusion." India and neighboring Pakistan have often traded rounds of missile and nuclear tests in times of tension between them. But relations between the nations have improved lately, and the governments have a standing agreement to inform each other before such tests. On Sunday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry confirmed that India had told it about the test in advance. While short-range missiles are enough to keep India and Pakistan in mutual range, analysts have seen India's development of long-range ballistic missiles, and the continuing development of its nuclear weapons program, as a strategic step to keep China in check. The listed range of the Agni 3, hundreds of miles longer than that of other missiles India has tested, would put more of China's major cities within striking distance. In the past two years, tensions between India and China have lessened somewhat, and direct border trade between them reopened last week along the storied Silk Road through the Himalayas for the first time since they fought a war 44 years ago. The BBC reported that before the launching on Sunday, India had twice postponed tests on the Agni 3, once for technical reasons and once because of concern about the international response while it was trying to seal its civilian nuclear deal with the Bush administration. In May, the Indian defense minister, Pranab Mukherjee, was quoted as saying that the missile was ready but that India was observing "self-imposed restraint" before testing. The nuclear deal between India and the United States is under review by Congress and would, in effect, remove all United States restrictions on nuclear trade with India that are in place because India has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The only other countries to refuse are Israel and Pakistan. North Korea withdrew from the treaty three years ago. Under the deal, the United States would give vital help to the Indian civilian nuclear program, including uranium for fuel for civilian reactors. The United States would not provide any fuel for Indian weapons, but critics have pointed out that it would essentially free the limited Indian uranium supplies for weapons production. The agreement contains no restriction on how much or how fast India could increase the size of its nuclear arsenal. Hari Kumar reported from New Delhi for this article, and David E. Sanger from Washington. -------- japan Japan Has Right To Protect Itself Says Foreign Minister by Staff Writers Tokyo (AFP) Jul 10, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Japan_Has_Right_To_Protect_Itself_Says_Foreign_Minister_999.html Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso Sunday suggested that Japan would have the right to attack North Korea to protect its citizens from a nuclear missile launch by the isolated Stalinist country. Following the testfiring last week by Pyongyang of seven ballistic missiles, Aso told NHK public television: "It is impossible for us to do nothing until we are attacked by a country which says it has nuclear weapons and could fire missiles against Japan." Japan has a pacifist constitution banning it from using or threatening to use force. Aso said the right to attack before being attacked was within the scope of the constitution "at least under the current situation to guarantee Japanese citizens' security". Aso's comment were echoed by Fukushiro Nukaga, director general of the Defense Agency, who was quoted as saying: "It is natural that a sovereign nation have a limited assault capability against enemy territory so as to protect its own citizens." "The latest problem of North Korea's missile launches will probably be a trigger for residents in Japan to ponder the issue. We need to discuss having offensive capability for the purpose of self-defense," Nukaga said, according to Jiji Press and NHK television. Of the seven missiles launched Wednesday by North Korea, six are thought to have been short-range Scuds or middle-range Rodongs, the latter capable of hitting the Japanese archipelago. "Rodong missiles have been regarded as a direct threat to Japan since they were testfired in 1993," said Aso. "We are rushing to put an anti-ballistic missile system in place ahead of schedule." Following last week's North Korean tests, Nukaga said Japan wanted to develop a joint missile defense system with the US as soon as possible. Japan has dodged the constitutional issue by calling its military self-defense forces and limiting its function to defensive purposes. US Downplays Japan Comments On North Korea The United States on Monday downplayed comments from senior Japanese officials who have warned that Tokyo has the right to make a preemptive strike on North Korea under some circumstances. "I did not read this as a declaration of war," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters, adding that the warning had come with "a whole series of qualifiers." But Snow said that Japan "has clearly not ruled out any options" in dealing with the potential missile threat from North Korea -- diplomatic language often attached to the principle that officials want to keep all options open. His comments came after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso Sunday suggested that Japan would have the right to attack North Korea to protect its citizens from a nuclear missile launch by the isolated Stalinist country. Following the test firing last week by Pyongyang of seven ballistic missiles, Aso told NHK public television: "It is impossible for us to do nothing until we are attacked by a country which says it has nuclear weapons and could fire missiles against Japan." Japan has a pacifist constitution banning it from using or threatening to use force. Aso said the right to attack before being attacked was within the scope of the constitution "at least under the current situation to guarantee Japanese citizens' security". Of the seven missiles launched Wednesday by North Korea, six are thought to have been short-range Scuds or middle-range Rodongs, the latter capable of hitting the Japanese archipelago. US Downplays Divisions Over North Korea The White House on Monday downplayed the possibility that permanent UN Security Council members Russia and China could abstain from voting on a UN resolution calling for sanctions on North Korea. Asked how their possible abstention would affect the resolution if the measure otherwise has enough support to pass, spokesman Tony Snow replied: "Then it passes." "I mean, that's the way it works. If you have a Security Council resolution that is passed with abstentions, it passes," he said, declining to say what impact if any their non-voting would have on the measure's effectiveness. Asked about a possible delay in voting on such a resolution, Snow noted that a high-level Chinese delegation was expected in Pyongyang and downplayed divisions in how to deal with the Stalinist regime. "I think the most important thing to note is that everybody really is united on the key goal," getting North Korea back to the six-country talks on its nuclear programs, he said. The UN Security Council is to hold formal consultations later Monday on when to vote on a Japanese draft resolution that would censure North Korea for its missile tests, amid a flurry of diplomacy to settle the crisis. The Japanese draft would block the transfer of items to North Korea that could be used in missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. It condemns North Korea's testing of seven missiles last week, including a new long-range Taepodong-2 which could theoretically reach US soil, and invokes Chapter Seven of the UN charter, which authorizes sanctions or even military action. China and Russia oppose the Japanese draft -- which is co-sponsored by the United States and all Western members of the council -- because it includes sanctions and a reference to Chapter Seven. ---- Japan Considers Strike Against N. Korea Jul 10, 2006 (AP) By MARI YAMAGUCHI http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060710/D8IP4UC81.html TOKYO - Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on the North's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime. Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites. "If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said. Japan's constitution currently bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defense Forces. A Defense Agency spokeswoman, however, said Japan has no attacking weapons such as ballistic missiles that could reach North Korea. Its forces only have ground-to-air missiles and ground-to-vessel missiles, she said on condition of anonymity due to official policy. Despite resistance from China and Russia, Japan has pushed for a U.N. Security Council resolution that would prohibit nations from procuring missiles or missile-related "items, materials goods and technology" from North Korea. A vote was possible in New York later Monday, but Japan said it would not insist on one. "It's important for the international community to express a strong will in response to the North Korean missile launches," Abe said. "This resolution is an effective way of expressing that." China and Russia, both nations with veto power on the council, have voiced opposition to the measure. Kyodo News agency reported Monday, citing unnamed Chinese diplomatic sources, that China may use its veto on the Security Council to block the resolution. The United States, Britain and France have expressed support for the proposal, while Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has said there is a possibility that Russia will abstain. South Korea, not a council member, has not publicly taken a position on the resolution, but on Sunday Seoul rebuked Japan for its outspoken criticism of the tests. "There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite," a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun's office said, suggesting that Tokyo was contributing to tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Abe said Monday it was "regrettable" that South Korea had accused Japan of overreacting. "There is no mistake that the missile launch ... is a threat to Japan and the region. It is only natural for Japan to take measures of risk management against such a threat," Abe said. Meanwhile, a Chinese delegation including the country's top nuclear envoy - Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei - arrived in North Korea on Monday, officially to attend celebrations marking the 45th anniversary of a friendship treaty between the North and China. The U.S. is urging Beijing to push its communist ally back into six-party nuclear disarmament talks, but the Chinese government has not said whether Wu would bring up the negotiations. A ministry spokeswoman said last week that China was "making assiduous efforts" in pushing for the talks to resume. Talks have been deadlocked since November because of a boycott by Pyongyang in protest of a crackdown by Washington on the regime's alleged money-laundering and other financial crimes. Beijing has suggested an informal gathering of the six nations, which could allow the North to technically stand by its boycott, but at the same time meet with the other five parties - South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan and Russia. The U.S. has backed the idea and said Washington could meet with the North on the sidelines of such a meeting. Still, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill questioned just how influential Beijing was with the enigmatic regime. "I must say the issue of China's influence on DPRK is one that concerns us," Hill told reporters in Tokyo. "China said to the DPRK, 'Don't fire those missiles,' but the DPRK fired them. So I think everybody, especially the Chinese, are a little bit worried about it." The DPRK refers to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Hill is touring the region to coordinate strategy on North Korea. He has emphasized the need for countries involved to present a united front. "We want to make it very clear that we all speak in one voice on this provocative action by the North Koreans to launch missiles in all shapes and sizes," Hill said. "We want to make it clear to North Korea that what it did was really unacceptable." Associated Press writers Audra Ang in Beijing and Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo contributed to this report. -------- korea Japan mulls North Korea strike Updated 7/10/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-07-10-north-korea-japan_x.htm TOKYO — Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on North Korea's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime. China asked Japan to postpone the vote until later this week and Japan is prepared to accept, Kyodo News agency said. Japanese officials had earlier vowed to push ahead with a resolution that would impose sanctions on North Korea for its missile tests last week, but said Tokyo would not insist on a Monday vote. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters his government wants a vote on the measure "as soon as possible." "I think we must send a message that's as clear as possible" to North Korea, he said. VIDEO: Japan considers options Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites. "If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said. Japan's constitution bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defense Forces. A Defense Agency spokeswoman, however, said Japan has no offensive weapons such as ballistic missiles that could reach North Korea. Its forces only have ground-to-air missiles and ground-to-vessel missiles, she said on condition of anonymity because of official policy. Japanese fighter jets and pilots are not capable of carrying out such an attack, a military analyst said. "Japan's air force is top class in defending the nation's airspace, but attacking another country is almost impossible," said analyst Kazuhisa Ogawa. "Even if Japan's planes made it to North Korea, they wouldn't make it back ... it would be an act of suicide," he said. "Japan has no capacity to wage war." Despite resistance from China and Russia, Japan has pushed for the U.N. Security Council resolution, which would bar nations from buying or otherwise receiving missile-related items, materials goods and technology from North Korea. "It's important for the international community to express a strong will in response to the North Korean missile launches," Abe said. "This resolution is an effective way of expressing that." China and Russia, both nations with veto power on the council, have voiced opposition to the measure. Kyodo reported Monday, citing unidentified Chinese diplomatic sources, that China may use its veto on the Security Council to block the resolution. The United States, Britain and France have expressed support for the proposal, while Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has said there is a possibility that Russia will abstain. South Korea, not a council member, has not publicly taken a position on the resolution, but on Sunday Seoul rebuked Japan for its outspoken criticism of the tests. "There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite," a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun's office said, suggesting that Tokyo was contributing to tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Abe said Monday it was "regrettable" that South Korea had accused Japan of overreacting. "There is no mistake that the missile launch ... is a threat to Japan and the region. It is only natural for Japan to take measures of risk management against such a threat," Abe said. Meanwhile, a Chinese delegation including the country's top nuclear envoy — Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei — arrived Monday in North Korea, officially to attend celebrations marking the 45th anniversary of a friendship treaty between the North and China. The U.S. is urging Beijing to push its communist ally back into six-party nuclear disarmament talks, but the Chinese government has not said whether Wu would bring up the negotiations. A ministry spokeswoman said last week that China was "making assiduous efforts" in pushing for the talks to resume. Talks have been deadlocked since November because of a boycott by Pyongyang in protest of a crackdown by Washington on the regime's alleged money-laundering and other financial crimes. Beijing has suggested an informal gathering of the six nations, which could allow the North to technically stand by its boycott, but at the same time meet with the other five parties — South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan and Russia. The U.S. has backed the idea and said Washington could meet with the North on the sidelines of such a meeting. Still, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill questioned just how influential Beijing was with the enigmatic regime. "I must say the issue of China's influence on DPRK is one that concerns us," Hill told reporters in Tokyo. "China said to the DPRK, 'Don't fire those missiles,' but the DPRK fired them. So I think everybody, especially the Chinese, are a little bit worried about it." The DPRK refers to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Hill is touring the region to coordinate strategy on North Korea. He has emphasized the need for countries involved to present a united front. "We want to make it very clear that we all speak in one voice on this provocative action by the North Koreans to launch missiles in all shapes and sizes," Hill said. "We want to make it clear to North Korea that what it did was really unacceptable." -------- russia Russians get help to clean nuclear waste July 10, 2006 (UPI) http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060710-124402-2546r MOSCOW -- Russia has hired Fluor Ltd. and British Nuclear Group to help clean up nuclear fuel and waste from the nation's naval fleet. The Russian Foundation for Environmental Safety of Power Engineering hired the two companies to assist with the decommissioning of the retired Russian nuclear-powered naval fleet and associated spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste management near the Barents Sea ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk, Fluor said Monday. Fluor and BNG will work with Russian government organization Rosatom as it develops the Russia's program for cleaning up the former Soviet navy's nuclear ---- U.S. May Ask Russian Help With Nuke Waste By Jul 10, 2006 (UPI) http://www.postchronicle.com/news/science/article_21227447.shtml WASHINGTON, July 10, 2006 -- The United States reportedly plans to begin talks with Russia on an agreement making Russia one of the world's largest repositories of spent nuclear fuel. Although the United States has previously opposed such a plan, once U.S. President Bush endorsed Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal