NucNews September 20, 2006


-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- asia

Powerful argument for nuclear

Michael Backman
michaelbackman@yahoo.com
September 20, 2006 The Age (Australia)

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/powerful-argument-for-nuclear/2006/09/19/1158431711366.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Photo: 
Cold shoulder: China plans to replace many coal-fired power plants with nuclear reactors.
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/09/19/svCHINA_wideweb__470x446,0.jpg

IS URANIUM a good bet? If the evidence from Asia is anything to go by, the answer is yes. The economies of China and India are growing fast. Neither produce enough power for existing requirements.

The US Government's National Intelligence Council has estimated that India's energy consumption will at least double by 2020. China's will rise by 150 per cent. That heralds an environmental disaster.

Why? Because the power that both produce comes largely from the dirtiest, most harmful means: burning coal. The situation is unsustainable. Nuclear power is an obvious solution and, in a few decades, Asia could be home to at least half the world's nuclear reactors.

Coal burning accounts for about 70 per cent of the energy produced in China, compared with a global average of about 25 per cent. China wants to get this down to 60 per cent by 2020, but even if it is possible it will mean coal-generated power will dramatically increase in absolute terms.

As things stand, China uses more coal than the US, the European Union and Japan combined, and its coal consumption this year is up

14 per cent on last year. According to one report, a new coal-fired power station opens in China every seven to 10 days.

Not surprisingly, China has quickly become one of the most polluted countries. Air quality is abysmal. Official estimates are that 400,000 Chinese die each year from diseases related to air pollution. Separately, the World Bank says 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China.

Pollution levels in India are also rising but the problem is not as acute as in China. Nonetheless, India is stepping up its construction of coal-fired plants, meaning that its greenhouse gas emissions will accelerate. And given that India's population is expected to pass China's in 2030, that's a worrying trend.

Both are looking to generate more power from gas and hydro-electric schemes. But both sources will only slow the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions. And so nuclear energy is looking increasingly viable, and even desirable.

According to the World Nuclear Association, of the 442 operational reactors in the world, almost a quarter, or 109, are in Asia. Another 28 are under construction worldwide. Fifteen of these are in Asia. More are planned, so that in total, 285 nuclear reactors are either operational, under construction, planned or proposed for South and East Asia.

The most nuclear of Asia's economies are South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, which generate 45, 29 and 20 per cent respectively of their power from nuclear sources. China's nuclear power plants generate just 2 per cent and India's 2.8 per cent. This is when, worldwide, nuclear accounts for 16 per cent of all the power generated. There is room for growth.

A sign of things to come was the nuclear co-operation treaty between India and the US earlier this year. And the US Government's Export-Import Bank recently provided US company Westinghouse with $US5 billion in loan guarantees for bids to supply technology to build nuclear power plants in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.

Australia's agreement to sell uranium to China is instructive, as was the recent announcement that a representative of China's main nuclear power plant operator, the Chinese National Nuclear Corp, had joined the board of South Australia-based explorer UraniumSA, which is preparing to float on the stock exchange.

China plans a fivefold increase in its nuclear power capacity by 2020. It now has 10 operational nuclear reactors. With five more under construction, 13 more planned and a further 50 proposed, China expects to have at least 78 nuclear reactors in the future.

Assuming that each new plant will consume the same uranium as the average of the existing plants (in fact, the newer plants are likely to consume more), then

China's annual demand for uranium will rise to at least 10,093 tonnes, from the current 1294 tonnes.

That's almost a tenfold increase. China produces about half its current uranium needs, suggesting that almost all its future requirements will be imported.

Most of the uranium China imports probably comes from Kazakhstan, Russia and Namibia. We don't actually know because China withholds the data. Certainly, Kazakhstan is the world's fourth-biggest producer of uranium and supplies about 8 per cent of world demand. But a new source will be Australia.

As for India, its long-term plan is to increase nuclear's share of power output to 25-30 per cent by 2050. Government plans are for 47 nuclear reactors in the future, up from 14. Assuming that each new plant consumes the same uranium as the average of existing plants, then India's annual demand for uranium will be 3918 tonnes, up from 1334 tonnes. India is now self-sufficient in uranium. Eventually, it will become a net importer.

There might be some squeamishness now about China and India's nuclear programs, but if their use of fossil fuels continues to grow exponentially then it may not be long before the world actually begs China and India to build more nuclear reactors.

Even if India and China do nothing more than raise nuclear power's share of the total to the current world average, uranium has a very bright future indeed.

----

Thai coup leader delays elections for a year

Updated 9/20/2006 By Paul Wisemanand Ratchada Chitrada, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-19-thailand_x.htm

BANGKOK — A day after grabbing power in a bloodless coup, Thailand's army chief announced Wednesday that the military will postpone elections for a year while a constitution is drafted.

Despite international criticism, Thailand's king endorsed the military takeover that deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra while he was out of the country Tuesday.

The army chief, Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, who led the coup, promised that the Thai armed forces will quickly surrender authority to a "neutral" caretaker prime minister.

"We will be in power for two weeks," Sondhi told reporters at military headquarters here. During that time, the country will be ruled by a six-member Council of Administrative Reform, made up of military and police officials. Parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled for this fall, will be pushed back until about October 2007, said Sondhi, 59.

Tuesday night's coup has been criticized by several countries, including the United States. "We hope those who mounted it will ... make good swiftly on their promises to restore democracy," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

The takeover has been welcomed in the Thai capital. The urban elite have turned against Thaksin, even though he won re-election in February 2005.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej appointed Sondhi, a Muslim in a predominantly Buddhist country, as head of the council "in order to create peace in the country," according to an announcement Wednesday on state-run television.

Sondhi said the king, who is influential but has no official political role in Thailand, had not been involved in planning or executing the coup. "I am the one who decided to stage the coup," he said. "No one supported me."

The capital was calm Wednesday. Backpackers on Kao San Road barely noticed the political upheaval. "Nobody's up in arms about it," said Amy Farquhar, 21, a recent college graduate visiting from Aberdeen, Scotland.

The U.S. Embassy on its website advised Americans "to monitor the situation closely," but added, "At this point, we are not advising Americans to leave Thailand."

The political crisis had been building for months. Many of the capital's residents were tired of Thaksin's governing style and the way the former telecommunication tycoon blurred his private and government business.

In January 2006, Thaksin's family maneuvered to skip taxes on the $1.9 billion sale of a controlling stake in its telecommunication empire to the investment arm of Singapore's government.

"He takes care of his cronies, and he looks out for his family," said grocer Thongdee Wonghaew, 64. When army tanks rolled into the prime minister's office complex Tuesday night, Wonghaew said, she brought the soldiers coffee and snacks.

A standoff between Thaksin and his opponents had paralyzed the Thai government for months. After intensifying street protests in January and February, Thaksin scheduled a snap election for April 2, hoping to win another popular mandate and silence his critics.

The opposition staged a boycott. Thai courts jailed three election commissioners accused of favoring Thaksin's political party and annulled the election as undemocratic and unconstitutional. New elections had been scheduled for October or November.

Thaksin was in New York for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly when the coup occurred. He flew to London on Wednesday. It's unclear whether he will try to return to Thailand.

He still has strong support in the countryside. "He promised to give free cows, and he did," said Sutatip Sritao, 44, a farmer in Khonkaen in northeastern Thailand's Isan province, a Thaksin stronghold. "If Thaksin is not around, I won't vote for anyone else." Rural Thais have not come out strongly against the coup.

Political scientist Neil Englehart of Bowling Green State University warned that support for the coup could disappear if the military doesn't hand power to an elected government.

"If the military can keep up the impression that they have acted for the good of the nation, then opposition is likely to be muted," he said. "If it appears that they want to stay in power, opposition will get stronger."

Contributing: Wire reports



-------- britain

Wales should have right to ban nuclear - Opik

20/9/2006 News Wales

http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Environment&F=1&id=9365

Lembit Opik, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, told the Loib Dem conference at Brighton that Wales should have the right to say no to Tony Blair's nuclear plans.

"We now have at least 470,000m3 of hazardous nuclear waste in this country for which we have no disposal plans, enough to fill the Brighton Conference Hall 22 times," said Mr Opik.

"And there could b't sure exactly how much nuclear waste we have. Recently, they admitted that an additional 1,200 cubic metres of radioactive sludge had been found in part of Sellafield.

"Both the Tories and Labour are responsible for this radioactive mountain. Since 1976 successive Governments have spent twelve times more money on nuclear energy than on renewable energy.

"Now Tony Blair looks set to repeat the mistakes of the past and build a new generation of nuclear power plants, adding to our enormous stockpile of nuclear waste.

" Wales should have the right to say no to Tony Blair's nuclear plans. Because of their extra powers, the Scottish Parliament can say no to nuclear. It's ridiculous that Wales doesn't have this power.

"Instead of going nuclear again we should be looking to radically overhaul our energy system by focusing on energy conservation, microgeneration and renewable energy. Instead of being walked down the nuclear path by this reactionary Labour Government, Wales should be aiming to become a world leader in renewable energy and green industry."



-------- business

Shares plunge hits nuclear sell-off
British Energy warns over reactor shutdowns. Government's £3bn stake sale facing delay

By Michael Harrison, Business Editor
Published: 20 September 2006 UK Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article1621789.ece

Fresh doubts were cast over the Government's plans to raise some £3bn from the sale of shares in British Energy yesterday after the nuclear power producer warned that output this year would be further hit by cracks in some of its reactors.

The warning sent British Energy shares 8 per cent lower, wiping nearly £500m from the value of the Government's 65 per cent holding in the company. Since late July, when the Trade and Industry Secretary, Alistair Darling, confirmed that the Government intended to proceed with the disposal of part of its stake through a public offer, British Energy shares have fallen by 16 per cent.

Although ministers have never given any details about the timing or scale of the share sale, it is thought that the Government planned to launch the offer late this year and to sell between 20 and 30 per cent of British Energy, raising between £2bn and £3bn.

Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch were appointed to advise the Government on the share sale in early August.

In a circular issued yesterday, Citigroup's energy analyst Peter Atherton said that the additional uncertainty caused by British Energy's announcement "calls into question the ability of the UK Government to sell down its stake this year".

British Energy said in August that output this year could be 2 TWh (terawatt hours) less than planned because of cracks in boiler tubes on one of the units at its Hunterston B station.

Yesterday, it said that delays in bringing Hunterston B back into service and the need for similar safety checks on a sister station, Hinkley Point B, meant that output could be cut by a further 2 TWh.

Analysts estimated the delays could shave £50m-£60m from British Energy profits this year, but warned that, because of the nature of the problems, there could be further unplanned reactor shutdowns in future years.

Brokers at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson said: "The market is likely to be very disappointed in another downward revision for output, especially with the prospect of further problems going forward. As British Energy's stations get older there may be further operational issues and the market is likely to be worried about continuing problems and targets being missed."

A DTI spokeswoman said the Government was still "actively considering" the sale of part of its stake in the group and would take into account what British Energy had said. She reiterated that the intention was to dispose of the shares through a "capital markets transaction" rather than a trade sale. There has been speculation that EdF, the state-owned French electricity company, and the two German utilities RWE and E.ON could be interested in buying British Energy.

At British Energy's closing share price last night of 582.5p, the company is worth £9.4bn, valuing the Government's 65 per cent stake at £6.1bn. The vale of the company has soared since it was rescued through a £5bn government bailout and re-listed on the London market 18 months ago. However, in the past three months, the shares have slipped due to the flow of negative news on station shutdowns and the fall in wholesale electricity prices.

Even so, a sale of half of the Government's remaining shareholding would still represent one of the biggest secondary offerings seen on the London market.

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Duke Energy seeking guarantee of recovery of 'prudent' nuclear development costs

September 20, 2006 6:35 PM ET
By Andrew Engblom

http://www2.snl.com/interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-4702591-13662

A Duke Energy Corp. subsidiary has filed an application with the North Carolina Utilities Commission, seeking assurances it would be able to recover "prudently incurred development costs" for a proposed nuclear power plant whether or not the facility is completed.

Duke Power Co. LLC d/b/a Duke Energy Carolinas in the filing said it believed the early recovery of costs is in the public's interest and would "assure that all potential future resource options, including nuclear generation, are fully considered." Additionally, the company said it believes the plan would reduce the financial risk that will arise from the development of a new nuclear plant without the assurance of cost recovery.

