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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (1292)	10/25/2002 6:56:48 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Respond to of 37549

Canada needs a no-Candu stand Asian Post Vancouver, British Columbia (October 24, 2002) asianpacificpost.com by Asian Pacific News Service You don't have to be a nuclear scientist to deduce that Canada has played a strident role in North Korea's covert march to get nuclear weapons. The full story of how the North Koreans have come this far is not yet clear, but no one doubts that Pakistan played a role, trading its nuclear technology for North Korea's missile-making expertise. And how did Pakistan attain nuclear macho status? Well you can thank Canada's Atomic Energy Corporation Ltd (AECL) - the crown corporation which has sucked up over C$5 billion in taxpayer dollars making Candu nuclear reactors. Pakistan's nuclear research has been under the direction of men like Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed. These fellows got their uranium enrichment expertise courtesy of the Atomic Energy of Canada, and Sultan Mahmood learned his stuff on a Candu reactor near Karachi. Sultan and some 50 leading Pakistani nuclear engineers were also trained in Ontario and New Brunswick. If you believe AECL's assertions that the radioactive plutonium that is the raw material for Pakistan's nuclear bombs did not come from the spent fuel of Candu reactors, you are being taken for a magic carpet ride. And why is Pakistan so gung ho about increasing its nuclear prowess over the last two decades? Well you can thank AECL again for that. Canada had given India a nuclear research reactor and the South Asian behemoth promptly used the plutonium manufactured in the reactor to make a bomb. India then tested the bomb at the infamous Pokhran desert site in 1974 triggering howls of outrage around the world and frightening Pakistan into speeding up its own nuclear program. Canada retaliated by cutting off nuclear assistance to India but by then the country had transferred enough technology to independently build seven Candu 'clones'. In 1998, the Canadian taxpayer funded arms race between Pakistan and India exploded with India detonating five nuclear test bombs prompting Pakistan to explode six of its own. The desperate geniuses at AECL had no inkling of what was to transpire and shake the world. Six months before the explosions AECL officials toured both the South Asian nuclear states trying to drum up business. During the visit, India's senior nuclear officials offered to buy new Candu reactors from Canada. Now we have a defiant North Korea and suspicions that Canada's nuclear secrets may have been compromised by spies from the rogue communist state. And again we have the spectre of AECL over the latest nuclear debacle. David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector, believes North Korea is two years or three years away from manufacturing three weapons a year. That would put North Korea in the position of providing others like Iraq, Syria and Iran with the ultimate weapon within a decade. "It's serious enough that they have to be stopped," Albright said. But despite the dismal track record, AECL continues to naively flirt with dangerous friends pushing Candu sales in China, Indonesia and Thailand. Led by prime minister Jean Chretien, who is a Candu guy himself, AECL is especially focussing its efforts in China - North Korea's best buddy - urging Beijing to buy more Canadian-built nuclear power plants. From a global perspective your tax dollars have contributed to making this world an unsafe place which brings us to the question - should your tax dollars continue to go to AECL, a perennial money loser. Herb Dhaliwal, the new minister in charge of Canada's atomic program now wants a review of AECL to see if taxpayers should continue funding the crown corporation to the tune of $100-million a year. While pocketing the federal largesse, the secretive AECL made a commitment to sell 10 reactors in 10 years. That was in 1995. Since then, despite billions of dollars in bait that AECL has dangled before potential purchasers, only two reactors were sold, both to China. The last hot prospect, Turkey, declined the nuclear option in July 2000 observing that "the world is abandoning nuclear power." Canada's need to follow suit and take a No-Candu stand.