last year for Iran to conduct uranium enrichment inside Russia -- rather than in Iran -- it made little sense to bar ordinary civilian nuclear exchanges with Russia, The New York Times reported. In return, administration officials say they expect Putin's cooperation in forcing Iran to stop the enrichment of uranium. "We have made clear to Russia that for an agreement on peaceful nuke cooperation to go forward, we will need active cooperation in blocking Iran's attempts to obtain nuclear weapons," said Peter Watkins, a White House spokesman. So far, Russia has backed the United States in its fundamental demands, but the Times says Russia has balked at the imposition of sanctions or the passage of any U.N. resolution that might be later used as a justification for military action. The Washington Post first reported the U.S. policy change Saturday. ---- US offers Russia nuclear deal to support Western action against Iran By Rupert Cornwell in Washington Published: 10 July 2006 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1169743.ece The US is offering to break a decades-old taboo and negotiate a civil nuclear deal with Russia - a move largely intended as an incentive for Moscow to throw its full weight behind Western efforts to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. Talks are still at an early stage, officials say, and details are unlikely to be unveiled at this weekend's G8 summit in St Petersburg, hosted by President Vladimir Putin. If completed, however, a deal could see Russia earning billions of dollars as a leading storage centre for spent nuclear fuel from US-built reactors. The discussions, first disclosed by The Washington Post on Saturday, should help smooth ties between America and its one-time superpower rival ruffled by US accusations of a clampdown on democracy and free speech by Mr Putin, and by anger over Moscow's unwillingness to back punitive sanctions against Iran and North Korea. But they are bound to generate controversy in the US, where some conservatives were already calling on President Bush to boycott the St Petersburg meeting as a sign of his displeasure. The environmental lobby, deeply worried about nuclear safety standards in Russia, will also protest. Iran is likely to top the G8 agenda when the leaders gather on Saturday, amid growing impatience over Tehran's apparent stalling over its response to the package of incentives offered by European negotiators to persuade the Islamic regime to abandon its uranium enrichment activities - which the West suspects are aimed at developing a nuclear bomb. Russia has refused to back either sanctions, or a strong United Nations Security Council resolution that could pave the way for US military strikes. But the Bush administration believes a lucrative civilian deal will make Moscow more amenable. The latest moves could revive an earlier Russian offer to conduct uranium enrichment for Iran inside Russia - a proposal which has drawn mixed reactions from Tehran. Yesterday, however, Iran warned the G8 not to take any decisions on its nuclear programme, arguing that this could jeopardise the current negotiations with the European Union, which are supported by the US. Any "premature and incomplete" summit decision "could harm the positive trend of negotiations", Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, said. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- pennsylvania Exelon Pushes To Store Nuclear Fuel In Limerick Jul 10, 2006 (AP) http://cbs3.com/topstories/local_story_191084935.html LIMERICK, PA Officials from Exelon Corporation will meet with Montgomery county officials and residents Tuesday to defend the company’s plan to store spent nuclear fuel in outdoor casks at the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station. A spokeswoman says Exelon wants to store the used nuclear fuel in airtight steel cylinders and house the containers in outdoor concrete vaults beginning in 2009. The township must approve Exelon’s proposal for a concrete pad to hold the vaults and two buildings for equipment storage before the company can build the vaults. The supervisors plan to vote on the proposal on Thursday. ---- Storing nuclear waste in spotlight at Limerick Officials at the power plant in Montgomery County will defend their plans to store used reactor fuel in outdoor vaults at a meeting Tuesday. By Mike Urban Reading, PA, Eagle, July 10, 2006 http://www.readingeagle.com/re/lead/1539784.asp Residents and officials in Montgomery County have concerns and questions about Limerick Generating Station's plan for storing nuclear waste, officials from Limerick Township and the plant have said. But the facility's experts hope to answer those questions Tuesday. Exelon Corp., which owns the plant in Limerick Township, will hold a community open house from 4 to 7 p.m. in the township building. Exelon's plan is to store spent, or used, nuclear fuel in airtight steel cylinders that would be housed in outdoor concrete vaults beginning in 2009, company spokeswoman Elizabeth Rapczynski said. Before Exelon can build the vaults, the township supervisors must approve its proposal to build a 10,000-square-foot concrete pad to hold the vaults and two related buildings for equipment storage. The supervisors plan to vote on the proposal at their meeting Thursday night. Several weeks ago, the township planning commission recommended the supervisors reject the plan because of a lack of information, but since then, the company has better explained its proposal to Limerick officials, Supervisor Renee Chesler said. Security concerns limited the information in the initial proposal, Rapczynski said. The waste storage facility, known as a dry cask system, would follow a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved design and does not require township approval, said Joseph H. McGrory Jr. of Norristown, township solicitor. The commission would inspect the construction and storage procedures and review the system regularly once it is in use, commission spokeswoman Diane Screnci said. Limerick and other nuclear plants use heat from uranium to boil water, and the steam turns turbines to generate electricity. About every two years, one-third of the uranium must be replaced, and that spent fuel is put in permanent storage, she said. The Limerick station has been storing spent fuel indoors in steel-lined concrete pools of water since it began commercial operations in 1986, Rapczynski said. But the plant needs additional storage because its indoor storage area will be full by 2009, and the national underground storage facility proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nev., is not expected to be ready until 2015, she said. The dry cask system would give the plant storage through 2020, Rapczynski said. Preliminary construction would start this fall, she said. America's first dry cask system began use in 1986, and there now are about 35 such facilities nationwide, including four that Exelon operates, she said. None has resulted in radiation releases that affected the public or in radioactive contamination, and there have been no attempts to sabotage the systems, Screnci said. “The systems are safe and environmentally sound,” she said. Rapczynski said that people living near the plant have nothing to fear. “This is a proven technology, and it will be protected with robust security,” she said. Chesler said she did not know how she would vote but commended both the Limerick plant and the commission for their past actions. “The plant has been an extremely safe facility, and both Exelon and the NRC have proven track records,” Chesler said. Contact reporter Mike Urban at 610-371-5023 or murban@readingeagle.com. -------- south carolina Startup of second nuclear facility begins at Savannah River Site Associated Press Mon, Jul. 10, 2006 http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/15008228.htm http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/15008228.htm AIKEN, S.C. - Operations have begun at a second facility at the Savannah River Site to immobilize nuclear waste in glass logs, federal officials announced Monday. The first glass waste storage building used for the last decade is nearing capacity. The new facility has the capacity to store 2,340 canisters and shouldn't fill until 2015, U.S. Department of Energy officials said. The construction of the second facility was begun two years ago by the Department of Energy. It was completed over two months ahead of schedule and $8 million under the total project cost, officials said. There are roughly 36 million gallons of radioactive waste at SRS left over from Cold War-era bomb making. About 34 million gallons of the waste stored in the tanks is made up of salt waste, which the agency considers low-activity and can be left behind at the site. The high-level radioactive waste is converted into the glass logs. The Department of Energy has said a facility to separate the high- and low-level radioactive nuclear waste stored in underground tanks at the site will be delayed until 2011. In March, the SRS Citizens Advisory Board's waste management committee wrote a letter to the federal government saying that construction delays for a nuclear waste processing facility at the site could cost taxpayers $1 billion. -------- MILITARY -------- chemical weapons U.S. Will Miss Treaty Deadline to Destroy Chemical Weapons THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, July 