"Such prudently incurred costs are necessary and will be incurred regardless of whether a new nuclear facility is ultimately constructed or not," Duke said in the filing. "Further, they are used and useful for the determination of whether the Lee Nuclear Station is the least-cost option to meet future customer needs."

Duke in the filing said it expects to spend as much as $125 million in development costs even before a certificate of public convenience and necessity could be granted for the proposed William States Lee III nuclear station in Cherokee County, S.C.

"This work must be done and these funds must be expended in the near future if Duke Energy Carolinas is to ensure that its customers will have nuclear generation available as a resource option by 2016," the filing said.

Development costs, the utility said, would include: siting analysis, licensing and permitting costs; long lead time for equipment purchases related to the Lee nuclear station; and any related financing costs.

Duke said, however, that it does not intend to file a similar application in South Carolina seeking cost recovery assurance at this time.

"We have elected to apply first to the NCUC because of the express public policy recognition in N.C. General Statute 62-2 of the importance of utilities' ability to finance generation facilities and the need for provisions to facilitate utility investment in plants under construction," the company said in documents released with the application.

Duke said although it believed the NCUC had the authority to grant it such assurance, it would seek a legislative remedy "if the commission concludes it does not have the statutory authority to grant our request."

The assurance of cost recovery, Duke said, is necessary because of the long lead time associated with nuclear generation and because the investment community has been "sensitive" to the cancellation of proposed nuclear plants since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a number of proposed facilities were abandoned.

"These cancellations led to billions of dollars of utility write-offs, regardless of the prudence of those incurred development costs," Duke said in documents released with the application. "Since 1979, no applications for the construction of new nuclear plants have been filed in the United States, partially due to the potential that events outside the control of the electric supplier could cause prudently incurred costs not to be recovered."



-------- canada

ATK Receives Initial $10 Million Contract to Prepare to Supply USEC With Composite Tubes for Uranium Enrichment Operations

9/20/2006 San Diego California Tech News

http://www.freshnews.com/news/defense-west/article_34113.html

MINNEAPOLIS, MN -- Alliant Techsystems (NYSE:ATK) is performing work under an initial $10 million contract to prepare for high-volume manufacturing of composite rotor tubes for USEC Inc.'s (NYSE:USU) American Centrifuge program. ATK expects to provide USEC with approximately 12,000 rotor tubes throughout the four-year production run, making this program the largest commercial composite production program in ATK's history. When completed, ATK estimates that total revenue from the program may exceed $250 million.
   
   Each rotor tube is approximately 24 inches in diameter and about 43 feet long. The tubes will be used by USEC in a gas centrifuge process that will yield enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. The centrifuge process is significantly more cost effective than the traditional gaseous diffusion process, using only 5 percent of the electricity used in the current process.
   
   "Power generation is the most recent example of how ATK's industry-leading expertise in the design, development and production of advanced composite structures is dramatically altering the landscape of traditional manufacturing materials and processes, said Jack Cronin, President, ATK Mission Systems Group. "The strength, reduced-weight and low-cost of composite materials have a long and valued heritage in space exploration and launch vehicles, but today are equally at home in military and commercial aircraft, as well as power- generation, shipbuilding and many other industries."
   
   "We're proud to have ATK manufacture rotor tubes for USEC's American Centrifuge Plant," said John K. Welch, USEC president and chief executive officer. "ATK's manufacturing expertise and American know-how will support the only domestic uranium enrichment facility using U.S. centrifuge technology, which makes the American Centrifuge Plant strategically important to our nation's energy security, energy independence and industrial manufacturing base."
   
   Work on the demonstration and qualification phase of the program is being performed at ATK's Space Systems & Sensors facility in Clearfield, Utah. Once qualified, ATK intends to transition production to its manufacturing center of excellence in Rocket Center, West Virginia. The rotor tubes will be shipped to USEC's production facility in Piketon, Ohio, beginning in 2008.
   
   USEC Inc., a global energy company, is a leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
   
   ATK is a $3.4 billion advanced weapon and space systems company employing approximately 15,000 people in 22 states. News and information can be found at www.atk.com.



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-------- depleted uranium

Fort Lewis breaking in latest Strykers
Firepower - Crews are being trained on the first of the Army's new version of armored vehicles

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Oregon Live 

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/115871731378010.xml&coll=7

FORT LEWIS, Wash. -- Soldiers at Fort Lewis have begun training on the Army's 10th and final version of the Stryker armored vehicle.

Five years in the making, the Mobile Gun System looks a lot like its predecessors but has a 105 mm cannon, and Army officials say it packs more power than other versions armed with a heavy machine gun, a grenade launcher or anti-tank missiles.

"This will bring a lot more firepower, a lot more versatility to what the infantry can do," said Sgt. 1st Class David Cooper, a tanker who leads a platoon of three of the new vehicles in the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment.

The MGS, as the Army calls the new vehicle, is designed to back up infantry with a gun that can blast through walls, knock out fortified sniper nests, stop other armored vehicles and clear streets of enemy fighters.

General Dynamics Land Systems began delivering the new vehicles a couple of months ago, and company teams are training crews.

At about $3.7 million apiece, the MGS is the most expensive of the 10 variations of Stryker armored vehicles. For now, Fort Lewis -- an Army post about 50 miles south of Seattle -- will be home to 27 of them. Eventually, the Army plans to buy a set of 27 for each of its seven Stryker brigades.

Local Stryker troops fighting in Iraq won't get the MGS till they come home next year. But the brigade that's breaking in the new vehicles at Fort Lewis expects to return next summer to Iraq with the new vehicles, The News Tribune in Tacoma, which is near the base, reported Sunday.

Fort Lewis Stryker troops plan to take the vehicles late this month to the Yakima Training Center in Eastern Washington to conduct tests, validating skills based on the experiences of soldiers fighting in Iraq, Cooper said.

As with past Stryker models, testing will continue as the vehicle is delivered to soldiers preparing to take it into combat, said Peter Keating, a General Dynamics spokesman in Warren, Mich.

The 49,000-pound MGS is operated by a three-man crew: a driver, a gunner and a vehicle commander, said Thomas Crooks, the company's service leader at Fort Lewis. The gunner and commander track targets on computer screens inside their hatches in the turret.

The vehicle can carry up to 18 rounds, and the gun is loaded by an automated hydraulic handler. Its computerized fire-control system is virtually identical to the one in the M1 Abrams, the Army's main battle tank.

The MGS will carry four types of ammunition: a depleted-uranium armor-piercing round, a high-explosive anti-tank round, a high-explosive plastic round for blowing through walls and barricades and a canister round filled with 2,300 tungsten ball bearings for firing on enemy fighters.

The MGS packs "exactly the same, if not a little more enhanced" firepower as the much heavier 70-ton Abrams tank, but is not as sturdy defensively, Cooper said.

"It can dish out the punishment," Cooper said, "but it can't take it to the same degree that an Abrams can."

The MGS also does not need as much logistical support as the Abrams, gets better gas mileage and is built on the same basic chassis as other Stryker vehicles.



-------- india 

Fingers crossed, Delhi hopes for Senate vote on Friday

Pranab Dhal Samanta
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Indian Express

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/13059.html

NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 19: With word that the US Senate, scheduled to close on October 6, may wrap its current session in just 10 days, the Bill enabling civil Indo-US nuclear cooperation could be tabled for vote on Friday.

‘India slow to tackle crimes against minorities’Albright backs n-deal, says Bush built on what we had begun ‘Indians are fastest growing Asian community in America’Procedural linkage slows Senate clearanceCome Nov, India will get chance for talks with Rice, Kasuri

That’s the indication from Washington to a tense New Delhi as a vote this week is necessary to ensure that the entire process is completed before the newly elected Congress takes over after elections in November. Otherwise, it will have to start from scratch.

Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, the chief interlocutor on the n-deal, is in New York with Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee at the UN General Assembly. He will meet US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns on the margins of the UNGA. It’s learnt that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been in touch with the Senate leadership, including Majority leader Bill Frist, to schedule a vote this session.

While this Congress will meet again in November, a vote then would mean hardly any time for reconciliation of the Bill with the one that has been passed in the House of Representatives.

A vote this week will give time — the whole of October — for the Reconciliation Committee to address the portions with which India has problems and arrive at a common version of the Bill that could be put through an “up and down” vote in both chambers of the Congress.

The problem for India is that US Congressional rules don’t allow for any carry forward to the newly elected Congress.

If a Bill is not fully passed by both chambers of the Congress and sent to the President for approval, it lapses and the process will have to begin from scratch. This would mean going back to the respective committees in both chambers and dealing with the new composition of the House of Representatives.

Part of the problem is that the US Additional Protocol, a matter that has nothing to do with the n-deal, had been tagged to the Indian legislation. Some Senators have demanded that this be debated separately.

In New Delhi, the understanding is that once the reconciliation process begins in Washington, negotiations on the bilateral agreement can be hastened. Similar efforts will be made on the India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ideally, these will all be finalised simultaneously by mid-November.

This would time well with the “lame duck” session of this Congress in November. In this session, up and down vote on both the Bill and the bilateral agreement can be slated. An up and down vote means no amendments can be moved, just a plain vote which usually doesn’t take much time.

But for this tight schedule to fall in place, sources said, it is vital that Senate votes soon. Friday may just be right.

pranab.samanta@expressindia.com

----

Saran in US to get nuke deal past Senate

Indrani Bagchi
[ 20 Sep, 2006 Times of India ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2007851.cms

NEW DELHI: As the nuclear deal moves to a floor vote in the US Senate days before it stops work for elections, foreign secretary Shyam Saran gears up for a final round of diplomacy with Senate leaders and his US counterpart Nick Burns.

Now all this could have happened last week, if an unexpected resignation drama in the MEA did not force Saran to postpone his visit to Washington.

Neither the US nor India want a repeat of the House of Representatives vote with amendments requiring more work at the reconciliation stage.

Right now, both sides are just keen that it passes through the Senate before October 6, which is its last working day, before the Congress breaks for elections.

This is the idea — after the Senate votes on it, reconciliation can be worked out over the next couple of months.

The resultant up-down vote can happen in the "lame duck" session of the Congress between election day and January, enabling US President George Bush to sign the waiver into law by January 20.

It's a tight schedule and even optimists believe both sides are cutting it a bit too fine. Because, if the January deadline is missed, the whole process goes back to starting point.

The problem is, the Senate functions by its own rules. It has been flexible enough to work on what is known in American legislative jargon as a "unanimous consent" vote.

But this too needs heavy duty communication which goes by the name "hotlining" and nobody is quite sure whether all the loose ends will be tied. His job is to reassure Senate leaders on a number of questions.



-------- iran

Bush, Ahmadinejad Trade Criticism in General Assembly Speeches

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233

Speaking from the same lectern within hours of each other, President Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traded criticism Tuesday at the opening session of the UN General Assembly. Taking the podium first, President Bush threatened consequences if Iran does not return to international talks on its nuclear program. Iran has said it’s open to the talks but won’t accept the administration’s pre-condition for a freeze on nuclear activities. In an appeal to Iranian citizens, Bush said Iran’s leaders were misrepresenting US intentions and using state funds to sponsor terrorism and build nuclear weapons. The President also defended his so-called “freedom agenda” in the Middle East.

    * President Bush: "Today, I'd like to speak directly to the people across the broader Middle East: My country desires peace. Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of terror. We respect Islam, but we will protect our people from those who pervert Islam to sow death and destruction. Our goal is to help you build a more tolerant and hopeful society that honours people of all faiths and promote the peace." 

Hours later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his country’s nuclear program which he said was for peaceful purposes. Ahmadinejad accused the US and Britain of using the UN Security Council to advance their own agendas and said the occupation of Iraq is fueling instability.

    * Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "It seems that intensification of hostilities and terrorism serves as the pretext for the continued presence of foreign forces in Iraq. Where can the people of Iraq seek refuge? And from whom should the government of Iraq seek justice? Who can ensure Iraq's security? Insecurity in Iraq affects the entire region. Can the security council play a role in restoring peace and security in Iraq while the occupiers are themselves permanent members of the security council?"

