Global Security Newswire: By National Journal

    Issue for Friday, March 5, 2004

    Week in Review

    Search and View Past Issues

  terrorism  
U.N. Security Council Considers Plan for Reforming Counterterrorism Committee Full Story
Recent Stories

  wmd  
Responders Need More Anti-WMD Gear, Researchers Say Full Story
U.S. Officials Testify on Prewar Iraq Intelligence Full Story
Recent Stories

  nuclear  
Malaysia Resists Additional Nuclear Safeguards Full Story
Powell Says U.S. Remains Patient on North Korea Full Story
Straw Praises Pakistani Cooperation in Investigation of International Nuclear Network Full Story
Moscow Treaty Implementation Group Has Yet to Meet Full Story
Recent Stories

  biological  
U.S. Intelligence Never Met With Source of Iraqi Mobile Laboratory Claim Full Story
U.S. Post Offices Saw 20,000 Powder Scares Since 2001 Full Story
New Board to Advise U.S. Scientists on Dual-Use Research Full Story
Recent Stories

  chemical  
Libya Submits Chemical Weapons Declaration Full Story
Weapons Incinerator Exceeded Allowed PCB Levels Full Story
Newport Chemical Depot VX Byproduct Can Be Shipped Off-Site for Treatment, Company Says Full Story
Recent Stories

  missile1  
Russian Experts Aided Iraqi Missile Projects in Violation of U.N. Sanctions, U.S. Officials Say Full Story
Recent Stories

 

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The president strongly believes that a diplomatic solution is possible, and we are not in any urgency to achieve that solution.
—U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, rebutting reports that the Bush administration was losing patience with diplomatic efforts to end the North Korean nuclear standoff.


Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, shown with fellow National Front Coalition members yesterday, met with a U.S. official this week, but refused to commit to strengthen Kuala Lumpur’s nuclear oversight (AFP Photo/Jimin Lai).
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, shown with fellow National Front Coalition members yesterday, met with a U.S. official this week, but refused to commit to strengthen Kuala Lumpur’s nuclear oversight (AFP Photo/Jimin Lai).
Malaysia Resists Additional Nuclear Safeguards

Malaysia today said it would not sign the Additional Protocol to its nuclear safeguards agreement, but it promised the United States it will continue to crack down on nuclear trafficking after a recently disclosed black market scandal, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 3).

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi today confirmed that he had met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf, who traveled to Malaysia on Tuesday in response to the scandal, but said Wolf did not demand that Malaysia enact “strict controls.”..Full Story

Libya Submits Chemical Weapons Declaration

Libya’s chemical weapons program has 23 metric tons of mustard agent, one inactive production site and two storage facilities, according to an initial Libyan declaration described today by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (see GSN, March 4)...Full Story

Powell Says U.S. Remains Patient on North Korea

Responding to media reports, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday denied that the United States is “losing patience” with North Korea, CNN.com reported (see GSN, March 4)...Full Story

Current Issue Friday, March 5, 2004
terrorism

U.N. Security Council Considers Plan for Reforming Counterterrorism Committee

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — The chairman of the U.N. Security Council’s Counterterrorism Committee (CTC) presented a proposal to the council yesterday to revamp the workings of the committee after indicating in the most recent report on the committee’s operations that the effort to crack down on international terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is “encountering serious problems” (see GSN, April 7, 2003).

“The goal of the revitalization is to provide the CTC with the means to become more operational, more proactive and more visible,” said Spanish Ambassador Inocencio Arias.

He added that reform is “urgent and absolutely necessary to strengthen the fight against terrorism.”

In a paper presented to the council, Arias wrote that the revitalization “must be understood as a way to consolidate what has already been achieved and to intensify the CTC’s and the Security Council’s work in the field.” The reform is meant to accommodate the CTC’s shifting role from passively monitoring compliance with council requirements to actively judging that compliance.

The proposals had been worked out over several months among the council members.

Currently, CTC is composed of council members and chaired by a council ambassador, with a small technical support team. Practical matters, including translating all national reports into all official U.N. languages, is done by the U.N. Secretariat.

Under the reform plan, a “counterterrorism executive directorate” would be established, headed by an executive director — who would be appointed by the secretary general — and composed of council members, Secretariat staff and an expanded team of technical experts. The team would include experts on issues such as customs, international financial systems, drug trafficking, human rights and weapons of mass destruction. The new structure would have a “sunset” clause of Dec. 31, 2007, meaning it would automatically expire if the council does not vote to extend it.