10, 2006 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2006/2006-07-10-01.asp The United States has requested a five year extension to the deadline for completing destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile. But even if the extension is granted, the new deadline cannot be met, a U.S. ambassador says. The United States possesses the second largest chemical weapons stockpile in the world - more than 27,700 metric tons of deadly VX, GB, HD, mustard, and sarin nerve agent and associated explosives. They must be destroyed under the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty signed by 178 countries. Ambassador Eric Javits, head of the U.S. delegation to the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), submitted the extension request to the council during a session that ended Friday at The Hague, Netherlands. The draft request would extend the deadline for the destruction of the entire U.S. chemical weapons stockpile five years from April 2007 to April 2012. Javits told the council that the United States is asking for an extended deadline of April 29, 2012 because it is the latest date the treaty allows, but even if the extension is granted, the U.S. will not be able to destroy all its chemical weapons by then. "Based on our current projections, we do not expect to be able to meet that deadline," the ambassador said first in April and reiterated at the council meeting. "We are making every effort and continuing to seek opportunities to improve our [chemical weapons] destruction with a view to meeting the 2012 deadline or completing destruction as soon after that date as feasible," Javits said. After OPCW states have a chance to consider the U.S. request, Javits said he hopes the council will endorse it at its next session in November. "Let me emphatically reiterate that the United States is committed to the earliest possible completion of destruction of its chemical weapons stockpiles," Javits said. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force April 29, 1997, bans the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and direct or indirect transfer of chemical weapons. It prohibits the use or preparation for use of chemical weapons. As of March 29, 2003, 176 countries have signed the treaty and 151 of them have ratified it. The treaty requires that each Party government must destroy any chemical weapons production facilities it owns, or that are located in any place under its control. Destruction of the U.S. stockpile is being conducted by the U.S. Army's Chemical Materials Agency based at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. As of March 31, 2006 the U.S. had destroyed 10,103 metric tons of chemical agent, or 36.4 percent of its declared inventory of 27,768 metric tons. The U.S. has concentrated on destroying its most lethal weapons first, VX and sarin nerve agent. Javits says over 86 percent of the sarin is already destroyed. The U.S. has completed operations at two chemical weapons destruction facilities - at Johnston Island, 800 miles southwest of Hawaii, and at Aberdeen, Maryland. Six other facilities are currently operating at a cost of a billion and a half dollars a year, and site preparations are underway for construction of the final two destruction facilities. In April, Javits told the Executive Council that it took the United States "longer than anticipated to build facilities and to obtain the necessary permits and consent to begin destruction of chemical weapons, and we have found that, once operating, our facilities have not destroyed weapons as rapidly as we initially projected." Current projections indicate that four facilities will be operating past 2012 - Umatilla, Oregon; Tooele, Utah; Anniston, Alabama; and Pine Bluff Arkansas. The Umatilla facility began operations in September 2004, but is encountering delays as a result of repeated fires in the explosive containment rooms during the rocket shearing process. This facility has destroyed 478 metric tons of GB stocks using incineration, with 2,896 metric tons remaining. At the Tooele facility 6,489 metric tons of chemical weapons have been incinerated, with 5,632 metric tons remaining. The facility was shut down for eight months to implement a new safety plan following an incident of worker exposure to a small amount of nerve agent. This facility is currently inactive preparing for destruction of mustard agent, but contamination of some mustard stocks with mercury has complicated the process, officials say. At the Anniston facility, operations began in August 2003, and the facility has destroyed by incineration all 397 metric tons of GB, with 1,648 metric tons of other agents remaining. Startup was delayed seven months to implement additional community emergency preparedness. This facility is currently inactive while preparing for destruction of VX agent. The Pine Bluff facility began operations in March 2005, and has destroyed 166 metric tons of GB using incineration, with 3,327 metric tons remaining. Two facilities that have not yet been constructed are expected to begin operations no earlier than 2011. One of the two, the Blue Grass, Kentucky Chemical Agent Disposal Pilot Plant is currently in the design phase, with 475 metric tons to be destroyed. Most facilties have incinerated the chemical weapons, but Blue Grass will use alternative techniques - neutralization, followed by supercritical water oxidation - to destroy GB, VX, and HD. It is projected to start in 2011. The other facility that has yet to be built is in Pueblo, Colorado. Currently in the design phase, it has 2,371 metric tons to be destroyed. This facility will use the alternative techniques of neutralization followed by biotreatment to destroy mustard agent. It is also projected to start operations in 2011. While, the United States announced the decision to request an extension in April, it delayed submitting a draft request to provide information about the move and to listen to the comments, suggestions and concerns of others. "We have appreciated your thoughtful and constructive comments, and recognize the concerns that have been raised," Javits said. The threat of chemical weapons use no longer is confined to combat, he said. "The threat now also comes from terrorists and non-state actors," as they may threaten "us in our homes and cities." -------- israel / palestine Israeli use of poisonous material alleged GAZA, July 10, 2006 (UPI) http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060710-081624-7700r The Palestinian health ministry accused Israel of using a new type of banned explosives containing poisonous material. A ministry report released Monday said testimonies from surgeons in Palestinian hospitals indicated that "all 249 casualties inflicted by the Israeli war machine during the operation on Gaza which started on June 27 resulted from shrapnel of new and developed shells and explosives which cause amputation of limbs and burning of all the injured parts." The ministry called on the international community and human rights organization "to send medical committees to examine the wounded and verify the existence of poisonous material in their bodies caused by Israeli weapons." It also urged international organization to put pressure on Israel to stop using internationally banned arms against inoffensive and unarmed civilians. The report indicated that "most casualties who were submitted to surgeries were caused by strong explosions that led to the amputation and carbonization of limbs while shrapnel caused small openings in the body through which internal parts, including intestines and spleen, are burned." In a related development, the foreign ministry warned Monday that Israel's military operations and threats to expand its incursion in Gaza will not contribute to finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis of the Israeli soldier abducted by three Palestinian factions, including Hamas which leads the Palestinian government. The ministry said in a statement that "international idleness and silence over Israel's crimes do not contribute to boosting the rule of the law but encourages the law of the jungle and Israel's ignoring of all international norms." Israel launched operation "Summer Rains" in Gaza two weeks ago in an attempt to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was abducted in an attack on the crossing of Keer Shalom between Gaza and Israel by militants from Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Islamic Army. -------- POLITICS -------- investigations Closing In on the Niger Uranium Hoax Who lied us into war? The answer may be forthcoming… by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com July 10, 2006 http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9278 On January 28, 2003, George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, wherein he uttered 16 fateful words: "The British government," he averred, "has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Fateful, because this assertion turned out to have been based not on mistaken intelligence, or wrongly interpreted data, but on an outright fabrication: the now-infamous Niger uranium forgeries. The British dodge, as Josh Marshall has pointed out, leads us in circles, and was only added later, to answer objections from the CIA. On March 7, the International Atomic Energy Agency, having asked for the evidence supposedly supporting Bush's