NucNews November 3, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR Nuclear Power Becoming More Acceptable - IEA Story by Alex Lawler REUTERS UK: November 3, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38805/story.htm LONDON - Countries are becoming more open to nuclear power due to costly natural gas and the need to combat harmful emissions, the International Energy Agency's chief economist said on Thursday. "There's a change in the mood in general terms," Fatih Birol told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Nuclear is important especially in the context of security of gas supply. It can also provide part of the solution on climate change as well," he said. Renewed interest in nuclear comes as soaring oil and gas prices have left consuming countries worried about the effect of energy costs on their economies, and as concern mounts about climate change. Birol was speaking before the IEA, an adviser to 26 industrialised countries, next week publishes its latest annual long-term outlook on world energy supply, demand and investment. Germany, Britain, the United States and other countries are becoming more interested in nuclear, but a question mark remains whether it will be backed by investment, Birol said. "There's a renewed interest in nuclear in many governments, many countries," he said. "However, it remains to be seen how this interest will turn into concrete projects." ACT NOW The Paris-based IEA manages the emergency oil stockpile of industrialised countries used during supply breaks and is an advocate of energy saving. The World Energy Outlook to be published on Tuesday identifies increasing risks to energy security and soaring carbon dioxide emissions as threats to the global energy system, Birol said. It is as urgent as ever to curb oil demand as well as emissions of greenhouse gases, he said. "If we want to see a different world in 25 years, we have to act now." Earlier, the Financial Times reported the IEA would for the first time in its 32-year history call on governments next week to help accelerate the building of new nuclear plants. "We need a decision almost tomorrow if we are going to act before we reach a point of no return in climate and security of supply," Birol told the paper. He confirmed the US$17,000 billion the agency last year calculated the world needed to invest in energy until 2030 had risen because of cost inflation. "It will definitely be revised up," he told Reuters. (additional reporting by Deborah Haynes) ---- Salt could cool cores of advanced nuclear reactors Source: University of Missouri-Rolla November 03, 2006 PhysOrg http://www.physorg.com/news81786299.html The water in a conventional nuclear reactor cools the core, but a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Rolla says salt would be a better alternative in some advanced reactor designs. Büchi Reactor Systems - Glass or Metal, Lab-/Pilot-Scale 0.1-250 lt -90 - 350 °C max 350 bar Current Limiting Reactors - We can build from 1 A to 3000 A with adjustable mH and multi-taps Biodiesel Plant-100% ASTM - Low Cost Waterless 3.6 min reaction 3M-160M gal/yr- Industrial Level Brandon Distler, a graduate student in nuclear engineering from Eldon, Mo., was recently awarded a fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy to pursue his research related to using salts as coolant in nuclear reactors. All commercial reactors in the United States currently employ water as the coolant, but Distler says salts are being considered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Distler had an internship at Oak Ridge last summer. Using salts as the coolant, according to Distler, would allow reactors to operate at close to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Water-based reactors typically operate at about 330 degrees Celsius. “Water wouldn’t work at the extreme temperatures we propose, but the salt would melt into a clear liquid that would provide stability,” Distler says. “The process for turning heat into electricity is more efficient at higher temperatures and it would be more efficient in the production of hydrogen.” Distler is one of 12 graduate students to receive the fellowship this year through the DOE’s Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. In addition to a monthly stipend of $1,600, Distler will receive funds to cover tuition and textbooks while he pursues a master’s degree. At UMR, Distler is developing a modification to the Oak Ridge model. He hopes to improve the proposed design for a salt-based reactor and make it even more efficient. Source: University of Missouri-Rolla -------- africa Big bucks for Erwin’s baby Tumi Makgetla 03 November 2006 South African Mail & Guardian http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=288993&area=/insight/insight__national/ Finance Minister Trevor Manuel last week upped the government’s contribution to the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) to R9-billion, with a commitment to spend R6-billion over the next three years. The money keeps rolling into what was originally a R2-billion project -- but whether it is a hugely expensive dud or a money-spinner will not be known for at least five years. Critics say that a possible R40-billion price tag for Eskom’s demonstration plant and the 24 commercial units does not reflect decommissioning costs for those plants when they stop producing electricity. PBMR enthusiasts say the pay-off will be sizeable if the project succeeds. They hope it will create more than 56 000 jobs and provide exports netting 8% of GDP when South Africa supplies 2% of the world’s electricity. But critics question whether South African taxpayers should shoulder such a heavy cost of research and development for risk-laden, untried technology. Despite Eskom’s plans to scale down its investor role, the programme has not been able to expand its private sector investment beyond Westinghouse, which holds a 15% share in PBMR through Toshiba. PBMR has revealed that by October 2006 Westinghouse had invested a total of R450-million, Eskom had invested R818-million, the Industrial Development Corporation R457-million and the departments of public enterprise and trade and industry R1,76-billion. Before pulling out in 2002 United States company Exelon had invested R101-million. Without public financial statements or an annual report it is difficult to judge where the money is going or whether it is being prudently spent. The company does not report because it generates no income, said PBMR spokesperson Geraldine Bennett. She said money had been spent on a demonstration plant, a pilot fuel plant at Pelindaba and technology development programmes. PBMR has also placed long-lead contracts for sub-systems, increased its staff and supported mathematics and science education. “If the people will support it and be proud of it and love it, it will be such a unifying process,” she said, comparing the project’s feel-good potential to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and South Africa’s Rugby World Cup win in 1996. Such public enthusiasm has yet to emerge. Earthlife Africa, an environmental lobby group opposed to nuclear power, is calling on Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin to resign over mismanagement of the project. Before any construction of the nuclear station can begin PBMR requires a positive record of decision from the environmental affairs and tourism ministry as well as a licence from the national nuclear regulator. The project received an additional R462-million from this financial year from the department of public enterprises last week, with the explanation that “progress on the project from basic design to requiring long-lead materials and hardware necessitates funds in excess of those committed by existing shareholders”. The total adjusted appropriation for PBMR in the current financial year is R1,2-billion. The reactor was established in 1999 to develop an innovative nuclear reactor based on German technology. Pebble bed reactors are supposed to be much safer, more cost-efficient, quicker to build and smaller than the pressurised water reactor currently used in Koeberg. Projected costs have jumped by more than seven times the initial estimates since 1999, according to a study of PBMR by Steve Thomas of the University of Greenwich. He anticipates that taxpayers will continue to subsidise the project beyond the costs currently provided by the company. The plant will be complete by 2011 and the first commercial unit will be available from 2013. Bennett said Eskom had signed a letter of intent to buy the demonstration plant and 24 commercial units subject to certain conditions. “But it’s not a foregone conclusion,” she admitted. Both the Americans and Chinese are known to be developing modular reactor technology and could be significant competitors. Eskom needs to develop new power stations to meet an electricity supply gap of between 3 000mW and 4 000mW, said Andrew Kenny of the energy research institute centre at the University of Cape Town. In the absence of steps to increase our energy supply, Kenny said the gap would grow roughly in line with economic growth. Independent consultant and nuclear physicist Kelvin Kemm described PBMR’s admittedly small R23-million contract with the US energy department as “a huge stamp of approval”. The department contracted PBMR in preference to world nuclear technology leader Ariva to work on hydrogen production. Kemm said PBMR technology -- at R1,5-billion for a unit that produces 165mW -- is much cheaper to construct than the technology used in Koeberg, which produces about 1 000mW. Because PBMR does not require water, he said, these relatively small units could be placed close to areas of demand, reducing transmission costs. -------- asia Malaysia to host Asian forum on nuclear cooperation Associated Press (November 3, 2006) http://pepei.pennnet.com/news/display_news_story.cfm?Section=WireNews&Category=HOME&NewsID=140591 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysia announced it will host an international conference this month on using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in Asia, a news report said. Government ministers and representatives from at least 10 countries will attend the Nov. 25-27 Forum for Nuclear Cooperation in Asia, an annual event bringing together the region's countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "Besides discussions on research and development in nuclear energy, we will discuss ways to convince the people of the safe use of nuclear energy for power," Malaysia's Science Minister Jamaludin Jarjis was quoted as saying by the national news agency, Bernama, late Friday. So far, Malaysia, Australia, China, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Bangladesh have confirmed their participation in the forum, to be held in the eastern Malaysian state of Pahang, Jamaludin said. Science ministry officials couldn't immediately be contacted for other details. -------- australia Nuke industry reveals skills shortage November 03, 2006 Australia Daily Mail http://www.news.com.au/sundaymail/story/0,,20693077-1702,00.html?from=rss AUSTRALIA may have to import skilled workers to operate a home-grown nuclear power industry. A Federal Government review into the nuclear energy is expected to reveal a shortage of skilled nuclear scientists and technicians. News Ltd reports the review - headed by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski - is expected to produce a draft report by November 21 identifying skills and education in nuclear science as key issues in need of attention. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said yesterday an Australian nuclear industry could act as a magnet to highly skilled scientists and technicians who went overseas to pursue their careers. One of the concerns understood to be expressed in the report is that Australia has allowed a gap to develop in its nuclear skills base over the past two decades due to a lacklustre interest in the technology. This could leave the nation exposed as it tries to attract the staff it needs from overseas, News Ltd reports. Other countries are showing much greater interest in going nuclear or expanding their nuclear power industries themselves as international pressure grows to reduce greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. The nuclear taskforce was established in June to review uranium mining, the prospects for processing the ore here and the possible contribution of nuclear energy to Australia in the longer term. ---- Call for national body on green reforms Matthew Warren November 03, 2006 The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20691992-2702,00.html ONE of Australia's leading environmentalists has called for the creation of a national sustainability commission to initiate a new green microeconomic reform agenda to include the environmental impacts of existing taxes and industry support measures. In the wake of this week's Stern report assessing the costs of global inaction on climate change, Australian Conservation Foundation director Don Henry said yesterday the Howard Government should implement "a charter for achieving a sustainable Australia within a generation". While Mr Henry repeated his strong rejection of the use of nuclear power as an energy solution to climate change, Institute of Public Affairs director Alan Moran said nuclear energy would be the most likely source of electricity in Australia if the price set by the Stern report - $110 per tonne of carbon - were adopted. "In a non-carbon-constrained world there is a means of abundant and reliable energy supply that will allow existing consumption at only a modest increase in costs," he said. "However, Australia has no advantage, indeed considerable disadvantages, in nuclear even aside from the rather uniquely strong anti-nuclear groups." Addressing the Making the Boom Pay conference yesterday, Mr Henry said the success of the National Competition Council in driving a decade of effective reform offered a blueprint for the Council of Australian Governments to institute a major sustainability reform agenda. "One of the most effective drivers for change we have seen as a policy instrument is competition policy and the National Competition Council: why not a similar strong drive from COAG to drive sustainability?" Mr Henry said. "Perhaps the Treasurer should be asking the Productivity Commission to review the subsidies in our economy that are driving increased greenhouse pollution to help inform our policy decision making." He said the message from the Stern report was that the costs of inaction across a broader range of environmental issues might be greater than the steps to repair them. He said it should first focus on the hidden environmental costs of ongoing assistance to the car industry and the operation of fringe benefits taxation, which provided perverse incentives for many drivers to travel further and which leaked $1.2 billion from government revenues. Mr Henry highlighted the preferential treatment of large four-wheel-drive vehicles and assistance worth $570 million a year to sections of the Australian automotive industry to continue to build larger six-cylinder cars rather than lower-emission or hybrid vehicles. "The Government provides considerable assistance to the car industry, most of it not spent on fuel efficiency standards and hybrids, but actually encouraging fuel guzzlers," Mr Henry said. A UN report card on greenhouse emissions for developed countries shows most western European countries are unlikely to meet their Kyoto targets. While Australia's emissions have increased by around 25 per cent between 1990 and 2004, this works out to around 5.6 per cent when savings from land clearing and sequestration are included. ---- Lucas Heights reactor fires up Sidney Morning Herald November 3, 2006 http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/lucas-heights-reactor-fires-up/2006/11/03/1162340039497.html?from=rss An eerie blue radioactive glow has announced that Australia's most expensive - and most controversial - science project, the new $400 million nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights, is finally running. At 11.45am OPAL, the Open Pool Australian Light-water reactor, was throttled up to full power for the first time, producing the targeted 20 megawatts of energy, twice that of the old reactor built in the 1950s. Radiation from the new reactor's core, powered by 16 enriched uranium fuel elements that were loaded in August, filled the surrounding tank of protective water with an eerie light. "The water in OPAL's pool vessel is now emitting the distinctive blue glow of Cerenkov radiation, characteristic of nuclear fission," said the executive director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Dr Ian Smith. The new reactor, which will be used for science and manfacturing nuclear medicines, will not be operational until next year. Some residents and environmental groups argue the reactor is an environmental danger and potential terrorist target. But the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency says the reactor is based on a cutting-edge design with plenty of safety features. The chief executive, John Loy, said there could never be guarantees, but the best possible arrangements had been made. Under the terms of the licence, safety reviews will have to be carried out every 10 years. -------- depleted uranium Depleted Uranium Weapons – an investigation Angus Stickler, BBC, via Iraq Solidarity News (Al-Thawra) November 3, 2006 http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m27968&hd=0&size=1&l=t A BBC investigation can reveal that the US and UK military have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings from scientists that it poses a potential long-term cancer risk to civilians. A former senior scientist with the United Nations has told the BBC that studies showing that it was carcinogenic were suppressed from a seminal World Health Organisation report. The US has refused to fund major research and has been criticised for failing to cooperate with UN attempts to conduct a post conflict assessment in Iraq. Angus Stickler reports: When depleted uranium bullets are fired, the rounds can rip through the tank armour. And once inside - on contact with air they combust exploding into a 10,000 degrees centigrade ball of fire. Both the US and UK used depleted uranium in Iraq. The US fired 320 tons in Gulf War I – and possibly as much as 2,000 tonnes in Gulf War II. But its use is highly controversial - blamed as one of the possible causes of cancer and birth defects. It’s this that prompted the Untied Nations’ World Health Organisation to conduct a major assessment of the post conflict hazards. The findings were published in 2001. Dr Mike Repacholi retired as the Coordinator of the W.H.O. Radiation and Environmental Health Unit in June of this year. He oversaw the project. He says, "Depleted uranium is basically safe - you can touch depleted uranium for hours and not cause and radiation damage you can ingest it and it’s excreted through the body - 99 per cent of it goes within about a day - you would have to ingest a huge amount of depleted uranium dust to cause any adverse health effect." The W.H.O. assessment warns that children should be restricted from going into post conflict areas. The monograph - as it is called – is now used by some as the definitive document on the potential health hazards of depleted uranium. But now this BBC investigation has been told - its findings may skewed. Dr Keith Baverstock – now retired - was a senior radiation advisor with 12 years experience at the W.H.O - part of Dr Repacholi's editorial team at the time. He came across research indicating that depleted uranium is a potentially dangerous carcinogen: "When you breathe in the dust the deeper it goes into the lung the more difficult it is to clear. The particles that dissolve pose a risk - part radioactive - and part from the chemical toxicity in the lung - and then later as that material diffuses into the rest of the body, and into the blood stream a potential risk at sites like the bone marrow for leukaemia, the lymphatic system and the kidney" according to Dr Baverstock. Health warnings suppressed This is called genotoxicicty says Dr Baverstock, it could take decades before evidence of cancer starts to emerge. As part of the W.H.O. team he submitted these findings - based on peer reviewed research conducted by the United States Department of Defense - for inclusion into the monograph. It received short shrift. Dr Repacholi says this was with good reason. It was the committee's general conclusion that this data did not substantiate that there was a health effect at this stage. Was the science that was in that report - which was research that came effectively from the US Department of Defense - was it wrong? DR REPACHOLI: We want a comprehensive report - we want to include everything that we can - but we don't want fairytale stuff - it wasn't collaborated by other reports - that was felt to the level that science would say this was established. ANGUS STICKLER: My understanding is that at the time that there were eight published peer reviewed research studies - attesting to the genotoxic nature of uranium - all of which could have been included in the monograph? REPACHOLI: Yep - these - er - papers were speculative at the time and W.H.O. will only publish data that they know is established. STICKLER: Shouldn't the World Health Organisation err on the side of caution? REPACHOLI: W.H.O is a conservative organisation there's no doubt - it's not a leader in this sort of thing - it's not out there saying wow we should be concerned about this, this and this - it's not there to do that. Dr Baverstock disagrees. He says the W.H.O stance that this is inconclusive science is not safe science. He attempted to take the issue further. DR BAVERSTOCK: When it wasn't included in the monograph - I with two other colleagues prepared a paper for the open literature and the W.H.O did not permit me to submit that paper for publication. ANGUS STICKLER: Why not - what reasons were you given? BAVERSTOCK: Well ha - I still have not had a reason as to why that paper was not allowed to be published. STICKLER: Could it be the case that the science you're talking about is unsafe - in that you're - as a scientist - a bit miffed that they didn't include what you wanted them to include? BAVERSTOCK: No I'm not miffed about it at all - we use this kind of laboratory testing in many systems to screen chemicals and to know whether things are going to be dangerous or not. STICKLER: Why do you think your study was - as you say - suppressed? BAVERSTOCK: It is naive to think that in institutions like the United Nations one is free from political influences - the member states have their own agendas. STICKLER: What you seem to be saying there is that the W.H.O. was pressurised by the likes of the United States to come to the right conclusion? BAVERSTOCK: I think that could be the case - yes. It’s ironic that the major player that Dr Baverstock believes was behind the decision block publication of his study – was the nation state that conducted the research he was citing: The United States' Department of Defence Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute: a credible State laboratory. A point I put to Dr Repacholi. DR REPACHOLI: The problem that W.H.O had and it went right up to the Director General's office that it was finally disapproved at that level was that on the basis of the evidence that we have - we can't conclude that it is harmful - and to have a paper from another W.H.O staff member that says we absolutely think it's harmful - makes W.H.O look a bit odd. STICKLER: With the greatest respect - that's going to have very little truck with someone who may get seriously ill because of depleted uranium the fact that the W.H.O. may look a bit odd? REPACHOLI: No the odd part is that it looks like W.H.O. is not in control of its shop. There is undoubtedly a massive gulf between the views of these two scientists. Dr Repacholi - however - denies that pressure was brought to bear on the W.H.O. The findings of the US Department of Defense research - are now in the public domain: depleted uranium is genotoxic - it chemically alters DNA and could be a precursor to tumour growth. Since 2001, there have been numerous studies supporting the findings. We asked for an interview with the scientist who conducted these studies - Dr Alexandra Miller – the US Department of Defense refused. The BBC has been told that she applied to the US Army Research Programme to do further work on the effects of depleted uranium in 2004, five and six. All the applications were turned down. Iraqi cancer increase This is the Isotope Geo-science laboratory at the British Geological Survey. Its equipment has been used by the British Government to conduct the most extensive research so far - into depleted uranium contamination of UK troops. Professor Randall Parrish says there are worrying signals coming from Iraq – from civilian populations. "I’ve been to several international conferences where I’ve heard Iraqi medical physicians summarise health statistics on the occurrence of birth defects and non Hodgkin’s Lymphomas and the rise in incidents in these kind of effects especially in the area of southern Iraq and the Basra area appears quite alarming on the basis of the figures that I’ve seen – significant data – that would suggest that we should be erring on the side of caution here – and it ought to be investigated" Professor Parrish told us. Professor Parrish has recently completed another research study – as yet unpublished – but it shows that if inhaled – depleted uranium remains in high concentrations in the body - a potential hazard - for decades. The priority now, he says, is to ascertain whether it poses a real risk to humans – the people of Iraq. PROFESSOR PARRISH: If we want to get to bottom of this issue as to whether populations and people are really suffering – we have to conduct environmental and health assessments – in places where people are exposed and we can I think solve this problem if sufficient resources and the will is there to actually address the problem. AHGUS STICKLER: Do you think the will is there on the part of the politicians? PARRISH: Unless we can conduct additional work – this issue of DU and the politics of it will continue to hang over many governments for years and years and years to come. Professor Parrish is prepared to undertake research on behalf of any member state that wishes to fund him. In the meantime the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP has trained a team of Iraqi scientists ready to carry out a detailed assessment. But despite having political allies in Washington Henrik Slotte chief of the UNEP post conflict branch – says his work can’t progress further without co-operation from the US. HENRIK SLOTTE: Without the coordinates and clear information about what was used and when - it is impossible to start working on depleted uranium in the field - it's like looking for a needle in the haystack. ANGUS STICKLER: Are they providing you with all the information you've requested? SLOTTE: In the case of Iraq we have requested and the reply has been that this is an issue that concerns many parts of that administration and it will take some time for them to come back in writing. STICKLER: You do now have a team of Iraqis now ready to go in - wouldn't it be helpful for them to have this information now? SLOTTE: Yes it would. STICKLER: Are there any indications that they are going to get this information shortly? SLOTTE: There are no indications. Depleted Uranium according to a growing body of scientists is carcinogenic – a health hazard not just to Saddam Husain’s republican guard – but Iraqi civilians for generations to come. It’s been used in other theatres of conflict too – Afghanistan and Lebanon – and calls for action are now gaining ground. Not just with fervent campaigners – but eminent scientists, academics, and lawyers too - depleted uranium munitions they say should be banned under international law as potential weapons of indiscriminate effect. you can listen to the report by clicking on the following link "LISTEN" http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today3_du_20061101.ram -------- europe India-Hungary Foster Nuke Cooperation Nov 3, 2006 (Prensa Latina) http://www.plenglish.com/Article.asp?ID={8A190537-2CB4-4D57-AF78-70958B989D58}&language=EN New Delhi The Foreign Affairs Ministers of India, Pranab Mukherjee, and Hungary, Kinga Goncz, on Friday discussed the aspirations of both countries to develop civil projects of nuclear energy. New Delhi and Budapest are members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and are exploring the possibilities of cooperation, said Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Natvej Sarna Hungary also supported the Indian demand for a post as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Sarna said some points were key, such as nuclear collaboration with peaceful objectives and the role of Hungary in the NSG. Also, other topics were discussed, like terrorism and the best way to fight it and the intention of both governments to strengthen scientific, academic, ministerial and institutional exchanges. ---- Belgium silent on support for Indo-US nuke deal From ANI, Nov 3, 2006 http://www.dailyindia.com/show/77974.php/Belgium_silent_on_support_for_Indo-US_nuke_dealANI New Delhi (ANI): While Belgium agreed to exempt Indians working there from paying social security; it remained silent on its support over the crucial Indo-US civilian nuclear energy cooperation. ccording to the External Affairs Ministry, the visiting Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt during his meeting with Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had discussions on the civil nuclear energy cooperation that India signed with the US. External Affairs Ministry's official spokesman Navtej Sarna, on being asked about the outcome of the discussion said, "It is a detailed exposition. They already are aware of our concern. They already are aware of the entire background of the India-US nuclear deal. They are aware of the legislative processes under play. They are aware that matters could come up in the NSG. These are opportunities to have an exchange at the highest political level". Belgium is also the member of the 45 member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and its support will be important when the civilian nuclear deal comes up in the NSG for ratification. Earlier in the day, India and Belgium signed the Social Security Agreement, as per which ndian professional working in Belgium will now be exempted from paying social security. Those who have been already contributing and would later return back to India would have the option of getting their pensions from Belgium. This is the first time that India has signed such an agreement with any country and now the External Affairs Ministry is looking forward to sign such agreement with other European countries. "It can serve as a model for agreements with other European countries and that it gives increased marketability to Indian professionals who, as you know, are in any case very popular on the basis of their expertise," Sarna said. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt in a bid to attract Indian investors told Indian businessmen to take advantage of the reformed tax regime and flexible labour laws in his country. Verhofstadt, who is in India on a six-day visit, said the time was ripe for countries to invest in Belgium to maximise profits. "We want Belgium to become a magnet for international investments and we are well on our way to achieving our aim and so I am convinced that now is the perfect time to invest in our country, to invest in Belgium. Hence our slogan - invest in Belgium and increase your profits," he told a session jointly organised by industry chambers Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM). Stating that past year's investment to Belgium from India stood at around one billion dollars, Verhofstadt said there was enough scope for both the countries to further the trade and economic ties. Currently gems and jewellery account for nearly 75 percent of bilateral trade between the two nations with the Antwerp diamonds providing fodder to much of India's massive cutting and polishing industry, earning an estimated US dollar four billion in exports every year. But in recent years 230 Belgian joint ventures in India have sprung up, spanning diverse areas such as IT, energy, ports, construction, banking, chemicals and fertilizers and biotechnology.Verhofstadt, arrived in New Delhi on Thursday, accompanied by a high-level delegation which includes Deputy Prime Minister Didier Reynders and Foreign Minister Karl De Gucht and several business CEO's. The Belgian premier also met Congress President Sonia Gandhi and held meetings with Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, earlier in the day. -------- iran Iran To Step-Up Sensitive Nuclear Activities by Staff Writers Tehran (AFP) Nov 01, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_To_Step_Up_Sensitive_Nuclear_Activities_999.html Iran is preparing new uranium enriching centrifuges less than a week after starting up its second such cascade despite the threat of UN Security Council sanctions, an influential MP said Wednesday. "Other cascades are underway and we have plans to build many centrifuges in order to supply our nuclear fuel," Kazem Jalai, parliament's national security commission rapporteur, was quoted as saying by student news agency ISNA. Iran on Saturday confirmed it had successfully enriched uranium from a new cascade of 164 centrifuges, the second to be installed at the Natanz nuclear plant in central Iran. Enriched uranium is at the core of the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme, as it can produce nuclear fuel and, in highly refined form of around 90 percent, be developed to a nuclear bomb. But Iran says it aims to reach only five percent enrichment in order to make fuel. Iran would need thousands more such centrifuges to enrich uranium on an industrial scale and its current uranium enrichment work is on a research level only. "Even if we make 10 164-centrifuge cascades, it still remains at the level of research and development and we want to reach a certain phase in this level and then start the industrial work," Jalali said. The UN Security Council's five veto-wielding members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- as well as from Germany have been discussing a draft UN resolution on sanctions put forward by European countries. Jalali said that Iran would "react to such unfair resolutions", adding that a bill was heading to parliament that would suspend inspections by the UN's the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the event of sanctions. The former head of Iran's nuclear dossier, Hassan Rowhani, who is a close aid to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also said that Tehran could suspend IAEA inspections if sanctions were applied. "Approval of such a resolution will not remain unanswered and it is possible that one of (Iran's) moves could be a reduction of cooperations with the IAEA," Rowhani was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency Mehr. ---- Iran Fires First Longer-Range Missiles In War Games by Staff Writers Tehran (AFP) Nov 2, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_Fires_First_Longer_Range_Missiles_In_War_Games_999.html Iran fired its longer-range Shahab-3 ballistic missile for the first time Thursday as it began 10 days of war games amid a mounting standoff with the West over its nuclear program, official media said. The hardline Revolutionary Guards fired the missiles, which have a range of up to 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) -- sufficient to threaten US bases in the Gulf -- during the first phase of military maneuvers in the central desert, state television reported. "Shahab missiles, carrying cluster warheads, with a range of 2,000 kilometres, were fired from the desert near (Iran's clerical capital) Qom," it said. "Dozens of Shahab-2 and -3, Zolfaghar-73, Scud B, Fath-110 and Zelzal have been launched in the presence of (Guards chief) General Yahya Rahim Safavi, and other high-ranking commanders," the television said. "The cluster head of the Shahab-2 has the capability to disperse 1,400 bomblets with great destructive power." It was the first time that Iran had fired the longer-range Shahab-3 on exercise and commanders said they would also be employing other "new equipment" during the war games. Russia said it would monitor Iran's military moves after the reports of the missile-firing but ruled out the possibility that the Islamic republic had the technological means to create even longer-range missiles. "If we are talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to our information, Iran does not possess the technological capability" to create missiles with a 5,000-kilometer (3,100-mile) range, the head of Russian military's general staff Yury Baluyevsky told ITAR-TASS news agency. Dubbed "Great Prophet 2," the air, land and sea maneuvers are to extend across 14 provinces "with the focus on the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman," Safavi said Wednesday. "The first and main goal of this exercise is to demonstrate power and national determination to defend the country against any possible threat," he said. "Heliport operations will be carried out in the Hormozgan region (on the Strait of Hormuz) and some of the Persian Gulf islands." The strategic Strait of Hormuz is the obligatory passage for tankers exiting the Gulf that carry much of the world's oil supply. The Iranian maneuvers come on the heels of naval exercises launched in the Gulf on Monday by a US-led flotilla including warships from Australia, Bahrain, France, Italy and Britain. "That is a propaganda and political maneuver without military value," Safavi said then. "If forces from out of the region want to jeopardize Iran's security and interests, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij (volunteer militia) will use all their capabilities to strike their enemies and their interests," he warned. But the Guards commander insisted Iran's exercises were no threat to its neighbors. "This maneuver is no threat for the region or neighboring countries," he said, adding: "Our neighbors are our friends and we consider our neighbors' enemies our enemies." The aim of the exercises was the "defence of sensitive centres, strategic bottlenecks and confrontation of possible troubles," he said. It is Iran's third round of war games this year. In August, the armed forces held country-wide maneuvers dubbed Zolfaghar Blow. Iran also staged Great Prophet 1 exercises in April. The new war games come amid a mounting standoff between Iran and the West over its nuclear program after the European Union pronounced at an end talks on a negotiated solution to Western concerns that Tehran is seeking the bomb. Iran "not capable" of creating intercontinental missiles: Russia Iran does not have the technological means to create intercontinental ballistic missiles, the head of Russian military's general staff Yury Baluyevsky told ITAR-TASS news agency Thursday. Baluyevsky's remarks came shortly after Iran reportedly fired its longer-range Shahab-3 ballistic missile on exercise for the first time. "If we are talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to our information, Iran does not possess the technological capability" to create missiles with a 5,000-kilometer (3,100-mile) range, Baluyevsky said. "In any case, this will be monitored by our intelligence services," Baluyevsky added. Thursday's missile test marked the beginning of 10 days of war games in Iran amid a mounting standoff with the West over its nuclear program. The hardline Revolutionary Guards fired the Shahab-3 missiles, which have a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) -- sufficient to threaten US bases in the Gulf -- during the first phase of maneuvers in the centeral desert, state television reported. The manuevers came hot on the heels of of naval exercises launched in the Gulf on Monday by a US-led flotilla including warships from Australia, Bahrain, France, Italy and Britain. When asked whether Iran's Shehab-3 missiles posed a threat to Russia, Baluyevsky responded: "That depends on which direction they are sent." ---- Iran test fires three new missiles in the Gulf Updated 11/3/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-03-iran-missiles_x.htm TEHRAN, Iran — The test-firing of three new models of sea missiles in the Gulf should send a strong message to the U.S. to cease military maneuvers in the zone, an Iranian navy chief said Friday. "Our enemies should keep their hostility off the Persian Gulf," said Adm. Sardar Fadavi, the deputy navy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guard, hours after his troops tested the new missiles. "They should not initiate any move that would make the region tense," he said of the US. RELATED: Russia, China won't back Iran sanctions The Iranian military chief was answering a question on Iran's state-run radio about whether the new Iranian maneuvers were a response to a US-led military exercise in the zone earlier this week. The two-day U.S.-led naval maneuvers that finished Monday focused on surveillance, with warships from six nation including the US, Britain and France tracking a vessel suspected of carrying nuclear components or illegal weapons. Iranian state television on Friday showed footage of Revolutionary Guards firing the missiles from mobile launching pads on the shore, and from warships. Iranian forces have previously test-fired missiles in the crowed Gulf waters, but the new maneuvers, which began on Thursday, apeared to be geared at showing Iran's discontent that U.S. and western warships had held an exercise so close to its territorial waters. "The maneuvers are not a threat to any neighboring country," said Gen. Ali Fazli, the spokesman for the Iranian war-games. Iran nonetheless insisted the new sea missiles enhanced its military muscle in the Gulf, where most of the world's oil is extracted. The weapons are "suitable for covering all the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian gulf and the sea of Oman" said Fadavi, the deputy navy chief. Some 20% of the world's oil supply passes every day through the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The three new types of missiles, named Noor, Kowsar, and Nasr, have a range of about 106 miles and were built for naval warfare, TV reported. Iranian sea missiles previously had a range of 75 miles, TV quoted Fadavi as saying. The new tests demonstrate Iran's military capacities at sea, the admiral said. -------- iraq U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Guide By WILLIAM J. BROAD New York Times November 3, 2006 http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt576.html Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein. But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb. Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.” Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures. The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs. “For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. “There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.” The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of the Web site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure. The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who argued that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees told the administration that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for evidence that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence in Iraq. The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release. In his statement last night, Mr. Negroponte’s spokesman, Chad Kolton, said, “While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted documents, the material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again.” A spokesman for the National Security Council, Gordon D. Johndroe, said, “We’re confident the D.N.I. is taking the appropriate steps to maintain the balance between public information and national security.” Portrait of Prewar Iraq The Web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” was a constantly expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its many thousands of documents included everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry to instructions for the repair of parachutes to handwritten notes from Mr. Hussein’s intelligence service. It became a popular quarry for a legion of bloggers, translators and amateur historians. Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away. European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms. The deletions, the diplomats said, had been done in consultation with the United States and other nuclear-weapons nations. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which ran the nuclear part of the inspections, told the Security Council in late 2002 that the deletions were “consistent with the principle that proliferation-sensitive information should not be released.” In Europe, a senior diplomat said atomic experts there had studied the nuclear documents on the Web site and judged their public release as potentially dangerous. “It’s a cookbook,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules. “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.” The New York Times had examined dozens of the documents and asked a half dozen nuclear experts to evaluate some of them. Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King’s College, London, called the posted material “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.” Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful” to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret. A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.” The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency’s rules against public comment, called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.” Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group at George Washington University that tracks federal secrecy decisions, said the impetus for the Web site’s creation came from an array of sources — private conservative groups, Congressional Republicans and some figures in the Bush administration — who clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents would show that Mr. Hussein’s government had clandestinely reconstituted an unconventional arms programs. “There were hundreds of people who said, ‘There’s got to be gold in them thar hills,’ ” Mr. Blanton said. The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume of the documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community. Fears, and a Disclaimer Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies’ view that Mr. Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to Al Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, they argued. On March 16, after the documents’ release was approved, Mr. Negroponte’s office issued a terse public announcement including a disclaimer that remained on the Web site: “The U.S. government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.” On April 18, about a month after the first documents were made public, Mr. Hoekstra issued a news release acknowledging “minimal risks,” but saying the site “will enable us to better understand information such as Saddam’s links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the Iraqi people.” He added: “It will allow us to leverage the Internet to enable a mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive elites.” Yesterday, before the site was shut down, Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, said the government had “developed a sound process to review the documents to ensure sensitive or dangerous information is not posted.” Later, he said the complaints about the site “didn’t sound like a big deal,” adding, “We were a little surprised when they pulled the plug.” The precise review process that led to the posting of the nuclear and chemical-weapons documents is unclear. But in testimony before Congress last spring, a senior official from Mr. Negroponte’s office, Daniel Butler, described a “triage” system used to sort out material that should remain classified. Even so, he said, the policy was to “be biased towards release if at all possible.“ Government officials say all the documents in Arabic have received at least a quick review by Arabic linguists. Some of the first posted documents dealt with Iraq’s program to make germ weapons, followed by a wave of papers on chemical arms. At the United Nations in New York, the chemical papers raised alarms at the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which had been in charge of searching Iraq for all unconventional arms, save the nuclear ones. In April, diplomats said, the commission’s acting chief weapons inspector, Demetrius Perricos, lodged an objection with the United States mission to the United Nations over the document that dealt with the nerve agents tabun and sarin. Soon, the document vanished from the Web site. On June 8, diplomats said, Mr. Perricos told the Security Council of how risky arms information had shown up on a public Web site and how his agency appreciated the American cooperation in resolving the matter. Nuclear Documents Posted In September, the Web site began posting the nuclear documents, and some soon raised concerns. On Sept. 12, it posted a document it called “Progress of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995.” That description is potentially misleading since the research occurred years earlier. The Iraqi document is marked “Draft FFCD Version 3 (20.12.95),” meaning it was preparatory for the “Full, Final, Complete Disclosure” that Iraq made to United Nations inspectors in March 1996. The document carries three diagrams showing cross sections of bomb cores, and their diameters. On Sept. 20, the site posted a much larger document, “Summary of technical achievements of Iraq’s former nuclear program.” It runs to 51 pages, 18 focusing on the development of Iraq’s bomb design. Topics included physical theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments. By early October, diplomats and officials said, United Nations arms inspectors in New York and their counterparts in Vienna were alarmed and discussing what to do. Last week in Vienna, Olli J. Heinonen, head of safeguards at the international atomic agency, expressed concern about the documents to the American ambassador, Gregory L. Schulte, diplomats said. Calls to Mr. Schulte’s office yesterday were not returned. Scott Shane contributed reporting. -------- japan US denies Japanese missile defense reports Nov. 3, 2006 United Press International http://washtimes.com/upi/20061103-092719-1646r.htm U.S. Forces Japan commander Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright has dismissed Japanese and American media reports that Patriot missile batteries will be placed around Tokyo. Stars and Stripes on Nov. 3 quoted Wright, who also commands the 5th Air Force, as calling "false" Sunday's Associated Press story, which cited the Nihon Keizai newspaper that Patriot PAC-3 defensive missiles were being considered for the Yokota and Yokosuka military bases as well. Nihon Keizai did not reveal its information source. Wright said simply, "There are no U.S. plans of this coming into Tokyo." Wright alluded to Okinawa, where facilities for Patriot missile batteries at Kadena Air Base have been under development since October, saying, "The only plan is for Okinawa." On Oct. 30 United States Forces Japan issued a statement commenting that, "the United States will continue to work closely with the Government of Japan to determine how best to deploy and utilize respective (ballistic missile defense) assets to meet the commitment to the defense of Japan." ---- North Korea says it wants Japan out of six-party nuclear talks ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 3, 2006 http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap11-03-181544.asp?reg=pacrim&vts=11320061909 SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday it wants Japan out of six-party disarmament talks, calling officials in Tokyo ''political imbeciles'' for saying they will not accept Pyongyang as a nuclear power. Meanwhile, the North's leader Kim Jong Il made his first public military visit since the Oct. 9 test, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported late Friday. He visited an army unit but it was not clear from the report when it took place. The North agreed earlier this week to return to the international disarmament negotiations — which also include China, Russia, the U.S. and South Korea — in the first relaxation of tension after its Oct. 9 nuclear test. The talks have been stalled for a year. A statement from North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Saturday said ''there is no need for Japan to participate in (the talks) as a