NucNews January 27, 2007 -------- NUCLEAR -------- britain Vengeance is her name and vengeance her only purpose EBEN HARRELL (eharrell@scotsman.com) Saturday, 27th January 2007 http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=139832007 SHOULD Armageddon come, its heralding scripture will not appear in any holy book. It will appear on a screen in front of two officers in the small communications room of HMS Vengeance, one of Britain's four nuclear submarines - launch orders; blood and rubble. Here the debate over renewing Britain's nuclear arsenal is made real: 16 Trident missiles, each with up to 12 independently targeted nuclear warheads. Once airborne, the 60 tonne missiles travel at four miles a second. HMS Vengeance, like all Vanguard class Trident ballistic missile submarines, carries enough nuclear firepower to destroy 1,500 Hiroshimas within 15 minutes. Resting at port at the HM Naval Base Clyde, the Vengeance resembles a prehistoric sea beast - flattened forehead, rusting spots like barnacles, squat, obsolete flippers from some abandoned evolutionary stage. A team of workers - their silhouettes framed against rolling, snow-capped hills - gingerly repair a few of the tiles on her giant bow, which have fallen off - there are 89,000 in all. There are 1,600 people stationed at the base at Faslane to fuss around the Vengeance and her three sisters - the largest naval base in Britain, whose sole purpose is helping keep these doomsday boats at sea. On board, 130 officers and men spend up to three months at a stretch at sea amid the wires, gauges, communication equipment, missiles and nuclear reactor of the Vengeance. The ship's sole function is to rehearse, and execute if necessary, the launching of the missiles. What strikes you immediately on board is the eerie hush. There are signs everywhere enjoining silence: "Noise kills". The nuclear reactor, which powers the enormous vessel, is no larger than a wheelie bin and is completely silent. The only noise is that of the ventilation system - the constant hiss of used air being filtered, treated with oxygen, then re-released. One of Britain's four nuclear subs is continuously on patrol at sea, a routine that has been kept up for 38 years. According to deterrence theory, it is the ultimate weapon: even if all of mainland Britain is destroyed, the sub will be able to retaliate. The name says it all: Vengeance. Although it is enormous by submarine standards - causing the same water displacement when under water as an aircraft carrier - space is at a premium. Men - there are no women - sleep in 6ft bunks, nine to a room. A sign on the washroom reads "no Hollywood showers": a continuous water supply is for movie stars. This crowding has resulted in a strange intermingling of domesticity and destruction. Men shower in cubicles situated between the missile silos, jog on running machines positioned underneath them, and sleep in bunks a few feet from them. Attached to each of the 16 onboard missile silos - massive, stolid, primed - is a detachable ironing board and an iron. Despite this proximity, there is nothing to suggest intimacy with the weapons. While the first atomic bombs were given deceptively innocent sobriquets - Little Boy and Fat Man of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the Vengeance's arsenal is known to the crew as Missile 1, Missile 2; that is all. This formality speaks of the sobriety of the Vengeance's mission, and the precision with which Trident missiles have been designed to cause mass destruction. "They say the missiles are accurate to within 6ft, but it could be 30ft, or a football field, or a city; they are still going to level the place," the ship's Commander, Mark Lister, says. "The responsibility is awesome and the scrutiny is continuous. We take our mission extremely seriously, and serve the Prime Minister, whatever his or her orders". To the officers - many of them engineers - the missiles are machines; it is their job not to ponder, but guarantee their smooth operation. Even so, the quietest place on board is the upper compartment of the missile section. There, crewman can stand within a few inches of nuclear warheads and place their hands on the cool exterior of their casing. There are no ironing boards here, only gauges, pumps, hatches, and the strangely soothing hum of the ventilation system. It has the feel of a prayer room. Sometimes, the captain will come and stand among the rows of missile tubes, eight on each side like trunks of stately redwoods. He calls this room "Sherwood Forest". Firing drills take place twice a week. In order for a missile to be launched, the captain must insert a small key into a slot on his control panel and turn it from "hold" to "fire". The weapons engineer, in a different room, then pulls a trigger modelled on the pistol grip of a Colt 45 revolver. Launch orders come directly from the Prime Minister. In a safe in the captain's quarters is a handwritten letter from Tony Blair bearing his instructions for nuclear war should Britain suffer a first strike that kills millions of people, including the government. The orders are to be opened and acted upon only if the Vengeance fails to receive communication for a set number of days and has other reasons to believe Britain has been destroyed. The contents of the letter are classified. If everything is running smoothly, submarines are remarkably healthy places to work. The air is pumped full of oxygen and the reactor is so well shielded that a three month underwater tour exposes a crewman to less radiation than a long-haul air flight. The flip side is that if something does go wrong, it is likely to be catastrophic. Every crewman wears a dosimeter on his hip to measure radiation exposure. There is a sign tacked up outside the on-board medical quarters: "God's Waiting Room". The biggest threat to the crew on the long underwater tours is to their mental health. Life on a submarine is a potent mixture of the claustrophobia of cramped living quarters and the agoraphobia of being surrounded on all sides by a seemingly endless expanse of ocean. For some, the pressure is overwhelming. "Men get 'coffin dreams'," Lieutenant Dan Wright explains. "They wake up thinking they are stuck in a