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What to Do About Iran's Nukes

By Ivan Eland
September 20, 2006 Consortium for Independent Journalism

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/091906b.html

Editor's Note: In this guest essay, the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland looks at the quandary George W. Bush faces -- and has helped create -- in dealing with Iran's nuclear program:

In June, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China offered to provide goodies if Iran ended its nuclear program and threatened economic sanctions if it did not. Negotiations would not start until Iran suspended its enrichment of uranium. Although this was a bold take-it-or-leave-it deal by the six powers, Iran left it.

The Iranians, knowing they have the upper hand against a befuddled Bush administration in several respects, have sporadically and belatedly offered to freeze uranium enrichment, but have refused to do it as a condition for negotiations. But negotiations have been held anyway.

At the same time, the United States has pressed Russia and China to fulfill their agreement to impose sanctions if the Iranians balked at the original incentives package. Any sanctions, however, are likely to be weak because both Russia and China have economic interests in Iran.

The sanctions being talked about are a ban on exports of nuclear components to Iran and a ban on travel for Iranians working on that country’s nuclear program. Iran already has an extensive illicit network in the West for smuggling nuclear components, so a formal ban on Western sales is unlikely to have much of an effect.

For security reasons Iran does not allow its nuclear scientists to do much overseas junketing, so the travel ban will be mainly symbolic too.

The only sanctions that would have any real effect on Iran would be in the oil sector. But Russia and China would oppose these vehemently. And so would the nervous Republicans trying to get re-elected in 2006 and 2008 amid already high oil prices.

Any petroleum sanctions against Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers, would cause the world price of oil to escalate. In addition, the history of economic sanctions indicates that, over time, loopholes and smuggling eventually greatly diminish their effect.

The Iranians know this well because they have been under some form of economic sanctions ever since their revolution alarmed the West in the late 1970s. Thus, Iran is not exactly quaking in its boots over the new threat of Western sanctions.

Iran also knows that if the United States launches a military air strike against its nuclear facilities, it could retaliate against the United States by causing much trouble in two areas of substantial Republican vulnerability—Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran could encourage friendly militias in those countries, now supporting their respective governments, to go into violent opposition.

The Iranians have many friends in both places who are hostile to the United States. Although Iran would also be harmed by this action, it could close the Strait of Hormuz to petroleum shipments coming out of the Persian Gulf, thus causing the world oil price to skyrocket. But although seemingly irrational, an Iran under U.S. attack might choose to retaliate in any way possible.

Although the Bush administration would have a stronger hand in negotiations with Iran if it hadn’t become involved in the Afghan and Iraqi quagmires, it can’t cry over spilled milk. In addition, haggling over only temporarily freezing the Iranian nuclear program in order to allow negotiations provides no permanent solution to the problem.

The United States must make another bold offer to Iran, this time without the accompanying threats. In addition to the economic incentives provided by a full normalization of U.S.–Iranian relations and complete integration of Iran into the world economy, the United States needs to guarantee the Iranians that neither the United States nor Israel will attack Iran.

At this late date, with the recent invasions by Iran’s adversaries of Iraq and Lebanon, Iran may be too suspicious that such promises will be broken and elect not to give up its nuclear program. But at this point, it’s the Bush administration’s only option.

In fact, the threat of military attack by the United States or Israel is what’s driving Iran to seek nuclear weapons in the first place.

If Iran remains intransigent, the United States will probably have to accept that Iran will likely some day become a nuclear weapons state. Although undesirable, this outcome would not be catastrophic because the United States has the most formidable nuclear forces in the world and could likely deter any strike from the small Iranian atomic arsenal.

The United States successfully deterred a nuclear attack by radical Maoist China after that regime got nuclear weapons in the 1960s. Nuclear deterrence should also work in the case of a theocratic Iran.

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NBC exclusive: Ahmadinejad on the record
Iranian leader discusses the pope's remarks, Iran's nuclear program
	
By Brian Williams
Anchor & “Nightly News” managing editor
NBC News Sept 20, 2006

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14911753/

NEW YORK - Here in New York Tuesday we sat down for an exclusive conversation with a man who is the focus of so much of the Bush Administration foreign policy: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man most Americans are used to seeing in a zip-up tan jacket, the man who the U.S. believes is planning to make Iran the next nuclear nation on the planet, and that has prompted talk of a future war between the two nations.

Brian Williams: How do you think the discussion has been allowed to get that far, that we're discussing possible war between the U.S. and Iran?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: I think we need to ask this question from American, U.S., politicians. The world has changed. The time for world empires has ended. The U.S. government thinks that it's still the period after World War II, when they came out as a victor and enjoyed special rights. And can rule, therefore, over the rest of the world. I explicitly say that I am against the policies chosen by the U.S. government to run the world. Because these policies are moving the world towards war.

He is the son of a blacksmith, he's the former mayor of Tehran, who won the presidency out of nowhere, and has made news often with his sometimes-outrageous statements. He speaks very little English and so our conversation was through an interpreter, beginning with his message, pointed at our audience.

Brian Williams: Mr. President, you're here as a guest of the United Nations, under the protection of the United States. What is your message to the American people?

Ahmadinejad: In the letter I sent to Mr. Bush, I also addressed the American people. We think that the American people are like our people. They're good people. They support peace, equality and brotherhood. They like to see the world in peace.

Williams: What was your reaction to the pope's speech? And do you accept his apology?

Ahmadinejad: I think that the people who give political advice to the pope were not well informed.

Williams: Do you accept his words of apology?

Ahmadinejad: I think that he actually takes back his statement, and there is no problem. He should be careful that those who want war do not take advantage of his statements and use it for their own causes. People in important positions should be careful about what they say. What he said may give an excuse to another group to start a war.

Williams: The president of the United States, speaking to the United Nations today, said to the people of Iran he looks forward to the day when America and Iran can be good friends. And close partners, in the cause of peace. How do you react to the statement of the American president today?

Ahmadinejad: We have the same desire, to be together, for the cause of world peace. But we have to see what the impediments are. Is it Iranian forces that have occupied countries neighboring the United States, or is it American forces that are occupying countries neighboring Iran? If Mr. Bush is saying that he can create the distance between the Iranian nation and the Iranian government, he is wrong.

Williams: You are on the cover of Time magazine here in the United States and around the world. Inside, it says, "A Date with a Dangerous Mind." Why do you think they think you have a dangerous mind? Do you?

Ahmadinejad: You should hear what I have to say, and then be the judge of that. I think that if people have a hard time accepting the logic and fact, they should not actually accuse others. The picture is an attempt to darken my face a lot. I think it actually shows me much younger than what I am.

Williams: If I was President Bush, sitting here across from you, what would you say to him?  resident to President, but more important, man to man?

Ahmadinejad: I think that the situation would have been better here, if you were Mr. Bush. I sent him a letter.

Williams: I'm aware of it.

Ahmadinejad: I raised some very serious issues. I really expressed my thoughts and beliefs. You know that I am teacher. I am interested in talks and in dialogue. I like to understand the truth. Facts. And in that letter, I raised very important subject. I invited him to peace, brotherhood and friendship. But we did not receive an answer.

Williams: And the American president says, "It's OK, keep your nuclear program to keep your homes warm. Stop enriching uranium toward weapons." How do you react?

Ahmadinejad: Who is the judge for that? Any entity except for the IAEA? Reports indicate that Iran has had no deviation. We have said on numerous occasions that our activities are for peaceful purposes. The agency's cameras videotape all the activities that we have. Did Iran build the atomic bomb and use it? You must know that, because of our beliefs and our religion, we're against such acts. We are against the atomic bomb. We believe bombs-- are used only to kill people.

Williams: Why keep them in your arsenal if you don't someday hope to tip them with a nuclear weapon?

Ahmadinejad: So are you thinking of the possibility of a danger? Is that what you're speaking of?

Williams: I'm asking about your arsenal.

Ahmadinejad: Yes, we are powerful and strong in defending ourselves.

Our conversation took place in a hotel here in Midtown Manhattan, where he's protected by his own security and the U.S. Secret Service while he's in America.

At first, the 5-foot 4-inch President disliked the chairs, saying the arms wouldn't allow him to move his arms. So we changed chairs. He talked about the cover of TIME magazine. He thinks the illustration makes him look young. And when I noted that he was not wearing his trademark tan zipper jacket, he said he wore a suit because he thought I would do the same.

Once underway, I asked him to explain why he famously called the Holocaust a "myth."

Williams: There is something you said that upset and scared a lot of people. It upset a lot of Jews in the United States and around the world when you called the Holocaust a myth. There are people, some people I know, who escaped Hitler's reign. There is research. There are scholars who teach you about it. And yet, you've expressed doubt about the holocaust, why?

Ahmadinejad: In the Second World War, over 60 million people lost their lives. They were all human beings. Why is it that only a select group of those who were killed have become so prominent and important?

Williams: Because of the difference humankind draws between warfare and genocide.

Ahmadinejad: Do you think that the 60 million who lost their lives were all at the result of warfare alone? There were 2 million that were part of the military at the time -- perhaps altogether 58 million civilians with no roles in the war -- Christians, Muslims, they were all killed. If this event happened, and if it is a historical event, then we should allow everyone to research it and study it. The more research and studies are done, the more we can become aware of the realities that happened. Historical events are always subject to revisions, and reviews and studies.  

Williams: Is that a change in your position that Israel should be wiped away? And second, would you ever be willing to sit down with Jews, with scholars, with survivors of Hitler's camps where 6 million died? Our American film director, Steven Spielberg, is one of many collecting the stories of those still alive, who will tell you of the dead, and the program to kill the Jews in Germany and elsewhere.

Ahmadinejad: The main question is, if this happened in Europe, what is the fault of the Palestinian people? This is a problem we have today, the root cause of many of our problems, not what happened 60 years ago. The Palestinian people, their lives are being destroyed today under the pretext of the Holocaust. Their lands have been occupied, usurped. What is their fault? What are they to be blamed for? Are they not human beings? Do they have no rights? What role did they play in the Holocaust?

----

Major Powers Give Iran Until Early October To Accept Nuclear Deal

If Iran suspends its enrichment, which Washington and others believe is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, Rice said she would personally attend the launch of direct negotiations with Tehran aimed at rewarding the Islamic republic for winding down its nuclear program.

by Staff Writers
United Nations (AFP) Sep 20, 2006

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Major_Powers_Give_Iran_Until_Early_October_To_Accept_Nuclear_Deal_999.html

The major powers have given Iran a new deadline of early October to suspend uranium enrichment and begin negotiations on a package of rewards for stepping back from a nuclear showdown, a senior European diplomat said Wednesday.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and Italy agreed at a meeting late Tuesday to give European negotiators more time to convince Iran to give up its enrichment program before seeking sanctions against Tehran as called for under a UN resolution.

But the meeting set a deadline of early October for success in the negotiations between European foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani, the diplomat said.

Speaking Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the major powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States -- agreed that Iran must respond rapidly.

"We must have a response fairly quickly," he said, "it's becoming urgent."

At Tuesday's meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed away from the long-standing US position that Iran should face sanctions immediately for failing to meet an August 31 UN deadline for suspending its uranium enrichment.

At the urging of Washington's partners, she agreed to permit a new round of negotiations between Solana and Larijani in hopes of convincing Tehran to meet the UN demand, US officials said.

If Iran suspends its enrichment, which Washington and others believe is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, Rice said she would personally attend the launch of direct negotiations with Tehran aimed at rewarding the Islamic republic for winding down its nuclear program.

But Washington also got its partners to agree to the new deadline for imposing sanctions if Iran stands firm, according to senior US and European officials who were present at the meeting.

The US officials declined to reveal the new deadline, but the European diplomat said Solana would be given until the first week of October to achieve results in his talks with Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani.

Douste-Blazy said Tuesday's meeting had agreed on the need to give Iran one more chance to reach a negotiated settlement of the dispute.

"We all thought that we had to avoid confrontation and do everything possible to pursue a dialogue ... while also avoiding a situation where the Iranians, through meeting after meeting, are able to play for time and we end up with a fait accompli" of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, he said.

Douste-Blazy was due to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki later Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, a diplomat said.

At the same time, however, chances of a quick breakthrough in the standoff dimmed with the announcement that Larijani would not meet with Solana in New York this week as expected.

