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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (42576)	9/8/2002 11:55:24 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>>Nuclear terrorism a 'near-term threat'- Experts: U.S. must act now By BOB PORT DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER One year after the attacks on New York and Washington, a growing chorus of experts warns that the U.S. should not underestimate the threat of nuclear terrorism. A partly classified report by the National Academy of Sciences declared last month that "clandestine production of special nuclear material by states or terrorist groups ... for use against the United States represents a significant near-term threat to homeland security." The nation's top scientists warned that "theft or diversion of smaller, man-portable weapons" also may be a significant risk. But they stopped short of agreeing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's prediction in May that terrorists will "inevitably get their hands on" a weapon of mass destruction. "Inevitably" is the wrong word, says Lewis Branscomb, the Harvard University physicist who served as chairman of the study. "But the consequences of a fission weapon - even a crude one - are so severe that Americans... should act as though it might happen," he said. "I really hate to use the word 'inevitable,'" said Laura Holgate, former chief of a Pentagon program to secure Soviet nuclear stockpiles in the Clinton administration. "But if we proceed without treating this threat as one that holds the future of the planet, then, yes, you do start to say it may be inevitable." Holgate now works for Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonproliferation charity set up by media tycoon Ted Turner and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn. A dangerous state The world is awash, say experts, in nuclear material - much of it loosely monitored by governments, international agencies or growing numbers of private concerns that oversee nuclear reactors. And that is a dangerous state of affairs. Outside the U.S. and Western Europe, by far the largest stockpiles of weapons-grade nuclear material are in the former Soviet Union, a focus of U.S. security policy for the past decade. Holgate, who often visits Russia, finds some nuclear sites as hardened as the U.S. military's best. Others, she says, invite burglary. The Bush administration is not putting enough resources into securing Soviet nuclear material, Holgate said. Washington spends about $1 billion a year on nuclear security in former Soviet states. Holgate believes $6 billion a year is needed to do the job right. "I'm certain that we could do more," said Paul Bremer, a counterterrorist official under Ronald Reagan and longtime Republican adviser, "but that's a question for Congress." "We think we have a strong program," said National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. "There are times when merely throwing money at a program isn't the answer." Experts cite a number of other disturbing realities: More than 22 tons of highly enriched uranium are controlled by civilians in some 345 aging nuclear power plants and research reactors in as many as 58 countries, presenting countless opportunities for theft. Plutonium is being extracted from spent reactor fuel by Britain, France, Russia, Japan and India for future use, creating colossal stockpiles of bomb-capable, toxic material that cannot be accurately inventoried. Disarmament treaties or agreements have never addressed small tactical nuclear weapons in the arsenals of both Russia and the United States - weapons far more suited to terrorism than missiles. Nuclear security within the borders of sovereign nations is voluntary. Despite the efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is no international law for safeguarding nuclear weapons stockpiles or fuel. Besides "dirty" bombs - crude devices of radioactive material packed with explosives - the nuclear bomb of choice for terrorists is probably a gun-style device like Little Boy, the 1945 Hiroshima bomb. These weapons require 110 pounds of 90% pure radioactive uranium 235, or highly enriched uranium. Little Boy was considered so reliable that it was never tested before it was dropped on Japan. The Manhattan Project adapted an Army-surplus cannon barrel to fire one glob of uranium into another, triggering an atomic blast. Less likely for terrorists are more complex implosion bombs, such as Fat Man, the Nagasaki bomb, a ball of plutonium jacketed by explosives that was first tested at the Trinity site near Alamagordo, N.M. An implosion nuke is so tricky to build that terrorists are unlikely to try. But it requires small amounts of weapons-grade plutonium - 9 pounds, about the size of a baseball - or 25 pounds of highly enriched uranium. What is plutonium? Plutonium is a by-product of the uranium widely used to fuel nuclear power or research reactors. Once separated from spent fuel, plutonium does not require enrichment to be bomb-grade. And lots of plutonium is being processed for fuel in so-called breeder reactors. The amount of weapons-grade plutonium - perfect material for dirty bombs - controlled by civilian interests has outstripped military plutonium stores in the past decade. "Plutonium is still seen as the ideal fuel within the nuclear fraternity," said