coffin. The feeling usually passes in a few minutes. I've heard that some men lose it on board, but I've never witnessed anything more than the nightmares". The crew work through their duties in a state of timelessness; with no windows and no natural light, the only indication of the time is the next meal. The menu is the same every week - curry on Wednesday, fish and chips on Friday. DVDs, books and board games are the preferred distractions. One of the games in the officers' cabinet is "Risk: The Game of World Domination". Some take work towards Open University degrees. Once a week, each crewman can receive a 40-word message from his family, sent on a page with 40 boxes. Although the captain will inform the crew in the event of a launch - "we take everyone to war with us," he says - not everything is shared. The captain vets personal messages. One that tells of a death in the family will be withheld from the crewman until the boat returns to port. At the officers' mess, men don't mind discussing the geopolitical debate to which they are now central. Universally, they believe their submarine should be replaced with a boat capable of both tactical strikes - nuclear bunker-busters, say - and strategic deterence; a doomsday boat capable of nuclear-lite. Hardly any of these men are old enough to have served during the brinkmanship of the Cold War; Cmdr Lister is 45. But to everyone on HMS Vengeance, the prospect of nuclear war remains only a key-turn away. "With all the talk about emerging threats, the question of whether these weapons will be used is still relevant," Cmdr Lister says. There is a terrible beauty to this submarine, the brain-child of a generation's brightest minds. It highlights a central issue for humanity: whether the gift of consciousness may also be our curse. Somewhere in the depths of the Atlantic, the missiles of a Royal Navy submarine are silent and waiting. -------- china GOP Senator: Confront China Weapons Test ASSOCIATED PRESS January 29, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-China-Missile-Test.html?_r=1&oref=slogin WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Republican senator criticized the Bush administration Monday for failing to aggressively confront China over its test of a satellite-killing weapon, which he called a provocative militarization of space. ''Key policy makers seem oblivious to the nature and the urgency of the threat,'' Sen. Jon Kyl, Ariz., told an audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. ''It's time to start speaking out about this.'' The Jan. 11 test destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite by hitting it with a warhead launched from a ballistic missile. A week later, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: ''The United States believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area. We and other countries have expressed our concern to the Chinese.'' Kyl said the ''muted response'' in the United States has been due in part to the fierce congressional debate about the war in Iraq, which has drawn attention away from other foreign policy issues. Kyl also linked the administration's silence to a ''complicated relationship with China, which is difficult to manage under the best of circumstances. There is so much we want to engage with China.'' He mentioned U.S.-Chinese trade interests, and the need to secure Chinese help in the United Nations to confront alleged illicit nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea. This, Kyl said, ''inhibits our government from being as forthright as I think we should be in criticizing the Chinese when they do something as provocative as this.'' The danger, he said, is that ''China believes that it must develop space weapons for its own security, specifically for preparation for possible conflict with the United States over Taiwan.'' Kyl called for congressional hearings to ensure that the Chinese program is not based on U.S. technology, ''either shared or stolen.'' Also Monday, the deputy director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said in a discussion of the missile program's capabilities that his agency had not been given the mandate to counteract the kind of technology that China demonstrated in its recent test. But he added that current technologies could be easily adapted to defend against an attack on U.S. satellites. ''That work would be straightforward if we were given that guidance or mandate,'' said Brig. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly. Associated Press writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report. -------- depleted uranium Skopje Municipal Mayor Proposes Renaming Streets after NATO’s Kosovo War Heroes 1/27/2007 (Balkanalysis.com) http://www.balkanalysis.com/2007/01/27/skopje-municipal-mayor-proposes-renaming-streets-after-nato%E2%80%99s-kosovo-war-heroes/ According to a report from A1 TV yesterday, Izet Mexhiti, the young Albanian mayor of Skopje’s Cair municipality, has proposed that 20 percent of the city’s streets should be renamed to honor the many heroes of the Albanian people. Among these heroes, apparently, are Bill Clinton, Wesley Clark and Tony Blair- the prime architects of NATO’s bombing campaign in 1999 in neighboring Kosovo. In that bombing, an incompetent NATO failed to damage the Yugoslav Army, but did eventually triumph after bombing bridges, hospitals, schools, TV stations and markets, not to mention the supremely reckless deliberate destruction of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. In the wake of the air campaign, hundreds of thousands of non-Albanians were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo, and NATO’s own soldiers (especially Italians) came down with cancer, while Kosovar Albanians too began to suffer as a result of the dangers of the depleted uranium NATO expended over the Serbian province. Every now and again a small child, usually Albanian, is injured or killed from playing with a random piece of ordinance left undetected in a field. The cluster bombs are especially fun. The street renaming proposal, like all others made by the Albanian parties in Macedonia since the war, comes by way of analogy to the Ohrid Agreement’s 20-percent-threshold of minority