The CTC was set up under Resolution 1373, which was unanimously adopted less than two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The CTC’s mandate is to monitor states’ compliance with the multiple anti-terrorism measures in the resolution, such as denying safe haven for terrorists and cracking down on money-laundering, and to assist governments in complying with the resolution.

In his most recent report on governments’ compliance with Resolution 1373, Arias wrote that some countries still have difficulties in closing down financial systems used by terrorists, breaking the links between terrorism and organized crime and implementing and enforcing national anti-terrorism legislation. The report also said nations need to do more to enforce international controls over weapons of mass destruction and other weapons useful for terrorists.

“From all the above issues it is clear that the implementation of Resolution 1373 is encountering serious problems, both at the states and at the counterterrorism committee levels,” Arias wrote. The revitalization plan stems from this analysis.

Both council and noncouncil delegates speaking during yesterday’s debate said the reform was needed and welcomed various aspects of the plan, such as strengthening the links between the committee and the Secretariat and ensuring that the new structure would have a “sunset” clause, but there were also concerns that more needed to be done to assist poorer countries in implementing the complicated and often expensive mandates of the resolution and to reach out to countries not on the council.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte stressed the importance of getting all U.N. members involved in counterterrorism efforts. “The council and its Counterterrorism Committee must never forget that so long as a few states are not acting quickly enough to raise their capacity to fight terrorism, we all remain vulnerable,” he said. “The Security Council must remain at the forefront of the international community’s campaign to rid the world of the scourge of terrorism. To do so, it must act with a renewed sense of urgency and commitment to a sustained and determined effort to defeat this global scourge.”

German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said reform “must contribute to further enhance the CTC’s legitimacy” in the eyes of all states and help deepen the dialogue between the council and states. “The quality, impartiality and intensity of this dialogue is unprecedented in U.N. history and remains a valuable asset we can build upon,” he said.

Some developing states were more cautious, citing not only the burdens placed on the poorer countries but also their continuing worry that the council’s counterterrorism efforts do not focus enough on root causes of terrorism.

Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram said the proposals should “focus on substance rather than form” and address the “current and mutating nature of the terrorist threat by also focusing on information-sharing, prevention of terrorist financing, and capacity-building within states to combat terrorism and extremism,” as well as addressing the root causes, including poverty, occupation and extremism.

Several delegates welcomed the idea that the revamped committee would work with the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. The lack of references to human rights protections in Resolution 1373 has always been a point of contention.


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wmd

Responders Need More Anti-WMD Gear, Researchers Say

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Anti-WMD gear should be standard equipment for more emergency responders around the United States, according to researchers here.

Emergency personnel responding to biological, chemical and other incidents would benefit if ambulances more often carried personal protective equipment, decontamination gear and antidotes, Rhode Island Disaster Initiative researchers found in a series of incident simulations that ended in late January.

“Disaster response comes in an ambulance, not in a trailer. If you have to wait for somebody’s beeper to go off to go get a truck to drive to some warehouse, or the back of some fire station, and hook a truck up to a trailer and bring it to the scene to start your official disaster system, it’s too late,” said Rhode Island Hospital physician and Brown Medical School professor Kenneth Williams, one of three principal investigators for the federally funded initiative.

“The things that people do in disaster response need to be a scale-up of the things they do every day, which means the things they do every day need to be disaster-flexible. So they need to have PPE [personal protective equipment] immediately available to them, they need to have decon immediately available to them, they need to have antidotes immediately available to them, and they need to be thinking about this stuff and be aware on every call,” Williams said in an interview this week in the group’s offices.

Seeking to determine to what extent giving first responders a minimal amount of specialized equipment and training would improve WMD victims’ chances of survival, the researchers observed the performances of real emergency medical technicians in highly realistic simulations. The scenario used was an explosion in a pediatrician’s office of a bomb containing what Williams would identify only as “a WMD agent.”

The simulations were one phase of a multipart study that also included a statewide vulnerability assessment and monitoring of real incidents that took place during the study period, notably a February 2003 fire at a rock concert in West Warwick, R.I., that made news around the world. Initial results are not slated for release until May, but Williams previewed the findings for Global Security Newswire.

Besides a need for more widespread access to anti-WMD gear, Williams said, the researchers found that responders without personal protective equipment tend nevertheless to enter rooms where dangerous substances are present, placing their own effectiveness and lives in immediate danger; that the emergency response network in Rhode Island, and presumably in other parts of the United States, “has no surge capacity,” indicating a possible need for “better support for ambulances and reimbursement for ambulance care;” that triage plans used widely in less realistic drills are generally shunned in high-fidelity drills and in real incidents; and that, although oral communication and stethoscope use are difficult for a responder wearing Level C personal protective equipment, “It is possible to perform more tasks in Level C PPE than we thought was likely.”