Instead, Larijani and Solana agreed in a telephone conversation to hold talks next week in an unidentified European capital, the official Iranian news agency reported in Tehran.

Time of the essence in Iran showdown : Bush

President George W. Bush warned Wednesday "time is of the essence" in the prolonged international diplomatic drive to halt Iran's nuclear program. Bush said in an interview with CNN that he was still worried Tehran was playing for time in talks with world powers on a package of incentives designed to get it to halt uranium enrichment.

After returning to Washington from the United Nations General Assembly, Bush injected a new note of urgency into the showdown, when asked whether he backed the Israeli position that there were only a few months left until Iranian scientists learned how to enrich the uranium needed to make a nuclear bomb.

"I'm not going to discuss with you our intelligence on the subject, but time is of the essence," Bush said.

"I'm concerned that Iran is trying to stall, and to try to buy time, and therefore it seems like a smart policy is to push this issue along as hard as we can and we are."

A senior European diplomat at the United Nations meanwhile said Iran had been handed a new deadline of early October to halt enriching uranium and join crisis talks.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to confirm that date, but added that "everyone wants to resolve this through negotiations and everyone wants to solve this thing quickly."

On Tuesday, Rice backed away from the long-standing US position that Iran should face sanctions immediately for failing to meet a previous August 31 UN deadline for suspending uranium enrichment.

At the urging of Washington's partners, she agreed to permit a new round of talks between the European Union and Iran in hopes of convincing Tehran to meet a UN demand to halt enrichment or face sanctions.

----

Bush Clears Task Force to Meet With Iranians

by Jim Lobe
September 20, 2006
(Inter Press Service)

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9721

While his handlers worked assiduously Tuesday to ensure that U.S. President George W. Bush did not run into his Iranian nemesis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the corridors of the UN, a legendary fixer for the Bush family announced that the White House had cleared him to meet with a "high representative" of Tehran's government.

Former Secretary of State James Baker, who co-chairs a bipartisan, congressionally appointed task force called the Iraq Study Group (ISG), said that the timing of the meeting with that representative, whom he declined to name, had yet to be arranged but that permission for such a meeting to take place has been granted.

"I'm fairly confident that we will meet with a high representative of the [Iranian] government," he said at a press conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), one of several think tanks, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for the Study of the Presidency, and Baker's own Houston-based Institute for Public Policy, that are supporting the Study Group's work.

Such a meeting would no doubt feed speculation here that Baker, a consummate "realist" who reportedly has been privately critical of the administration's Middle East policies, could help tilt the balance of power within the administration in favor of fellow realists, centered in the State Department. They generally support greater flexibility in dealing with perceived U.S. foes in the region, and against right-wing hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney who have steadfastly opposed engagement with both Iran and Syria.

Indeed, Baker also announced Tuesday that his task force will meet later this week with the foreign minister of Syria, against which the administration has mounted a diplomatic boycott for almost two years. The task force has already met with Damascus' ambassador here, as part of a series of meetings with Washington-based envoys from Iraq's Arab neighbors.

The ISG was launched by Congress and quietly endorsed by the White House last April at the suggestion of a senior Republican lawmaker, Rep. Frank Wolf, who expressed growing concern about both the increasingly obvious deterioration of the situation in Iraq – and the threats it posed to the larger region – and the increasingly rancorous and partisan tone of the domestic debate about the war here.

Baker, who served as Washington's chief diplomat under President George H. W. Bush, agreed to the appointment after gaining the personal approval of the younger Bush himself.

The ISG is co-chaired by former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, who also serves as the head of the Wilson International Center for Scholars here, and consists of eight other members divided equally among prominent Republicans and Democrats, including several former senior members of the Reagan, elder Bush, and Clinton administrations.

Aiding the task force, which spent four days in Iraq earlier this month, are some five dozen policy experts and Middle East specialists from think tanks, academic institutions, and the private sector. They range from neoconservative hawks, such as Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to outspoken foes of the original decision to invade Iraq, such as the president of the Middle East Policy Council, retired ambassador Charles Freeman. They in turn are divided into four working groups: economy and reconstruction; military and security; political development; and strategic environment.

All participants have been ordered repeatedly by Baker not to talk to the press or anyone else about the ISG's deliberations until its work was concluded, probably some time early next year, so as not to influence the mid-term congressional elections in November. Hamilton said the group's final report and recommendations will be made public immediately after they are submitted to Congress and the president.

In their remarks Tuesday, the ISG's first public appearance since its formation, both Baker and Hamilton stressed that the group had not yet begun discussing those recommendations. Hamilton, however, also stressed the urgency and the Iraqi government's responsibility for reversing negative trends.

"No one can expect miracles, but the people of Iraq have the right to expect immediate action," he said, adding, "The next three months are critical."

Unlike the elder Bush's other top "realist" foreign policy aide, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, with whom he remains close, Baker has been discreet about his criticism of the younger Bush's Middle East policies.

"He has never overtly criticized Bush," noted Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Project at the New America Foundation. Unlike Scowcroft, "he has essentially kept a foothold in the administration."

Indeed, Baker, who led lead a major diplomatic effort for Bush in 2004 to reduce Iraq's staggering foreign debt, has confined his public criticism to the way the Pentagon handled the Iraq invasion and its aftermath.

Nonetheless, Baker, whose law firm has long represented some of the U.S.'s biggest oil companies, is widely believed to agree with Scowcroft's criticisms of Bush's virtually unconditional alignment with Israel and his refusal to engage Iran and Syria, not only with respect to stabilizing Iraq – the ISG's focus – but also on a variety of other regional issues.

"He's always been a proponent of dialogue," said Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and author of Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel, and the United States, who suggested that the Baker talks may offer an opportunity for "informal talks" with Iran and, in any event, "should help reduce the negative trend and the loss of trust" between Tehran and Washington. "I think the fact that the talks will take place is quite significant in and of itself," he added.

Indeed, during last month's conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the director of the Baker Institute, Edward Djerejian, who also served as a former ambassador to Damascus and as Baker's top Middle East adviser in the State Department during the 1991 Gulf War, called explicitly for the administration to engage in direct talks with both Syria and Iran on a range of issues.

"Despite the tragedy we see unfolding in the region on all sides, this crisis does represent an opportunity to get on with the real core issues in the region, and this will require contacting and dealing with all the players. All the players," Djerejian, who has advised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and mentored her public-diplomacy chief and longtime Bush adviser, Karen Hughes, told an interviewer on National Public Radio in early August.

Rice, who has tried with limited success to move U.S. policy in a more flexible direction, particularly with respect to Iran, has reportedly come to largely share that view, but has been thwarted by Cheney and other senior officials, including Elliot Abrams, the neoconservative director of Middle East affairs in the National Security Council, in implementing it.

Whether Baker, in his work on the ISG or alongside, might help establish the kind of dialogue publicly advocated by Djerejian is speculative at this point. Many observers believe that, at the very least, a strong recommendation by him or the group as a whole that Washington directly engage Tehran would be difficult for the administration to resist, particularly if current trends are not reversed.

"It seems to me that Rice has gotten the latitude from Bush to pursue this sort of alternative course with Iran and the broader Middle East," Clemons said, adding "But it doesn't mean that the president has bought into the process."

Ten months ago, the administration in fact agreed to a suggestion by its ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, to initiate talks with Tehran about the stabilizing Iraq, but Washington subsequently backed away from the idea.

----

Delays In EU-Iran Nuclear Talks A Sign Of Divisions In Tehran Says US

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana (R) shakes hands with top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani 09 September 2006 at the Chancellery in Vienna. Photo courtesy of Bernard J. Holzner and AFP.

by Staff Writers
New York (AFP) Sep 20, 2006

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Delays_In_EU_Iran_Nuclear_Talks_A_Sign_Of_Divisions_In_Tehran_Says_US_999.html

The repeated postponement of a new round of negotiations between the major powers and Iran over its uranium enrichment program signals a "great debate" in Tehran over the country's nuclear future, a senior US official said. The negotiations between EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, representing the major UN powers, and Iran's main nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, were due to resume in New York early this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The talks focus on a package of rewards offered to Iran in June by the five permanent UN security council members plus Germany in the event that Tehran agrees to give up its enrichment program, which many believe is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

But Iran announced Wednesday that Larijani, whose arrival here was initially expected Saturday and then postponed to mid-week, would not meet with Solana until next week in an unidentified European capital.

"We may be seeing a great debate in Iran about how to react to the proposal made three months ago by the permanent five countries plus Germany," said the senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We understand that Iran is not a monolithic entity -- there are lots of voices, there are lots of views being expressed publicly," he said.

In a policy turnaround, the United States on Tuesday endorsed the Solana-Larijani negotiating track, after arguing fruitlessly for weeks that it was necessary to move beyond talks and impose sanctions on Iran as called for in a UN Security Council resolution.

The resolution gave Iran until August 31 to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities or face sanctions.

Iran has so far refused, insisting the program is designed solely to supply fuel for a civilian nuclear power industry.

Washington has been unable to convince its coalition partners to move ahead with sanctions, with French President Jacques Chirac becoming the latest leader this week to balk at punishing Tehran until all negotiating options had been explored.

But at a meeting Tuesday night, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice obtained an agreement from fellow foreign ministers from six nations plus Italy to set a firm new time limit for the Solana-Larijani talks, officials said.

US officials have declined to publicise the new deadline, but a European diplomat said Solana had been given until the first week of October to achieve success.

If the deadline is not met, the seven agreed to move ahead on a new UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, the senior US official said.



-------- mideast

Mubarak's Son Urges Nuclear Development

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 20, 2006
Filed at 9:20 a.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Egypt-Nuclear.html

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- The son of Egypt's president
urged the nation to consider developing nuclear
energy, a proposal that could help establish his
own credentials as a serious politician and
publicly distance him from the United States.

Gamal Mubarak made the suggestion in an address to
delegates of the country's ruling party Tuesday as
the impasse between the international community
and Iran continued over Tehran's defiance of a
U.N. demand that it halt uranium enrichment.

''We will continue using our natural energy
resources, but we should conserve these resources
for our future generations. The whole world is
looking at alternative energy -- so should
Egypt -- including nuclear,'' Mubarak told the
gathering in Cairo.

Since 2002, when Mubarak took up a high-profile
position in his father's party, rumors have
abounded that he was being groomed to replace his
father. Frequent appearances at official functions
in Egypt and several trips to the United States,
which have included meetings with top officials,
have fed that speculation.

Mubarak has repeatedly denied that he wants to
succeed his father, President Hosni Mubarak.

Asserting that his country has a ''responsibility
to offer a new vision for the Middle East based on
our Arab identity,'' Gamal Mubarak vowed not to
''accept ideas about a greater Middle East or a
new Middle East,'' apparently referring to ideas
for the region put forward by the Bush
administration, which provides Egypt with a hefty
annual aid package.

''We will not accept initiatives made abroad,''
said the 42-year-old politician. ''Egypt is a big
country and plays a leading role and will continue
to do that.''

The younger Mubarak addressed delegates for nearly
an hour, emphasizing the party's commitment to
continuing political and economic reform.

Egypt, which has signed the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, has conducted nuclear
experiments on a very small scale, according to
the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

In February 2005, the International Atomic Energy
Agency disclosed that it was investigating Egypt's
nuclear activities. It concluded that Egypt had
conducted atomic research for as long as four
decades, ending it as recently as 2000, but that
research did not appear to be aimed at developing
nuclear weapons and did not include uranium
enrichment.

Egyptian officials have largely remained on the
sidelines of international criticism of Iran's
nuclear program, which the U.S. has said aims to
produce nuclear weapons, although Tehran claims
its goal is to generate electricity.

Like many other Arab countries, Egypt is said to
be concerned that Iranian nuclear capabilities
could spark an arms race and destabilize the
region.

----

Mubarak's Son Proposes Nuclear Program

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and MONA EL-NAGGAR
Published: September 20, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/world/africa/20egypt.html

CAIRO, Sept. 19 - Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt'
s president, proposed Tuesday that his country
pursue nuclear energy, drawing strong applause
from the nation's political elite, while raising
expectations that Mr. Mubarak is being positioned
to replace his father as president.

The carefully crafted political speech raised the
prospect of two potentially embarrassing
developments for the White House at a time when
the region is awash in crisis: a nuclear program
in Egypt, recipient of about $2 billion a year in
military and development aid from the United
States, and Mr. Mubarak succeeding his father,
Hosni Mubarak, as president without substantial
political challenge.