population for things such as language usage and flag-waving to kick in. Most things seem to apply to this analogy. Said the mayor, “our request will be for at least 20 percent of the names of the boulevards and major streets of Skopje to have the names of persons or events from Albanian history.” While there was a public debate in the municipality of Cair to give proposals for names, the debate was conducted only in the Albanian language, stated A1, though Macedonians, Turks and Roma also live in Cair. The report added that the procedure of changing the names would involve taking the suggestions to the council of Skopje municipalities, which will look at the list, before going before a government commission which would decide. It was not said how much time this could take, or how many working hours would be lost from activities that are perhaps of greater importance to improving residents’ standard of living. Mayor Mexhiti won his office in March 2005 and has since pledged to stamp out crime. He was the candidate fielded by Ali Ahmeti’s DUI party, the political incarnation of the 2001 paramilitary NLA. When the DUI was not selected to join the ruling coalition following July 2006 elections, the party cried foul and ominously intimated that it could not be held responsible if further violence broke out, forcing Western ambassadors to embark on a tedious and time-wasting round of baby-sitting and hand-holding. DUI’s recent announcement that it would boycott parliament is bound to only intensify this trend, just at a time when other more important issues need to be dealt with. While the DUI has protested its exclusion from government despite being called obstructionist and unhelpful by the international community, party leader Ahmeti did take time out of his busy schedule to deal with an important issue: the erection of a statue of perceived national hero Skanderbeg, also in Cair. The statue had been cast in Albania and carried to rapturous applause throughout western Macedonia on the way to its final resting place in Skopje. Earlier last year, there was some controversy over whether the polarizing statue would be erected. Yet erected it was. On Nov. 28, 2006, Independence Day in the Republic of Albania, self-proclaimed spokesman for the Albanian people Ahmeti orated to great applause from a large crowd of Albanian Muslims in Cair. Skanderbeg (real name, Gjergji Kastrioti) battled the Ottoman Turks, and was honored by Pope Paul II as an Athleta Christi, a “champion of Christ” for his work in… killing Muslims. Somewhat later, in 1944, Heinrich Himmler created a Nazi SS division of Kosovo Muslim Albanians named after Skanderbeg, to kill the Christian Serbs of Kosovo. So what do Clinton, Clark and Blair think of their incorporation into the great family of Albanian heroes, side-by-side with Mother Teresa and John Belushi? We’ll probably never know. The Cair mayor justified the initiative by pointing out that other Skopje streets have long been named after great Americans presidents such as Roosevelt and Kennedy. So what’s the harm in honoring one somewhat less great ex-president, one failed presidential candidate, and one presidential poodle from Britain? After all, Kosovo is already full of streets, structures and red-light bordellos named after such people. Yet it might all seem a ribald enough gesture, certainly a less menacing one, were these adopted heroes to have some association with the Albanian history of Macedonia, rather than that of Kosovo. For those who fear a possible transition from FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) to FMRK (Future Macedonian Republic of Kosovo) a distinct possibility, naming Macedonian streets after the foreign “heroes” of an immoral and illegal war conducted in a third country, a war deeply opposed by the Macedonian majority, is a disconcerting idea. More immediately, these grand initiatives of statues and streets have allowed ordinary Albanians in Macedonia to continue to be manipulated by political leaders offering a lot of symbolic triumphs in place of something more substantial. A sickly devotion to political correctness, however, means that few outsiders dare draw attention to this travesty. -------- europe Nuclear disarmament at last appears in a big French newspaper! Disarm to Develop Editorial by François Régis Hutin, director of OUEST-France Translated from French by Peter Low for ACDN 27 January 2007 ACDN http://acdn.france.free.fr/spip/article.php3?id_article=268&lang=en Disarm to Develop an editorial by François Régis Hutin, director of OUEST-France [On 27 January 2007, 800 000 homes which read every day the regional newspaper "OUEST-France" in western France, from Caen to Cherbourg, Rennes, Brest, and Nantes... were able to read this editorial by François Régis Hutin. He is president and general director of OUEST-France and a member of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). Unless the media and the rest of the big French papers (2/3 controlled by the arms merchants) contrive to put a ring of silence around this editorial, it could well MARK A TURNING-POINT IN FRANCE’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.] Disarm to Develop Great fears return periodically in History, but sometimes their causes become hidden and forgotten. We get used to this or that threat or danger, until another incident arises and sounds the alarm. That is what is happening with nuclear arms. For over 50 years we have got used to them. The nations with them feel protected by their deterrent force. And the disappearance of the Soviet Union reassured us, even though Russia still possesses a fearsome arsenal. But now two small players, North Korea and Iran, are shaking our confidence, especially because their leaders, located in zones of geopolitical tension, are rather unpredictable. Besides, if they achieve their goals, other states near them or even far away, feeling more or less threatened, will themselves want weapons of the same kind to deter their enemies. What then will become of international security? The possibilities of conflict will not decrease and each crisis will be a case where the atom bomb could be used deliberately by a fragile or irresponsible head of state, or be triggered