local delegate because it is no more than a state of the U.S. and it is enough for Tokyo just to be informed of the results of the talks by Washington.'' Japan is a common target for the North's hostile rhetoric, stemming from Tokyo's imperial occupation of the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century. Pyongyang has called before for Japan to be excluded from the nuclear talks. The talks have been on hold since November 2005, with Pyongyang refusing to attend because of a U.S. campaign to cut off its access to international banks due to alleged illegal activity such as counterfeiting and money laundering. The Foreign Ministry said most of the international community had welcomed North Korea's return to the talks. ''But it is only Japan that expressed its wicked intention,'' the ministry said, referring to comments by Tokyo that it will not accept a nuclear North Korea. ''The Japanese authorities have thus clearly proved themselves that they are political imbeciles,'' it added. The statement was carried on KCNA. The statement came after North Korea's No. 2 leader said any progress at the revived talks on the communist nation's nuclear program will depend on the United States, an indication that any breakthrough at the negotiations could be difficult. ''Results of the six-party talks depend on the U.S. attitude,'' Kim Yong Nam told a visiting South Korean delegation in Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported Friday. Kim accused the U.S. of seeking the resumed nuclear talks to bolster the Republicans' popularity ahead of U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, casting doubts on Washington's sincerity in resolving ''fundamental problems between North Korea and the U.S.'' Kim's comments, made in a meeting with members of South Korea's minor opposition Democratic Labor Party, could not be immediately confirmed by the party headquarters in Seoul. The North Korean official claimed it was Pyongyang that proposed returning to the negotiations as a way for the U.S. to save face and not appear to be caving in to the North's demand that the financial issue be discussed. That account contradicts U.S. statements that diplomacy by China, the North's last major ally, had been instrumental in luring the North back to the nuclear talks. KCNA reported that North leader Kim Jong Il visited the North's Korean People's Army Unit 1112, inspected the barracks and took photographs with the soldiers there. It was the first report in official media on Kim's activities since the North agreed to return to the six-nation nuclear talks. -------- korea N. Korea says progress depends on U.S. Posted 11/3/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-03-nkorea-progress_x.htm SEOUL — North Korea's No. 2 leader said Friday that any progress at revived talks on the communist nation's nuclear program will depend on the United States, according to a news report, an indication that any breakthrough at the negotiations could be difficult. The North agreed earlier this week to return to the arms talks after Washington said it would address financial restrictions that have limited the regime's access to outside banks. North Korea has boycotted the talks since November 2005. "Results of the six-party talks depend on the U.S. attitude," Kim Yong Nam told a visiting South Korean delegation in Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported. Kim also accused the U.S. of seeking the resumed nuclear talks to bolster the Republicans' popularity ahead of U.S. midterm elections next week, casting doubts on Washington's sincerity in resolving "fundamental problems between North Korea and the U.S." Kim's comments, made in a meeting with members of South Korea's minor opposition Democratic Labor Party, could not be immediately confirmed by the party headquarters in Seoul. The North Korean official claimed Pyongyang proposed returning to the negotiations to allow the U.S. to save face and not appear to be caving in to the North's demand that the financial issue be discussed. That account contradicts U.S. statements that diplomacy by China, the North's last major ally, had been instrumental in luring the North back to the nuclear talks. The U.S. financial restrictions — imposed for the North's alleged illicit activities like counterfeiting and money laundering — had been a major stumbling block to the nuclear talks. Pyongyang has said it would seek to have the restrictions lifted at the resumed talks, which also involve China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. South Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Chun Yung-woo, said "there is no way the U.S. can promise a solution" to the financial issue. "I think North Korea has become aware of the reality and had decided to solve this issue at the six-party talks," he said in an interview with KBS radio. The South Korean diplomat added that North Korea "has no more cards to play after the nuclear test" and that the communist nation had realized that time was not on their side in returning to arms talks. No date has been set for the next round of talks, but officials have said it would be held after the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum scheduled for Nov. 18-19 in Vietnam and before the year's end. Chun said Friday the formal talks could open in December. Meanwhile, Washington was sending two senior State Department officials to Japan, China and South Korea next week for talks on enforcing the U.N. sanctions imposed against the North for its Oct. 9 nuclear test. Undersecretaries of State Nicholas Burns and Robert Joseph will be in the region to discuss the sanctions, which forbid trade with North Korea in weapons and luxury goods. ---- U.S. speeds attack plans for North Korea By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published November 3, 2006 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20061103-122702-4895r.htm The Pentagon has stepped up planning for attacks against North Korea's nuclear program and is bolstering nuclear forces in Asia, said defense officials familiar with the highly secret process. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the accelerated military planning includes detailed programs for striking a North Korean plutonium-reprocessing facility at Yongbyon with special operations commando raids or strikes with Tomahawk cruise missiles or other precision-guided weapons. The effort, which had been under way for several months, was given new impetus by Pyongyang's underground nuclear test Oct. 9 and growing opposition to the nuclear program of Kim Jong-il's communist regime, especially by China and South Korea. A Pentagon official said the Department of Defense is considering "various military options" to remove the program. "Other than nuclear strikes, which are considered excessive, there are several options now in place. Planning has been accelerated," the official said. A second, senior defense official privy to the effort said the Bush administration recently affirmed its commitment to both South Korea and Japan that it would use U.S. nuclear weapons to deter North Korea, now considered an unofficial nuclear weapon state. "We will resort to whatever force levels we need to have, to defend the Republic of Korea. That nuclear deterrence is in place," said the senior official, who declined to reveal what nuclear forces are deployed in Asia. Other officials said the forces include bombs and air-launched missiles stored at Guam, a U.S. island in the western Pacific, that could be delivered by B-52 or B-2 bombers. Nine U.S. nuclear-missile submarines regularly deploy to Asian waters from Washington state. The officials said one military option calls for teams of Navy SEALs or other special operations commandos to conduct covert raids on Yongbyon's plutonium-reprocessing facility. The commandos would blow up the facility to prevent further reprocessing of the spent fuel rods, which provides the material for developing nuclear weapons. A second option calls for strikes by precision-guided Tomahawk missiles on the reprocessing plant from submarines or ships. The plan calls for simultaneous strikes from various sides to minimize any radioactive particles being carried away in the air. Planners estimate that six Tomahawks could destroy the reprocessing plant and that it would take five to 10 years to rebuild. Asked about the strike planning, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.S. government is seeking a "peaceful, diplomatic solution" to the threat posed by North Korea. Regarding any military options, Mr. Whitman said, "The U.S. military is prepared and capable of carrying out all of its assigned missions." The planning does not mean that the United States will attack, only that military forces are ready to do so if President Bush orders strikes. Concerned about threats from rogue states such as North Korea, Mr. Bush called for a ballistic missile defense system, parts of which are operational. Defense officials said a key factor in the ramped-up planning effort is China's new attitude toward North Korea. Beijing's leaders, upset that North Korea conducted the test, supported a U.S.-led United Nations' resolution. Chinese opposition to military action had limited defense planning, the officials said. In the past, U.S. military plans required warning Beijing, a move considered likely to compromise any planned action because of the close military ties between China and North Korea. The Bush administration regards the new level of Chinese support as a "green light" for more aggressive military planning. U.S. officials think North Korea will conduct another underground test soon because Pyongyang is demanding to be recognized as a declared nuclear power. Both China and the U.S. gauged the test as only partially successful. The Yongbyon plant, 32 miles from the coast and a half-mile from a river, is considered a key target because U.S. intelligence agencies suspect that it is where the plutonium fuel used in the Oct. 9 test was produced. Defense planners also said equipment destroyed at Yongbyon would be difficult to replace once newly approved U.N. sanctions are in place. Another set of targets could be the nuclear test site near Kilchu, in northeastern North Korea. That site includes several research and testing-control facilities in the mountains -- and possibly one more tunnel where a nuclear device could be set off, the officials said. Recent intelligence reports also provided new information about Pyongyang's uranium-enrichment program, which remains hidden in underground facilities in northern North Korea, the officials said. The U.S. Special Operations Command has been planning raids against North Korean nuclear facilities for some time. It has conducted training for joint operations with South Korean special forces as well as unilateral U.S. operations. U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Capt. Jeff Alderson declined to comment on military planning but said the command is continuing to shift forces to the Pacific and has four missile-defense ships deployed in Japan. Mr. Bush said recently that any transfer of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be a "grave threat," phrasing viewed as diplomatic code for a military response. Defense officials said the military option will be used if North Korea is caught transferring nuclear arms to other states or terrorist groups. -------- russia Russia Defends Supply Of Missiles To Iran (RTTNews) Nov 3, 2006 http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20061101%5cACQRTT200611011103RTTRADERUSEQUITY_1003.htm& Russia on Wednesday defended its agreement to supply air defense missiles to Iran. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview with Russia Today television on Wednesday that the air defense missiles Russia had agreed to supply to Iran last December are purely defensive weapons with a limited range. He stressed that the missiles were purely defensive and added that they cannot be used in offensive operations. He said that the missiles that are to be supplied by Russia have a very limited range and could be used to defend only "a small part of the Iranian territory." Earlier, Russia had rejected the Western demand to cancel its $700 million contract to sell 29 Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran as per an agreement signed last December. ---- Lawmakers could adopt law to form unified nuclear power company 03/ 11/ 2006 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/russia/20061103/55359713.html MOSCOW, November 3 - A law allowing the creation of a unified state company to control Russia's nuclear power sector could be adopted by the lower house of parliament by the end of the year, the head of the State Duma's subcommittee on atomic energy said Friday. "If there are no discrepancies in terms of amendments to the law, it could be adopted by the State Duma by the end of the year," Viktor Opekunov said. He said the Duma's energy and transport committee had until November 15 to propose amendments to the law. Opekunov said the new corporation, which will be named Atomprom, will be 100% state-owned, and its nuclear power facilities will be guarded by Interior Ministry troops. Russia's reserves of coal and natural gas could be depleted in 50 years. But with around 8% of the world's uranium output, Russia is planning to mine 60-70% of its uranium needs by 2015, with the remainder coming from joint ventures in former Soviet republics, particularly Kazakhstan, which holds 25-30% of the world's uranium reserves. In mid-September, Russia's nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko said nuclear energy must replace the share of natural gas in Russia's energy balance. "There is no alternative to the development of nuclear power in Russia, which must replace power generated using natural gas," he said. On September 25, Kiriyenko said a vertically integrated company, Atomprom, will be formed to comprise all of the country's civilian nuclear industry enterprises as part of a move to divide the industry into military and civilian branches. He said up to 90% of the profit in Russia's nuclear sector comes from nuclear energy exports, which is why the company will be set up to compete fully with the world leaders on the global market. "Two-thirds of the companies in the nuclear energy industry are joint stock companies, and therefore Atomprom will have to be based on a joint stock scheme," Kiriyenko said. Earlier in September, he said the revival of the nuclear sector in Russia was prompted by rising energy consumption, a lack of new energy sources in the foreseeable future, and unjustified hopes that energy-saving technologies can solve energy deficits. Russia currently has 10 operational nuclear power plants with 31 reactors, but Kiriyenko said Russia will need another 300 gigawatts from new plants to cover a projected energy deficit in the next 30 years. Kiriyenko highlighted several key areas in the development of the nuclear industry -- the division of the industry into military and civilian branches, budget spending on the construction of nuclear power plants to ensure a two gigawatt annual increase, the adoption of a nuclear and radiation security program, the establishment of a single mining company, international centers for nuclear cycle services, the development of fast-neutron reactors and serial construction of new power units. In October, Russia and Kazakhstan established their first joint venture to enrich uranium in Angarsk, near Irkutsk, about 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) east of Moscow. The city "has always been connected with the nuclear sector's civilian side. The enterprise in Angarsk can be put under [the UN's] IAEA control, and it has additional reserve capacities," Kiriyenko said then. -------- security Nuclear Lab Breach Could Be 'Devastating' CBS News Exclusive: Data Found In Drug Raid Contains Weapons-Design Secrets Nov. 3, 2006 (CBS) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/03/national/main2151021.shtml (CBS) The recent security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory was very serious, with sensitive materials being taken out of the facility — possibly including information on how to deactivate locks on nuclear weapons, officials tell CBS News. Officials say there is no evidence the information taken from Los Alamos was sold or transferred to anybody else, but there is no way to be sure right now. As CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson was the first to report, secret documents apparently taken from the lab were found during a drug raid at a Los Alamos-area home last month. The FBI was called in to investigate. Multiple sources now tell CBS News that the material includes sensitive weapons-design data. A federal official who has been briefed on the issue said at least three USB thumb-drives were involved. Those small storage drives contained 408 separate classified documents ranging in importance from Secret National Security Information (pertaining to intelligence) to Secret Restricted Data (pertaining to nuclear weapons). All of the information came from the classified document video media vault inside the Lab. Federal officials also found 228 pages — printed front and back — of classified documents in the drug trailer during their investigation. Los Alamos claims to have done a careful and comprehensive analysis of the materials that it believes have been compromised as part of this matter, and has determined that "the majority of the material was classified at the lowest levels and was twenty to thirty years old." "None of the documents in question were classified Top Secret," read a statement released by the lab. "None of the materials included any of