Simply raising the topic of Egypt's nuclear
ambitions at a time of heightened tensions over
Iran's nuclear activity was received as a
calculated effort to raise the younger Mr. Mubarak
's profile and to build public support through a
show of defiance toward Washington, political
analysts and foreign affairs experts said.

"The whole world - I don't want to say all, but
many developing countries - have proposed and
started to execute the issue of alternative
energy," he said. "It is time for Egypt to put
forth, and the party will put forth, this proposal
for discussion about its future energy policies,
the issue of alternative energy, including nuclear
energy, as one of the alternatives."

He also said in a clear reference to the White
House: "We do not accept visions from abroad that
try to dissolve the Arab identity and the joint
Arab efforts within the framework of the so-called
Greater Middle East Initiative."

When President Bush called for promoting democracy
in the Middle East, he looked to Egypt as a leader
in that effort. But with all the chaos in the
region, and with the United States in need of
strong allies, the administration has backed off
on pressing for democracy here.

Instead, it has witnessed the country reversing
earlier gains, arresting political opposition
figures, beating street demonstrators, locking up
bloggers, blocking creation of new political
parties and postponing local elections by two
years.

In his speech, Mr. Mubarak, an assistant secretary
general of the governing National Democratic Party
and head of its powerful policies committee, did
not specify what he envisioned for a nuclear
program, but there are several potential avenues.

If, for example, Egypt simply purchased nuclear
fuel from abroad to power its reactors under
international inspection, and then returned the
spent fuel to its supplier, it would pose no
significant threat of being diverted to a weapons
program, nuclear experts said. The Bush
administration and the Europeans have proposed a
similar arrangement to solve the Iran standoff,
though Iran has so far rejected that approach.

The trouble would come if Egypt, like Iran,
insisted on developing the capacity to produce the
fuel on its own, which would also give it the
ability, theoretically, to produce weapons-grade
uranium.

Many experts here welcomed Gamal Mubarak's
proposal and dismissed suggestions that it might
pose a threat to the West.

"Egypt, and especially the N.D.P., is a strategic
ally of the U.S.," said Hassan Abou Taleb, an
analyst with the government-financed Ahram Center
for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "It
does not seek confrontation with the U.S. over its
nuclear program. Instead, it seeks cooperation.
Why should the U.S. assist India in its nuclear
program and not Egypt?"

Mr. Mubarak's speech was delivered during the
fourth annual party convention, presented as "New
thought and a second leap toward the future."
Thematically, the party has refocused itself on
bread-and-butter issues, talking about pensions,
jobs and even how to promote soccer, which is a
national obsession.

Both Gamal Mubarak and his father have said that
he is not interested in the presidency. But
political analysts said that Egypt was serious
about nuclear energy and that the speech was
clearly aimed at promoting the younger Mr.
Mubarak. Afterward, even party members said it
appeared that he would be the party's candidate
for president in 2011.

Distance from Washington and pursuit of nuclear
power are two actions that could help shore up two
of Gamal Mubarak's perceived shortcomings if he
were to run for president: his lack of a military
background and the perception that he and his
father are Washington's lackeys. The nuclear
program might help him win support among the
military and the veiled criticism of Washington
might help him restore some credibility with the
public.

President Mubarak, 79, has said Egypt, unlike
Syria, will not allow the presidency to be
inherited. He was elected to a new six-year term
in 2004, and that is expected to be his last. Even
party members close to the son acknowledge that
there are no other candidates on the horizon,
either in the party or in what remains of a
crushed and disorganized opposition.

"Even if we assume that Gamal Mubarak will run,
what is the problem with that?" said Gamal Moussa,
a district party leader. "He is an Egyptian
citizen. I am one of the people who support him.
He is an educated man and he is sensitive to the
public. He has ideas and he is loyal to his
country. If the party can get him the votes, then
why can't he run?"

Egyptians often joke about the president's son,
watching as he checks off requirements to become
president. He recently visited Washington, where
he was greeted by President Bush. The party
insisted he had gone to the United States only to
renew his pilot's license.

With his nuclear proposal, the younger Mr. Mubarak
also appears to be taking a page from the playbook
of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
has turned producing nuclear energy into a matter
of national pride.

Today, Egypt has no nuclear reactors for making
electricity, nor the means to enrich uranium into
atomic fuel. It has conducted atomic research for
decades, but appears to have never pursued major
programs for making reactors for power or nuclear
arms, according to the International Atomic Energy
Agency.

Early last year, the agency reported "a number of
failures by Egypt to report" on the history of its
atomic research program, with most of the
violations centering on small research facilities.
Egypt has two research reactors.

For the decades ahead, atomic experts foresee
strong international growth in the use of nuclear
power and expect developing states like Egypt to
eventually build reactors. "The N.D.P. has been
discussing and deliberating the issue of
developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes
for about three months," said Mr. Abou Taleb of
the Ahram Center. "This is not a secret."

Jano Charbel contributed reporting from Cairo, and
William J.Broad from Vienna.



-------- russia

US-Russia effort to contain nuclear experts fades
A Russia-US partnership to stem Russian brain drain is set to expire Friday, barring final talks.

By Fred Weir and Mark Clayton
September 20, 2006 Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0920/p01s03-woeu.html

MOSCOW AND BOSTON – At a Moscow conference in 2000 on stopping the global migration of nuclear-weapons know-how, a Russian security official revealed that Taliban envoys had tried to recruit a Russian nuclear expert.

That expert didn't go to work for the Afghan regime. But three of his colleagues did leave their institute for other nations - and Russian officials had no idea which ones, US experts say.

With the threat of nuclear terrorism looming large in a post-9/11 world, the brain drain of Russian nuclear expertise is an even more critical concern than it was six years ago, many say. Yet a unique 1998 US-Russian partnership to offer new opportunities and skills to destitute Russian nuclear specialists living in remote former-Soviet "science cities" is set to expire Friday unless last-minute diplomacy saves it.

A stronger Russian economy and growing wariness of US access to sensitive nuclear programs has dampened Moscow's enthusiasm for the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) program, as has a three-year wrangle with Washington over legal liability issues, observers say.

"It will be a great pity if this program dies, because it really had an impact around here," says Yuri Yudin, a former atomic scientist who heads the Analytical Center for Nonproliferation in the closed city of Sarov, one of several NCI-funded projects. "The objective was to create nonmilitary businesses and new jobs that could become self-sustaining, and it had considerable success. But the task is far from finished."

Others say losing the program would be another "unsettling sign" of erosion in US-Russia nuclear security cooperation.

"If we eliminate this program we will be losing a major nonproliferation agreement," says Kenneth Luongo, executive director of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a nuclear nonproliferation group in Washington.

Ten Russian cities - mainly linked to nuclear weapons and missile research - remain "closed" today, even to Russians who lack special permission. The closed nature of the cities became traps for some of the estimated 35,000 Russian scientists who needed work after the Soviet Union's collapse. For these scientists, who live under security surveillance, jobs needed to be created in the closed cities.

The tiny NCI program, which has helped 1,600 scientists in its existence, has been folded into a much larger DOE effort that employs more than 13,000 Russian scientists with grant funding. But NCI is unique in its focus on job creation in closed cities by converting existing nuclear complexes into other businesses, such as computer centers, US officials say.

"If you put the money through different channels, it's not the same," Mr. Luongo says. "The program's underpinnings and momentum ... are lost."

The head of Russia's nuclear agency RosAtom, Sergei Kiriyenko, is slated to meet US Department of Energy chief Samuel Bodman in Vienna this week in an eleventh-hour chance to save the program.

"It [NCI] has been definitely a useful tool, a unique way to work with Russian WMD scientists and engineers," says Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration that administers NCI.

Not everyone agrees the program is still needed. Valentin Ivanov, a member of the Russian parliament's energy committee, says that while there's still plenty of room for US-Russian cooperation on nuclear disarmament, the problems of the closed cities are a "domestic matter" that Moscow now has the means to address.

"We thank the US for its help, which was greatly needed in the 1990s," he says. "But this is a new time, Russia has a budget surplus now, and [US help] is not necessary anymore."

Negotiators for RosAtom and DOE failed to renew the deal in 2003 after the US side demanded a blanket liability exemption for Americans working on NCI projects, and the Russians balked. Earlier this year, the US acquiesced to the Russians. But whether it will be enough to interest Moscow in extending the deal remains highly uncertain, US officials and other observers say.

Even before the legal dispute, Moscow complained that NCI budgets in the $20 million range were too low, that much of the money was being spent in the US, and that highly qualified scientists were being re-trained to do low-level jobs like computer programmer and paramedic.

But Russian security concerns may also have played a role.

"Access to closed cities was the biggest stumbling block. Russian secrecy paranoia still exists," says Gennady Pshakhin, an expert at the Institute for Physics and Power Engineering in the formerly closed city of Obninsk. He says if his institute - which specializes in civilian nuclear energy - invites a foreigner to visit, it must obtain clearance from President Vladimir Putin or Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.

Supporters say the NCI made a big difference in some places, and could have done much more if more time and resources had been devoted. In Sarov - Russia's Los Alamos - NCI helped to close down one of the ex-USSR's biggest nuclear warhead factories, and turn it into a computer center that's now used by firms like Intel and Motorola. About 1,000 new jobs were created, Mr. Yudin says.

"The program really helped to diversify Sarov's economy; it changed peoples' mentality and helped to prepare them for the market," says Alexei Golubov, a former nuclear researcher who now works as an information analyst. "It was like a small window that opened onto the world for us."

Impelling NCI and other such programs is evidence over the years that Russian scientists might be willing to shop their skills to rogue regimes. In one reported 1992 incident, a planeload of Russian scientists was stopped by police "on the tarmac" as they embarked for North Korea. In 1998, an arms expert in Sarov was arrested by the FSB security service for allegedly spying for Iraq.

A study last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed the attitudes of 602 Russian nuclear, biological, and chemical WMD scientists. The study found that the mean income for such scientists was about $110 a month, and that 21 percent were willing to move to a "rogue nation" to work. As for the impact of assistance programs like NCI, the survey found 12 percent of those with grant funding would consider work in a rogue state, versus 28 percent without funding.

However, it's doubtful that any atomic experts could illegally leave Russia now, Pshakhin says.

"A lot of nuclear scientists are still underemployed, but things are a bit better," he says. "Nuclear scientists are under very strong monitoring. We are not allowed to move freely. Any attempt by a foreign power to recruit Russian scientists would immediately come to the attention of the FSB."

RosAtom chief Mr. Kiriyenko has announced plans for a sweeping revival of Russia's civilian atomic power industry. Military leaders also talk of putting weapons experts back to work.

Vladimir Fortov, head of the department of energy for the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that while Russia is returning some scientists to their old jobs, the NCI training programs remain valuable.

"They aided Russian-American mutual understanding, and it will be very unfortunate if they are discontinued," he says.

Efforts of the NCI

The Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) is a US effort to help Russia reduce its nuclear weapons production, and shift the economy in certain remote "science cities" away from weapons research and toward production by nonmilitary businesses. The NCI pays particular attention to retraining workers – particularly scientists – displaced from their jobs by the reduction in weapons production. The summary material below, drawn from the NCI website, describes their efforts in three cities in particular.

Sarov

Sarov is home to the Avangard weapons assembly plant and a nuclear design institute known as VNIIEF.

NCI identified scientists at VNIIEF with specialized weapons design knowledge, and implemented a plan for those scientists to leave their institutes for work in commercial, non-weapons-related businesses.

NCI also came to an agreement with Russia's nuclear agency, RosAtom, to permanently terminate weapons production at the Avangard plant. They then converted a significant portion of the plant into a civilian "technopark" used for non-weapons related commercial work, and helped establish six non-weapons-related commercial businesses dealing in metal fabrication, rubber and plastics molding, and microelectronics circuit board assembly. NCI assisted those businesses with training and other resources to help them operate.

Snezhinsk

Snezhinsk is home to another Russian nuclear design institute named VNIITF.

NCI assisted around 4,000 displaced VNIITF workers by helping support civilian enterprises and small businesses. One such venture involved taking computers that were formerly used in weapons labs and using them to create open computer centers, where scientists would be able use their skills in the commercial market. NCI also supplied city residents with business training in such fields as marketing, management, and intellectual property rights.