accidentally on account of inadequate mastery of systems or false information. All that confronts us again with the question not only of proliferation (and the need to halt it) but of nuclear disarmament. How can this new proliferation be stopped ? Certainly not by attacking the nations concerned, although that possibility does exist. Periodically there is talk of a preemptive attack against Iran, as if the experiment of the Iraq War was not enough. As for Japan, which faces North Korea, it is reviewing its attitudes and envisaging changes to its means of defense. Clearly if things carry on this way, one day or other, what everyone fears will take place, with repercussions and consequences that can probably not be controlled. In addition and at the same time, various terrorist groups are certainly trying to obtain the means of using nuclear technology for their criminal actions. The presidential candidates must declare their positions In these conditions, everything must be questioned, looked at in new ways, in the search for other solutions - and there is only one: nuclear disarmament. "Utopian, naive," people will say. Yet that is the goal that Gorbachev and Reagan sought to reach when they met in Reykjavik 20 years ago - they wanted the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Today this necessity seems even more urgent. Several top US personalities have just reminded us : Henry A. Kissinger, US Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, G.P. Shultz, US Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989, Sam Nunn, former chair of the US Senate Committee for the armed forces, and W.J. Perry, Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. These men say that "first and foremost is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise. Such a joint enterprise... would lend additional weight to efforts already under way to avoid the emergence of a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran." Today one can indeed think that such a disarmament process, negotiated with all those possessing or wanting to possess nuclear weapons, is the only way to really stop the proliferation. These men’s programme also involves setting an end-date on the production of nuclear material for military ends, reducing progressively to zero all exchanges of highly enriched uranium, and withdrawing all weapons-grade uranium from all research centres everywhere and rendering it harmless. Consideration must also be given to the proliferation of nuclear wastes from the reactors of nuclear power plants. Clearly the field is vast, but the stake is very high: to prevent the planet from sinking into chaos. What then is the craziest option? To try to ward off this danger or to let it go on growing? As a corollary, the considerable sums that would thus be saved could be devoted with huge effectiveness to a large development effort. To disarm so as to develop, that is the chief mission of the world’s responsible political leaders. We’ll have peace and development or else the risk of annihilation; everyone knows the sensible choice. That is a fundamental question which we would like to see studied by the various candidates to the French Presidency. In this domain France, with Europe, has certainly an essential role to play. -------- iran US Warns Iran Of Global Wrath If It Cranks Up Nuclear Capacity by Staff Writers Washington (AFP) Jan 27, 2007 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Warns_Iran_Of_Global_Wrath_If_It_Cranks_Up_Nuclear_Capacity_999.html The United States warned Iran of "universal" opposition if it proceeds with plans to beef up its nuclear capacity by installing at least 3,000 centrifuges at a key atomic plant. Already facing UN sanctions over its sensitive nuclear program, Tehran announced recently it wanted to install "even more" than 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its Natanz underground facility. "This would be a major miscalculation and mistake by the Iranian government," US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said. "If Iran takes this step, it is going to confront universal international opposition. "And if they think that they can get away with 3,000 centrifuges without another Security Council resolution and additional international pressure then they're very badly mistaken," Burns said. In December, the UN Security Council passed 15-0 a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for its repeated refusal to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN atomic energy watchdog, or to suspend uranium enrichment. "They've already had China and Russia and all of the European countries and the United States oppose them. They've also had India and Egypt and Brazil oppose them a year ago at the IAEA Board of Governors," Burns said. Another defiant move would "solidify the international opposition to Iran," he said, emphasizing again "it's a miscalculation." An Iranian government spokesman said earlier this month that Iran would be making a major announcement on the "completion" of Iran's nuclear program during the 10-day anniversary celebrations for the Islamic revolution in February. He did not go into details. The Islamic republic has so far declared the installation of two cascades of 164 centrifuges at the plant in Natanz and the installation of 3,000 centrifuges would mark a major step towards industrial enrichment. The machinery is used to enrich uranium, a highly sensitive process that can be used both to make nuclear energy and a nuclear bomb. It has so far shown no sign of caving into the Security Council resolution that imposed the first ever UN sanctions against Iran over its failure to suspend enrichment. Iran, which insists that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, this week banned 38 IAEA inspectors from working in the country. It also sought removal of the official overseeing the IAEA's inspection of the Iranian nuclear program. "It's outrageous," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "They're inspector shopping." He said that "the tone of those kinds of actions are indicative of their continued defiance. "And this is not what the international system is looking for or, frankly, what it was hoping for in terms of Iranian behavior." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is to report to the UN Security Council by February 21 on whether Iran has suspended enrichment. If it has not, sanctions could be tightened and there is increased speculation that either the United States or Israel could eventually decide to bomb Iran in order to stop it from making nuclear weapons. related report Iran prepared for nuclear issue solution without preconditions Tehran (RIA Novosti) Jan 29 - Tehran is prepared for negotiations on the Iran nuclear issue without preconditions, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday. Hosseini said Iran still keeps the doors open for negotiations and is prepared for these negotiations to resume but without any preconditions. Hosseini said international pressure will not force Tehran to give up its civilian nuclear technologies. Iran has been at the center of international concerns since January 2006 over its nuclear program, which some countries suspect is geared toward nuclear weapons development. Tehran has consistently denied the claims, and says it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1737 on Iran December 23, which imposed sanctions on the country's nuclear weapons programs but allowed officials to make foreign trips and companies to do business abroad. The sanctions banned activities involving uranium enrichment, chemical reprocessing, heavy water-based projects, and production of means for nuclear weapons delivery. Hosseini said Tehran welcomes any proposal [on the Iran nuclear issue], which will secure the Islamic Republic's right to civilian nuclear technologies within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hosseini also said Iran will continue cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, despite its recent refusal to admit 38 inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. -------- russia Russian City May Be Source for Uranium The Associated Press By JIM HEINTZ January 27, 2007 http://www.topix.net/content/ap/3217992173404369643719629395840261576064 Novosibirsk is located in the depths of Siberia, but despite the remoteness it's one of Russia's main areas for nuclear activity and a cause of concern for those worried about nuclear materials falling into terrorists' hands. The concerns about Russia's third-largest city rose to the forefront this week after officials in the former Soviet republic of Georgia announced the arrest of a Russian man for allegedly trying to sell weapons-grade uranium to an undercover agent. The man, who was arrested last year, initially told his interrogators the uranium came from Novosibirsk, 1,600 miles east of Moscow, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told The Associated Press on Saturday. He later recanted his statement, but Georgian authorities sent a letter to Russia's Federal Security Service inquiring about the possible link to Novosibirsk, Utiashvili said. The agency declined to comment Saturday. A top Russian science official has said the sample of the alleged contraband uranium provided by Georgia was too small for analysis that could determine its origin. The episode appeared to cast doubt on Russia's ability to halt the black-market trade in nuclear materials and renewed concern about security at Russia's array of nuclear facilities. The Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant is one of Russia's main facilities for producing enriched uranium both for use in nuclear reactors and in the higher concentration that could be used to make an atomic bomb. In addition, highly enriched uranium has been shipped into Novosibirsk in recent years from former Soviet bloc countries, including Poland and Romania. Under a program backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the uranium is to be blended down into lower concentrations. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration funded a program to improve security at the Novosibirsk plant as part of a wider initiative to boost security at facilities throughout Russia. The NNSA says the Novosibirsk plant completed its upgrade in late 2004. However, security apparently was lax in Novosibirsk for years before that. In 2002, the head of the agency that was then responsible for security at nuclear facilities admitted that weapons-grade nuclear material had disappeared from Russian facilities. 'Most often, these instances are connected with factories preparing fuel' including Novosibirsk's, the official, Yuri Vishnyevsky, said at the time. Novosibirsk was also the site of the 1997 arrest of two men who officials said intended to smuggle some 11 pounds of enriched uranium to Pakistan or China. That uranium reportedly was stolen from a plant in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Security at Russia's nuclear facilities was seen as deteriorating rapidly in the early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when economic hardships made black-market activities increasingly widespread and as political chaos left official lines of command and supervision shaky. The U.S.-based organization Nuclear Threat Initiative said in a report last year that Russia remains the prime country of concern for contraband nuclear material. 'Russia has the world's largest stockpiles of both nuclear weapons and the materials to make them, scattered among hundreds of buildings and bunkers at scores of sites. Over the past 15 years security for those stockpiles has improved from poor to moderate, but there remain immense threats those security systems must confront,' the NTI said. ---- Russian City May Be Source for Uranium The Associated Press By JIM HEINTZ January 27, 2007 http://www.topix.net/content/ap/3217992173404369643719629395840261576064 Novosibirsk is located in the depths of Siberia, but despite the remoteness it's one of Russia's main areas for nuclear activity and a cause of concern for those worried about nuclear materials falling into terrorists' hands. The concerns about Russia's third-largest city rose to the forefront this week after officials in the former Soviet republic of Georgia announced the arrest of a Russian man for allegedly trying to sell weapons-grade uranium to an undercover agent. The man, who was arrested last