Paul Leventhal, former president of the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute. "And it's the fuel that will bring down civilization if it falls into the wrong hands." "If we can make sure that doesn't happen, we'll have an excellent chance," said Matthew Bunn, a White House adviser under former President Bill Clinton who is now a senior researcher for Harvard's Managing the Atom project. "There is some material that's been stolen that we don't know about," Bunn said. "We have no evidence yet that any nuclear materials are yet in the hands of terrorists." The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed 14 thefts over the past decade, all originating in the former Soviet Union. None involved enough material, alone or taken together, to make a bomb - until the Chelyabinsk affair. In December 1998, Russian authorities announced they had foiled a plot to steal 41 pounds of "nuclear material" at a weapons plant about 1,000 miles east of Moscow in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural Mountains. Watchdogs at Harvard eventually learned it included enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb. Records recovered in Afghanistan show Al Qaeda leaders have studied how to build nuclear devices. "Those were pretty unsophisticated documents, from discussion with those who have looked at the translations," said Harvard's Bunn. "No evidence of traces of nuclear material were found" in Al Qaeda hideouts, he said. But the Taliban's pre-9/11 hiring of two Russian nuclear scientists and the bellicose statements of an Islamic Pakistani nuclear physicist showed that terrorists can gain access to bombmaking expertise. The greatest threat to the U.S. and its allies is the availability of highly enriched uranium, which is now the focus of U.S. and European nuclear monitoring efforts. Last month, U.S. and Russian forces, in a secret predawn operation with 1,200 Serbian troops, descended on the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Belgrade. Soldiers brandished rifles on rooftops as nearly 6,000 ingots of 90% enriched uranium - 100 pounds - were hauled off. Three trucks sped away on different routes. Two were decoys. The uranium, stockpiled for the former Yugoslavia's A-bomb effort, was flown to Russia. But the raid might not have happened if Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative hadn't put up $5 million to ensure Serbian support. Washington kicked in only $2 million. Two dozen similar raids are in the works. Harvard's Bunn has reported that more than 165 pounds of highly enriched uranium - even more than was secured in Belgrade - is stored at an impoverished research reactor in Ukraine. In Belarus, another ex-Soviet state, an outmoded facility with little security has 660 pounds of enriched uranium - enough to make a half-dozen gun-type atom bombs. Formally, the job of monitoring nuclear material around the globe falls to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, an independent arm of the United Nations. The agency confronts a daunting task. Its budget has remained flat for a decade as the number of sites it must watch - some 900 today - has steadily grown. The agency now has six experts to offer security advice worldwide - thanks to another gift of $1.2 million from Turner. But member nations cannot agree on security rules - armed guards, fencing, locks or employee background checks - for nuclear material inside their borders. Even if the IAEA adopted security requirements, India, Israel and Pakistan have refused to sign the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which is the basis of the agency's powers. Iran and North Korea have evaded full disclosure. Iraq refuses to cooperate altogether. Lengthy process In 1992, the U.S. began paying Russia to dilute its weapons uranium to less than 20% enrichment - good enough to sell as fuel. That process could take 25 years. Holgate, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, is trying to speed up the effort. "I do know people, and I'm one of them, who are up at night worrying about the security of the Russian arsenal," she said. Holgate believes a stolen tactical nuke is as great a risk as an improvised or dirty bomb. Yet, both U.S. and Russian arms negotiators have kept these small nukes off the table. "There is a lot that can be done to improve the situation," Holgate said. "It needs to be done faster. It needs to be done smarter. It needs to be done with a lot more cooperation from both sides."<< nydailynews.com

To: Ilaine who wrote (42576)	9/8/2002 12:50:05 PM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I hope we have seen enough of our children and non-combatants slaughtered by these lunatics to have the national will to be on a perpetual offense. We have had 20+ years of reacting and wishful thinking. Now we have a future full of vigilance and hopefully mostly ruthless proactive destruction of our enemies and those who aid and abet them. They were my peers in the military getting slaughtered in the 1980's. I dont like the world my son's will become young adults in. I hope we value our freedom enough to make the sacrifices we need to now, before the price gets higher and before it is too late to preserve our world for our future generations. If Arabs and Iranians added WMD to their oil assets I think our world we be altered in an intolerable manner.