the most sensitive nuclear weapons information." But one federal official recently briefed on the issue says "It's devastating." If a nuclear weapon were stolen, the information "would tell the terrorists everything they need to do to get a weapon to fire." Sources say she also had something called Sigma-15 clearance allowing her to access to documents explaining how to deactivate locks on a nuclear weapon. The woman believed to have taken the information — Jessica Quintana, 22, who owned the trailer — worked in three classified vault rooms across Los Alamos: # Safeguards and Security (relating to strategic nuclear material control and accountability) # X-Division (top secret) # Physics P-Division. She also had top secret "Q-clearance" with access to all the U.S. underground nuclear test data. Quintana has not been arrested or charged. Her attorney says she took the material home to work and then forgot about it. For example, if a terrorist steals an American nuclear weapon, he could not detonate it due to the special access controls. This woman is authorized to read the reports that tell how to get around those safety controls. Only the FBI will be able to tell for sure what's on the thumb drives, but British security officials are worried that design plans for Trident nuclear weapons are among the stolen documents. They are making inquiries of U.S. officials. Britain used to test its nuclear weapons in the United States, and data on those tests may have been held at Los Alamos. Los Alamos has a history of high-profile security problems in the past decade, with the most notable the case of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee. After years of accusations, Lee pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to one count of mishandling nuclear secrets at the lab. In 2004, the lab was essentially shut down after an inventory showed that two computer disks containing nuclear secrets were missing. A year later the lab concluded that it was just a mistake and the disks never existed. But the incident highlighted sloppy inventory control and security failures at the nuclear weapons lab. The Energy Department then began moving toward a five-year program to create a so-called diskless environment at Los Alamos to prevent any classified material being carried outside the lab. "We are currently taking decisive actions to further enhance our existing security measures that protect classified information employing both administrative and engineering controls," the lab said in a statement. ---- US posted Iraqi nuclear bomb documents on Internet Fri Nov 3, 2006 (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061103/tc_afp/usiraqnuclearinternet_061103184619 WASHINGTON - The US government hurriedly closed down an official website this week after a newspaper reported it contained Iraqi documents that included details for building a nuclear bomb, officials said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, was combing through the Arabic-language material "to see whether or not there were documents there that are particularly troubling." Rice confirmed that the Pentagon website set up last March to make documents found in Iraq following the ouster of Saddam Hussein available to the public, had been "taken down" after concerns were raised about its content. The New York Times reported Friday that officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency had complained to Washington last week about the postings of "roughly a dozen" documents from Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear research that contained diagrams, equations and other details for making a nuclear bomb. One of the documents, running to 51 pages, covered the technical advances of Iraq's early nuclear program, including 18 pages on the development of its bomb design -- materials that one expert told the Times "constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb." In a radio interview Friday Rice defended the original posting of the captured Iraqi archives. "But obviously we want to be in a position of protecting anything that might give an upper hand to people trying to build weapons of mass destruction, and so the the DNI, John Negroponte, is taking a look at it and I'm certain it will be taken care of," she said. The US government created the website, called the Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal, in March to make available to the public a huge archive of Iraqi government papers in the hope that private experts might find useful information government translators did not have time to locate. The Times said that earlier in the year UN arms control officials had complained about documents on the website that had information on producing the extremely dangerous nerve agents sarin and tabun. The Department of Defense set up the Iraqi website under pressure from legislators to find a way to quickly sort through some 48,000 boxes of mostly Arabic documents seized in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The idea was to let the public help in reading and translating the documents, with hopes that they might shed light on matters such as deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. While many of the documents have proven innocuous, the Times said the nuclear material was identical to papers presented to the UN Security Council in 2002 in the lead-up to the US invasion. However, the documents the Security Council saw were heavily edited to mask "sensitive information on unconventional arms," the newspaper said. It added that a senior diplomat in Europe called the documents a "cookbook" for making a bomb. "If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things," the diplomat said. Peter Zimmerman, a physicist and weapons scientist at King's College London, said the documents were "very sensitive." But the United States appeared to have ignored warnings about dangerous documents surfacing on the website. In June, the Times said, Demetrius Perricos, the acting chief weapons inspector of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, complained to the Security Council about the appearance of risky arms information on a public website. Nevertheless, the nuclear bomb papers were posted on the site in September. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Despite Controversy, Nuclear Energy Poised for Comeback November 3, 2006 American Institute of Physics Richard M. Jones http://www.aip.org/fyi/2006/128.html There are clear signs from the Bush Administration, Congress, and the utility industry that nuclear energy is poised for a renaissance in the United States. While no nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. since the late 1970s, scores of nuclear plants have opened in other nations since then, and many more are underway. U.S. utilities have become much more enthusiastic about nuclear energy, spurred by the National Energy Policy Act of 2005, forecasts of future generating needs, and rising public concerns about global warming. Owners of existing plants are seeking renewal of operating licenses and are taking steps to uprate power output or restart closed reactors. It is predicted that during the next few years there could be applications for as many as 30 new U.S. reactors with approximately 40,000 megawatts of energy. On Capitol Hill, attention is focused on how to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Responding to continuing delays in the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository, and the Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, committees in both the House and Senate have held many hearings - four in just one week in September - to find a politically, environmentally, and economically acceptable solution to dealing with nuclear waste. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), a strong supporter of nuclear energy, recently introduced legislation that bears watching in coming months. S. 3962, the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act, would permit the consolidation and above ground storage of defense and commercial nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain repository in 2010 and 2011 after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issues necessary licenses. (For information on the repository see http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ym_repository/index.shtml.) The bill authorizes the withdrawal of 147,000 acres of federal lands (such as the Nevada test site), and the construction of necessary infrastructure. This bill contrasts with the approach taken in the Administration's repository legislation (see http://www.aip.org/fyi/2006/110.html ) since it would not expedite federal environmental reviews or the licensing process. Domenici explained that "this bill will remove legal barriers that will allow DOE to meet its obligation to accept and store nuclear fuel as soon as possible, without prejudging the outcome of the NRC's repository licensing decision." This bill has no provisions regarding the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. S. 3962 is cosponsored by four Republican senators. Domenici acknowledged when introducing the bill that "it will take many months on the floor of the Senate before we finish." He later added, "This will certainly not proceed in any hurry; it will take a while. But I intend to move it as best I can. There will be opportunities to stop the movement at every opportunity. I am just hopeful that we will carry all the way through, as we have in the past, and go to conference and take something to the President and see where we are." While the schedule for S. 3962 stretches into next year, Congress must, in the next two months, resolve competing approaches to nuclear fuel reprocessing in H.R. 5427, the FY 2007 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill. A version of this bill was passed by the House in May, and although Domenici's appropriations subcommittee sent its version to the Senate floor in June, it has not yet been considered. Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), whose subcommittee drafted the House bill, is, like Domenici, a strong supporter of nuclear energy. While the House report accompanying H.R. 5427 states, "The committee strongly endorses the concept of recycling spent fuel," it is far less enthusiastic about the Administration's $243.0 million request for DOE's Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. The House position is that the Administration has moved too quickly to accelerate an engineering scale demonstration for a particular recycling process and is concerned about resulting waste forms and volumes. Hobson's subcommittee wants further study of the Administration's plan. The House bill only provides $150.0 million for the Initiative. While Domenici's appropriations subcommittee agrees that a "robust" R&D program is required for the Initiative, it took a different approach, provided significantly more money than the Administration's request. Under its version of the FY 2007 funding bill, the Initiative would receive $279.0 million. The $129.0 million difference in the House and Senate versions of the bill will be resolved when Congress returns later this month. The similarities and differences between the House and Senate positions were highlighted at two mid-September hearings on nuclear energy. Hobson looked out at the large audience attending his hearing, and noted that it was indicative of the broad interest there is in nuclear energy. He spoke of the industry being poised for a "significant rebirth," although is concerned that as the price of gasoline drops, public interest in nuclear energy will decline. Hobson spoke of the need to find a "real world" solution to nuclear waste disposal, and noted that the House bill would fully fund the Administration's Yucca Mountain request. Peter Visclosky (IN), the subcommittee's most senior Democrat, agreed that "nuclear energy has a role to play," and reiterated the need for a waste solution. He criticized attempts to legislate, as an Administration bill would do, "waste confidence" about the nation's ability to deal with spent fuel (see http://www.aip.org/fyi/2006/110.html), saying it "would not pass the laugh test." A similar provision is in the bill Domenici recently introduced, S. 3962. Visclosky was unhappy about aspects of the Senate funding bill, such as its reduction of funding for Yucca Mountain. He was especially concerned about the timing of building reprocessing facilities, saying "haste makes waste," although later saying he did "not want to research this issue to death." Hobson later echoed these sentiments, saying that "the fast track has cost us billions of dollars." The hearing's witnesses, supportive of nuclear energy, spoke of the importance of finding a solution for nuclear waste. There was general recognition that the Yucca Mountain repository was an important component to the problem's solution in the more distant future, with consolidated interim storage needed in the nearer term. The next day, Domenici held a hearing in his appropriations subcommittee on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a Bush Administration initiative which revolves around fuel reprocessing. Domenici described GNEP as a medium term option which is the "best solution to reuse valuable uranium through recycling and to significantly reduce the amount and toxicity of spent fuel." Domenici said that in the short term the federal government should take waste that is now stored at 60 reactor sites, while a long term option is the utilization of Yucca Mountain. He described DOE's recent solicitations for sites on which to develop a Consolidation Fuel Treatment Facility and an Advanced Burner Reactor as a "major departure" from DOE's original plan that "has the potential to significantly accelerate the deployment of recycling technology and bring it more in line with the plan for Yucca Mountain." "Accelerating the process will certainly change the selection of technologies, and I need to be assured the Department is making a sound decision regarding nonproliferation," he added. DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon, who had also testified at Hobson's hearing, outlined the "considerable progress" the department has made on GNEP. "I can tell you that industry has responded positively" to DOE's request for Expressions of Interest for a Consolidated Fuel Treatment Center and an Advanced Burner Reactor, he told the subcommittee. There were three other witnesses, two of which were from private industry and who were generally supportive of DOE's position. Expressing a different view was Matthew Bunn of Harvard University. He cautioned that "gaining the public, utility, and government acceptance needed for a large-scale expansion of nuclear energy will not be easy," and later added "there is no need to rush to judgement" about spent fuel management. "The nuclear age is littered with the costly results of the rushed decisions of the past," he told the subcommittee. Bunn urged that the U.S. "focus first on interim storage," and recommended a continuation of the moratoria on commercial fuel reprocessing and commercial breeder reactors. Domenici responded that this would mean that the U.S. would be "right back where we have been." In his written testimony Bunn noted that Domenici has encouraged the American Physical Society to examine issues surrounding fuel storage in depth; a report will be released at the start of the next Congress. Also of interest is a Government Accountability Office report that was recently released. In January 2006, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the Energy and Resources Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, requested a study on DOE's ability to meet its schedule for the design and construction of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant. GAO, in its 30-page report entitled "Nuclear Energy: Status of DOE's Effort to Develop the Next Generation Nuclear Plant," concluded: "DOE has prepared and begun to implement plans to meet its schedule to design and construct the Next Generation Nuclear Plant by 2021, as required by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Initial R&D results are favorable, but DOE officials consider the schedule to be challenging, given the amount of R&D that remains to be conducted." This report may be accessed at www.gao.gov -------- michigan Leak closes CMS plant Friday, November 03, 2006 Jackson MI Citizen Patriot By Chris Gautz cgautz@citpat.com -- 768-4926 http://www.mlive.com/business/jacitpat/index.ssf?