statement, declared that the documents provided to them – including correspondence between officials of the African nation of Niger and Saddam's minions – were bogus, badly done forgeries that required only a few hours of Googling to expose as fakes. Yet, somehow they had been incorporated into the U.S. intelligence stream and piped, it seems, directly to the White House. Someone had double-crossed the president in a spectacular act of betrayal that surely provoked some resentment in the White House. But who were the betrayers? And how, given all the alleged safeguards, did they manage to get this half-baked hodgepodge past the gatekeepers and make the president look like an idiot? There are many, and not just Democrats, who would claim that the president accomplishes this all by himself on a daily basis – but that, logically, would constitute an even greater provocation, and invite immediate and ruthless retaliation. This came, I believe, on Dec. 30, 2003, when Patrick J. Fitzgerald was appointed [.pdf] to investigate the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald's target: a cabal of administration insiders, including I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, who was later indicted. Plame was targeted because she and her husband were at the center of efforts inside the national security bureaucracy to debunk and expose the bogus "intelligence" being fed to the president, the Congress, and the American people (often via the front page of the New York Times) to justify the invasion and conquest of Iraq. Joseph C. Wilson, a career diplomat and former ambassador to Gabon, and Valerie Plame Wilson had worked as a team to follow up on the claim that Saddam had sought weapons-grade uranium in Niger. Wilson traveled to Niger, at the behest of the CIA, and reported back that there was nothing to the story. Wilson was therefore astonished to listen to the president give credence to these claims in the State of the Union address: Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times expressing his astonishment and laying out the specific findings of his trip. As Gertrude Stein said of her hometown, "there was no there there." But there was something there, albeit nothing like the truth. There was, instead, a forgery. Crudely done, yet ultimately successful in that it fooled the White House into including "intelligence" gleaned from it in the most visible presidential forum of the year, when all eyes were on the American commander in chief as he threatened war with Iraq. Who were the forgers – and, more importantly, who had facilitated their pipeline to the president's desk? The answer to this question has taken investigators to Italy, where the Niger uranium forgeries first turned up. Dropped off at the American embassy in Rome by a journalist for one of former Prime Minister Berlusconi's magazines, the Niger uranium papers were apparently an amalgam of old intelligence reports, amateur forgery exercises, and large dollops of political fantasy. Peddled by a former intelligence officer, one Rocco Martino, who served as the conduit or "cutout" – i.e., the fall guy – the true origins of the papers have remained mysterious, although I have floated a theory of my own. (See also here, here, here, and here.) Now that theory has been bolstered by a new development in the Italian investigation – the arrest of five (and counting) top officials of the Italian military intelligence service, SISMI, for maintaining a domestic spying unit that bugged phones, pushed disinformation, and sought to destroy Berlusconi's political enemies. The spy unit made payments to an Italian journalist, one Renato Farina, whose oeuvre includes articles blaming the Niger uranium forgeries on the French. The story being pushed was that Jacques Chirac, eager to embarrass the Americans, planted these bogus documents and set up the White House for a fall. However, as the Italian media smelled the scent of blood and the Niger uranium mystery began to unravel, this hokum also fell apart. Instead, as reported by the Italian daily La Repubblica, the evidence pointed to a joint Italian-American cabal of SISMI operatives and U.S.-based neoconservatives based in and around the Pentagon and the office of the vice president. Key figures in what we might call the Roman wing of this operation have now been arrested in connection with the illegal CIA-SISMI abduction of Abu Omar, including SISMI's number two, Marco Mancini. According to Italian news reports, the charge is not limited to the Abu Omar caper, but also involves SISMI running an elaborate propaganda and spying outfit that eavesdropped on journalists and disseminated "dossiers" to favored journalists. Speaking of which, the office of Farina was also searched and his computer seized. Laura Rozen, who has been on top of this story from the beginning, underscores the significance of all this and makes an important point: "Amazing to see the actual alleged extent of the Sismi disinformation and interception operation, details which are now apparently in the hands of Milan prosecutors. Amazing and distracting as those details are, the larger potential implication of this arrangement is important and shouldn't be lost: the official cover story for the Italian government – one put forward by Sismi, the Berlusconi government and seemingly accepted by the Italian parliamentary services oversight committee – that the Niger forgeries middleman, ex Sismi agent Rocco Martino, was under the control and run by the French at the time of the forgeries caper, was first promoted by a 'journalist' – Renato Farina – who the Milan magistrates now have wiretap evidence agreed to help Sismi put out disinformation on the Abu Omar case. The extent of Farina's alleged disinformation operations for Sismi is a matter now under investigation." Scooter Libby and his co-conspirators were, in Fitzgerald's famous analogy, diligently "throwing sand" in the faces of investigators on this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, on the other shore, SISMI was busy kicking up a veritable sandstorm of distractions and phony cover stories, employing a team of journalists-cum-operatives assiduously working to blame the French, Rocco Martino, the mysterious "La Signora," anyone but the actual authors of the forgery that fooled a president. This entire network is being uprooted, in the full glare of publicity, and amid signs that the Italian and American investigations into the cabal are beginning to converge. As I wrote in October: "Even as the FBI was following the trail of the forgers, the Italians were looking into the matter from their end. A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report: now, I am told by a former CIA operations officer, the report has aroused some interest on this side of the Atlantic. According to a source in the Italian embassy, Patrick J. 'Bulldog' Fitzgerald asked for and 'has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document,' the former CIA officer tells me: "'Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi.' "Alan Wolf died about a year and a half ago of cancer. He served as chief of the CIA's Near East Division as well as the European Division, and was also CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. According to my source, 'he and Clarridge and Ledeen were all very close and also close to Chalabi.' The former CIA officer says Wolf 'was Clarridge's Agency godfather.' Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop." The close-mouthed Fitzgerald and the voluble Italians could not be more different in their respective approaches: the former gives the media next to nothing, and the latter are all too forthcoming. The result is that public awareness of the implications is taking much longer to percolate in the U.S., while the real story of how we were lied into war is coming out on the front pages of the Italian media. Sooner or later, however, Americans will learn the full truth about the liars – their crimes, their motives, and perhaps even their overseas connections. The War Party is being slowly backed into a corner, and the Italian imbroglio gives us new hope that the process is quickening. The wheels of justice may be turning with frustrating laziness, but when they finally begin to move my guess is that the culprits in the great Niger Uranium Hoax are going to be crushed beneath their weight in very short order. -------- propaganda wars Republican lawmakers cite shells as WMD proof By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published July 10, 2006 http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20060710-123909-1428r Congressional Republicans are at odds with Democrats -- and the Bush administration -- over the significance of 500 munitions found in Iraq since 2003 and recently disclosed by the Pentagon. The rocket and artillery shells hold deadly sarin and mustard gas, a small part of the vast weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal that Saddam Hussein built in the 1980s. Republican lawmakers say the 500-plus shells, with more likely to be found in the coming months, are evidence that Saddam was still concealing WMDs in 2003 in violation of United Nations resolutions to disarm after Iraq's failed invasion of Kuwait. The resolution "didn't say pre-'91 chemical weapons," said Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican. "It didn't say post-'91 chemical weapons. It said chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein violated this resolution and others like it. ... In part because of such violations, we voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq." Democrats dismiss the findings. They say the munitions were found in small clusters and are 1980s vintage. In other words, Iraq produced them before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and thus they are irrelevant to the CIA's flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), on which President Bush largely based his decision to go to war to keep Iraq's WMDs from terrorists, they say. To the consternation of congressional Republicans, including Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, the Democrats are getting support from the administration. When the office of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte conducted a phone-in briefing for reporters last month, the presenters downplayed the munitions finding, just like the Democrats. "The priority of the ISG [Iraq Survey Group, which headed the hunt for WMDs] was to look for post-Desert Storm [1991] munitions, newer stuff," an anonymous briefer told reporters. "It was not looking for older stuff. And so this doesn't really bear on the issue." That dismissive remark generally dovetailed with press reporting. But it irked Mr. Hoekstra, who had held a press conference to announce that the administration had declassified a report on the 500 shells. Mr. Hoekstra wrote an unusually blunt June 29 letter to Mr. Negroponte, accusing his staff of misstating the ISG's mission statement. The ISG was not limited to poking around for post-1991 weapons, he said. He also accused Mr. Negroponte of ignoring requests for information from a Republican senator. "I am very disappointed by the inaccurate, incomplete, and occasionally misleading comments made by the briefers," he wrote. Negroponte spokesman Carl Kropf said of the letter, "We'll respond in some fashion to be determined." Republicans say that with the passage of time, as new information surfaces, the CIA's much-maligned NIE does not look quite as bad. To be sure, inspectors have not found the tons of chemical weapons stockpiles it had predicted, or an active nuclear weapons program, or continued manufacturing of WMDs. But the NIE contained other components. For example, it said hundreds of chemical weapons munitions remained unaccounted for, after U.N. inspectors destroyed thousands. The NIE did not specify the shells had to be post-1991, so the discovery of more than 500 munitions since 2004 would tend to validate that finding. What's more, the ISG did find that Saddam planned to resume WMD production quickly once U.N. sanctions were lifted. He had already corrupted the U.N.'s oil-for-food transactions by bribing foreign government officials and suppliers of prohibited weapons. That ISG finding has been buttressed by newly declassified transcripts of taped conversations between Saddam and his top aides. The palace talk: WMD production would be resumed once the West lost interest in containing Baghdad. Republicans received a bit more support from the administration in a subsequent House Armed Services Committee hearing last week. "We do assess that the chemical munitions that have been found are hazardous, and potentially they could be lethal," Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, testified. "The chemicals that are contained in the munitions that are referred to in this report are capable of creating mass casualties." The committee also heard from David Kay, who initially led the search for WMDs before turning the job over to Charles Duelfer. He generally downplayed the discovery. "I don't think any of us should be surprised that we are still finding chemical munitions produced before 1991 in Iraq," he said. He added that his main task was to try to find WMD that the CIA said were produced after U.N. inspectors left in 1998. He found none. The DNI briefers stressed to reporters that the new report on munitions is not a dissent from the final March 2005 report of Mr. Duelfer. But there does seem to be a difference in how the two assess the danger to U.S. troops. "The ISG believes that any remaining chemical munitions in Iraq do not pose a militarily significant threat to coalition forces because the agent and munitions are degraded and there are not enough extant to cause mass casualties," Mr. Duelfer wrote. Col. John Chiu, commander of the National Ground Intelligence Center, which is conducting the WMD search in Iraq, told the Armed Services committee that, "The munitions that we're finding, the agents within those munitions are still toxic, and if exposed to enough of a degree, would prove to be lethal. ... They do constitute weapons of mass destruction." -------- us politics Snow on the dismal failure of the administration's Korea policy Josh Micah Marshall (July 10, 2006 -- 02:49 PM EDT) http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008988.php I'd been waiting for the day when Tony Snow would slip into full wing-nut claptrap overdrive. And today I think we've got it. Here's what Snow said today when he got backed into a corner about the dismal failure of the administration's Korea policy ... "I understand what the Clinton administration wanted to do. They wanted to talk reason to the government of Pyongyang, and they engaged in bilateral conversations. And Bill Richardson went with flowers and chocolates, and he went with light water nuclear reactors, and he went with promises of heavy oil and a basketball signed by Michael Jordan, and many other inducements for the dear leader to try to agree not to develop nuclear weapons, and it failed." You know Snow felt deeply under the gun here, because this claptrap comes from deep in the 'winger brain stem. Let's review a few salient, uncontested facts. Back in 1994, the US came close to war over its nuclear activities and particularly the reactor complex at Yongbyon. War was averted with the so-called 'Agreed Framework' in which North Korea suspended its production of plutonium (and put the facility under international inspections) in exchange for assistance building light water nuclear reactors (the kind that don't help you make bombs) and fuel oil for energy generation. There are all sorts of details to what was going to be in exchange for what, who exactly would be doing the giving, and lots of other details you can see here. But that is the essence of it. And it shut down the North Koreans' plutonium reprocessing activities for close to a decade. The agreement began to come apart in 1998 when the North Koreans did an unnannounced test firing of one of their missiles, which went over Japan and crashed into the Pacific. There was also, by the end of the Clinton administration, evidence that the North Koreans were attempting to enrich uranium, something not explicitly covered in the Agreed Framework, but certainly a violation of the spirit of the agreement. There's a fairly detailed explanation of the US reaction and the efforts to arrive at a new agreement during the late Clinton administration. It's a Times , oped written by two of the policy makers at the time, Bill Perry and Ashton Carter. The Bush administration came to office convinced that this entire process was one of appeasement and set in motion a series of events that led to a complete breakdown of the initial agreement. In response, the North Koreans started reprocessing plutonium again. Now, most agree, the North Koreans probably have enough for several nuclear warheads. Now, the premise of the Bush administration's North Korea policy was that North Korea was a bad acting state that had to be dealt with through force, not negotiation. That didn't necessarily mean going to war. The goal was to intimidate the North Koreans into better behavior if possible and resort to force if necessary. Yet, when the North Koreans called the White House's bluff and starting reprocessing plutonium, the White House's response was ... well, nothing. That was three years ago. Rather than talk softly and carry a big stick it was a policy of talk tough and do nothing. The bomb making plutonium keeps coming off the conveyor belt. And the White House policy is to say they won't negotiate and also ask the Chinese to get the North Koreans to behave. The remaining conceit of the Bush administration is that the Clintonites met with the North Koreans in bilateral talks while they insist on multilateral talks. That's the policy, which is to say, they have no policy. The salient fact is that under Clinton plutonium reprocessing stopped and under Bush it restarted. The Bushies angle was that you don't coddle bad actors like the North Koreans. You deal with them in the language they understand: force. But the NKs called their bluff, they weren't prepared to use force. So they decided to forget about the whole thing. That's the record. That's the policy. A total failure. Tony Snow knows it. That's why he went into overdrive. The truth hurts. ---- Veteran Journalist Robert Scheer on Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton- and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush Monday, July 10th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/10/1356245 We speak with veteran journalist and author Robert Scheer about his new book, "Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton- and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush." [includes