Zheleznogorsk

Zheleznogorsk is home to the Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC), a plutonium production plant.

NCI focused on lowering the overall plutonium production capacity of the MCC, and planned for the eventual shutdown of one of the city's two plutonium production plants.

As part of a plan to create jobs for 6,000 displaced weapons workers, NCI assisted in the transfer of equipment formerly used to produce plutonium into producing such products as plant-growth stimulants and health care preparations. NCI also helped to prepare land for use in the production of rare earth metals, and created a company that specializes in the storage and processing of spent nuclear fuel.

Source: Nuclear Cities Initiative 



-------- treaties

Over 50 nations press for binding nuclear test ban

Wed Sep 20, 2006 
By Irwin Arieff (Reuters)

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2006-09-20T235430Z_01_N20199665_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-TREATY-UN.xml

UNITED NATIONS - More than 50 nations issued a plea on Wednesday for 10 more countries to ratify a 10-year old treaty banning nuclear tests, a step that would transform an informal moratorium into a binding commitment.

A meeting of "Friends of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" at U.N. headquarters was intended to "serve as a wake-up call for those nations that have not done so to sign and ratify the CTBT," said Bernard Bot, the Netherlands foreign minister.

The pact was adopted in New York in September 1996. So far, 176 nations have signed it and 135 have ratified.

But under the treaty's terms, it will come into force only after it is ratified by the 44 states deemed capable of producing nuclear weapons.

To date just 34 of those states have done so. The 10 that have not are the United States, China, Colombia, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel and Pakistan.

President George W. Bush's administration actively opposes the pact although U.S. officials have said they have no plans to resume nuclear testing.

"We live with the risk of someone going ahead and testing nuclear weapons all of the time," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who co-chaired Wednesday's meeting with Bot.

Downer singled out North Korea as one country that might soon do so. U.S. officials have reported signs that Pyongyang may be preparing to conduct an underground nuclear test.

"Through the horrific experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people learned first-hand that the use of nuclear weapons causes incomparable human suffering," Japanese Vice Foreign Minister told the meeting. "We must ensure that nuclear tests are not held."

----

China, Russia Welcome Central Asian Nuclear-free Zone Treaty

Mosnews
September 20th, 2006, 

http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/China_Russia_Welcome_Central_Asian_Nuclear-free_Zone_Treaty_20060920.php

Russia and China have expressed their support to the nuclear-weapon-free zone treaty signed by the Central Asian nations Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the Xinhua news agency reports.

“The unique feature of the initiative is that the participating states voluntarily relinquished the former Soviet nuclear infrastructure, and that Kazakhstan gave up the fourth largest nuclear arsenal,” Kayrat Abusseitov, Kazakhstan’s Ambassador to the UN Office in Geneva, told reporters.

The treaty not only prohibits the acquisition of nuclear weapons and of other nuclear explosive devices by the five signatory states, but also prohibits the stationing in the zone of nuclear forces belonging to any country, he said.

According to Abusseitov, the treaty was signed on Sept. 8 in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, where several hundred Soviet nuclear explosions had been conducted before the closure of the test site 15 years ago.

By signing the treaty, the states reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, he said.

He said the treaty was also a significant contribution to the international fight against terrorism and the global campaign to prevent nuclear materials and technologies from falling into the hands of terrorist organizations or other non-state actors.

In addition, an important step has been taken to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to rehabilitate the areas contaminated by radioactivity, the ambassador added.

Parliaments of the signatory states are to ratify the treaty within 30 days of its signing.

Russia and China, the two nuclear powers which border on the Central Asia zone, have expressed their support for the treaty, Abusseitov said. However, the United States, Britain and France still have reservations about the treaty.

The parties to this new regional denuclearization agreement intend to negotiate with the nuclear-weapon powers the text of a protocol committing these powers to respect the non-nuclear status of Central Asia and not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the states of the zone, Abusseitov said.



-------- u.n.

At U.N., Chavez calls Bush 'the devil'

KIM GAMEL
Associated Press
Wed, Sep. 20, 2006

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/15564536.htm

UNITED NATIONS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his verbal battle with the United States to the floor of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, calling President Bush "the devil."

The impassioned speech by the leftist leader came a day after Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparred over Tehran's disputed nuclear program but managed to avoid a personal encounter.

"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush's address on Tuesday and making the sign of the cross. "He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world."

The leftist leader, who has joined Iran and Cuba in opposing U.S. influence, accused Washington of "domination, exploitation and pillage of peoples of the world."

"We appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our head," he said.

The main U.S. seat in the assembly hall was empty as Chavez spoke. But there was a "junior note taker" there, as is customary "when governments like that speak," the U.S. ambassador to the U.N said.

Ambassador John Bolton told The Associated Press that Chavez had the right to express his opinion, adding it was "too bad the people of Venezuela don't have free speech."

"I'm just not going to comment on this because his remarks just don't warrant a response," Bolton said. "Serious people can listen to what he had to say and if they do they will reject it."

Chavez drew tentative giggles at times from the audience, but also some applause when he called Bush the devil.

Chavez spoke on the second day of the annual ministerial meetings, which were overshadowed by an ambitious agenda of sideline talks.

The Mideast peace process also was in the spotlight, with ministers from the Quartet that drafted the stalled road map - the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia - planning to meet. The Security Council also was scheduled to hold a ministerial meeting Thursday that Arab leaders hope will help revive the Mideast peace process.

Bush tried to advance his campaign for democracy in the Middle East during his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, saying extremists were trying to justify their violence by falsely claiming the U.S. is waging war on Islam. He singled out Iran and Syria as sponsors of terrorism.

Bush also pointed to Tehran's rejection of a Security Council demand to stop enriching uranium by Aug. 31 or face the possibility of sanctions. But he addressed his remarks to the Iranian people in a clear insult to the government.

"The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons," the U.S. leader said.

"Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions," he said. "Despite what the regime tells you, we have no objection to Iran's pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program."

He said he hoped to see "the day when you can live in freedom, and America and Iran can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace."

Ahmadinejad took the podium hours later, denouncing U.S. policies in Iraq and Lebanon and accusing Washington of abusing its power in the Security Council to punish others while protecting its own interests and allies.

The hard-line leader insisted that his nation's nuclear activities are "transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eye" of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. He also reiterated his nation's commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Earlier this month, Ahmadinejad proposed a debate with Bush at the General Assembly's ministerial meeting after the White House dismissed a previous TV debate proposal as a "diversion" from serious concerns over Iran's nuclear program.

But even though the two leaders spoke from the same podium, they skipped each other's addresses and managed to avoid direct contact during the ministerial meeting.

Also on Wednesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that terrorism is rebounding in his country and said efforts to build democracy there had suffered setbacks over the past year as violence increased, especially in the volatile south where NATO forces have been battling Taliban militants in some of the fiercest battles since the hard-line government was toppled in 2001.

"We have seen terrorism rebounding as terrorists have infiltrated our borders to step up their murderous campaign against our people," he told the General Assembly.

He said the situation was so bad it had contributed to a rise in polio from four cases in 2005 to 27 this year because health workers were unable to reach the region.

But he said the problem had to be fought beyond Afghanistan's borders as well as within.

"We must look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism," he said. "We must destroy terrorist sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan."

He also expressed concern about "the increased incidents of Islamophobia in the West," saying it does not "bode well for the cause of building understanding and cooperation across civilizations."

The crisis in the ravaged Sudanese region of Darfur also was on the agenda Wednesday, with the African Union's Peace and Security Council meeting to discuss breaking the deadlock over a plan to replace an AU force with U.N. peacekeepers.

The Sudanese president said his country won't allow the United Nations to take control of peacekeepers in Darfur under any circumstance, claiming that rights groups have exaggerated the crisis there in a bid for more cash.

But Omar al-Bashir did say that the African Union, which now runs the peacekeeping mission in Darfur, should be allowed to augment its forces with more logistics, advisers and other support.

"We want the African Union to remain in Darfur until peace is re-established in Sudan," al-Bashir said at a news conference. Those comments suggest that the African Union will not face any resistance in renewing the peacekeeping force's mandate, which expires Sept. 30.

Associated Press writers Ian James and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this story.



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


-------- georgia

CDC: Few risks from nuclear site

By STACY SHELTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/20/06

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/09/20/0920srs.html

Aiken, S.C. — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found only a minimal risk to residents and workers at the Savannah River Site who were exposed to thousands of air and water releases of potentially cancer-causing radioactive plutonium, tritium and other chemicals in the 39 years that nuclear bomb materials were manufactured at the plant.

Mandated by Congress in 1992, the last year the plant produced the bomb components, the exhaustive 14-year scientific analysis was quietly presented in final form Tuesday night at a little-publicized gathering at the University of South Carolina campus here. Scientists said they delved into mountains of formerly top-secret documents to reconstruct the doses of radiation and chemicals that were released after 1954 into the atmosphere, the Savannah River and its tributary, the Lower Three Runs Creek and into the soil.

CDC officials estimated the study cost $10 million.

The exposure findings — projected for seven hypothetical families of two adults and two children — left a few critics questioning why real people who live in the area weren't given blood and tissue tests.

Louis Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, one of the fewer than three dozen people who attended, agreed that "more work needs to be done.

"There are shortcomings and information gaps that undermine the estimates and the impact on human health and the environment."

Jen Kato, a nurse who works in Atlanta and a former member of the CDC's advisory panel — the Savannah River Site Health Effects Subcommittee — said the study did not consider any exposure effects on fetuses, considered the most likely to be affected by radiation. Nor did the study project the impact of eating deer hunted on the federal acreage around the site, animals that would likely have consumed contaminated vegetation.

"I see a lot of holes that point to some concerns for me," said Kato, who grew up in Augusta. She was particularly concerned that two phases planned for the study — which would have considered actual human effects — were eventually scratched.

Retired environmental scientist Todd Crawford, who worked at SRS and now lives nearby, was the last chairman of the subcommittee. He said the shortcuts were taken, with the panel's blessing, because there was a sense that CDC's interest and funding were waning.

"You can quibble on the numbers, and you can quibble on the [study methods], but I think you have to say 'stop' at some point," Crawford said.

Charles M. Wood, a CDC health physicist who worked on the project, said additional data was requested by some of the panel members and by a Georgia Tech scientist who reviewed the work. But he said the study is over.

"At some point, we have to declare that we're beating this thing to death," Wood said.

Wood, who has also worked on four other dose reconstruction studies including Hanford, Wash., said the exposures calculated for SRS are the lowest found. He said CDC did conduct epidemiological studies at Hanford and found thyroid cancer cases, but the incidence was "no higher than in the American population in general."

The Savannah River Site is a vast, Cold War-era facility where the materials for nuclear bombs — radioactive plutonium, tritium and other compounds — were produced and purified. Built in the early 1950s under great secrecy on 300 square miles in South Carolina along the Savannah River, the complex that once employed as many as 25,000 people is about 22 miles southeast of Augusta and about 190 miles east of downtown Atlanta.

Georgia officials have said they fear groundwater contaminated with tritium at the site could migrate beneath the Savannah River and taint Georgia's groundwater.

Most production at the plant ended in 1992 but some separation processes , waste management and environmental cleanup facilities still operate, with the federal government spending billions on cleanup and remediation at the heavily polluted Superfund site.

Large amounts of plutonium and tritium, with other radioactive materials and chemicals, were released into the air and water during the plant operations, causing concern to people living near SRS that their health may have been damaged. CDC launched the current Dose Reconstruction Project in 1992, focusing on those releases from 1954 to 1992 — a massive effort involving digging through thousands of documents to find information on accidental or unplanned radioactive releases.

The scientists, using a series of hypothetical scenarios representing a family that lived and worked near the plant, including children born during years of large releases of radioactive material. They concluded that the highest risk would have been to a hypothetical male child born in 1955 to a family in a rural area on the SRS outskirts.

That person, CDC said would have been exposed from eating fish from the Savannah River and eating food grown nearby. But even the greatest risk, scientists said, would have been small. The study estimated that male child's risk of dying of cancer would be only fractionally greater — by 0.024 percent than for a man who didn't grow up next to the facility.