/base/business-1/116257172921910.xml&coll=3 CMS Energy's Palisades nuclear plant in South Haven remains shut down today after a service water leak was found in a containment cooler Wednesday night. Palisades communication manager Mark Savage said the cooling coil leak occurred in a containment cooler. After it could not be immediately fixed, the plant was shut down at 9:48 p.m. "The air cooler in question is not part of a safety function for the plant," Savage said. The plant has four coolers, three of which have safety-related functions. The cooler with the leak is not one of those three, Savage said. Once the leak was noticed, appropriate action was taken, he said. "Safety is never compromised at Palisades or any nuclear plant," Savage said. Savage did not know how much water had leaked in the containment building, but he said employees noticed it. "It represented an inoperable condition," he said. Nuclear Management Co., of Hudson, Wis., which operates the plant, sent a report of the shutdown to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In July, CMS agreed to sell Palisades to Entergy Corp., but the sale has not been completed. Savage did not have an estimate on when the plant would come back online. "We'll be returning the plant to service when the work is completed," he said. The last time the plant was brought back online after a shutdown occurred was May 16, due to a refueling outage. -------- pennsylvania Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Shutdown Friday November 03, 2006 ABC 7 News http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1106/372765.html The reactor at Three Mile Island, site of the nation's worst nuclear accident, shut down Thursday, but radiation was not released and there was no danger to the public, company and federal officials said. A faulty instrument reading triggered the automatic shutdown, officials said. It was the first shutdown of Unit 1 since 1997, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for the plant's operator, AmerGen Energy Co. LLC. The unit, which opened in 1974, shut off at 1:35 p.m. and remained down Thursday evening. "It appears this was an uncomplicated, smooth shutdown," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. DeSantis said other power plants in the regional electricity grid would ensure that customers experienced no power failures. Workers were investigating, and it was unclear when the reactor would resume operation. The plant, about 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, was the site of the nation's worst nuclear accident when a partial meltdown occurred in the Unit 2 reactor in March 1979. -------- texas Nuclear reactor shut down 11/03/06 Associated Press http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=5601396 GLEN ROSE, Texas T-X-U shut down the Comanche Peak Two nuclear reactor early today after a problem came up with the system that provides water to the steam turbines. That's according to a spokeswoman for the company. Spokeswoman Kim Morgan says that the unit had already been down for scheduled maintenance and they were in the process of bringing it back online -- ahead of schedule -- when they discovered the issue with the feedwater system. She says that today they were doing some testing and she anticipates it being fully operational early next week. The reactor is located near Glen Rose, 75 miles southwest of Dallas. -------- MILITARY -------- israel Why Israel will go to war again – soon By John Keegan 03/11/2006 UK Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=FF1X4WCQ1HJSDQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/opinion/2006/11/03/do0302.xml There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel. Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike. What happened in south Lebanon earlier this year has been widely misunderstood, largely because the anti-Israel bias in the international media led to the situation being misreported as an Israeli defeat. It was no such thing. It was certainly an Israeli setback, but the idea that the IDF had suddenly lost its historic superiority over its Arab enemies and that they had acquired military qualities that had hitherto eluded them was quite false. Hizbollah suffered heavy losses in the fighting, perhaps as many as 1,000 killed out of its strength of up to 5,000 and it is only just now recovering. What allowed Hizbollah to appear successful was its occupation of the bunker-and-tunnel system that it had constructed since June 2000, when the IDF gave up its presence in south Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982. Although the IDF had got into south Lebanon, the casualties it had suffered in entering the fortified zone had alarmed the government and high command, since Israel's tiny population is acutely vulnerable to losses in battle. Israel's plan was to destroy Hizbollah's tunnels and bunkers, but the sending of a United Nations intervention force did not allow the destruction to be completed before the IDF was forced to withdraw. Tunnel systems have played a crucial part in many modern campaigns, without attracting much attention. That is a serious oversight. The success of the Viet Cong in sustaining its war effort in Vietnam in 1968-72 depended heavily on its use of the so-called War Zone B, a complex of deep tunnels and underground bases north of Saigon, which had been begun during the war against the French in 1946-55. War Zone B provided the Viet Cong with a permanent base of refuge and resupply that proved effectively invulnerable even against a determined American effort to destroy it. War Zone B has now become a major tourist attraction to Western visitors to Vietnam. In its time, however, War Zone B was very far from being a holiday facility: it assured the survival of the Viet Cong close to Saigon and their ability to mount operations against the government forces and the Americans. Hizbollah, either by mimicry or on its own account, has now begun to employ a tunnel and underground base strategy against Israel. It was for that reason it was able to confront Israeli armoured forces in south Lebanon earlier this year. The adoption of a tunnel strategy has allowed Hizbollah to wage asymmetric warfare against Israel's previously all-conquering armoured forces. The tunnel system is also impervious to attack by the Israeli Air Force. Since Israel's reason for existence is to provide a secure base for the Jewish people, and that of the IDF is to act as their shield and safeguard – functions that have been carried out with high success since 1948 – it is obvious that neither can tolerate a zone of invulnerability occupied by a sworn enemy located directly on Israel's northern border. It is therefore an easy prediction to foresee that the IDF will – at some time in the near future – reopen its offensive against Hizbollah in south Lebanon and will not cease until it has destroyed the underground system, even if, in the process, it inflicts heavy damage on the towns and villages of the region. It is likely that it will also move against the underground system being constructed in the Gaza Strip. Hamas resupplies itself with arms and munitions brought from Egypt through those channels. Gaza is a softer target than south Lebanon, since it is an enclave that Israel easily dominates. Indeed, the IDF may attack Gaza as a distraction from south Lebanon in an effort to make Hizbollah divide its forces and efforts. Destroying the underground military facilities may be straightforward, but it is likely to create diplomatic complexities, particularly with the UN. Entering south Lebanon risks provoking a clash with Unifil, the major part of whose strength is provided by France. It is unlikely that such a risk will deter Israel. When national survival is at risk, Israel behaves with extreme ruthlessness. It attacked an American communications ship during the Six-Day War because it objected to America listening in to its most secret signals. The big question hanging over an Israeli return to south Lebanon is whether that would provoke a war with Syria, Lebanon's Arab protector. The answer is quite possibly yes, but that such an extension of hostilities might prove welcome both to Israel and to the United States, which regards Syria as Iran's advanced post on the Mediterranean shore. What is certain is that – probably before the year is out – Israel will have struck at Hizbollah in south Lebanon. And the strike will come even sooner if Hizbollah reopens its missile bombardment of northern Israel from its underground systems. -------- pakistan / india Thousands protest deadly madrassa airstrike, as Pakistan TV airs its surveillance footage ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 3, 2006 http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap11-03-070239.asp?reg=asia&vts=11320061909 KHAR, Pakistan — Thousands of angry tribesmen and Islamists protested Friday across Pakistan against an airstrike that killed 80 people at a religious school near the Afghan border this week, as state TV aired video footage purportedly showing militants in training there before the attack. More than 5,000 people rallied in the Bajur tribal region, scene of Monday's airstrike that destroyed a madrassa, or Islamic seminary, run by a Pakistani cleric with alleged ties to al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri. They demanded government compensation for relatives of the dead. Religious hardliners gathered in other key cities across Pakistan, railing against America and key anti-terror ally, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Bajur residents and Islamic parties claim the strike was launched by U.S. drones and that the victims were either religious students or teachers. Pakistan and the U.S. military have denied American involvement. Islamabad says the 80 dead were militants being trained to fight in neighboring Afghanistan where U.S. forces are based, and that Pakistani army helicopters fired the missiles that killed them. ''We reject the government claim that America is not behind this attack,'' tribal leader Akhwanzada Chitan told protesters who gathered near the town of Khar, where shops were shuttered and public transport stayed off the roads. He urged the government to apologize for killing ''innocent people'' and to pay compensation to their families. Thousands of ethnic Pashtuns rallied in the southern city of Karachi, the border town of Chaman and the northwestern city of Peshawar. Hundreds more people demonstrated in the cities of Lahore, Quetta, Islamabad and Multan, where women in shawls staged a protest. Most of the demonstrators were supporters of the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA, a hardline Islamic coalition. Since the attack, tribesmen in Bajur have threatened to launch suicide attacks on Pakistani forces, but Friday's protests were peaceful. Late Thursday, state-run Pakistan Television broadcast aerial surveillance video shot with an infrared camera that the government said showed men receiving militant training before the attack at the madrassa. The dark, monochrome footage showed people running in a circle and doing simple physical exercises. No weapons were visible. Security officials say the footage was shot a day before the airstrike. Bajur lies opposite Afghanistan's rugged Kunar province, where U.S. forces are deployed against insurgents linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Officials also claim that al-Zawahri, the deputy of Osama bin Laden, had previously visited the madrassa. In January, a purported U.S. missile attack hit another border village in Bajur where officials say al-Zawahri had been due to attend a dinner. Intelligence officials say 13 civilians were killed as well as some senior al-Qaida operatives, although authorities never located the bodies of any terror suspects. Al-Zawahri was not hurt. Associated Press writers Bashirullah Khan in Miran Shah and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report. -------- un US, Venezuela Claim Victory in Security Council Standoff Friday, November 3rd, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/03/1431222 At the United Nations, both the US and Venezuela are claiming victory in their standoff over Venezuela’s race with Guatemala for a seat on the UN Security Council. The two Latin American countries agreed to nominate Panama for the seat after neither was able to attract a two-thirds majority. On Thursday, Venezuelan Ambassador Francisco Javier Arias Cardenas said his government had stood up to American intimidation. Venezuelan UN Ambassador Francisco Javier Arias Cardenas: I think we won really. We won in that the General Assembly won in freedom. We won in finding out our strengths and I think, if they can learn from this, Mr. Bolton and the government of Mr. Bush, that they can not impose things through force." Meanwhile, US Ambassador John Bolton said the Bush administration has achieved its main goal. US UN Ambassador John Bolton: We would have looked forward to working with Guatemala on the Council, we'll now look forward to working with Panama if in fact GRULAC endorses that. I would say the defeat of Venezuela certainly accomplishes our principal objective." -------- us Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them to Enlist Colonel Says Incidents Are the Exception, Not the Rule Nov. 3, 2006 ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=2626032 An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist. ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. "Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter. "No, we're bringing people back," he replies. "We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says. Last year, the Army suspended recruiting nationwide to retrain recruiters following hundreds of allegations of improprieties. One Colorado student taped a recruiting session posing as a drug-addicted dropout. "You mean I'm not going to get in trouble?" the student asked. The recruiters told him no, and helped him cheat to sign up. During the ABC News sessions, some recruiters told our students if they enlisted, there would be little chance they'd to go Iraq. But Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of U.S. Army recruiting for the entire Northeast, said that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq. "I would not disagree with that," Manning said. "We are a nation and Army at war still." Manning looked at the ABC News video of his recruiters. "It's hard to believe some of things they are telling prospective applicants," Manning said. "I still believe that this is the exception more than the norm. … I've visited many stations myself, and I know that we have many wonderful Americans serving in uniform as recruiters." Yet ABC News found one recruiter who even claimed if you didn't like the Army, you could just quit. "It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It's an entry-level discharge so it won't affect anything on your record. It'll just be like it never happened." Manning, however, disagrees with the ease the recruiter describes. "I would believe it's not as easy as he would lead you to believe it is," he said. Sue Niederer, whose son, Seth, joined the Army in 2002, said she was all too familiar with recruiters' lies. "They need to do anything they possibly can to get recruits," Niederer said. Seth was sent to Iraq and was killed by a roadside bomb. Niederer said she was not surprised by what ABC News had found. She believes it's still a widespread problem. She said that recruiters told Seth he wouldn't be put into combat. "Ninety percent [are] going to be putting their lives on the line for our country," she said. "Tell them the truth. That's all. Just tell them the truth." -------- POLITICS -------- corruption Documentary Blasts Iraq War Profiteering Nov 3, 2006 (IPS) Mark Weisenmiller http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35360 TAMPA, Florida - With just four days to go before the U.S. mid-term congressional elections, the director of a scathing new documentary about the outsourcing of personnel and supplies for the Iraq war says he hopes audiences will view it "as a tool for discussion". Robert Greenwald's "Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers" is a relatively succinct 75 minutes long. "I wanted it to be short so that it can be discussed by audiences after it's shown," Greenwald told IPS. "I think that it's going to take three things to start to address these issues about war profiteering: public pressure, public shame and finally, legislation," he said. "The short length of the film follows the lead of my other films, such as 'Outfoxed' (about the journalistic ethics of Fox News). I make all of my films as a tool for discussing the issues of the day. Church groups, military groups, civic organisation groups -- all of these have shown my films and had discussion sessions afterwards," he said. "Iraq For Sale" can be described as an anti-war film in the spirit of Errol Morris' "The Fog of War" or Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11". U.S. history and political manipulation are the themes, respectively, of Morris' and Moore's films, but Greenwald's thesis is that the George W. Bush administration's love of privatisation is slowly and irrevocably destroying the democratic ideals of transparency and accountability. Through interviews with Iraqi detainees, U.S. military personnel, former contract employees, and U.S. government whistleblowers like Bunnatine Greenhouse, former chief contracting officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with charts showing the massive profits made by the four corporations highlighted in the film (Blackwater, CACI, Halliburton, and TITAN), Greenwald launches an assault on the advisability of outsourcing the goods and services needed to wage war to civilian-run corporations. For example, CACI received a 60-million-dollar contract for U.S. Army intelligence services. Part of that money was parceled out to contract interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison complex, at least one of whom would later be implicated in the torture of prisoners there. (The company has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.) Artists portraying war profiteers as evil is nothing new. Seventy years ago, in 1936, Robert Sherwood won a Pulitzer Prize for his anti-war play "Idiot's Delight", whose villain is an arms manufacturer (believed to be based on the German Krupp family) who gladly sells his wares to whatever government will buy them. In Greenwald's view, the "bad guys" are now U.S. corporations. Without question, the film's most compelling section is its middle, in which Greenwald presents evidence that many of the alleged torturers of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison complex were private contractors. Greenwald interviews two former U.S. military interrogators at Abu Ghraib, Anthony Lagouranis and Joshua