NucNews September 30, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety TMI tritium leaks 'no safety hazard' The levels found in the groundwater did not exceed federal drinking-water standards. By Ad Crable Lancaster PA New Era Published: Sep 30, 2006 12:42 PM EST http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/26285 LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - An environmental study has found that slightly radioactive water found underneath the Three Mile Island nuclear plant does not exceed federal drinking-water limits. The study also found that groundwater containing tritium is migrating into the Susquehanna River, where “it is immediately diluted to non-detectable levels, posing no safety hazard,” according to the study by AmerGen Energy, operator of TMI. “We have completed the most extensive tritium sampling effort ever conducted at TMI. The results show that the TMI Station is operating in a manner that protects public health and safety,” said Rusty West, TMI site vice president. The study was prompted by the discovery of leaks of tritium, which at high levels is linked to cancer, at three nuclear plants owned by Exelon Nuclear in Illinois in 2005. A fleet-wide search discovered tritium had leaked into groundwater at one monitoring well at TMI. The levels found in the groundwater did not exceed federal drinking-water standards. The spill occurred when a pipe at a sump pump at an auxiliary boiler at the Unit 1 reactor leaked, Exelon officials said last February. The leak was promptly corrected and posed no safety hazard, Exelon said. A more in-depth assessment has found that 42 of 66 samples of groundwater around TMI had detectable levels of tritium — primarily from past leaks. The leaks had been detected and reported to government officials, Exelon said. But none of the levels violated drinking-water standards. Exelon tested water from 31 new wells, 32 existing wells and three surface-water locations at TMI. All were analyzed by an independent laboratory. Tritium is a normal byproduct of nuclear energy. Water with small levels of tritium in it is routinely released from nuclear plants into waterways. ---- Nuclear plants' tritium levels safe Environmental study finds no new leaks DRESDEN, BRAIDWOOD FACILITIES September 30, 2006 By KIM SMITH STAFF WRITER Suburban Chicago News http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/news/78126,4_1_JO30_TRITIUM_S1.article Final results of environmental studies of tritium at both the Dresden and Braidwood nuclear power plants have confirmed no active leaks beyond what was found in and around Braidwood late last year. After the tritium leaks were discovered in Braidwood, Exelon Corp. began an assessment program at all its facilities. Officials are saying the assessment is the largest environmental tritium study involving nuclear energy stations ever undertaken in the country. "Protecting the health and safety of our employees and our neighbors is our most important responsibility," said Danny Bost, Dresden vice president. "This comprehensive groundwater assessment has given us an added measure of confidence that we are not putting radioactive materials where they do not belong." Tritium is a radioactive hydrogen isotope that is a byproduct of nuclear reactors producing electricity. Elevated levels of tritium are believed to cause cancer. At Dresden, 29 water samples were taken from on-site wells revealed only slightly elevated levels of tritium as a result of past releases. A single water sample contained strontium-90 at slightly above the detectable level, but far below the federal maximum safe drinking water standard. Strontium-90 is a radionuclide believed to cause leukemia. It was detected in an isolated well. Exelon officials say the source was rainwater drainage from an open pipe during construction activities in 1975. "Samples from all other wells in close proximity to this location had no detectable levels of strontium-90, indicating that it is isolated to this single location on plant property," said Bob Osgood, Dresden spokesman. Results were also good at the Braidwood facility in Braceville, according to Exelon reports. "We are confident that we have identified all areas of concern at Braidwood," said Tom Coutu, site vice president. "Protecting the public and our environment is our top priority. We will continue to monitor our systems in place as well as remediate the previously identified areas." Exelon tested water from 33 existing wells, 12 new wells and six surface water areas. Of the 51 water samples, 16 contained slightly elevated levels of tritium as a result of the past releases. All the samples of tritium detected were far below the 200 picocuries per liter of drinking water deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "There is no threat to public health or safety as a result of these levels of tritium," said Braidwood spokesman Neal Miller. "No other radionuclides, other than those that occur naturally, were found in groundwater samples at Braidwood." Reporter Kim Smith can be reached at (815) 729-6067 or ksmith@scn1.com. ---- Story doesn't hold water Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 09/30/06 http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006609300406 Ah, so that's why an employee at the Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in Lacey removed jugs designed to detect leaks that could compromise the integrity of the plant before regulators could measure and analyze their contents? The employee did it to make sure the inspectors wouldn't hurt themselves by tripping over the jugs and possibly bumping their heads. That's the explanation given to the inspection team leader for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which toured the plant in March as part of its evaluation to determine whether the plant's operating license should be renewed for another 20 years. Unbelievable. The jugs were not inconsequential, not given the serious concerns about corrosion of the plant's drywell, a steel shell around the nuclear reactor that serves as a barrier to the release of radioactive material in the event of an accident. Corrosion was detected at Oyster Creek after water leaks were found in 1980. To stop the corrosion, the affected areas were coated with epoxy. Plant operator AmerGen says the measures taken at that time checked the corrosion. But it has been 10 years since ultrasound measurements were taken to determine whether that's indeed the case. And NRC regulators say AmerGen failed for the past eight years to abide by a directive to periodically check jugs meant to collect water leaking from an upper portion of the plant. After the jugs were finally put out, the day the NRC regulators were checking out the plant, they were removed in the name of safety. Fortunately, several area congressmen finally seem to have recognized what activists and environmental groups recognized long ago: Oyster Creek is worth getting nervous about. They must insist the plant gets the scrutiny it, and the public, deserve. -------- australia NLC denies nuclear dump deal done Saturday, 30 September 2006 Australia Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/message/news/stories/ms_news_1752669.htm The Northern Land Council (NLC) has denied reports a group of traditional owners near Tennant Creek has given their approval for a nuclear waste dump on their land. The report says the Federal Government has been given approval to use Muckaty Creek. But a NLC spokesman says no Aboriginal group, whether at Muckaty or anywhere else, has given consent to build a nuclear waste facility on their country. The spokesman says the NLC is not presently considering any proposals from either the Commonwealth Government or Aboriginal groups. -------- depleted uranium Soldiers Earn Court Victory In Battle To Prove Exposure Disability September 30, 2006 NY1 News http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=6&aid=63050 Soldiers from the New York area are reacting to news that they can sue their own military for what they say is mistreatment of medical conditions they continue to suffer after serving time in Iraq. NY1'S Dean Meminger filed the following report. Iraq war veteran Hector Vega says he still gets headaches and lumps on his hands and neck. Why? He says it is because of high levels of depleted uranium or DU in his body. He says he breathed in the radioactive substance in Iraq. But he says for the last three years military doctors have told him something different. “I'm still being checked out at the VA hospital and they just keep denying the DU issue and keep telling me I'm suffering fro PTSD," said Vega. PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder. Vega is one of nine soldiers suing the government for misdiagnosing their illnesses. It's a case federal prosecutors tried to get thrown out, but a federal judge has now ruled part of their case can go forward. "It is a great ruling, we did not expect this,” said Vega. “I'm just happy. It was a landmark decision, but this is just part one. We have a long way to go. I just hope we come out on top." It wasn't a complete victory: the judge ruled they cannot sue for injuries suffered as active duty soldiers, and that includes exposure to DU. They can only sue for the alleged medical mistreatment of DU after they were discharged. Depleted uranium is a slightly radioactive heavy metal used to strengthen missiles and tanks. The vets say they were wounded by radioactive shrapnel or breathed in radioactive particles. "These brave men did not receive honest and descent medical treatment. In fact the misdiagnosis they got made them feel bad about themselves, that they could not stand up to the stress, when in fact it was due to radioactivity,” said the veterans’ lawyer George Zelma. The judge ruled their wives also can sue, based on claims they have been deprived of companionship. At the same time, a suit on behalf of Victoria Matthew, the daughter of one of the soldiers, has been thrown out. Her father says the girl was born with a severely deformed hand because of his DU exposure. But since he cannot sue for his own exposure, only for his misdiagnosis, his daughter' s case can not move forward. Still, the nine soldiers say they look forward to their day in court to battle their own government. – Dean Meminger ---- The Role of Saskatchewan Uranium In Weapons Politics’n'Poetry September 30, 2006 http://politicsnpoetry.wordpress.com/2006/09/30/sk-uranium-in-weapons/ I’ve posted more than once on the topic of Saskatchewan’s uranium. Here’s another. Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility has written this brief bit (emphasis mine): Here are some facts and thoughts on the role of depleted uranium in weapons, both those of the conventional type and those of the nuclear variety. Natural uranium is 99.7 percent U-238 and 0.7 percent U-235. Uranium Enrichment is a process by which the percentage of U-235 is boosted beyond the 0.7 percent mark. This can only be done by discarding a large amount of U-238, which will still contain a small amount (0.2 percent to 0.4 percent) of U-235. This cast-off uranium is called depleted uranium (DU). As you may know a tremendous amount of Canadian uranium, and in particular Saskatchewan uranium, has been enriched in the USA before being sent on to overseas customers. [It’s not just the stuff we sold to the US, but the stuff we sold to other countries that was first enriched in the US before being sent (as enriched uranium for use as reactor fuel) to various other customers.] But to produce just 1 kg of 5% enriched uranium requires an input of over 11.8 kg of natural uranium, and results in 10.8 kg of depleted uranium [having about 0.3 % U-235]. When the enriched uranium is shipped to the customer, the depleted uranium is left behind at the US enrichment plant. In other words, over 90% of all Canadian (or Saskatchewan) uranium that was ever sent to USA for enrichment (for peaceful purposes as nuclear reactor fuel) has remained in the USA as depleted uranium (DU). There is absolutely no distinction between the DU of Canadian origin (or Saskatchewan origin) and the DU of other origins (US, Australian, etc.) It all goes into the same very large stockpile of DU. And a portion of this large stockpile of DU has always been used freely and without any compunctions by the US military for military purposes. It is a perfectly fair and factual statement to say that whatever the percentage might be of Canadian (Saskatchewan) uranium as a fraction of the total through-put at US uranium enrichment plants, that same percentage is found in the US DU stockpiles. It is by no means an insignificant fraction. Thus there is some Canadian-origin (Saskatchewan) uranium in virtually every US DU weapon. Most people do not realize that the SAME DU stockpile was also used for half a century — and more — to produce the plutonium that is used in almost all US nuclear weapons. When depleted uranium “target rods” are inserted into military production reactors (notably at Savannah River) some U-238 atoms in the DU are converted into Pu-239 (plutonium-239) atoms and are subsequently separated out for use as a nuclear explosive. Virtually all of the plutonium in all US nuclear warheads was produced directly from depleted uranium. Most people also do not realize that the military has, from the very first H-bombs, used depleted uranium directly in the construction of the metallic components of the warheads themselves, AND that this depleted uranium is responsible for at least 50 % of the explosive power of each H-bomb, as well as almost all of the radioactive fallout from the H-bombs. This is because the plutonium trigger (which was also made from depleted uranium) heats the fusion materials (deuterium and tritium) to several million degrees celsius so that they can undergo nuclear fusion, which in turn produces a huge burst of enormously energetic fusion neutrons (4 or 5 times more energetic than the neutrons produced by nuclear fission). But neutrons are highly penetrating and therefore do not create as powerful an explosion as they might unless they are intercepted by something which can absorb them and magnify t he energy by a factor of 2 or more in a non-penetrating form — and that’s what the depleted uranium in the H-bomb is there for. When these highly energetic fusion neutrons hit the DU (mainly U-238) atoms, those “non-fissile” atoms are in fact fissioned (something that almost never happens in nuclear fission reactors!) producing an enormously enhanced burst of energy (double or more than double) and a plethora of highly radioactive “fission products” which contribute most of the radioactive fallout of the H-bomb. That’s why these bombs are called “fission-fusion-fission” bombs. The first fission is plutonium. Then there’s the fusion of the deuterium and tritium. Then the second fission, which is the depleted uranium. If you remove the depleted uranium materials from the H-bomb, you get a “neutron bomb” — one that has much less blast, much less radioactive fallout, and an enormous spewing forth of highly penetrating neutrons which do not generally destroy buildings but which are absolutely deadly to living things. And to think that a large percentage of that DU is good old Canadian (Saskatchewan) uranium! Yikes. The Canadian connections with DU munitions are even closer than just providing the raw material, as the following little excerpt indicates…. From: Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) 12/26/2005 Uranium Biological Effects Study – Port Hope UMRC is pleased on its official participation in the Port Hope Biological Studies Project, Port Hope Ontario. Port Hope is the home of two nuclear industry facilities: Zircatec Precision Industries and Cameco Nuclear Fuels Division. Cameco acquired the Port Hope uranium refinery, conversion and metals processing facility from the original Canadian Crown Corporation, Eldarado Nuclear. Eldarado Nuclear participated in the Manhattan Project and now as Cameco, supplies UF6 to the US uranium enrichment program and UO2 to Zircatec and other fuel rod manufacturers. Currently Zircatec and Cameco process commercial natural uranium, depleted uranium, and enriched uranium stocks. As Eldoradeo, the refinery supplied Canadian and US Defense Departments with uranium and depleted uranium metals and extruded rods for kinetic energy penetrator research. Retired employees confirm that DU-KEP extruded rods were manufactured in Port Hope in the 1960’s onwards. The Cameco facility hosts one of the largest uranium metal processing capacities in the industry. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC’s Director of Research has been appointed to the Medical Advisory Committee, Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee. Tedd Weyman, UMRC’s Deputy Director is leading the field investigations at Port Hope. So, Premier Calvert and Minister Cline, how will you respond to this? -------- europe Sweden: New problem delays nuclear reactor restart Published: 30th September 2006 14:56 CET http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=5076&date=20060930 A new problem at the Forsmark nuclear power plant has delayed the restart of the Forsmark 2 reactor, after a two month stoppage. The reactor was due to start over the weekend but a fault was discovered in the detection system. "It is a system where we monitor the nuclear fission process at the beginning of the start-up," said Claes-Inge Andersson, head of information at Forsmark, to TT. The system itself monitors the flow of neutrons in the reactor in the first phase of the restart, until the reactor is operating at eight percent effect. At that point the second monitoring system takes over. Sweden's nuclear inspectorate (SKI) decided on Thursday that both reactors would restart, two months after they were shut down following an incident at Forsmark. Forsmark 2 was expected to reach full production on Monday, but Andersson said that it would now be Wednesday. "We're expecting a delay of a couple of days," he said. --- Swedish nuclear reactor to remain shutdown due to new faults German Press Agency Saturday September 30, 2006 http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Swedish_nuclear_reactor_to_remain_s_09302006.html Stockholm - Sweden's Forsmark nuclear reactor shutdown in July will remain silent due to new technical faults, a spokesman for the state Nuclear Power Inspectorate reported Saturday in Stockholm. A reactivation approved on Thursday failed on Saturday afternoon due to a fault in the reactor's control system, the report said. On July 25, two of four backup generators malfunctioned when a reactor at the Forsmark plant shutdown. The generators were supposed to start automatically. Swedish nuclear authorities have required both Forsmark reactors and two reactors of similar type at the Oskarshamn plant to be shut down till the end of the year. -------- india Indo-US N-deal pushed to lame duck sessionAdd to Clippings [ 30 Sep, 2006 ] Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2052078,curpg-2.cms The House of Representatives had passed a different version of the enabling bill by an overwhelming 359-68 votes. But Reid stood his ground. The India-US nuclear deal was important not only for India and the United States, but for the whole world and as such deserved all the more attention. Frist then moved for the adjournment of the Senate until November 9 when no business would be conducted except introduction of bills. The chamber would meet again on November 13 to take up pending business. The Congress session in November is considered a "lame duck" session as some lawmakers who return for this session will not be in the next Congress that would convene in January 2007. Hence, they are informally called "lame duck" members participating in a "lame duck" session. The Senate then adjourned at 2.30 am on Saturday. Earlier through the long hard day starting at 9.30 am. Friday Frist and Reid tried to work out a "package" on how to debate the bill that was supported by both sides, but had not been taken up by the whole Senate in the face of objections from a few senators from either party. As the Senate raced through several other bills considered crucial by the White House, Minority leader Harry Reid promised to put the bill on "automatic pilot" so that it may be taken up as "the first order of business" after the break. The Bush administration has been pushing hard to get the legislation passed with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice making "a rare personal telephone call" to Reid last Monday after her meeting with Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New York. Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran too has had meetings with both Reid and Frist besides other key Congressional leaders and administration officials including Under Secretary of State, Nick Burns to push the legislation. The enabling legislation would exempt India from the current-law prohibition on the transfer of nuclear materials and technology to countries that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ---- "The goalposts haven't been shifted and they will not be shifted" T.S. Subramanian and Kesava Menon 30/09/2006 The Hindu http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006093005491100.htm&date=2006/09/30/&prd=th& With the congressional elections scheduled to take place in November 2006, time appears to be running out for the passage of the legislation that will give effect to the nuclear co-operation deal between India and the United States. What are the chances that the U.S. Congress will enact the enabling law before its current term comes to an end? U.S. AmbassadorDavid C. Mulford provides answers to this and related questions in an interview in Chennai: David C. Mulford: "It is up to India to decide what is in its national interests. If it finds that the agreement isn't helpful, then I suppose it will not accept it." — PHOTO: Shaju John Mr. Ambassador, you said in Jaipur that the United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act is likely to be passed before the U.S. Congress finishes its term. What if it isn't and one of the Houses is captured by the Democrats? We have few days left for the Congressional session before they recess for election. An effort is being made to obtain a floor vote in the Senate. The House has already voted. This is looking less likely because there has been some wrangling over procedural matters even when both the sides, the Republicans and the Democrats, are bending backwards to emphasise their support for the Bill on the Indo-U.S. [nuclear] relationship. There are some differences of opinion on possible amendments and how to proceed through the Senate, which is a complicated parliamentary format to work in. It may still be that we get a floor vote. If we get a floor vote, I believe it will be strongly positive by a substantial majority. It will be a bi-partisan majority. If we get that vote, the Bill goes to the Conference of the House and the Senate. That is a select group of members. They will rationalise the two Bills into one single Bill and the single Bill will go back for approval to both the Chambers, which is a quick action and then be signed by the President. If that does not happen before the end of this Congress, which will be adjourning by early December. Then we will have to go back to square one in the Congress all over again and start with the committees, the mark-ups for floor action, and the Conference all over again. How the elections come out will influence that situation because if the House changes hands those committees will be chaired by people on the other political party. My own view is that it will not matter a great deal [because] both the parties are very supportive of this agreement. But I am afraid that it would draw the process out because there wouldn't be the same pressure on the Congress to act. So it would take more time to re-position, work through the committees and the whole process again. But it will not change the commitment of this Administration to get it done. The July 18, 2005 Joint Statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush and the March 2006 Separation Plan are a win-win arrangement for both India and the U.S. in civilian nuclear cooperation. So why are the House of Representatives Bill and the draft Senate Bill trying to change the terms of this agreement into issues of concern over proliferation and why are efforts being made at capping India's nuclear weapons programme? In short, why is the U.S. shifting the goalposts? First of all, let me emphasise that the goalposts have not been shifted and they will not be shifted. The Administration has reached an agreement on the deal and for the deal to be implemented, the law has to be changed. The law has to be changed by the United States Congress. They have had certain suggestions to make about legislation and they are in the form of either what we call declaratory points which are not enforceable but are matters of stated opinion. The other type of amendments is in the form of substantive amendments. Most of the people who make those amendments believe that the amendments they are making are within the spirit of the July 18 Agreement. The Indian Government does not agree with that and the Administration does not agree in every case with that either. So we are trying to soften and change some of those amendments. And the question is what is the best tactic for doing that? We have judged that it is not the best tactic to change the amendments on the floor of the Senate. That it is better to make that effort in the conference between the two Houses. The line that will be taken is that these amendments were put forward in June. That was very early in the process. They were put forward in the committees. Now we have floor votes with overwhelming support. So we would be making the point to the members that the overwhelming intention of the Congress, both the parties, is to see that this Agreement is put in place. So let us not have amendments there we know will make the deal unacceptable to the Indian Government because in their view these would fall outside the parameters of the Agreements of July 05 and March 06. The second point is that the bilateral agreement which is being negotiated, the so-called 123 Agreement, is the operational agreement. When it is concluded, it would be submitted to the Congress for a vote. That vote will be an up or down vote. There will not be any opportunity to make amendments there. So what we will say to the people is, "Your amendment is a very detailed provision which is changing the law and the issues that you are worried about are dealt with in the 123 agreement. You will get a chance to vote on that later. If you don't like what you see, you can vote against it. We think that the Agreement will be supportive." We hope that one way or the other, we can soften or remove some of these amendments. But we do not know because it is in the hands of the Congress. But the Administration knew that the non-proliferation lobby in the U.S. would get active. Then why did not the Administration take pre-emptive action to put forth its case before the Congress before the non-proliferation lobbies got active? We did put our case before the Congress immediately after the legislation was submitted in early May, may be even April. After the July agreement, I started making calls myself to members of the Congress in September 05 to lobby them to support this agreement. But we have a system that permits all parties to put forward their views. The other point you made is incorrect when you said the aim of these amendments is to cap India's strategic programme. I disagree with that. This negotiation was always about a civil nuclear programme and that is the agreement... It is not a negotiation over India's strategic programme. There was no secret agenda to find a way indirectly to cap India's strategic programme. That is simply untrue. The fact that some of these amendments are objectionable [to India] does not mean that they are amendments which will effectively cap India's strategic programme. They have to do with some genuine concerns that members of the Congress have about matters of non-proliferation, management and handling of nuclear fuels, and so on. It is a complicated area. Obviously, there will be different opinions on things. You said you will try to reconcile things in the conference. That is one way of getting around this. The Senate Bill also includes a lot of provisions similar to the House Bill. It may not be in exactly the same language but the thrust is the same. How much of scope is there for reconciling the two in such a way that it is acceptable to India? There is some scope which I have already explained. We should first get to know what is really acceptable in the final analysis or what is unacceptable. May be some of the things in there will turn out to be acceptable. For example, there are recording functions which are mentioned, I think, in the House Bill. These are requirements that would be imposed on the Administration. They are not imposed on India. It is not so much the reporting. It is an issue of waiver. I wouldn't worry about that. The Administration will... In the draft Senate Bill, there is a provision that any waiver on nuclear technology transfers to India in areas such as reprocessing and enrichment or on fuel supplies "shall cease to be effective if the President determines that India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment of this Act." That is an issue that is pretty well taken care of and will not be an issue there. I can't commit on behalf of the United States Congress but my understanding is that that issue can be worked out. I think you might be scrutinising these issues closely. After India conducted its nuclear test in 1974, embargoes and technology denial regimes were imposed on it. But India survived for 30 years. Again, after the 1998 nuclear tests, sanctions were imposed on India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear twice in Parliament in August that if extraneous conditions, not envisaged in the agreement, find their way into the Congressional legislation and they are going to hurt India, India will "draw the appropriate conclusions." Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, has also said that India has got its own three-stage nuclear power programme and that it would go on. So the bottom-line is clear: India will not be unduly worried if this nuclear deal falls through. What is your reaction to that? My reaction to what? If the deal does not come through, India will not be unduly worried because India has got its own three-stage nuclear power programme and it will go on. It is up to India to decide what is in its national interests. If it finds that the agreement isn't helpful, then I suppose it will not accept it. But that is up to India to decide. It is not the impression I have that India thinks this deal is unimportant. I think they think that it is very important; very important to finish, to put into position. But India is a sovereign nation. It will make its own decisions. It is fair to say that you are scrutinising very closely a very complicated process which is being handled fully transparently by two major democracies. That is a recipe for some complication. This is not a deal, which is being cut in the backroom somewhere. This is a deal which is well agreed in the full light of the day and it is being processed by both the Governments in accordance with their democratic arrangements. So it is a very impressive process and it also by definition has some imperfections in it. Right? I think you will agree with that? But we should get some credit for doing it within the full, transparent democratic process in both the Governments. Both of us should get credit for that. The U.S. President is very much interested in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). There are plans to set up international reprocessing centres under the GNEP, especially in the P-5 countries. There is a strong feeling in the nuclear community in India that India is being played out of these international reprocessing centres although it has mastered the art of reprocessing (that is, India will not host any international reprocessing facility). Why isn't India being given its due recognition in this? They [India] weren't cut out. In the negotiations, it was very clear that for India to have full access to the GNEP group, it would need to place one of its fast breeder reactors under safeguards. India decided that it would not do that. So India decided not to become a full-fledged member of that group. I guess if they decided to do that later [place one of its fast breeder reactors under safeguards], they will not then be restricted. That was the understanding at that time. Even then you will insist that India should place one of its breeder reactors under safeguards. That was the condition in the negotiations. That was well understood and a decision was made by India not to do that. -------- iran Ahmadinejad Says Nuclear Suspension Part of Western Propaganda 30 September 2006 By VOA News http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-09-30-voa8.cfm Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has again rejected calls to suspend his nation's nuclear program, saying Western nations would use such a move as propaganda. Mr. Ahmadinejad told students in Tehran Saturday that any suspension of nuclear enrichment would be portrayed by the West as a surrender. He vowed to continue, in his words, protecting Iran's right to a nuclear program. Western nations say the program is intended to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it is for peaceful purposes. Earlier this week, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, to discuss the dispute. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to speak in coming days with her counterparts from other world powers to discuss that meeting. France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany will take part in the consultations. Earlier Saturday, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that would apply sanctions on companies or individuals providing materials for Iran's weapons programs. The bill now must be approved by President Bush to become law. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- pennsylvania TMI tritium leaks 'no safety hazard' The levels found in the groundwater did not exceed federal drinking-water standards. By Ad Crable Lancaster New Era Sep 30, 2006 12:42 PM EST http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/26285 LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - An environmental study has found that slightly radioactive water found underneath the Three Mile Island nuclear plant does not exceed federal drinking-water limits. The study also found that groundwater containing tritium is migrating into the Susquehanna River, where “it is immediately diluted to non-detectable levels, posing no safety hazard,” according to the study by AmerGen Energy, operator of TMI. “We have completed the most extensive tritium sampling effort ever conducted at TMI. The results show that the TMI Station is operating in a manner that protects public health and safety,” said Rusty West, TMI site vice president. The study was prompted by the discovery of leaks of tritium, which at high levels is linked to cancer, at three nuclear plants owned by Exelon Nuclear in Illinois in 2005. A fleet-wide search discovered tritium had leaked into groundwater at one monitoring well at TMI. The levels found in the groundwater did not exceed federal drinking-water standards. The spill occurred when a pipe at a sump pump at an auxiliary boiler at the Unit 1 reactor leaked, Exelon officials said last February. The leak was promptly corrected and posed no safety hazard, Exelon said. A more in-depth assessment has found that 42 of 66 samples of groundwater around TMI had detectable levels of tritium — primarily from past leaks. The leaks had been detected and reported to government officials, Exelon said. But none of the levels violated drinking-water standards. Exelon tested water from 31 new wells, 32 existing wells and three surface-water locations at TMI. All were analyzed by an independent laboratory. Tritium is a normal byproduct of nuclear energy. Water with small levels of tritium in it is routinely released from nuclear plants into waterways. -------- us nuc waste EPA to investigate mine site Agency, United Nuclear agree on probe for surface contamination September 30, 2006 By Zsombor Peter Staff Writer Gallup Independent http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/sept/093006zp_epamine.html GALLUP — Some 24 years after closing its Church Rock mines, the United Nuclear Corporation has reached an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the site for any persistent surface contamination. Under an earlier agreement with the EPA, United Nuclear is already busy pumping ground water out of the area contaminated by tailings from its past mining operations there. The new agreement, reached Thursday, orders it to study the site's soil and abandoned facilities for contamination as well. United Nuclear must also replace a fence around the 125-acre site all of it on tribal trust land that currently does little to keep people and livestock out. Representatives for United Nuclear could not immediately be reached for comment. "It's great that we're finally getting something started," said Chris Shuey, director of the Southwest Research and Information Center's Uranium Impact Assessment Program, "but there's been virtually a quarter-century where nothing was done to protect the health of these people." Besides, Shuey noted, the agreement is neither the beginning nor likely the end of the story for the EPA, United Nuclear or the residents living with the company's legacy. "It's been in the works for a long time, and it simply continues the investigation of the site," he said. So far as the soil and facilities are concerned, United Nuclear hasn't agreed to clean up anything just yet. Only after it's had a chance to study the findings of the investigation and consult with the Navajo Nation's own Environmental Protection Agency at whose request it stepped in will the U.S. EPA consider getting United Nuclear to clean up the site. That will take a separate agreement. Rise of 'Mutton Man' Residents of the area have been living with the fear of what effects the abandoned uranium mines might be having on their health and livestock for decades. It's even made its way into the local vernacular: "Mutton Man," the popular fictional character of local entertainer Vincent Craig, attained his superpowers by feasting on the meat of a lamb that drank from a nearby wash after a real-life spill of radioactive waste from one of United Nuclear's settling ponds in 1979. The Church Rock Uranium Monitoring Project, meanwhile, an initiative of the Navajo Nation's local chapter to study the legacy of the mines, has been sampling the area for the past few years. Their fears may be well grounded. In its press release about Thursday's agreement, the U.S. EPA claims it found "elevated levels" of alpha radiation at the site and radium-226 a known human carcinogen exposure to which can lead to bone, liver and breast cancers in the surface soil. Transported by wind and runoff from rain and snow melt, it continues, they "may have" affected residents to the northeast. Still, the EPA won't go so far as to say the Church Rock mines have definitively affected anyone's health or even speculate about whether they might have some grounds to pursue compensation if it turns out they were. That, said Andrew Bain, Remedial Project Manager for the EPA's Region 9 out of San Francisco, is not the agency's job. "Our mission is to find contamination and mitigate it," he said, nothing more and nothing less. Whether residents chose to pursue compensation, Bain said, will depend on them and United Nuclear's findings. The long wait So what took the EPA so long to get an investigation out of United Nuclear? For one thing, say Bain and Shuey, it wasn't the agency's fight to begin with. According to Shuey, the state began pursuing legal action against United Nuclear over the site in the mid-1990s. Although the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually ruled against the company, it managed to stall the case for eight years. But when the Navajo Nation decided the state wasn't asking enough of United Nuclear, Shuey said, it asked the EPA to step in. It took over last November. It's all happening while the tribe is trying to fend off a new round of uranium mining on and around the reservation. With more than half the world's remaining deposits, according to the University of New Mexico's Johnnye Lewis, the Colorado Plateau and the Navajo Nation's Eastern Agency in particular is where many of United Nuclear's successors are looking. One company, Texas-based Hydro Resources, Inc., has its eyes on Church Rock itself. The companies say the new techniques they'll be using won't pose the risks uranium mining used to, but the tribe and its backers aren't convinced. The Navajo Nation Council approved the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act in 2005, banning uranium mining anywhere on Navajoland. But some of the companies are seeking concessions on federal lands just outside the tribe's boarders, making it hard for the Nation to impose its will. The Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, which Shuey consults, is mounting its own offense. The EPA's latest agreement with United Nuclear may not do much to help the tribe shape its future, but it might help the tribe reconcile with its past. Bain expects the $350,000 investigation