-------- new york

Computer malfunction downs IP siren system

By BILL HUGHES
THE NY JOURNAL NEWS
September 20, 2006

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006609200374

BUCHANAN — A computer malfunction knocked 156 emergency sirens offline in a 10-mile radius around the Indian Point nuclear power plants for about an hour yesterday afternoon, officials said.

The siren system's computer malfunctioned after a routine maintenance check at 12:08 p.m. said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for Entergy, the plants' owner.

Technicians rebooted the system and had it back up and operating by 1:10 p.m., and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, local emergency planning personnel and government officials were notified.

Gottlieb said the system, which is on schedule to be completely replaced by January, now runs with two computers that were designed to back each other up, but do not function independently during maintenance.

"The problem is that when you shut it down to do maintenance you have to shut down both of them, they're like conjoined twins — if one coughs, then the other coughs," he said. "The problem was that we were unable to reboot the system so that both of them were online. When the system is running, if one of the computers went down you would be able to use the other one. In this situation, both computers were off-line."

Gottlieb added that in the event of an emergency and a complete failure of the siren system, the plant has several backup plans, beginning with a fleet of vehicles with speakers mounted on them to alert residents to tune in to radios or televisions where more detailed information would be made available.

On Sept. 13, the company tested all 156 sirens, 10 of which failed to properly activate. The new system being installed may also involve high-speed automated telephone calling to residents' homes as a backup.



-------- north carolina

Duke Energy Seeks to Ensure Cost Recovery for the Evaluation and Development of New Nuclear Plant

CHARLOTTE, NC UNITED STATES 04/14/2004
Sept. 20, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-20-2006/0004436910&EDATE=

    CHARLOTTE, N.C.,  -- Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) has filed documents with the North Carolina Utilities Commission seeking to ensure the recovery in future electric rates of its investment to evaluate and develop an advanced new nuclear power plant in the Carolinas.

    "Nuclear power supplies our customers in the Carolinas with approximately half of their electricity and is a primary reason why our electric rates are below the national average," said Ellen Ruff, president of Duke Energy Carolinas. "The intent of this request is to ensure that we can continue to fund the development and permitting of a new nuclear power plant, which will help maintain our competitive rates, grow our economy and help minimize overall greenhouse gas emissions as we continue to work to address climate change.

    "As the application notes, we intend to work with the commission to seek a legislative remedy if the commission concludes it does not have the statutory authority to grant our request," Ruff added.

    Duke Energy expects to invest approximately $125 million before the end of 2007 to develop the proposed William States Lee III Nuclear Station in Cherokee County, S.C., which will be jointly owned with Southern Company. Duke Energy is preparing a Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) application for the potential plant and will decide whether to submit the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2007. The decision to build the plant, projected to cost between $4 and $6 billion, is scheduled to be made by the end of 2010. The plant could begin electricity production in 2016.

    While nuclear power has relatively high development and construction costs, its low fuel costs make it a less expensive way to produce electricity over the long term compared to coal, natural gas or oil-fueled power plants.

    Duke Energy is adding between 40,000 and 60,000 new customers annually in the Carolinas. To serve this growing demand, the company is also pursing new highly efficient coal units at its existing Cliffside Steam Station. In addition, the company is pursuing energy efficiency and demand reduction programs to help reduce the amount of electricity needed to supply customers and slow down the need for new power plants.

    "Our long-term strategy is focused on ensuring that we maintain a diverse portfolio of resources to meet customers' needs and not 'put all our eggs in the same basket' as we prepare for the future and make long-term investments to serve our customers," said Ruff. "Nuclear power is a very important component of this diverse portfolio. In order for us to make the substantial investments necessary to evaluate and ultimately develop an advanced new nuclear plant, it is necessary for us to have assurance that we can recover these costs from customers through our electric rates."

    Duke Energy is a diversified energy company with a portfolio of natural gas and electric businesses, both regulated and unregulated, and an affiliated real estate company. Duke Energy supplies, delivers and processes energy for customers in the Americas, including 28,000 megawatts of regulated generating capacity in the United States. Duke Energy's Carolinas operations include a diverse mix of nuclear, coal-fired, natural gas and hydroelectric generation that provides 19,900 megawatts of safe, reliable and competitively priced electricity to more than 2.2 million electric customers in a 22,000 square mile service area of North Carolina and South Carolina. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available on the Internet at: http://www.duke-energy.com.

SOURCE Duke Energy

----

Harris Plant Still Down

09/20/06 -- WTVD Eyewitness News

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle&id=4580804

(NEW HILL) - The Shearon Harris nuclear plant is under fire on two fronts.

The plant is still shut down from a generator malfunction Tuesday. Plant spokeswoman Julie Hans says it was because of an electrical problem on the non-nuclear side of the plant, and the public was never in danger.

While crews work to repair the problem, some watchdog groups want the plant to lose its license for fire safety violations. NC Warn in Durham and two groups out of Washington are taking legal action. They claim that Progress Energy has been letting numerous fire violations slide at the Harris Plant for 14 years.

The three groups want the government to shut down Shearon Harris or fine it daily until the plant is in full compliance with federal fire safety regulations.

"The concern is that fires can cause control room operators to lose control of reactors and its multifaceted cooling system," said Jim Warren of NC Warn.

Progress Energy says that the plant is operating in full compliance with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees nuclear power facilities. Spokeswoman Hans says the utility is in the middle of major fire safety upgrades, spending more than $13 million so far to bring the plant up to new codes.

"We've installed additional sprinkler systems, detection devices, additional and newer fire protection wraps and devices," Hans said. "In some cases, we've built walls between cable and equipment as an additional fire barrier."

While the work is being done, the NRC requires companies to have employees look out for fire dangers.

"We have an entire team of individuals here at the plant that their job is to work on fire protection," Hans said. "We're working on this every single day."

The temporary solution is fine by the NRC, but does not sit well with watchdog groups.

"It's like a spare tire on a car that's only intended for short-term use," Warren said. "The NRC has allowed Harris and other plants to go years and years using these so-called interim protective measures."

The NRC says that if the Harris Plant was not safe, it would shut down the facility. 



-------- ohio

Nuclear Site Nears End of Its Conversion to a Park

By CHRISTOPHER MAAG
Published: September 20, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/us/20park.html

FERNALD, Ohio, Sept. 19 - In about two weeks, the
final trainload of radioactive waste is to leave
the Fernald nuclear site.

The train will carry 5,800 tons of contaminated
soil in 60 railcars, just like the 196 trains
before it, which have run for seven years to a
Utah dump from this scarred, cratered patch of
land in the hills of southern Ohio.

"I never thought I'd live to see this day," said
Johnny Reising, who directs activity at the site
for the Department of Energy.

This fall, the site will open to the public as a
natural, undeveloped park following a 13-year,
$4.4-billion cleanup. That is actually a bargain.
Experts had originally estimated that cleanup
would cost $12 billion and take until 2025.

"I remember touring the site in the 80's and
thinking, 'My golly, how are we ever going to
clean this up?' " said Graham Mitchell, who
oversaw the site for the Ohio Environmental
Protection Agency for 21 years until he retired
this month.

From the time it opened in 1951 until it closed in
1989, the Feed Materials Production Center in
Fernald enriched 500 million pounds of uranium, 67
percent of all the uranium used in the nation's
cold war nuclear weapons program.

The center also created 1.5 billion pounds of
radioactive waste, Mr. Reising said. It operated
in obscurity until 1985, when neighbors discovered
that the plant's waste had polluted their air,
soil and drinking water.

The neighbors sued, and the resulting news
coverage prompted similar revelations at nuclear
facilities around the country.

The site originally included a leaky silo filled
with highly radioactive uranium sludge. At the
time it was the largest concentration of poisonous
radon gas in the world, Mr. Reising said.
Officials at the Fernald center dumped radioactive
waste into pits just 20 yards from a creek that
sits directly atop the Great Miami Aquifer, one of
the biggest and cleanest aquifers east of the
Mississippi, Mr. Mitchell said.

Rainwater carried uranium into the creek, where it
sank and contaminated 225 acres, or about 0.062
percent of the aquifer, according to figures on
the Web site of the Fernald Citizens Advisory
Board, which represented the center's neighbors
through the cleanup process.

When the Department of Energy ran out of room to
bury waste at the 1,050-acre Fernald site,
officials ordered it packed into 100,000 metal
drums, which were left outside, exposed to the
elements. Accidental releases covered 11 square
miles of surrounding farmland in radioactive dust.

"When we first visited the site, I saw workers
walking around in short-sleeve shirts, and their
arms were covered with radioactive yellowcake,"
said Lisa Crawford, president of Fresh, a citizen'
s group that fought for cleanup at Fernald.

The original plan called for moving all the
radioactive waste from Fernald to Nevada. Citizens
and regulators gradually decided the plan was so
expensive that it might never happen. "It took us
years to realize how much dirt we were actually
talking about," said Jim Bierer, chairman of the
citizens board.

In the final compromise, the federal government
agreed to move 1.3 million tons of the most
contaminated waste to storage sites in Texas,
Nevada and Arizona. Citizens agreed to place the
rest - 4.7 million tons - in a landfill at
Fernald.

Today, the waste site resembles a long, fat worm.
Filled with uranium-laced soil, building parts and
shreds of clothing, the landfill is 30 feet deep,
with another 65 feet above ground, and is
three-quarters of a mile long.

The landfill's outer wall of rock, plastic and
clay is nine feet thick and sits 30 feet above the
aquifer. It is designed to last at least 1,000
years.

At its peak, the cleanup effort employed 2,000
workers, as many people as worked at the center
during the height of uranium production, Mr.
Reising said.

The Department of Energy spent $216 million on
buildings just to clean the site. When the
buildings were no longer needed, each one had to
be demolished, decontaminated and placed in the
landfill. The department also built a pumping
system to suck contaminated water out of the
aquifer and purify it. That process will continue
until the entire aquifer is clean, in about 2023,
Mr. Reising said.

When the site opens as a park, the landfill will
be off-limits to the public. The remaining 930
acres will include hardwood forest, prairie and
wetlands intended to recreate the area's natural
environment before European settlers arrived in
the early 1800's, Mr. Reising said.

Native bird species not seen in the area for
decades, including bobolinks and dickcissels, have
been spotted at Fernald, as have endangered
species including the Indiana brown bat and Sloan'
s crayfish. Deer wander the roads, and great blue
herons stand motionless in ponds.

Humans have started to return, too. For decades,
home values around Fernald stagnated because no
one wanted to live near a nuclear waste dump, Mr.
Bierer said.



-------- virginia

Dominion Continues Pitch For New Reactor at North Anna

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 NEI Nuclear Notes

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2006/09/dominion-continues-pitch-for-new.html

Dominion Virginia Power held a "media day" tour of the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant, and Rusty Dennen of the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star was there:

    David Christian, senior vice president-nuclear and chief nuclear officer, kicked off the tour with a short presentation in the plant's visitors center. He said Dominion must plan ahead, and that more nuclear power should be in the mix--not only for the nation, but to meet rising electricity demand worldwide.

Dennen also mentions a speech given by Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II at the Richmond-based World Affairs Council on energy policy earlier this week. Click here for a copy. And click here for my coverage from Louisa County last month when I attended an NRC public meeting.

----

Dominion pitches reactor

September 20, 2006 Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
By RUSTY DENNEN

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2006/092006/09202006/223026/printer_friendly

Across a sunken field and gravel road from the two enormous, bee-hive shaped reactor containment buildings at North Anna Power Station sits a little length of white pipe marked with a pink flag.

The spot is where Dominion power may someday build a third nuclear reactor at the plant near Mineral in Louisa County.

It was one stop on a "media day" tour yesterday for reporters, and a chance for Dominion to reinforce its arguments that another reactor could help the company deal with future electrical power needs.

David Christian, senior vice president-nuclear and chief nuclear officer, kicked off the tour with a short presentation in the plant's visitors center. He said Dominion must plan ahead, and that more nuclear power should be in the mix--not only for the nation, but to meet rising electricity demand worldwide.

Between 2002 and 2025, he said, U.S. energy consumption will increase by about a third. Since 1998, the fuel of choice for new power plants has been natural gas. But he noted that natural gas prices have fluctuated from between $4 per million cubic feet to $14, and oil prices have been volatile.