year, initially told his interrogators the uranium came from Novosibirsk, 1,600 miles east of Moscow, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told The Associated Press on Saturday. He later recanted his statement, but Georgian authorities sent a letter to Russia's Federal Security Service inquiring about the possible link to Novosibirsk, Utiashvili said. The agency declined to comment Saturday. A top Russian science official has said the sample of the alleged contraband uranium provided by Georgia was too small for analysis that could determine its origin. The episode appeared to cast doubt on Russia's ability to halt the black-market trade in nuclear materials and renewed concern about security at Russia's array of nuclear facilities. The Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant is one of Russia's main facilities for producing enriched uranium both for use in nuclear reactors and in the higher concentration that could be used to make an atomic bomb. In addition, highly enriched uranium has been shipped into Novosibirsk in recent years from former Soviet bloc countries, including Poland and Romania. Under a program backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the uranium is to be blended down into lower concentrations. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration funded a program to improve security at the Novosibirsk plant as part of a wider initiative to boost security at facilities throughout Russia. The NNSA says the Novosibirsk plant completed its upgrade in late 2004. However, security apparently was lax in Novosibirsk for years before that. In 2002, the head of the agency that was then responsible for security at nuclear facilities admitted that weapons-grade nuclear material had disappeared from Russian facilities. 'Most often, these instances are connected with factories preparing fuel' including Novosibirsk's, the official, Yuri Vishnyevsky, said at the time. Novosibirsk was also the site of the 1997 arrest of two men who officials said intended to smuggle some 11 pounds of enriched uranium to Pakistan or China. That uranium reportedly was stolen from a plant in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Security at Russia's nuclear facilities was seen as deteriorating rapidly in the early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when economic hardships made black-market activities increasingly widespread and as political chaos left official lines of command and supervision shaky. The U.S.-based organization Nuclear Threat Initiative said in a report last year that Russia remains the prime country of concern for contraband nuclear material. 'Russia has the world's largest stockpiles of both nuclear weapons and the materials to make them, scattered among hundreds of buildings and bunkers at scores of sites. Over the past 15 years security for those stockpiles has improved from poor to moderate, but there remain immense threats those security systems must confront,' the NTI said. -------- OTHER -------- environment Scientists Criticize Upcoming IPCC Report as Understated Melting ice means global warming report all wet, say some experts who warn it'll be even worse The Associated Press, Jan. 27, 2007 http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=6240&method=full WASHINGTON -- Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't take into account the gorillas . Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century." Michael MacCracken, who until 2001 coordinated the official U.S. government reviews of the international climate report on global warming, has fired off a letter of protest over the omission. The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don't know how to predict its effects in their computer models. But many fear it will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than most predict. Others believe the ice melt is temporary and won't play such a dramatic role. That debate may be the central one as scientists and bureaucrats from around the world gather in Paris to finish the first of four major global warming reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel was created by the United Nations in 1988. After four days of secret word-by-word editing, the final report will be issued Friday. The early versions of the report predict that by 2100 the sea level will rise anywhere between 5 and 23 inches (12.7 to 58 centimeters). That's far lower than the 20 to 55 inches (51 to 140 centimeters) forecast by 2100 in a study published in the peer-review journal Science this month. Other climate experts, including NASA's James Hansen, predict much bigger sea level rises. The report is also expected to include some kind of proviso that says things could be much worse if ice sheets continue to melt. The prediction being considered this week by the IPCC is "obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now, but we know it's happening," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate panel lead author from Germany who made the larger prediction of up to 55 inches (140 centimeters) of sea level rise. "A document like that tends to underestimate the risk," he said. "This will dominate their discussion because there's so much contentiousness about it," said Bob Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a multinational research effort. "If the IPCC comes out with significantly less than one meter (about 39 inches), there will be people in the science community saying we don't think that's a fair reflection of what we know." In the past, the climate change panel didn't figure there would be large melt of ice in west Antarctica and Greenland this century and didn't factor it into the predictions. Those forecasts were based only on the sea level rise from melting glaciers (which are different from ice sheets) and the physical expansion of water as it warms. But in 2002, Antarctica's 1,255-square-mile (3,250-square-kilometer) Larsen B ice shelf broke off and disappeared in just 35 days. And recent NASA data shows that Greenland is losing 53 cubic miles (221 cubic kilometers) of ice each year . twice the rate it was losing in 1996. Even so, there are questions about how permanent the melting in Greenland and especially