to begin some time in November and last up to a month. United Nuclear will be footing the bill. -------- MILITARY -------- israel / palestine When rockets and phosphorous cluster By Meron Rapoport Sat., September 30, 2006 Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761910.html "In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous," testifies a commander in the Israel Defense Forces' MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit. Quoting his battalion commander, he said the IDF fired some 1,800 cluster rockets on Lebanon during the war and they contained over 1.2 million cluster bombs. The IDF also used cluster shells fired by 155 mm artillery cannons, so the number of cluster bombs fired on Lebanon is even higher. At the same time, soldiers in the artillery corps testified that the IDF used phosphorous shells, which many experts say is prohibited by international law. According to the claims, the overwhelming majority of the weapons mentioned were fired during the last ten days of the war. The commander asserted that there was massive use of MLRS rockets despite the fact that they are known to be very inaccurate - the rockets' deviation from the target reaches to around 1,200 meters - and that a substantial percentage do not explode and become mines. Due to these facts, most experts view cluster ammunitions as a "non-discerning" weapon that is prohibited for use in a civilian environment. The percentage of duds among the rockets fired by the U.S. army in Iraq reached 30 percent and the United Nations' land mine removal team in Lebanon claims that the percentage of duds among the rockets fired by the IDF reaches some 40 percent. In light of these figures, the number of duds left behind by the Israeli cluster rockets in Lebanon is likely to reach half a million. According to the commander, in order to compensate for the rockets' imprecision, the order was to "flood" the area with them. "We have no option of striking an isolated target, and the commanders know this very well," he said. He also stated that the reserve soldiers were surprised by the use of MLRS rockets, because during their regular army service, they were told these are the IDF's "judgment day weapons" and intended for use in a full-scale war. The commander also said that at least in one case, they were asked to fire cluster rockets toward "a village's outskirts" in the early morning: "They told us that this is a good time because people are coming out of the mosques and the rockets would deter them." In other cases, they fired the rockets at a range of less than 15 kilometers, even though the manufacturer's guidelines state that firing at this range considerably increases the number of duds. The commander further related that during IDF training exercises hardly any live rockets are fired, for fear that they would leave duds behind and fill the IDF's firing grounds with mines. After being discharged from his reserve duty, the commander sent a letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz and protested the number of cluster rockets fired in Lebanon, which "perhaps the generals forgot to mention." "As far as the duds are concerned," he wrote, "we have no control over who is hurt. Sooner or later they will explode in people's hands." He has yet to receive a response from the defense minister. At the same time, soldiers are reporting that they fired phosphorous shells, which are supposed to be used by the IDF for marking or setting fire to areas, in order to start fires in Lebanon. The artillery commander says he saw trucks with phosphorous shells en route to artillery batteries in the North. A direct hit from a phosphorous shell causes severe burns and a painful death. Around a year ago, there was an international scandal after a television crew presented harsh pictures of the charred bodies of Iraqis injured by phosphorous bombs during the course of the American attack on the city of Fallujah. International law prohibits the use of weapons that cause "excessive damage and unnecessary suffering," and many experts feel that phosphorous is included in this category. The International Red Cross determined that international law prohibits the use of phosphorous against humans. The American "Book of War," published in 1999, which sets down the rules of war for the American army, states: "The ground war law prohibits the use of phosphorous against human targets." The pact on prohibiting or limiting flammable weapons bans the use of phosphorous against civilian targets and against military targets found amid large civil populations. The IDF Spokesperson said: "International law does not contain a sweeping ban on the use of cluster bombs. The Conventional Weapons Pact does not stipulate a ban on the use of inflammatory weapons (i.e., phosphorous - M.R.), rather it only offers rules for organizing the use of this weapon. For understandable operational reasons, the IDF will not comment on a detailed listing of the weaponry at its disposal. The IDF uses only methods and weapons that are permitted according to international law. The firing of artillery in general, including the firing of artillery to demolish a target, was initiated in response to firing at the State of Israel only." The defense minister's bureau said in response that it had yet to receive an inquiry on the matter of firing cluster rockets. -------- mideast Israelis expect to finish pullout by Sunday 9/30/2006 USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-30-israel-pullout_x.htm JERUSALEM — The Israeli army is preparing to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon by Sunday morning, according to Israeli defense officials and a spokesman for the Lebanese government. The pullout would meet a key condition of the Aug. 14 U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended more than a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. Israeli officials said the army was preparing to complete the withdrawal overnight, but the plans could change depending on conditions on the ground. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media. A similar announcement came from a Lebanese government spokesman, who said Saturday that U.N. peacekeepers informed Lebanono of Israeli plans to complete the promised pullout. The French commander of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), General Alain Pellegrini, had told Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora that Israel would pull out the last of its troops on Sunday. "General Pellegrini contacted Prime Minister Fuad Siniora to inform him that the Israeli army has undertaken to complete its withdrawal from south Lebanon on Sunday," the Lebanese spokesman said. UNIFIL spokesman Alexander Ivanko declined to confirm or deny the Israeli deadline. But he had said Thursday that he was hoping for Israel to complete its withdrawal by Sunday. "We are expecting the Israelis to withdraw at the end of the month," Ivanko said then. In Tel Aviv, an Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that the army planned to withdraw from more positions in south Lebanon on Sunday but declined to say whether that would mark the completion of its pullout. "We are going to hand over control of several sectors to UNIFIL," the spokeswoman said. The Israeli army still occupies about 10 positions on the Lebanese side of the border, after suspending its pullout earlier this month, according to UNIFIL. Israel's privately owned Channel Two television reported Friday that the army would complete its pullout by Sunday afternoon at the latest ? before the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday. The television said that army chiefs no longer saw any reason to keep the few hundred Israeli troops still deployed in Lebanon in place. Lebanon's prime minister talked to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by telephone during the night to seek her assistance in getting Israel to pull out its remaining troops, the spokesman added. Siniora asked Rice, who begins a Middle East tour Monday, to "put pressure on Israel to withdraw from south Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701," the spokesman said. Lebanon has stepped up its protests about the slow pace of Israel's withdrawal in recent days, warning that it is considering a formal protest to the Security Council. Disputes over how the Lebanese army and UNIFIL peacekeepers will deal with Hezbollah fighters have been holding up the withdrawal, Israeli army chief Dan Halutz said Wednesday. Hezbollah has agreed to abide by the ceasefire but refuses to lay down its weapons until it is satisfied that Israel has ended its occupation of Lebanese land. Meanwhile a government minister said Israel should eliminate Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah as soon as possible. "We must liquidate Nasrallah at the first opportunity, because he is the embodiment of evil, not just for us but for Muslims and Christians too," Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, a former defense minister, told army radio. Contributing: Agence-France Presse; Associated Press -------- nato Afghanistan: Why NATO cannot win Sep 30, 2006 By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI30Df01.html The four-month-old Republic of Montenegro on the Adriatic Sea received its first foreign dignitary on Monday when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived at its capital, Podgorica. Unknowingly, the tiny country of rugged mountains and great beauty in the Balkans with a population of 630,000 was being catapulted into the cockpit of 21st-century geopolitics. Rumsfeld's mission was to request the inexperienced leadership in Podgorica to dispatch a military contingent to form part of the coalition of the willing in the "war on terror". Rumsfeld promised that in return, the US would help train Montenegro's fledgling army to standards of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic could not make any commitments. Rumsfeld's proposal came at an awkward moment for the leadership in Podgorica, which had just scrapped the draft and was scaling down its 4,000-strong army to about 2,500. This bizarre diplomatic exchange between the most awesome military power on Earth and the newest member of the "international community" brings home the paradoxes of the "war on terror" on the eve of its fifth anniversary. Three ministerial-level meetings of NATO have taken place within the space of the past month alone, specifically