To: Ilaine who wrote (42576)	9/8/2002 2:36:12 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

Found this link in searches today: NATO report: and Libya is one of the four countries discussed here on this link....Isn't Qaddafi now in line for UN Human Rights head??? This is what they had to say re Libya Sept 1999 (2 years before 9-11): nato-pa.int II. B. LIBYA The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, or Libya as it is known in the West, is a unique nation and a unique case for international relations. Its political system, the Jamahiriya (state of the masses), established in 1977 according to Col Qaddafi's Third International Theory announced in his "Green Book", is a strange mixture of socialist, Islamic and Bedouin theories. Qaddafi presented his Third International Theory as an alternative to "capitalist materialism" and "communist atheism". In fact, the Libyan leader was a leading advocate of Pan-Arabism and saw himself as a revolutionary voice for developing countries and as a defender against Western imperialism and Zionist influences. In 30 years of power, Col Qaddafi has led various unsuccessful attempts to form unions and coalitions with other Arab nations, supported terrorist groups, insurgents and opposition movements in developing countries, and conducted an extended confrontation with the United States and the United Nations. For over 20 years, Libya - whose oil has made it one the richest countries in Africa - has been foremost on the list of countries supporting terrorism. Col Qaddafi spread his revolutionary network to include organisations worldwide: from Nicaragua to Italy, from Japan to Ireland, and from Thailand to Palestine. Libya established terrorist training camps on its soil and sent troops to areas of international conflict. During the Cold War, the country also supplied Soviet weapons to developing countries and subversive groups everywhere. Following Libyan involvement in the murderous attacks at the Vienna and Rome airports in 1985, the United States imposed economic sanctions and called upon other countries to join in this policy. Col Qaddafi retaliated by bombing American targets in Europe, and in 1986 US aircraft attacked government and military installations in Benghazi and Tripoli. In 1991 and 1992, United Nations sanctions were imposed on Libya for its involvement in the bombings of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people in 1988, and of the French UTA flight 772 over the Ténéré desert (Niger), resulting in 170 casualties in 1989. Libya had refused for years to surrender two of its agents accused of the Lockerbie bombing, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, claiming that they would not receive a fair trial. Recently, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to allow the two Libyans to be prosecuted in The Hague by Scottish judges. After a personal visit to Col Qaddafi paid by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, in December 1998, the Security Council's voted to suspend sanctions once the two Libyans had been brought to justice. On 5 April 1999 the two men flew to The Hague on a UN plane to be tried presumably starting February 2000. In July 1999, The UN Security Council has made it clear that the lifting of the sanctions must be contingent on Libya's full compliance with the verdict of the trial and its renunciation of terrorism. Meanwhile, the French government has dealt quietly with the UTA flight affair. For years, relations between the two countries were strained. Then in 1996 Col Qaddafi wrote personally to President Chirac assuring Libyan authorities' co-operation to the French investigators. Following the visit to Libya of the judges in charge of the inquiry, the French foreign ministry wrote to the United Nations that, with regard to the economic sanctions imposed on Libya, French demands had to be considered "essentially satisfied". In March 1999, six Libyans were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for causing the UTA bombing. Hoping to get out of its remaining diplomatic difficulties, Libya offered a $40m compensation to the victims' families, who in response have sued personally Col Qaddafi for aiding intentional homicide ("complicité d'homicide volontaire"). Apart from the legal outcome of the two bombings, it should be noted that the economic and political sanctions imposed on Libya, including an air embargo, arms sales and certain financial and travel restrictions, proved effective in curtailing the country's role in international terrorism. Since the imposition of sanctions, Libya has gradually