Antarctica are, said panel lead author Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. While he said the melting ice sheets "raise a warning flag," Trenberth said he wonders if "some of this might just be temporary." University of Alabama at Huntsville professor John Christy said Greenland didn't melt much within the past thousand years when it was warmer than now. Christy, a reviewer of the panel work, is a prominent so-called skeptic. He acknowledges that global warming is real and man-made, but he believes it is not as worrisome as advertised. Those scientists who say sea level will rise even more are battling a consensus-building structure that routinely issues scientifically cautious global warming reports, scientists say. The IPCC reports have to be unanimous, approved by 154 governments . including the United States and oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia . and already published peer-reviewed research done before mid-2006. Rahmstorf, a physics and oceanography professor at Potsdam University in Germany, says, "In a way, it is one of the strengths of the IPCC to be very conservative and cautious and not overstate any climate change risk." -------- ACTIVISTS War protesters demand U.S. troop withdrawal Tens of thousands of demonstrators and handful of celebrities rally in D.C. MSNBC, January 27, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16841070/ WASHINGTON - Protesters energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the Iraq war demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday that drew tens of thousands and brought Jane Fonda back to the streets. A sampling of celebrities, a half-dozen members of Congress and busloads of demonstrators from distant states joined in a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war. The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, threatened to use congressional spending power to try to stop the war. “George Bush has a habit of firing military leaders who tell him the Iraq war is failing,” he said, looking out at the masses. “He can’t fire you.” Referring to Congress, the Michigan Democrat added: “He can’t fire us. “The founders of our country gave our Congress the power of the purse because they envisioned a scenario exactly like we find ourselves in today. Now only is it in our power, it is our obligation to stop Bush.” The protests came on a day when the U.S. military reported the deaths of seven more American soldiers, raising to at least 12 the number of service members killed in the past three days. The most recent seven death reports were all the result of roadside bombs, two in Diyala province, two in Baghdad and three others at an unspecified location north of the capital. Five of the soldiers were assigned to Multi-National Division-Baghdad, one was a member of Task Force Lightning who was assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, and one other was a Multi-National Corps-Iraq soldier attached to north division. High U.S. death toll this month According to an Associated Press count, at least 73 service members have been killed so far this month. “Silence is no longer an option,” Fonda declared on Saturday to cheers, addressing not only the nation’s response to Iraq but her own absence from anti-war protests for 34 years. The actress once derided as “Hanoi Jane” by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but now needed to speak out. “Thank you so much for the courage to stand up against this mean-spirited, vengeful administration,” she said. Fonda drew parallels to the Vietnam War, citing “blindness to realities on the ground, hubris ... thoughtlessness in our approach to rebuilding a country we’ve destroyed.” But she noted that this time, veterans, soldiers and their families increasingly and vocally are against the Iraq war. The rally on the National Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling and wrestling with some and setting up barricades along the front steps. Protesters chanted “Our Congress” as police faced off against them. Their ranks grew and several dozen shouting “We want a tour” broke away and tried to get into a side door. At the rally, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold stood on her toes to reach the microphone and tell the crowd: “Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar.” The sixth-grader from Harvard, Mass., the youngest speaker on the stage, organized a petition drive at her school against the war that has killed more than 3,000 U.S. service-members. Celebrities flock to demonstration More Hollywood celebrities showed up at the demonstration than buttoned-down Washington typically sees in a month. Actor Sean Penn said lawmakers will pay a price in the 2008 elections if they do not take firmer action than to pass a nonbinding resolution against the war, the course Congress is now taking. “If they don’t stand up and make a resolution as binding as the death toll, we’re not going to be behind those politicians,” he said. Actors Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Danny Glover also spoke. Fonda was a lightning rod in the Vietnam era for her outspoken opposition to that war and her advocacy from Hanoi at the height of that conflict. Sensitive to the old wounds, she made it a point Saturday to thank the active-duty service-members, veterans and Gold Star mothers who attended the rally. On the stage rested a coffin covered with a U.S. flag and a pair of military boots, symbolizing American war dead. On the Mall stood a large bin filled with tags bearing the names of Iraqis who have died. Some service members present A small contingent of active-duty service members attended the rally, wearing civilian clothes because military rules forbid them from protesting in uniform. Air Force Staff Sgt. Tassi McKee, 26, an intelligence specialist at Fort Meade, Md., said she joined the Air Force because of patriotism, travel and money for college. “After we went to Iraq, I began to see through the lies,” she said. In the crowd, signs recalled the November elections that defeated the Republican congressional majority in part because of President Bush’s Iraq policy. “I voted for peace,” one said. “We see many things that we feel helpless