Casteel, who describe a litany of mistakes in the U.S. intelligence-gathering process at the prison. "We were interrogating taxi drivers and pizza delivery guys," Casteel says in the film. "I was getting really angry because I knew that a lot of these prisoners that I saw with those injuries from abuse and torture really hadn't done anything," Lagouranis adds. "Why aren't the U.S. contractors, the civilian corporate personnel, why aren't they being held accountable for their actions?" asks Shareef Akeel, a civil rights attorney who represented an Abu Ghraib detainee. During the interviews with Lagouranis and Casteel, Greenwald shows some of the now notorious photos of naked Iraqi prisoners in distorted physical positions. Their interrogators also appear in some of these pictures, both military and private. "What I have testimony of is that the private contractors (at Abu Ghraib) had more knowledge of the intelligence-gathering process than the Army soldiers stationed there," Greenwald told IPS. "Some of the private contractors had previous experience working at Guantanamo (Bay, the U.S. Army-run detention centre for alleged terrorists in Cuba) and that most of them were older than the soldiers. The Army soldiers were trained primarily to guard the prisoners. They were not trained to gather military intelligence." U.S. Army Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, who was assigned to the Abu Ghraib prison complex, notes in the film that, "The contractor (of the private interrogators at Abu Ghraib) is safely in an office in the U.S. somewhere with no direct supervision.... It seems to excuse all of that (allegations of torture)." The subject of the U.S. government and torture was again in the news recently when Vice President Dick Cheney told a radio interviewer that the controversial interrogation method known as "water-boarding" (which gives the sensation of drowning to a detainee) was a "no-brainer". "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" radio host Scott Hennen asked Cheney. "Well, it's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticised as being the vice president of torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in," Cheney responded. Cheney is a former CEO of Halliburton, whose subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has received more money for rebuilding and troop support services in Iraq than any other contractor. In total, Halliburton received more than 18.5 billion dollars, including one no-bid contract worth seven billion dollars for restoring the country's oil infrastructure. According to one Defence Contract Audit Agency report, Halliburton overcharged the federal government by 1.4 billion dollars for its services, "and I'm sure that figure has climbed", Greenwald told IPS. TITAN got a two-billion-dollar contract for military services, much of which was for providing 4,000 linguists in Iraq and the surrounding area. Lagouranis says he did not like to work with TITAN linguists "because they were terrible". Since the U.S.-led coalition forces invaded Baghdad in 2003, not one piece of war profiteering oversight legislation has been passed in the U.S. Congress. Two candidates -- amendments 3313 and 3292, which would have prohibited the use of contractors in Iraq and curtailed war profiteering, respectively-- were voted down. Not a single Republican legislator supported either amendment. For those viewers wondering if the makers of "Iraq for Sale" made an honest effort to get a response from the corporations named in the film, it closes with numerous film snippets of Greenwald and his colleagues working the phones. "We were not able to speak with anybody," Greenwald said. "We got one Blackwater guy on his cell phone, but he was in a rush to get off. Occasionally, we got an e-mail or a return telephone call from a media representative for these corporations, but we got nothing substantial from them which we could use in the film." -------- propaganda wars U.S. Shutters Site With Saddam-Era Files The Associated Press November 03, 2006 http://www.topix.net/content/ap/2348098132302327247042302355563583927606 While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted documents, the material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again The nation's top intelligence official took down a government Web site with captured Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi documents, after questions were raised about whether it provided too much information about making atomic bombs. In a statement Thursday night, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said his office has suspended public access to the Web site 'pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.' The action came after The New York Times raised questions about the contents of the government site, called the 'Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal.' The Times' Web site reported Thursday night that weapons experts say documents posted on the government site in recent weeks provide dangerous detail about Iraq's covert nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. 'While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted documents, the material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again,' said Negroponte's spokesman, Chad Kolton. Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card said Friday that top officials knew there were risks when they decided to post the documents. 'John Negroponte warned us that we don't know what's in these documents, so these are being put out at some risk, and that was a warning that he put out right when they first released the documents,' Card told NBC's 'Today' show. Pressed by Republican members of Congress, Negroponte's office last March ordered the unprecedented release of millions of pages of Iraqi documents, most of them in Arabic, collected by the U.S. government over more than a decade. Until this week, the information had been posted gradually on public Internet servers, run by the military. In announcing the postings, Negroponte's office said the U.S. government had made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, their factual accuracy or the quality of any translations, when available. The International Atomic Energy Agency declined to comment Friday on the report. A spokesman for the chief U.S. envoy to the nuclear agency, Gregory L. Schulte, denied that he was approached by agency officials about the posted documents. 'Ambassador Schulte did not receive any protest or expression of concern from the IAEA on this issue,' spokesman Matthew Boland told The Associated Press in Vienna, Austria. 'No representative of our mission was approached by a representative of the IAEA on this issue.' -------- us politics Embattled candidates call on Rumsfeld to quit From Tim Reid in Washington UK Times, November 03, 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-2435180,00.html A string of Republican candidates called on Donald Rumsfeld to resign yesterday, rejecting the surprise assertion by President Bush that his Defence Secretary would stay in office for another two years. In campaign advertisements and on the stump, at least six Republicans in tough re-election battles directly contradicted a claim by the President that Mr Rumsfeld was doing a “fantastic” job. Their swift response marked the latest attempt by endangered incumbents to distance themselves from the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq and the polarising figure at the Pentagon. Asked on Monday if he was expecting Mr Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to remain in their jobs until he left office in January 2009, Mr Bush replied “Yes, I am”, before adding: “Both men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them.” Even though Mr Bush was responding to a direct question, the subsequent headlines were an unwelcome intrusion for Republicans in tight races. A spokesman for Tom Kean, a Republican Senate candidate in New Jersey, told The Times: “Obviously we’re incredibly disappointed in that decision. We feel Iraq is on the verge of chaos and a new Secretary of Defence is needed if we are to change the direction and implement tactical changes.” In addition to Mr Kean, Republican Senate candidates in Rhode Island, Maryland, Ohio and Tennessee either suggested or demanded that Mr Rumsfeld should step down. In Ohio Anne Northup, a Republican congresswoman struggling in her re-election bid, said: “I don’t want to depend on the same team, meaning Rumsfeld.” Pressure on Mr Rumsfeld increased this week with the leak of a US military chart showing that Iraq was sliding into “chaos”. Democrats, and some retired generals, have called repeatedly for Mr Rumsfeld to resign. The new statements by Republicans show how damaging the war in Iraq has become to the party — but also what a useful lightning rod Mr Rumsfeld has become for the President, as he is the main focus of critics of the war. Mr Rumsfeld will overtake Robert McNamara, in charge of the Pentagon during much of the Vietnam War, as the longest-serving Defence Secretary next month. Despite the comments by Mr Bush, if Mr Rumsfeld becomes too damaging to the party — or if Iraq becomes so chaotic that a senior figure has to be thrown to the wolves — there will always be a way for Mr Bush to drop him. ---- Cheney: 'Full Speed Ahead' on Iraq Vice President Tells ABC News That Election, Public Sentiment Will Not Influence War Policy By ED O'KEEFE Nov. 3, 2006 ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=2627805 Four days before the election, as Republican candidates battle to save their seats in Congress amid a backlash over the war in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News the administration is going "full speed ahead" with its policy. "We've got the basic strategy right," Cheney told George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on "This Week." Watch the full interview this Sunday morning, including the vice president's candid comments on John Kerry's gaffe this week and Hillary Clinton. October was one of the deadliest months in Iraq for U.S. troops. Cheney said that while the administration's policy may not be popular, "This is the right thing for us to be doing." In the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 57 percent of Americans said that the war was not worth fighting. The poll also showed President Bush's job approval rating dropped to 37 percent, the second-lowest mark of his presidency. Cheney said that even with pollsters predicting that Democrats would likely make gains in both houses of Congress Tuesday, voter sentiment would not influence Bush's Iraq policy. "It may not be popular with the public -- it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that's exactly what we're doing," Cheney said. "We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right." First Reaction to Vanity Fair Report Cheney also gave his first reaction to the Vanity Fair report that two of the Pentagon's strongest supporters of the war, Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, now say they would not have supported the invasion if they had known how incompetently the administration would handle it. Cheney said, "I haven't seen the piece I'm not going to comment on it. I think there is no question that it is a tough war, but it is also the right thing to do," he said. "And it is very important that we complete the mission." Cheney asserted that the anti-war message is coming primarily from the Democrats, despite their own policy disagreements. "They haven't offered up a plan, but they have several different positions -- withdraw, withdraw at some future date, cut off funding," Cheney said. "The fact of the matter is, this is the right thing for us to be doing. We need to succeed here. It has a direct bearing on how we do around the world on the global war on terror." On another subject, the vice president touted the Bush administration's economic policies, arguing that if Democrats take control of Congress, the tax cuts he and the president deem essential would not be extended. Cheney then complained that the White House had not been given enough credit on the economy, which he described as going "gangbusters." When asked why he thinks the president doesn't get enough credit for the economy and the recent news that the nation has a 4.4 percent unemployment rate, Cheney said, "Well, you guys don't help," referring to the media. "What's news is if there's bad news, and that gets coverage," he said. "But the good news that's out there, day after day after day, doesn't get as much attention." ---- Neo Culpa by David Rose, November 3, 2006 Vanity Fair http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true¤tPage=all As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself. I remember sitting with Richard Perle in his suite at London's Grosvenor House hotel and receiving a private lecture on the importance of securing victory in Iraq. "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," he said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding." Perle seemed to exude the scent of liberation, as well as a whiff of gunpowder. It was February 2003, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the culmination of his long campaign on behalf of regime change in Iraq, was less than a month away. Three years later, Perle and I meet again at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in almost two years, and Republicans are bracing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat—an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"—is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating." According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty." George W. Bush. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have." Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel? I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East. I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration the neoconservatives once saw as their brightest hope. To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush. Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional." Dick Cheney. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself—what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"—is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go." I spend the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do. I will present my findings in full in the January issue of Vanity Fair, which will reach newsstands in New York and L.A. on December 6 and nationally by December 12. In the meantime, here is a brief survey of some of what I heard from the war's remorseful proponents. Richard Perle: "In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: 'The president makes the decision.' [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family." Donald Rumsfeld. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes." Frank Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and founder of the Center for Security Policy: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity." Kenneth Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq." David Frum: "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything." Condoleezza Rice. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Michael Rubin, former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did." Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that." Kenneth Adelman: "The problem here is not a selling job. The problem is a performance job.… Rumsfeld has said that the war could never be lost in Iraq, it could only be lost in Washington. I don't think that's true at all. We're losing in Iraq.… I've worked with [Rumsfeld] three times in my life. I've been to each of his houses, in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me." Eliot Cohen, director of the strategic-studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and member of the Defense Policy Board: "I wouldn't be surprised if what we end up drifting toward is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess.… I do think it's going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.… The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it." David Rose is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. -------- OTHER -------- environment Ocean Fish, Seafood Could Collapse By 2048 - Study Story by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent REUTERS US: November 3, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38799/story.htm WASHINGTON - The world's fish and seafood populations will collapse by 2048 if current trends in habitat destruction and overfishing continue, resulting in less food for humans, researchers said on Thursday. In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity -- the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms -- has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse. Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch. This applies to all species, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish, said Boris Worm, lead author of the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Science. Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, are also affected. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," Worm said in a statement. "In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected." When ocean species collapse, it makes the ocean itself weaker and less able to recover from shocks like global climate change, Worm said. The decline in marine biodiversity is largely due to over-fishing and destruction of habitat, Worm said in a telephone interview from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. OVER-EXPLOITATION The loss of biodiversity makes ocean ecosystems less able to recover from the effects of global climate change, pollution and over-exploitation, Worm said. He likened a diverse ocean environment to a diversified investment portfolio. With lots of different species in the oceans, just as with lots of different kinds of investments, "You spread the risk around," Worm said. "In the ocean ecosystem, we're losing a lot of the species in our stock portfolio, and by that we're losing productivity and stability. by losing stability, we're losing the ability of the system to self-repair." "This research shows we'll have few viable fisheries by 2050," Andrew Sugden, international managing editor of Science, told reporters at a telephone news briefing. "This work also shows that it's not too late to act." To help depleted areas rebuild, marine-life reserves and no-fishing zones need to be set up, Worm and other authors of the study said. This has proven effective in places including the Georges Bank off the US Atlantic coast, he said. With marine reserves in place, fishing near the reserves can improve as much as four-fold, Worm said. Beyond the economic benefits to coastal communities where fishing is a critical industry, there are environmental benefits to rebuilding marine biodiversity, the scientists said. Depleted coastal ecosystems are vulnerable to invasive species, disease outbreaks, coastal flooding and noxious algae blooms, they reported. Certain kinds of aquaculture -- like the traditional Chinese cultivation of carp using vegetable waste -- can also be beneficial, according to the scientists. However, farms that aim to raise carnivorous fish are less effective. ---- ALERT: ROCKET FUEL IN 93 PERCENT OF U.S. LETTUCE AND MILK From: "Global Network" Date: Fri Nov 3, 2006 9:34 am Dear friend, The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released its long anticipated report on the human health effects of perchlorates, a byproduct of rocket fuel. Perchlorates, which are a common pollutant near military sites, have recently BEEN FOUND IN DRINKING WATER IN 35 STATES AS WELL AS IN 93 PERCENT OF LETTUCE AND MILK. Along with the report, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set drinking water standards indicating that perchlorates are roughly TEN TIMES MORE TOXIC to humans than the Department of Defense has been claiming. Perchlorates can inhibit thyroid function, cause birth defects and lower IQs, and are considered particularly dangerous to children. Monitoring wells across the U.S. are now finding perchlorate levels as high as 30,000 times what the EPA indicates would be safe exposure. To avoid liability, the Pentagon is currently pressuring Congress to pass a new bill that states the military does not have to adhere to any environmental regulations (as a matter of national security). Please take 30 seconds to send a quick online letter urging your Congressperson to protect the nation's food and water by reducing perchlorate pollution. Take action and learn more about this issue here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/perchlorate.htm Please also forward this message to interested friends and colleagues. (source: Organic Consumers Association http://www.organicconsumers.org) Thank you! Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com http://space4peace.blogspot.com (our blog) --- Perchlorates: REPORT ON WIDESPREAD ROCKET FUEL POLLUTION IN NATION'S FOOD AND WATER November 3, 2006 Organic Consumers Association http://www.organicconsumers.org/perchlorate.htm CLICK HERE TO SEND INSTANT LETTER TO YOUR SENATORS! http://www.organicconsumers.org/perchlorate.htm#pesticide A new analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control indicates that a toxic chemical in rocket fuel has severely contaminated the nation's food and water supply (read the Environmental Working Group study here). Scientists warn that the chemical, known as perchlorate, could cause thyroid deficiency in more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age. This thyroid deficiency could damage the fetus of pregnant women, if left untreated. Perchlorate, the explosive ingredient in solid rocket fuel, has leaked from military bases and defense and aerospace contractors' plants in at least 22 states, contaminating drinking water for millions of Americans. Despite massive complaints, defense contractors such as Kerr-McGee have done little or nothing to clean up the pollution. Perchlorate has also been widely detected in milk, lettuce, produce and other foods. In an alarming study, the CDC found perchlorate in the urine of every person tested. The OCA has mobilized thousands of organic consumers to pressure the EPA and government officials to begin a massive clean up of perchlorate for over a year. Background: The Environmental Working Groups new report is an anlaysis of data originally released in 2005, when the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its long anticipated report on the human health effects of perchlorates, a byproduct of rocket fuel. Perchlorates, which are a common pollutant near military sites, have recently been found in the water at concerning levels in 22 states as well as in 93% of lettuce and milk. 97% of breast milk samples taken randomly from around the U.S. have tested positive for perchlorates. The government funded NAS report reveals that perchlorates are roughly ten times more toxic to humans than the Department of Defense has been claiming. Perchlorates can inhibit thyroid function, cause birth defects and lower IQs, and are considered particularly dangerous to children. The NAS report recommends human exposure at no more than .0007 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. The EPA has responded to the report by announcing a new drinking water standard of 24.5 ppb for perchlorate. This is bad news for military sites and rocket fuel plants around the country, including Henderson, Nevada, where EPA well monitoring has found perchlorates at a level 30,000 times higher than that. There are over 12,000 military sites in the U.S. that are used for training with live explosives. The Pentagon is urging Congress to pass a new law that would allow the military to freely violate a host of environmental regulations. Entitled "The Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative," the legislation would allow military facilities to ignore laws like the Clean Air Act. The Pentagon claims environmental regulations are a threat to national security, since they restrict the military. To date, only one Senator has had the backbone to propose legislation that would hold the military (and other perchlorate polluters) responsible for this excessive pollution of the U.S. food and water supply. Senator Feinstein (CA) has proposed legislation that would spend $200 million to identify and clean up perchlorate sources and provide grants for technologies to clean up existing contamination, while holding perchlorate polluters responsible for cleanup efforts. "It is imperative that we reduce the perchlorate in our drinking water and protect Californians, especially pregnant women, the unborn, infants, and young children from this threat to their health," said Feinstein of the bill. Links: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3250.cfm http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3250.cfm http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/lettuce120104.cfm http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/breastmilk022505.cfm http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11202.html http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/perchlorate022205.cfm http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccl/perchlorate/perchlorate.html http://www.organicconsumers.org/politics/pentagon30405.cfm http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/perchlorate010605.cfm -------- ACTIVISTS Protesters in Oaxaca make police retreat Updated 11/3/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-03-mexico_x.htm OAXACA, Mexico — Protesters besieging this colonial city forced federal police to retreat from the gates of the state university after six hours of pitched fighting and the rector's call for an end to the government "attack." The clash Thursday occurred at the entrance to the university, which protesters demanding the ouster of the Oaxaca state governor have used as their headquarters since police drove them from the city's picturesque central plaza on Sunday. Police control in other areas of the city remained spotty. Reverberations from the ongoing fight in Oaxaca city — seized five months ago by a coalition of striking teachers and leftist protesters — also reached Mexico City, where sympathizers temporarily blocked some downtown streets to demand police withdraw from Oaxaca. In Oaxaca City, about 200 police wearing body armor and carrying riot shields advanced to the university gates and fought the protesters for more than six hours before retreating. The retreat left protesters claiming victory and pledging to re-establish barricades that had been dismantled in previous days. Under Mexican law, the university rector must give the police permission to enter. Rector Francisco Martinez, speaking on the university radio station controlled by the protesters, called the operation an "attack" and demanded police withdraw. Federal police said they simply intended to "restore order and peace" on the streets and did not plan to storm the school. Previous negotiations between the protesters and the interior department broke down, and on Thursday protest spokesman Florentino Lopez demanded direct talks with President Vicente Fox. A free medical clinic near the university reported that more than 20 protesters had been treated for bruises, cuts and injuries related to tear gas. Lopez claimed the number of injured was much higher. Ten officers received various gas-fire burns and bruises, the federal police said. Photographer David Jaramillo of the Mexican daily El Universal was hit in the arm by a large bottle rocket loaded with nails, and was hospitalized in stable condition, the statement said. Another two photographers suffered minor injuries after being hit by stones or nails packed in the rockets, which are about an inch in diameter and six inches long. The university radio station reported that at least six demonstrators had been arrested and demanded their release. The university is a stronghold of the movement to oust Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz, who is accused of rigging the 2004 election to win office and organizing bands of thugs to attack dissidents. Protesters including trade unionists, leftists and Indian groups have been flocking to Oaxaca since May to press their demands, and took over the center of the state capital for more than five months. At least nine people have died in the conflict, mostly protesters shot by police or armed gangs. Among the victims was Bradley Roland Will, a 36-year-old activist-journalist from New York, who was shot in the stomach while filming a gunbattle Friday. The embassies of the U.S., Canada, Britain, France and Germany all have warned their citizens to avoid traveling to the region. The conflict has shattered tourism in the city, which is popular for its colonial architecture and ancient ruins. ---- Green Protestors Storm British Power Station November 3, 2006 Story by Stuart Penson REUTERS NEWS SERVICE http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38804/story.htm LONDON - Environmental campaigners invaded one of Britain's biggest power stations on Thursday, forcing the plant to reduce output on one of the coldest days so far this winter, campaigners and the plant's owner said. Thirty Greenpeace campaigners broke into the site of the Didcot A station in Oxfordshire, chaining themselves to a coal tower and scaling a chimney stack in a protest about greenhouse gas emissions from the 30 year old plant. "This one power station emits over six millions tonnes of CO2 (carbon dioxide) a year, that's more than the 29 lowest polluting countries put together," Greenpeace campaigner Blake Lee-Harwood said. The action appeared to be designed to coincide with a visit to the area by Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, a spokeswoman for the station's owner RWE Npower said. A Greenpeace spokeswoman said protestors planned to continue their action into the night. RWE Npower said the Didcot plant was still running but at reduced rates, and the company had made up for the shortfall by producing power at other stations. Thursday's protest comes after Britain on Monday called for urgent action on climate change following publication of a reporting outlining the economic and environmental fallout from further global warming. In August, about 600 green protestors staged a demonstration at Britain's biggest power plant, the Drax station in northern England, which is the UK's biggest single industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. RWE Npower said it is at the forefront of developing clean energy production. "We're the leading operator and generator of wind power in the UK with sixteen on-and offshore wind farms, as well as many hydro power stations and a fleet of highly efficient combined heat and power plant," Kevin Akhurst, Managing Director of Generation and Renewables at RWE npower, said. The 2000-megawatt coal-fired Didcot A station was commissioned in 1972 and is one of the UK's oldest stations. It is one of several plants due to close over the next five to 10 years. ---- Protesters urge Kyrgyz leader to quit Fri Nov 3, 2006 By Michael Steen BISHKEK (Reuters) http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2006-11-03T185046Z_01_L03621471_RTRUKOC_0_US-KYRGYZSTAN.xml Opponents of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev kept pressure on him to resign with fresh protests and a march on state television on Friday and officials accused them of plotting to seize control of state offices. A crowd of about 500 people marched through midday traffic to the state television headquarters. After jostling with interior ministry troops, opposition leaders were allowed in and emerged later saying they had been promised more air time. There was no disruption to broadcasts and the crowd dispersed peacefully. Despite the promise, the opposition did not appear on state TV during evening prime time. A government spokesman said they would be given access from Saturday morning. For a second day, protesters gathered on a central square, chanting "Bakiyev out!" But only about 2,000 people turned out, compared with an estimated 15,000 on Thursday. The protesters say Bakiyev, who came to power after a coup in March 2005, has failed to improve life for the millions of Kyrgyz who live in poverty, has ditched democratic reforms and backtracked on implementing power-sharing with parliament. Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Muslim nation of 5.2 million people, is home to both U.S. and Russian air bases. Outsiders are watching for signs of civil unrest they worry could spread to neighboring countries in Central Asia. "The opposition are quite serious. They have a certain feeling it's now or never," Michael Hall, Central Asia director for the think tank the International Crisis Group, told Reuters. "(But) Bakiyev has also gotten somewhat stronger over the last year or so. His government is not quite as unstable as it was even at the beginning of this year." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the situation in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, was "alarming" but that he hoped both the authorities and the opposition would be prudent. "I hope that the two sides will show prudence and that the opposition will not break the law. All the problems must be resolved within the legal framework," Lavrov told reporters in Brussels. DANGER Hall said the main danger was that one side would make a wrong move -- either the authorities cracking down or any action by the protesters that could look like a coup attempt. Bakiyev said the authorities had an audio tape of opposition leaders plotting to seize control of key state buildings. The opposition denied it planned a coup. The recording was apparently made secretly at a meeting on Thursday night in the office of Omurbek Tekebayev, one of the main opposition leaders. "Let's not get overtaken by emotion. There is no threat here. There are no forces to carry out a coup. But there are intentions. There is proof," Bakiyev told parliament. Edil Baisalov, a protest leader, said: "We will only use peaceful and non-violent means ... It's not a secret that there are radical elements but we are asking that we be judged solely on our actions." Many of Bishkek's shops took their shutters off and resumed normal business on Friday -- a sign shopkeepers did not sense mass disturbances were likely. After camping out overnight on the main square in red plastic tents, the color of the opposition, several hundred protesters resumed their chants and were gradually joined by others. Ildyar Akhmetov, a jobless 18-year-old from the nearby town of Tokmok who spent the night in one of the tents, said: "We need jobs for young people and to think about the future." "In one and a half years, Bakiyev has done nothing. If he won't go voluntarily he should if necessary be removed by force," he said. Bakiyev was elected president after his predecessor, Askar Akayev, fled the country following violent protests against a flawed parliamentary election which culminated in protesters ransacking the presidential offices and looting shops. Bakiyev has promised to present constitutional changes on Monday giving parliament more power. His opponents say they do not trust his assurances. (Additional reporting by Olga Dzyubenko, and Sabina Zawadzki in Brussels)