with the intent of ascertaining how troop strength in Afghanistan can be augmented. US Marine Corps General James Jones, NATO's supreme commander of operations, has admitted that the fierce resistance put up by the Taliban and the burgeoning insurgency has taken the alliance by surprise. NATO forces have realized that an all-out war is at hand, rather than the peacekeeping mission that was imagined earlier. New rules of engagement have been accordingly drawn up for NATO contingents deployed in the southern provinces of Afghanistan - and soon to be extended to the whole country, where US soldiers are reportedly to be put under NATO control. British commanders in southern Afghanistan have been given clearance to use the army's controversial Hydra rockets, which can target large concentrations of people with tungsten darts. The commanders are also permitted to resort to air strikes on suspected Taliban formations, conduct preemptive strikes and set up ambushes. Yet a British commander has been reported as telling the media, "The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis." The fatality rate of the 18,500-strong NATO force averages about five per week, which is roughly equal to the losses suffered by the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Indeed, in withering comments to The Sunday Telegraph newspaper last weekend, Soviet commanders who oversaw Moscow's disastrous campaign have predicted that the NATO forces will ultimately be forced to flee from Afghanistan. General Boris Gromov, the charismatic Soviet commander who supervised the withdrawal in 1989, warned, "The Afghan resistance is, in my opinion, growing. Such behavior on the part of the intractable Afghans is to my mind understandable. It is conditioned by centuries of tradition, geography, climate and religion. "We saw over a period of many years how the country was torn apart by civil war ... But in the face of outside aggressions, Afghans have always put aside their differences and united. Evidently, the [US-led] coalition forces are also being seen as a threat to the nation." A comparison with the 1980s is in order. The 100,000-strong Soviet army operated alongside a full-fledged Afghan army of equal strength with an officer corps trained in the elite Soviet military academies, and backed by aviation, armored vehicles and artillery, with all the advantages of a functioning, politically motivated government in Kabul. And yet it proved no match for the Afghan resistance. In comparison, there are about 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan, plus roughly the same number of troops belonging to NATO contingents, which includes 5,400 troops from Britain, 2,500 from Canada and 2,300 from the Netherlands. Nominally, there is a 42,000-strong Afghan National Army, but it suffers from a high rate of defection. General Jones has asked for 2,500 additional NATO troops. But the major NATO countries - Turkey, France, Germany, Spain and Italy - have declined to send more. In actuality, it is questionable whether 2,500 more troops would make any significant difference in a country of the size of Afghanistan and with such a difficult terrain. Distinguished British soldier-politician Sir Cyril Townsend wrote in Al-Hayat newspaper this week, "A realistic military appreciation of the situation would be that to gain the upper hand against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and to start winning over the southeast of the country, will require deployment of at least 10,000 extra, highly trained professional and well-equipped troops with matching air support." Clearly, a huge crisis is shaping up for NATO. Its credibility is at stake. Sir Cyril does not foresee that the alliance will come up with the required military resources "to beat the Taliban on its own ground". No wonder Lieutenant-General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan and former assistant chief of the general staff of the British army, ominously warned in a recent television interview, "We need to realize we could actually fail here." Most observers have pointed a finger at the developing crisis in Afghanistan almost exclusively in terms of the shortfalls in achieving a rapid, high-tech military victory over the Taliban. In the ensuing blame game, there is the recurrent criticism that Washington did not commit enough forces. Some say that the Iraq war turned out to be an unfortunate distraction for the US administration from wrapping up and following up on the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001. Others put the blame on the European member countries of NATO - that the Europeans are far too timid and self-centered to fight wars in faraway lands, even if it is for their ultimate good. Widening somewhat the gyre of the blame game, almost everyone acknowledges that opium is eating away the vitals of the Afghan state as counter-drug operations have been a dismal failure. And, of course, there is the perennial accusation that US regional policy during the administration of George W Bush has been on the whole negligent about "nation-building" and that Washington has been tardy in earmarking enough material and financial resources for Afghanistan's reconstruction (in comparison with East Timor or Bosnia-Herzegovina). All such criticism may contain elements of truth. But germane to the crisis in a fundamental sense is the hard reality that no matter the oft-repeated factor of a reasonably secure cross-border sanctuary in Pakistan, the Taliban have indeed staged a comeback in essence as an indigenous guerilla force capable of waging a long-term struggle. That is to say, the central issue is that the US has simply failed to come up with a winning political and military strategy in Afghanistan. Comparison has been drawn with the successful peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. General Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO, wrote in Newsweek magazine recently, "In order to succeed, we must adopt some of the lessons and practices we put in place so painfully in the Balkans. We must acknowledge the magnitude of the task and pull in the full authority of the international community. NATO can do much more than just supply troops. We need to acknowledge that, yes, we do nation-building." But again, the Afghan problem is vastly dissimilar from the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. First and foremost, there is the highly contrived nature of the US intervention in Afghanistan. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, in an international environment where "we are all Americans", as Le Monde famously wrote, no one asked any hard questions as to whether Washington's decision to attack Afghanistan was justified or not. The international community simply acquiesced. But the fact remains that Washington, indeed, had the option to forgo direct intervention and instead to extend its decisive political, diplomatic and military support to the anti-Taliban Afghan groups that, under the compulsions arising out of the assassination of the Northern Alliance's Ahmad Shah Masoud, were finally rallying under the leadership of former king Zahir Shah and were just about ready by late September 2001 to announce the establishment of an Afghan government-in-exile. The Afghan king himself was persuaded at long last to give up his reticence about returning to active politics after three decades of exile in Rome. That option, had it been pursued, would have opened the way for a quintessentially "Afghan solution" to the challenge posed by the Taliban regime - a solution that would have enjoyed the full sanctity of Afghan traditions and culture. But the Bush administration deliberately chose not to take that option. Conceivably, Washington decided that only a spectacular military operation would assuage the US public, which was traumatized by the September 11 attacks, and highlight the decisive leadership in the White House in safeguarding national security. Arguably, Afghanistan would also have been viewed by the Bush administration as a laboratory where Washington could test its doctrines of preemptive military strike, the "coalition of the willing", unilateralism, etc - doctrines that provided the political underpinning for the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Or, in the medium and long term, Washington estimated that short of a military presence inside Afghanistan and without a client regime installed in Kabul, the US would be unable to ease other regional powers from the Afghan chessboard and reorder the geopolitics of the region as part of its global strategy. At any rate, the stratagem aimed at exploiting the Afghan problem to seize geopolitical advantages was not so apparent at the beginning. But it didn't take long before it became clear that the US agenda was to exploit the "war on terror" for establishing a client state in Afghanistan, and for gaining a sought-after military presence in Central Asia. And in the event, the US military presence incrementally paved the way for creating a base for NATO in the region. There was a high degree of sophistry in the US military operations in October 2001 as well. In the initial stages, an impression was created deliberately that the US intervention would be confined to air operations and the induction of a limited number of special forces specifically for the purpose of advising and guiding the Northern Alliance militia. Thus the Northern Alliance furiously protested when it first came to be know of the sudden arrival of US ground troops at Bagram airport in early November 2001, in the wake of the overthrow of the Taliban government. Washington also gave different impressions to different interlocutors in the region regarding the nature of the post-Taliban regime it had in mind. Certainly, the mostly non-Pashtun Northern Alliance leadership was led to believe that the overthrow of the Taliban would automatically result in its return to the seat of power in Kabul from where it was evicted by the Taliban in 1996. Conceivably, regional powers such as Russia, Iran and India, too, were persuaded to fancy that such an outcome was in the cards and that the transfer of power in Kabul to the Northern Alliance leadership would ultimately work to their advantage, given their past material, financial, political and diplomatic backing of the alliance as the spearhead of the anti-Taliban resistance during the period 1996-2001. On the other hand, Islamabad was given assurances by Washington that a Pashtun-majority government in Kabul was in the making and that incrementally there would be a political accommodation of erstwhile Taliban elements in the emergent power structure. Islamabad no doubt sought and gained an assurance from Washington that under no circumstances would the Northern Alliance be allowed to grab power in Kabul in the post-Taliban phase. All this while, Washington seemed to have had Abdul Haq, the famous mujahideen leader with long-standing links with US intelligence, as its first choice to assume the leadership in Kabul after the overthrow of the Taliban. But in the event, Haq was assassinated by the Taliban, most likely with the connivance of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which got wind of Washington's hidden agenda and feared that Haq wouldn't be amenable to Islamabad's persuasions once he was ensconced in power in Kabul. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance outwitted its US mentors. Contrary to the tacit understanding between alliance commanders and their American mentors to the effect that after the Taliban's ouster Kabul would initially remain a neutral city under United Nations control, the alliance militia occupied the capital and its leadership unilaterally installed itself in power. These leaders hoped (optimistically, as it turned out) that the US would have little choice but to accept the fait accompli. Thus when the Bonn conference got under way in December 2001, Washington had a two-point agenda, namely to project a credible substitute for the late Haq as the leader of the new setup and, second, to do some arm-twisting to cajole the Northern Alliance to give up its leadership role in Kabul. Nonetheless, when the US brought up Hamid Karzai's name in Bonn, there was widespread opposition by Afghan groups. In the perceptions of the Afghan participants at the Bonn conference, Karzai simply didn't have enough standing as a political leader in the Afghan scene, having sat in exile in the US for the past several years, and being at a serious disadvantage insofar as he did not belong to a major Pashtun tribe. But the United States pressed ahead regardless with Karzai's name, given his closeness to the US establishment and his total dependence on US support. The US brought immense pressure to bear on Afghan groups present at Bonn to accept Karzai's leadership. It was with extreme reluctance that the Northern Alliance leader, president Burhanuddin Rabbani, finally handed over the levers of power to Karzai. While abdicating from power in Kabul in early 2002, Rabbani said he hoped that it was the last time the proud Afghan people would be bullied by foreigners. Anyone familiar with Afghan ethos and character could foresee at that juncture that Karzai would find it next to impossible to consolidate his grip on power, let alone establish his authority over the entire country. Indeed, that is exactly what has happened over the past five years. The repeated and brazen manipulations by the US during the past five years, especially during the parliamentary and presidential elections in Afghanistan held under election rules that were tailor-made for predictable results, failed to ensure that Karzai commanded respect in the Afghan bazaar. US attempts to consolidate a Pashtun power base for Karzai have virtually failed. Equally, the episodic attempts to create dissension within the Taliban have also not worked. In turn, these failures led to large-scale Pashtun alienation. US efforts to marginalize the Northern Alliance and to enlarge the ethnic-Pashtun representation in Karzai's cabinet have not had the desired effect of meaningfully tackling Pashtun alienation, either. Arguably, they may have created latent resentment among Northern Alliance leaders, which lies below the surface for the time being. In other words, there is a fundamental issue of the legitimacy of state power that remains unresolved in Afghanistan. At a minimum, in these past five years there should have been an intra-Afghan dialogue that included the Taliban. This initiative could have been under UN auspices on a parallel track. The inability to earn respect and command authority plus the heavy visible dependence on day-to-day US support have rendered the Kabul setup ineffective. Alongside this, the Afghan malaise of nepotism, tribal affiliations and corruption has also led to bad governance. It is in this combination of circumstances that the Taliban have succeeded in staging a comeback. What lies ahead is, therefore, becoming extremely difficult to predict. Even with 2,500 additional troops it is highly doubtful whether NATO can succeed in defeating the Taliban. For one thing, the Taliban enjoy grassroots support within Afghanistan. There is no denying this ground reality. Second, the Taliban are becoming synonymous with Afghan resistance. The mindless violations of the Afghan code of honor by the coalition forces during their search-and-destroy missions and the excessive use of force during military operations leading to loss of innocent lives have provoked widespread revulsion among Afghan people. Karzai's inability to do anything about the coalition forces' arbitrary behavior is only adding to his image of a weak leader and is deepening his overall loss of authority in the perceptions of the Afghan people, apart from strengthening the raison d'etre of the Afghan resistance. Third, it is a matter of time, if the threshold of the Taliban resurgence goes unchecked, before the non-Pashtun groups in the eastern, northern and western regions also begin to organize themselves. There are disturbing signs pointing in this direction already. If that were to happen, NATO forces might well find themselves in the unenviable situation of getting caught in the crossfire between various warring ethnic groups. Fourth, at a certain point it becomes unavoidable that regional powers will get drawn into the strife. The fact remains that all Afghan ethnic groups enjoy a contiguous presence across the borders in neighboring countries. There is considerable misgiving among regional powers already over Washington's hidden long-term agenda to bring Afghanistan, which has been historically a neutral country, under the NATO flag. No amount of pious homilies about NATO's role and objectives can obfuscate the geopolitical implications of the Western alliance's occupation of a strategically important country far away from the European continent, which lies at the crossroads of vast regions that are becoming the battleground for global influence. Without doubt, in the perceptions of regional powers, NATO's defeat in Afghanistan can only mean the scattering of the US blueprint of domination of Central Asia, South Asia and the Persian Gulf. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, stated in testimony at the House International Relations Committee of the US Congress in Washington last week: "Foreign pressures are making Afghanistan the turf for proxy wars. The country is being destabilized by an inflow of insurgents and weapons and money and intelligence. There is collusion from neighboring countries, and this is a problem in itself." M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001). -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- justice Detainee bill lifts Bush's power to new heights President now has legal authority even courts can't challenge Scott Shane, Adam Liptak, New York Times Saturday, September 30, 2006 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/30/MNGNKLFO3P1.DTL (09-30) 04:00 PDT Washington -- With the final passage through Congress of the detainee treatment bill, President Bush achieved a signal victory Friday, shoring up with legislation his determined campaign against terrorism in the face of challenges from critics and the courts. Rather than reining in the formidable presidential powers that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have asserted since Sept. 11, 2001, the law gives some of those powers a solid statutory foundation. In effect it allows the president to identify enemies, imprison them indefinitely and interrogate them -- albeit with a ban on the harshest treatment -- beyond the reach of the full court reviews traditionally afforded criminal defendants and ordinary prisoners. Taken as a whole, the law will give the president more power over terrorism suspects than he had before the Supreme Court decision this summer in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld that undercut more than four years of White House policy. It does, however, grant detainees brought before military commissions limited protections initially opposed by the White House. The bill, which cleared a final procedural hurdle in the House on Friday and is likely to be signed into law next week by Bush, does more than allow the president to determine the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions; it strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to his interpretation. And it broadens the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" to include not only those who fight the United States, but also those who have "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." The latter group could include those accused of providing financial or other indirect support to terrorists, human rights groups say. The designation can be made by any "competent tribunal" created by the president or secretary of defense. In very specific ways, the bill is a rejoinder to the Supreme Court's Hamdan ruling, in which several justices said the absence of congressional authorization was a central flaw in the administration's approach. The new bill solves that problem, legal experts said. "I think he can reasonably be confident that this statute answers the Supreme Court and puts him back in a position to prevent another attack, which is the goal of interrogation," said Douglas Kmiec, a conservative legal scholar at the Pepperdine University School of Law. But lawsuits challenging the bill are inevitable, and critics say substantial parts of it may well be rejected by the Supreme Court. Overall, the legislation reallocates power among the three branches of government, taking authority away from the judiciary and handing it to the president. Bruce Ackerman, a critic of the administration and a professor of law and political science at Yale University, sharply criticized the bill but agreed that it strengthened the White House position. "The president