about,” said Barbara Struna, 59, who came from Brewster, Mass., to march. “But this is like a united force. This is something I can do.” About 40 people staged a counter-protest, including military family members and Army Cpl. Joshua Sparling, 25, who lost his leg to a bomb in Iraq in November 2005. He said the anti-war protesters, especially those who are veterans or who are on active duty, “need to remember the sacrifice we have made and what our fallen comrades would say if they are alive.” As protesters streamed to the Mall, Bush reaffirmed his commitment to the troop increase in a phone conversation Saturday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a day when one or two rockets struck the heavily fortified Green Zone, home of the Iraqi government, thousands of Americans and the U.S. and British embassies. Bush was in Washington for the weekend. He is often is out of town during big protest days. United for Peace and Justice, a coalition group sponsoring the protest, said there has been intense interest in the rally since Bush announced he was sending 21,500 additional troops to supplement the 130,000 in Iraq. ---- Crowds on both coasts protest Iraq war Actor Sean Penn and The Rev. Jesse Jackson were among the leaders of the march against the war in Iraq. 1/27/2007 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-27-iraq-protest_x.htm WASHINGTON — Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq. Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict. Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years. SPEAKING OUT: 'We're fed up with this war' "Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now. The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances. Protesters chanted "Our Congress" as their numbers grew and police faced off against them. Demonstrators later joined the masses marching from the Mall, halfway around Capitol Hill and back. United for Peace and Justice, a coalition group sponsoring the protest, had hoped 100,000 would come. Police, who no longer give official estimates, said privately the crowd was smaller than that. At the rally, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold stood on her toes to reach the microphone and tell the crowd: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar." The sixth-grader from Harvard, Mass., organized a petition drive at her school against the war that has killed more than 3,000 U.S. servicemembers. More Hollywood celebrities showed up at the demonstration than buttoned-down Washington typically sees in a month. Actor Sean Penn said lawmakers will pay a price in the 2008 elections if they do not take firmer action than to pass a non-binding resolution against the war, the course Congress is now taking. "If they don't stand up and make a resolution as binding as the death toll, we're not going to be behind those politicians," he said. Actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins also spoke. Fonda was a lightning rod in the Vietnam era for her outspoken opposition to that war and her advocacy from Hanoi at the height of that conflict. Sensitive to the old wounds, she made it a point to thank the active-duty servicemembers, veterans and Gold Star mothers who attended the rally. She drew parallels to the Vietnam War, citing "blindness to realities on the ground, hubris ... thoughtlessness in our approach to rebuilding a country we've destroyed." But she noted that this time, veterans, soldiers and their families increasingly and vocally are against the Iraq war. The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, threatened to use congressional spending power to try to stop the war. "George Bush has a habit of firing military leaders who tell him the Iraq war is failing," he said, looking out at the masses. "He can't fire you." Referring to Congress, the Michigan Democrat added: "He can't fire us. "The founders of our country gave our Congress the power of the purse because they envisioned a scenario exactly like we find ourselves in today. Now only is it in our power, it is our obligation to stop Bush." On the stage rested a coffin covered with a U.S. flag and a pair of military boots, symbolizing American war dead. On the Mall stood a large bin filled with tags bearing the names of Iraqis who have died. A small contingent of active-duty service members attended the rally, wearing civilian clothes because military rules forbid them from protesting in uniform. Air Force Staff Sgt. Tassi McKee, 26, an intelligence specialist at Fort Meade, Md., said she joined the Air Force because of patriotism, travel and money for college. "After we went to Iraq, I began to see through the lies," she said. In the crowd, signs recalled the November elections that defeated the Republican congressional majority in part because of President Bush's Iraq policy. "I voted for peace," one said. "I've just gotten tired of seeing widows, tired of seeing dead Marines," said Vincent DiMezza, 32, wearing a dress Marine uniform from his years as a sergeant. A Marine aircraft mechanic from 1997 to 2002, he did not serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. About 40 people staged a counter-protest, including Army Cpl. Joshua Sparling, 25, who lost his leg to a bomb in Iraq. He said the anti-war protesters, especially those who are veterans or who are on active duty, "need to remember the sacrifice we have made and what our fallen comrades would say if they are alive." Bush reaffirmed his commitment to his planned troop increase in a phone conversation Saturday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The president was in Washington for the weekend. He is often is out of town during big protest days. "He understands that Americans want to see a conclusion to the war in Iraq and the new strategy is designed to do just that," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. CONGRESS ACTION ON IRAQ Senate rejects motions for Iraq troop pullout, war's end House rejects setting timetable for troop withdrawl from Iraq Bush rejects call for pull-out House, Senate incumbents weigh Iraq stance Pentagon arms Iraq supporters with rebuttal book Senate approves $94.5B spending bill Opinion: Benedetto predicts Iraq will figure big in fall elections