abandoned involvement in terrorist actions and suppressed the activities of the groups operating under its auspices. What the regime has not abandoned, however, is its harsh repression of opponents and dissidents, at home and abroad. Since the early 1990s, besides the continued dissent within the armed forces and the destabilising effects of tribal rivalries, the Islamist opposition has become the most dangerous threat to the Qaddafi regime. During the last three years, many sources have reported clashes between Islamist groups and government forces, especially in Cyrenaica, the eastern part of the country. This region, home of the powerful Sanusi tribe, has been historically opposed to the regime, which has its stronghold in the western part, Tripolitania. Few details are available about the Islamist opposition, and the degree of popular support it enjoys, but the most important seems to be the Militant Islamic Group, which is believed to have links with the Algerian GIA. Apparently, the resources of the Islamists are limited, while the regime's repression strategy is extremely effective. Many human rights organisations have denounced the Libyan government for arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill treatment, deaths in custody, disappearances and possible extrajudicial executions. UN embargoes and the unsettled domestic situation have crippled Col Qaddafi's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and missile capabilities. During the Cold War, all Libyan weapons relied on Soviet equipment, technology and expertise. Both its nuclear and biological weapons programmes, which have always remained at the early research and development stages, lack adequate scientific and technical bases. Only its chemical warfare programme made any demonstrable progress in developing facilities for large-scale indigenous production. In the 1980s, Libya produced - and used in Chad during 1986-87 - significant quantities of blister and nerve agents, and still possesses facilities capable of producing chemical agents. With regard to means of delivery, Tripoli continues to maintain a SCUD B missile force, although ageing and suffering from maintenance problems. So far, efforts to acquire the North Korean No Dong missiles have been unsuccessful: such a missile would allow Libya to threaten Egypt, Israel, NATO countries in southern Europe and US forces in the Mediterranean. Libya's relations with its Maghrebi neighbours have been irregular and inconsistent. Although a member of the Union of the Arab Maghreb (UAM), it has always showed little interest in tightening the bonds with the other members (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania). However, even before the suspension of the UN sanctions, relations with Tunisia (which provided Libya transit facilities) have become friendlier. Relations with Algeria have also improved over the last three years, focusing on co-operation in the struggle against militant Islamist groups. Moreover, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have all supported Libya at the United Nations in its efforts to lift the embargo. Things are likely to improve in the future, because all of Libya's neighbours, while still extremely suspicious of the Qaddafi regime, are apparently more concerned about its possible collapse, which could represent a real challenge for the stability of the entire Maghreb. Libya had already engaged in the improvement of its international position before the suspension of the sanctions. The country's ailing economy was certainly a strong motive behind the regime's new attitude. A turning point came already in July 1998, with a meeting in Rome between the Italian and Libyan foreign ministers. The Italian government subsequently declared the normalisation of relations between the two nations and its effort to bring Libya back within the international community provided it adhered to UN resolutions. Other European countries keen to expand the already considerable oil and gas imports from Tripoli welcomed this normalisation. With sanctions suspended, oil companies are now ready to sign new contracts, while the Libyan government is working to change the restrictive laws on investment in this sector. Libya also plans to build more than 2,000 km of railway along the coast and inland and to revive its national carrier by buying aircraft from the Airbus consortium. On 15-16 April 1999, during a Euro-Mediterranean meeting in Stuttgart, Libya was promised membership of the EU Mediterranean co-operation programme as soon as the United Nations lifted all sanctions against it.