rush transcript] The Vietnam, War, North Korea, The Cold War and Presidential Power. These are just a few of the topics that veteran journalist Robert Scheer has reported on in his long career. From 1964 to 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and in 1993 Scheer launched a nationally syndicated column based at the LA Times where he was named a contributing editor. Robert Scheer's column ran weekly for 12 years until November of last year when he was fired. Scheer said publicly that he believed his firing was due to ideological reasons and his steady criticism of the Bush administration At the time, Scheer wrote on the Huffington Post blog that "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately sixty percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher." Scheer's column is now based at the San Francisco Chronicle. He also recently launched the political blog, "Truthdig.com." His latest book is called "Playing President: "My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush." * Robert Scheer, journalist and author of several books. His latest is titled "Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton- and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush." RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Robert Scheer joins us in our Firehouse studio today in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now! It's good to have you with us. First, the firing, because you're still writing. In fact, you're probably known more now than before. Can you put it into the context of what is happening to the press today? ROBERT SCHEER: Well, first of all, there's a lot of opportunity. You know, AJ Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Well, I now own at least half of one, along with Zuade Kaufman, my publisher. So, you know, you can land on your feet, your show, which, you know, a lot of us listen to, as mainstream media now. And my wife, for instance, she’s a deputy editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, she sits in her parking lot listening to your show before she goes into her meetings. So alternative media is no longer really alternative, and we’re no longer that dependant upon newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times, for our information. You know, go to BuzzFlash or The Nation or TruthOut or TruthDig. There are many, many sites, as you're well aware. So, I don't want people to think, “Wow! They were able to silence me.” Nonsense. Did they try to silence? Yes. The Tribune Company took over the Los Angeles Times. There are issues of media conglomeration. This was a newspaper that I had worked for for 30 years. The interviews in this book, with the exception of the Playboy interview with Jimmy Carter, were all done for the Los Angeles Times. I was nominated by the paper some 20 times for Pulitzer Prizes. You know, I was a finalist. So, you know, I had a very good relationship with this paper. Chicago Tribune, the Tribune Company took it over. They're very conservative. The publisher definitely was ideologically opposed to my view. I was attacked by Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, sometimes nightly on O'Reilly. I mean, he called me the most dangerous columnist in the world or something. And I think that one of the problems is that I got it right. Now, that doesn't give me any satisfaction. I would have been much happier if we could go into Iraq, and democracy would flourish, there would be no casualties, the oil revenue would pay for everything, the country was reborn as a democracy. I mean, I think most people who are against the war would have been very happy to have been proved wrong. But to have had your column ended after you got it right all those years, it shows where the paper is. I think there's one other factor that should be mentioned. These are businesses. Tribune Company owns television stations and newspapers in the same market in Los Angeles, in Hartford and other places. They only can do that now, because there's a waiver from the F.C.C., a Bush-dominated outfit, the F.C.C., and the Congress did not pass the bill that they wanted, which would allow them to have that ownership in the same market. So they were defeated by Congress, these big multimedia corporations, and they're very dependant upon favors from the Bush administration. So aside from their own conservative politics at the Tribune Company, they need this administration, and so it doesn't take much to put pressure on them. AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about the presidents that you have interviewed and known. But before we do that, on this issue of media conglomeration, on the issue of what the press can say and what the press can't say, the Bush administration lashed out at the New York Times and other media outlets for their reports on the government's secret monitoring of -- well, the latest one, of international bank transactions without court approval. President Bush himself strongly denounced the disclosure of the program by the media. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Congress was briefed. And what we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America. And for people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America. AMY GOODMAN: That's President Bush. Robert Scheer, your response? ROBERT SCHEER: First of all, if the war on terror is endless, you could forget about democracy. If it's against any target he mentions, if you could spread it -- and you never win it, which is, I guess, clearly what’s involved here, because Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein was an opponent of bin Laden, bin Laden did not have a base in Iraq. So this guy takes us to war in Iraq, which is really the irritant. Now, he doesn’t pursue the situation in Afghanistan. In fact, he coddled the Taliban before 9/11. In my book, I have columns. I wrote a column in May of ‘01, blasting the Bush administration for ignoring the Taliban. I happen to be one of those in the antiwar part of things who actually supported Clinton when he sent the cruise missiles in to take out bin Laden. I had thought we had the right to use Special Forces to go in for bin Laden. He had attacked American embassies. He attacked ships. And so, I didn't see any need to coddle the Taliban. As a matter of fact, the one group in this country that consistently raised questions about the Taliban was the Foundation for Feminist Majority, Peg Yorkin and those folks. And that's where I learned about it. And for five years they were telling us what's going on in Afghanistan is extremely dangerous, first of all, to women and girls, of course, who were treated in a most horrible way. But this was also a place where terrorism was being sponsored. Also by Pakistan, our other big buddies out there. And so, the pressure to do something about bin Laden was coming more from the left than these so-called great patriots on the right before 9/11. And, you know, as I say, in the book I had a column I wrote in May, blasting them for giving $44 million through the U.N. to the Taliban, supposedly for suppressing the opium crop, which they didn't even do. They were putting it in sheds to drive the price up. And six weeks before 9/11, Christina Rocha from the State Department met with the Taliban ambassador in Pakistan and congratulated him once again for his great effort in the drug war. So this administration wasn’t interested in terrorism. They were interested in the drug war before 9/11. They ignored all the warnings from Sandy Berger. They ignored the warnings from the N.S.A. So it’s such garbage for this guy who ignored terrorism and then misdirected the whole fight against terrorism to Iraq, and everything else, has weakened our country, has alienated it. We need our allies. We need France and England and Germany and Spain, you know, and all of these countries. And you routinely attack their citizens. You attack their governments when they agree with their citizens. He's weakened us in that battle. Now, he says, “Well, this was all authorized by law.” Why don't they tell us what they're doing? If they're looking into our personal banking records, if they’re listening to our phone conversations -- we're supposed to live in a democracy -- why don't you tell us you want to do that? AMY GOODMAN: Well, they say if they tell you, then they're telling terrorists. ROBERT SCHEER: Look, first of all, the terrorists are going to believe the worst about this society. They think we spy on everything. They think we kill everyone. They think -- they don't believe that we believe in democracy, right? They don’t believe we have limits on our government. I’ve never met any strong critic of the United States anywhere in the world who gave us any credit for having limit on government. So they think the worst, and they're not naive about that, any serious terrorist. But I think the American public has a right to know to what degree their privacy is being invaded and then decide whether we want to pay that price. That's, after all, what democracy is about. But the really dangerous thing in what Bush said in that clip you had, if you define the enemy as this vague terrorism thing, because we still know very little about it -- if you read the 9/11 Commission Report, there's a disclaimer, a boxed disclaimer -- I forget what page it is, I think it’s 176 -- which says the whole narrative that we have about al-Qaeda and these