walked away with a lot more than most people thought," Ackerman said. He said the bill "further entrenches presidential power" and allows the administration to declare even a U.S. citizen an unlawful combatant subject to indefinite detention. "And it's not only about these prisoners," Ackerman said. "If Congress can strip courts of jurisdiction over cases because it fears their outcome, judicial independence is threatened." Even if the Supreme Court decides it has the power to hear challenges to the new law, the Bush administration has gained a crucial advantage. In adding a congressional imprimatur to a comprehensive set of procedures and tactics, lawmakers explicitly endorsed measures of the sort that in some other eras had been achieved by executive fiat. Earlier Supreme Court decisions have suggested that the president and Congress acting together in the national security arena can be an all but unstoppable force. The debate over the limits of torture and the rules for military commissions dominated discussion of the bill until this week. Only in the last few days has broad attention turned to its redefinition of "unlawful enemy combatant" and its ban on habeas corpus petitions that suspects have traditionally used to challenge their incarceration. Law professors will stay busy for months debating the implications. The most outspoken critics have compared the law's sweeping provisions to dark chapters in history, comparable to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in the fragile years after the nation's founding and the internment of Japanese Americans in the midst of World War II. Conservative legal experts, by contrast, said critics can no longer maintain that the Bush administration is guilty of unilateral executive overreaching. Congressional approval can cure many ills, Justice Robert Jackson wrote in his seminal concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube vs Sawyer, the 1952 case that struck down President Harry Truman's unilateral seizure of the nation's steel mills during the Korean War. Supporters of the law, in fact, say that its critics will never be satisfied. "For years they've been saying that we don't like Bush doing things unilaterally, that we don't like Bush doing things piecemeal," said David Rivkin, a former Justice Department official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush. How the measure will look decades hence may depend not just on how it is used but on how the terrorist threat evolves. If major terrorist plots in the United States are uncovered -- and surely if one succeeds -- it may vindicate the congressional decision to give the government more leeway to seize and question those who might know about the next attack. But if the attacks of 2001 recede as a devastating but unique tragedy, the decision to create a new legal framework may seem like overkill. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Woodward: Card wanted to fire Rumsfeld Updated 9/30/2006 USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-29-dems-book_x.htm WASHINGTON — Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card twice sought to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the second time with the support of first lady Laura Bush, Bob Woodward writes in a new book on the Bush administration's Iraq war policy. Card on Friday did not dispute that he had talked about a Rumsfeld resignation with the president but said it was his job to discuss a wide range of possible replacements, including his own. He denied talking to Mrs. Bush about the subject. The Washington Post assistant managing editor's third book on the Bush administration, State of Denial, comes out next week. Some details have already appeared, however, including on the newspaper's website. White House spokesman Tony Snow shrugged off the book as "cotton candy. It kind of melts on contact." "We've read this book before. This tends to repeat what we've seen in a number of other books that have been out this year where people are ventilating old disputes over troop levels," Snow said Friday. Woodward writes that Card sought and failed in November 2004, right after Bush won a second term, and again a year later, to persuade the president to fire Rumsfeld. In an interview with the Associated Press, Card rejected any suggestion that he led a campaign to dump Rumsfeld but said he did discuss with the president Rumsfeld's role in Bush's second term. After re-election, he and the president "talked about every Cabinet post and senior White House position," Card said. He said he kept a notebook listing all top jobs and possible replacements. "It's the chief of staff's job to give the lay of the land, have the president consider a lot of different options," Card said. As to whether the first lady had any particular views about Rumsfeld, "Mrs. Bush and I never discussed it," Card said. Dorrance Smith, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, responded to a request for comment by referring a reporter to Card's comments on the matter. As for the war, Woodward writes that White House and Pentagon officials voiced concern about the conduct of the fighting in reports and internal memos and that a secret intelligence report circulated last May predicted violence would continue for the rest of 2006 and increase in 2007. At the same time, Bush, Rumsfeld and other senior officials insisted publicly the situation was going well, Woodward writes, according to the Post. Snow insisted that the president "was not, in fact, painting a rose-colored picture. He has been saying that it's a tough war, it's a long war, it's a war that's going to outlive his presidency." The White House spokesman did confirm one detail in Woodward's forthcoming book — that Henry Kissinger has been advising Bush about Iraq. "The president has a lot of people in, and he listens to them. And Dr. Kissinger was one of them," Snow said. He said Bush listens to Kissinger's advice even when the two men disagree. In an interview scheduled to air Sunday night on CBS-TV's 60 Minutes, Woodward says Kissinger, who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, has been telling Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that in Iraq, "victory is the only meaningful exit strategy." As for accounts in the book of administration infighting, Snow said, "Quite often in a book like this you're going to see people who are on the losing side of arguments be especially outspoken about their opinions that nobody listened to." "As a matter of fact, the average Washington memoir ought to be subtitled 'If only they listened to me,'" said the White House spokesman. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy We must act now to save the planet, says PwC Ashley Seager September 30, 2006 UK GUARDIAN http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/we-must-act-now-to-save-the-planet-says-pwc/2006/09/29/1159337341539.html THE world would have to give up only one year's economic growth over the next four decades to reduce carbon emissions enough to stave off the threat of global warming. According to consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a "green growth plus" strategy, combining energy efficiency, greater use of renewables and carbon capture could, by 2050, cut emissions by 60 per cent from the level they would reach if no action were taken. Nuclear energy could play a role, but would not be crucial. But the PwC report warns its scenario, which involves little real sacrifice in economic growth, can only be achieved if embarked upon without delay. "If countries adopt a business-as-usual approach, the result could be a more than doubling of global carbon emissions by 2050," said John Hawksworth, head of macro-economics at PwC. "Our analysis suggests that there are technologically feasible and relatively low-cost options for controlling carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Estimates suggest that the level of GDP might be reduced by no more than 2-3 per cent in 2050 if this strategy is followed." PwC envisages the Group of Seven leading economies taking the initiative, cutting their emissions by about half by 2050, while the fast-growing E7, the emerging economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, could still increase their emissions by 30 per cent by 2050. "If this is to be achieved it will take further concerted action by governments, businesses and individuals over a broad range of measures to boost energy efficiency, adopt a greener fuel mix and introduce carbon capture and storage technologies in power plants and other major industrial facilities," Mr Hawksworth said. The report says a combination of all these measures will be necessary to stabilise global CO2 levels at 450 parts per million, the figure scientific opinion judges broadly acceptable. The PwC projections predict China will overtake the US as the world's biggest emitter of CO2 by 2010, while total E7 emissions would be more than double G7 emissions by 2050, with the "big three" — China, the US and India — accounting for just over half, up from 45 per cent now. The European Union could cut its share of global emissions to less than 9 per cent by 2050 from 15 per cent now, it said. Using a less carbon-intensive fuel mix would be enough to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent. PwC's view that renewables could do the job without nuclear could undermine British Prime Minister Tony Blair's argument that atomic power is crucial. -------- ACTIVISTS Anti-war protesters demonstrate outside U.S. embassy SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 The Associated Press http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/ap/2006/09/30/europe/EU_GEN_Greece_Anti_War_Protest.php ATHENS, Greece About 1,000 people marched through central Athens on Saturday and gathered outside the U.S. embassy where they staged an anti-war demonstration. The march, organized by Stop the War alliance, anti-globalization groups and trade unions, followed another march earlier in the day by some 500 protesters — organized by the Greek branch of the European Social Forum and leftist groups. Both demonstrations called for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq and an end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Protesters chanted "American killers get out of Iraq," "Bush is the biggest terrorist" and "Bush get off the planet." Others raised banners reading "Imperialist get out of the Middle East."