Between now and 2020, 50,000 megawatts of new nuclear power generation will be needed just to maintain existing energy supply diversity, he added.

In a speech to the World Affairs Council last week in Richmond, Thomas F. Farrell II, Dominion's chief executive officer, said the United States could be headed for an "energy train wreck" unless a balanced energy policy is created soon.

"Diversification is the linchpin. We must utilize all of our energy sources--coal, nuclear, oil, gas hydro and renewable sources--together with more conservation and energy efficiency. We do not have the luxury of limiting ourselves to a few sources of energy and excluding others."

That's why the plant, on the Louisa County shore across from Spotsylvania County, has been in the news as its application for a possible new reactor wends its way through the regulatory system. The 13,000-acre lake, formed in 1972 to cool the two existing reactors, is ringed by thousands of homes and is a popular destination for fishing and boating.

Dominion is one of four U.S. utilities seeking permits for new reactors. Others in the running are in Illinois, Mississippi and Georgia.

Dominion applied in September 2003 for an early site permit, the first step in a lengthy review process. The permit allows the utility to resolve site, safety and environmental issues prior to making a decision to build and to "bank" a site for up to 20 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to make a decision on that permit by December 2007.

If that's approved, Dominion would then need a combined license to build and operate a third reactor.

The company says it has no plans now for a new reactor, but that it wants the option should market conditions and demand make it worthwhile.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is also involved in the permitting process. It will decide by early November whether Dominion's plan conforms to the state's coastal protection laws.

There is no shortage of opposition to Dominion's plan: Half a dozen environmental groups and citizens organizations have weighed in on the prospect of a North Anna Unit 3.

To date, environmental and safety impacts have been reviewed by the NRC. The agency is expected to issue a final environmental impact statement in December.

Critics have many concerns, among them, additional spent fuel stored on the site creating more of a target for terrorists, plant security, environmental impacts on the lake--mainly water levels, water temperatures and water use--and whether Dominion has sufficiently explored other alternative energy sources.

To reach RUSTY DENNEN:540/374-5431
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com 



-------- MILITARY 


-------- africa

Annan Calls for Action on Darfur

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also spoke Tuesday in what was billed as his final address to world leaders before he steps down at the end of the year. Annan spoke about the need to end the crisis in Darfur.

    * UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: "Sadly, once again the biggest challenge comes from Africa - from Darfur, where the continued spectacle of men, women and children driven from their homes by murder, rape and the burning of their villages makes a mockery of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the worst abuses."

New Darfur Envoy Made Controversial Remarks on Africa

Darfur is among the top issues at this week’s summit. During his speech, President Bush announced the appointment of a new special envoy to deal with the crisis. The envoy, Andrew Natsios, is a former director of the State Department aid agency USAID. The appointment is already drawing controversy over past statements Natsios has made about Africa. In a June 2001 interview with the Boston Globe, Natsios suggested global AIDS funding should be devoted almost entirely to prevention instead of treating those suffering from the disease. Natsios said paying for antiretroviral treatment is impractical because “Africans don’t know what Western time is.” He added: “You have to take (AIDS) drugs a certain number of hours a day, or they don't work. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives.” 



-------- arms 

US may ban sale of cluster bombs to Israel

By Patrick Cockburn in Nabatiyeh, south Lebanon
Published: 20 September 2006 UK Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1621755.ece

The discovery of hundreds of US-made cluster bombs among the tens of thousands of unexploded munitions carpeting the south of Lebanon, has led to calls on Washington to impose a moratorium on sales of the weapons to Israel.

Bomb disposal experts are working around the clock to clear the lethal leftovers after Israel fired 1.2 million bomblets in the last three days of the war. The pods containing the 650 bomblets, which burst apart at a pre-determined height, have a failure rate of up to 30 per cent, leaving clear evidence of their American origin.

The US State Department is investigating Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs during the war in Lebanon. In particular, whether or not Israel broke a secret agreement with the United States not to use cluster bombs against civilians.

The Israelis make no attempt to hide where they obtained this weapon. In the garden of a house in Nabatiyeh used as a headquarters by the British-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG) lies a cluster-bomb container that sprayed bomblets over an area the size of a football pitch. Such weapons are still causing casualties.

When we visitedthe town a man had just been taken to hospital with severe injuries after a bomblet exploded in his hand.

The bomb was the size of a small torpedo. There are letters scrawled in Hebrew on the metal but most of the writing is in English; it says CBU [Cluster Bomb Unit] - 58B and "US Air Force". The manufacturer is identified as Lanson Industries. There are a number of cryptic code numbers reading "Part No 7127151/22290" and "FSN 1325-758-0417" and contract no F42600-72-2676. The bomb was made before the Vietnam War had ended, because there is a marking showing that its warranty ended on 7 February 1974. There is no indication of when the cluster bomb was transferred from the US to Israel.

Nick Guest, a former British Army bomb disposal officer working for MAG, says the most common bomblets - the M42 and the M77 - are of American manufacture. Some of the bombs are round like a metallic orange and others are like a can of fruit juice. They are small enough to be difficult to detect and may go on killing children and farmers for years.

The unexploded bomblets become anti-personel mines. Mr Guest says MAG has teams working in the banana groves on the coastal plain around Tyre and says that even for experts the mines are difficult to find because they may have "fallen into heart of the banana tree where their presence is concealed". In hill villages people are about to start harvesting their olive trees though they know branches and leaves may contain bomblets invisible to anybody from the ground. Another problem is that the Israelis may have fired cluster bombs into a village and then used conventional artillery to blow up houses. Families searching the ruins may accidentally detonate a bomblet.

The early date of the US bomb container in Nabatiyeh reveals another problem. The expiry of the warranty more than 30 years ago suggests that the manufacturer expected some deterioration in the product. Mr Guest points out that more recent cluster bombs have a self-destruct mechanism that operates after a period of time. But those dating from 1974 do not and therefore become sensitive anti-personnel mines.



-------- asia

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233

Thai Military Stages Coup

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233

A new crisis is developing in Thailand where military leaders have staged a bloodless coup. On Tuesday, tanks rolled into the capital Bangkok. Soldiers seized government offices and took up strategic positions around the city. In a broadcast aired across the country, coup leaders declared nationwide martial law and ordered all troops to return to their bases. A spokesperson said the seizure would be temporary and power "returned to the people" soon. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in New York for the UN General Assembly. It is unclear whether he intends to return home. The coup follows months of growing tension in Thailand. Numerous protests have called for the Prime Minister’s ouster. A general election was annulled due to concerns about its legitimacy.



-------- balkans

Major powers say Kosovo must be resolved in 2006

Wed Sep 20, 2006 (Reuters) 
By Sue Pleming and Paul Taylor

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2006-09-20T235032Z_01_N20363279_RTRUKOC_0_US-SERBIA-KOSOVO-CONTACT.xml

UNITED NATIONS - Major powers on Wednesday authorized a U.N. mediator to propose a final status plan for Kosovo and to achieve a settlement by the end of this year that they said neither side could block unilaterally.

A statement by the six-member "Contact Group" overseeing Balkan diplomacy -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia -- was harshly critical of what it called Belgrade's "obstruction."

"Ministers reaffirmed their commitment that all possible efforts be made to achieve a negotiated settlement in the course of 2006," said the statement from the group's ministers.

Meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the group heard a report from U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari on months of talks on Kosovo that have made little progress.

The former Finnish president is widely expected to propose independence for Kosovo, setting up a showdown with Serbia.

"The ministers also agreed that striving for a negotiated settlement should not obscure the fact that neither party can unilaterally block the status process from advancing," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried.

The breakaway southern Serbian province has been under U.N. administration since 1999 following a NATO bombing campaign that drove out Serb forces accused of ethnic cleansing. Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are Albanians.

IMPOSED SOLUTION

Last week, Ahtisaari's deputy said he saw little chance of progress in talks between Serbs and ethnic Albanians over Kosovo, but Fried said the international community was determined to achieve a negotiated settlement if possible.

"The ministers are determined to see this through (resolving Kosovo's status)," said Fried.

If the two sides fail to agree, major powers are expected to impose a solution.

Serbia's leaders have vowed never to give up Kosovo, which Serbs regard as the historic cradle of their nation.

Pro-European reformers in the Belgrade government have warned that an enforced separation could bring the ultra-nationalist Radicals and Socialists to power in Serbian elections due next year.

But European Union Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, in charge of the EU's relations with Serbia, said Serbian leaders needed to approach the talks "with renewed realism".

"Nobody benefits from delaying a solution on the status of Kosovo," he told Reuters, saying Kosovo had been in limbo for seven years and it had caused political and economic problems.

Direct talks on the province's future began in February, with little sign of compromise. The focus has been on the rights and security of the 100,000 remaining Serbs, but U.N. mediators say Belgrade has been particularly stubborn.

Analysts say Belgrade knows Kosovo is lost, but could back a breakaway bid by the Serb north of the region. The West argues this might reignite Albanian insurgencies in southern Serbia and Macedonia.

The EU is preparing to take over from the U.N. with a smaller police and monitoring operation. NATO will keep at least some of its current 16,000 troops in Kosovo.

Rehn added that Serbia had a clear prospect of eventual EU membership once it met the conditions, including cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal, which is currently blocking negotiations on closer ties.



-------- iraq

64 Killed in Iraq Violence; US Wounded Reach 20,000

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233

In Iraq, at least sixty-four people were killed Tuesday in violence around the country. The dead include four US troops. Their deaths come amid new figures showing the number of US troops wounded in Iraq has now passed twenty thousand. The top American military commander in the Middle East is now warning the Pentagon will maintain and may even increase the number of US troops. General John Abizaid says he expects at least 140,000 troops to stay in Iraq through the spring. There are currently 147,000 troops in Iraq – up 20,000 since June.

Legal Observers Criticize Judge Removal in Saddam Trial

Meanwhile, there have been major developments in the ongoing trial of Saddam Hussein. In a move decried by international legal observers, the Iraqi government removed the presiding judge over comments he made in the courtroom. In an exchange with Hussein last week, the judge said the former Iraqi leader was not a dictator during his years of rule. Richard Dicker, a legal observer for Human Rights Watch said: "The transfer effectively sends a chilling message to all judges: toe the line or risk removal." In court today, the new judge in the trial removed Hussein from the court after Hussein refused to end a defiant speech accusing the judge of being a US spy.

UK Soldier Admits to War Crime

In other Iraq news, a British soldier has become the first to admit to committing a war crime. The solider, Corporal Donald Payne, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the inhumane treatment of Iraqi civilians. Six other soldiers are charged in the death of an Iraqi man seized by British forces in Basra three years ago. They’ve all pleaded not guilty. 



-------- landmines

UN: Up to 350,000 Unexploded Cluster Bombs in Lebanon

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233

The UN has issued a new warning over the more than quarter million unexploded cluster bombs littered across southern Lebanon. David Shearer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, says unexploded bombs are killing an average three people every day. And that figure could rise. Shearer says there could be up to 350,000 unexploded cluster bombs still on the ground, and it will take at least a year for most to be cleared.



-------- prisoners of war

CIA ‘refused to operate’ secret jails

By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: September 20 2006  Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/57e68ed8-48da-11db-a996-0000779e2340.html

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.

The former officials said the CIA interrogators’ refusal was a factor in forcing the Bush administration to act earlier than it might have wished.

When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections.

The administration publicly explained its decision in light of the legal uncertainty surrounding permissible interrogation techniques following the June Supreme Court ruling that all terrorist suspects in detention were entitled to protection under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.

But the former CIA officials said Mr Bush’s hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going.

Senior officials and Mr Bush himself have come close to admitting this by saying CIA interrogators sought legal clarity. But no official has confirmed on the record how and when the secret programme actually came to an end.

John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, who was interviewed by Fox News on Sunday, said in response to a question of whether CIA interrogators had refused to work: “I think the way I would answer you in regard to that question is that there’s been precious little activity of that kind for a number of months now, and certainly since the Supreme Court decision.”

In an interview with the Financial Times, John Bellinger, legal adviser to the state department, went further, saying there had been “very little operational activity” on CIA interrogations since the passage last December of a bill proposed by Senator John McCain outlawing torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Mr Bellinger said the secret prisons remained empty for the moment. But he defended the US position that use of such prisons did not contravene international conventions as some in