people who did this to us comes from so-called key witnesses. The 9/11 Commission was not able to interview those witnesses, nor were they able to interview the people who interviewed the witnesses. So we have people like Cheney basically telling us we have this sort of James Bond marriage with the Mafia, enemy of al-Qaeda out there. We still don't know who the 15 Saudis were. We still have not traced the money to the real sponsors. We still don't know the role of Pakistan in this. So, yes, there's a problem of terrorism in the world. There's always been terrorism. There will be terrorism. You have to deal with it surgically. You have to deal with it in a serious way. This administration is not serious. So why should we accept that they're invading our privacies and that somehow it’s going to make us stronger? No, it's going to make us weaker. AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned President Bush supporting the Taliban before attacking Afghanistan. But you go way back. And now I want to talk about the presidents you've interviewed. For example, Jimmy Carter. You're the reporter who did the famous interview in Playboy magazine, where he talked about lust in his heart, and I want to ask you about that, but also you have been dogged in your pursuit of Carter around the issue of the Taliban and Afghanistan. ROBERT SCHEER: Yeah, let me just say something about objectivity and whether you're coming from the left or the right. I have blurbs on the back of my book from Richard Nixon, Nancy Reagan and Bill Clinton. Okay, I actually did a profile -- I interviewed Richard Nixon. I did a profile of him. And then after I did that, it was ‘84, I evaluated his administration. I got a very nice letter from Nixon, asking me to come -- offering to talk to me, that he appreciated my analysis. So I think we can be good historians on the left, as well as on the right or the center. I mean, and I like to think I get the stuff straight, you know, that it holds up. Now, in the case of Jimmy Carter, I was very surprised when this book came back from -- with the galleys and all the new stuff I had written, that I actually am much tougher on Carter than I was on Nixon. And that isn’t because I was a critic of Nixon. He killed a lot of people in Vietnam. It was a horror. But he escalated a democratic war. And when I was interviewing Carter for Playboy, I was very concerned about another hawkish Democrat. After all, Carter came across -- two things. We think the Republicans are the ones who started this fundamentalist religion claptrap, you know? It was Jimmy Carter. He’s the one who talked about, you know, “I’m a born-again Christian. I pray all the time. I do this,” etc. So the reason I was interested in interviewing him was, you know, what does that mean? Are you going to have a literal interpretation of scripture? Are you going to impose it on the rest of us? So the questions, the Falwell-type questions, the Pat Robertson, really started with Jimmy Carter. And the reason that Carter was willing to be interviewed by Playboy is he was having a lot of trouble with his base in the Democratic Party, so he wanted to assure more liberal people that he wasn't. And, in fact, his answer to the lust question was a very good one, very good interpretation of his Christian views. He’s very tolerant, and he was still pro-choice, and he wasn’t going to impose this on everyone, and so forth. What was controversial in that interview was, I said, “Well, wait a minute, but the Democrats have created a lot of mischief.” And we now think -- you know, it’s as bad as George W., and he's unquestionably the worst modern president. He’s the perfectly electronically transmitted president. There is no there there. He’s a captive of the neo-con. I accept all that. He’s part of this -- you know, he’s taken over by this cabal of Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think this guy is doing tremendous damage, and he's in a league all his own. That’s why the others didn’t prepare me. At least the others knew a lot about the world, had experience, had brains about this, cared. This guy had the platinum American Express card and didn’t even want to see Paris or London. He stayed in China for three days. So this guy’s indifferent to the world, and now he's going to change the whole world. A very ominous combination. But going back to the Carter interview, what I thought was very controversial in that interview, ignored by the media, because they have this salacious interest in lust and all that, I said, “Look, the Democrats gave us Vietnam.” And, by the way, you know, looking at those clips from Baghdad, everybody, they say, “Oh, we can never talk about Vietnam. It has nothing to do.” It’s not true. You know, we went into Vietnam as part of a religious division. Everybody forgets Ngo Dinh Diem was a Catholic, that 10% of the country was Catholic, that this was a Catholic-Buddhist issue, quite aside from whether it was an east-west issue, you know? And remember the Buddhist monks were burning themselves and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, religious tension, nationalist tension, there are parallels there. But with Carter, I say, “Look, Lyndon Johnson gave us this war. It’s true Nixon escalated it.” I said, “But, you know, you're coming on very hawkish here. Why won't you do the same?” And he said, “I will never lie to the American people the way Lyndon Johnson did.” That was Jimmy Carter. Now, he had already gotten the party nomination at that point. Lady Bird Johnson -- I was on the plane with Jimmy Carter as part of the press. When we landed in Dallas, Lady Bird would not meet with him, you know, because he had made that statement. And I thought that was the serious news. And I still think it's the serious news now about Democrats. There’s a question I want to raise about somebody like Hillary Clinton. It’s why I think history matters. Democrats can give us wars, you know? Democrats can play the false patriotism card. There's no assurance that a Democratic candidate who is elected will not move to the right of Bush on intervention, warmongering, playing to the military-industrial complex, so I am very concerned that we have a choice in the congressional elections, that we have a choice for the next presidential elections, and that we have candidates who at least will recognize this war for the monstrosity that it is. AMY GOODMAN: So you're saying the Republicans escalated Democrats' wars, like Nixon escalating the war from Johnson, from Kennedy. Carter, though, you haven't talked about the Mujahideen. ROBERT SCHEER: Oh, I’m sorry. By the way, it’s not just escalated. You know, Eisenhower was a pretty peace-oriented president. Truman was a pretty hawkish. I would argue, if we had more time, I would argue Truman had a lot to do with getting the Cold War going. Gore Vidal has a very good essay at the beginning of my book, a forward, where he makes that point. You know, Truman kind of wrapped it up. Eisenhower provided the first break in the Cold War, by bringing Khrushchev to the United States, in humanizing the Soviets; and then Nixon, by making the opening to China; and then Reagan, even meeting in Reykjavik with Gorbachev and acknowledging that nuclear weapons are a horror. So I wont accept that Republicans just escalate. Republicans, at least when they were more moderate, they were maybe even more isolationist, they sometimes brought sanity to the debate. We don't have that now. We have -- all these Republicans have gone off the neoconservative deep end. But bringing it to the point of Carter, yes. After 9/11, everyone went, “Where did this happen? Where did these people come from, these Muslim fundamentalists?” Now, clearly, we know where they came from. They came from Afghanistan. That's where they were based. How did bin Laden get to Afghanistan? Why isn't that the question that everyone asks? What was the guy doing there? What were these other fanatics doing in Afghanistan? Well, Jimmy Carter is this guy, and in the book I quote Bob Dole back in 1980. I happened to interview Dole, because he was a -- I used to do all these interviews of presidential candidates for the L.A. Times. California is important to presidential aspirants. And also print used to matter a great deal. So, you know, I got a lot of time with him. I spent -- I don't know what, seven hours with Reagan, six hours with Carter, that sort of thing. And I interviewed Bob Dole and all the guys who didn't make it. And Bob Dole said, “What's this big” -- this was 1980. He said, “What’s this big Afghanistan thing?” He said, “I think they're using it as a ploy to take attention away from the Iranian hostage crisis, which they had not been able to resolve, and from their domestic economic problems and the price of oil, and so forth.” He said, “The Soviets have always had a great deal of influence in Afghanistan. It's right on their border. They got along with the king and everything. They've been there for seven, eight months with this secular guy in Kabul. You know, and why is this suddenly the biggest thing?” This is Bob Dole said that. He said, “I think it's a ploy to take attention away from their problems.” And sure enough, in 1988, Zbigniew Brzezinski told Nouvel Observateur, he said, “We wanted to give the Soviets their Vietnam.” It was very cynical. It was once again foreign mischief for domestic advantage. And then, that's when Jimmy Carter said, “W