In simulations, the investigators compared the performances of control groups of emergency medical technicians with standard training and equipment to those of groups that had received two hours of special training and extra equipment. Some victims in the simulations were professional actors, while others were highly realistic mannequins programmed to replicate the body’s physiological response to the “WMD agent.”

“As far as we know,” Williams said, a systematic study of high-realism simulations using multiple victims and responders has “never been done before in the civilian world.”

“Lots of people have done disaster drills with … 50 or 100 victims. We did what would be a microcosm of a larger disaster, but to do it in high fidelity is relatively unheard of,” he said.

The study’s impetus, Williams said, was the notion that disaster planning and disaster response “are very different things.”

“What the plans call for and what people actually do are frequently two different things, and that either means the plans are great, and there’s a training and equipment deficit, or the plans are wrong, and we need to look at what people are actually doing and derive better plans from what works,” Williams said.

The timing of the project ― federal funding for the initiative was released Sept. 4, 2001 ― has created levels of interest and urgency the researchers had not expected.

“At that time, we were planning on a nice, careful, three- or four-year research project which we knew was going to be important at some point. The next week, everybody obviously wanted to know what the results were,” Williams said.

“Because it takes a year or two to set one of these kinds of things up, at least,” he said, “it put us two years ahead of everybody. Everybody wanted data on WMD.  We were poised to start collecting it when everybody else was saying, ‘Let’s do it; let’s have a project.’”


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U.S. Officials Testify on Prewar Iraq Intelligence


The heads of several U.S. intelligence agencies testified yesterday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as part of the panel’s inquiry into prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq, according to Reuters (see GSN, March 4).

The committee heard from the directors of the CIA, National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Reuters reported. “Virtually every concern that you ever read about or heard about was brought up,” said committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).

The committee also asked the intelligence officials as to what “can be done to fix any potential failures that might have taken place,” said Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the top Democrat on the committee.

CIA Director George Tenet is expected to testify again before the committee before it completes its report, expected next month, Reuters reported (Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters, March 4).

Meanwhile, Senators Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) have called for the Senate intelligence panel’s inquiry to also examine how Democrats used the same prewar assessments on Iraq that were available to the Bush administration, according to the Washington Times.

“We believe it is fair to ask whether those Democrat senators now criticizing the way the public case for war was made, have themselves met the standard to which they seek to hold administration officials on the ‘use’ of intelligence,” Kyl and Santorum wrote in a letter to Roberts (Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, March 5).


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nuclear

Malaysia Resists Additional Nuclear Safeguards


Malaysia today said it would not sign the Additional Protocol to its nuclear safeguards agreement, but it promised the United States it will continue to crack down on nuclear trafficking after a recently disclosed black market scandal, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 3).

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi today confirmed that he had met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf, who traveled to Malaysia on Tuesday in response to the scandal, but said Wolf did not demand that Malaysia enact “strict controls.”

“He is aware that we were already looking into it, even before this,” Abdullah said. “Of course, we need time. It’s not something that can easily be resolved,” he added.

Abdullah said results of the local police investigation into the incident would be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“They will scrutinize it,” he said. “They are not fools. They cannot be misled, he added (Patrick McDowell, Associated Press, March 5).

The scandal has become a central issue in Malaysia’s March 21 general elections, which the prime minister was under pressure to call, AFX News reported today.

Abdul Hadi Awang, leader of Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party, today accused the United States of treating Abdullah too lightly and of collaborating with the current government in a cover-up.

“I see this as a political gimmick by [U.S. President George W.] Bush,” he said. “He has to protect governments that sympathize with the U.S. and, until now, the [ruling] National Front is showing a positive stance in implementing U.S. policies,” he added.

Abdul Hadi’s party is the main challenger to the National Front, which has been a major ally within the Islamic world in the U.S. war on terror. The Islamic Party aims to turn Malaysia into a theocratic state, according to AFX (AFX News, March 5).


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Powell Says U.S. Remains Patient on North Korea


Responding to media reports, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday denied that the United States is “losing patience” with North Korea, CNN.com reported (see GSN, March 4).

“The president strongly believes that a diplomatic solution is possible, and we are not in any urgency to achieve that solution,” Powell said (Elise Labott, CNN.com, March 4)

Meanwhile, China urged the six countries involved in nuclear disarmament negotiations with North Korea to avoid heightening tensions prior to the next round of talks, Agence France-Presse reported today.

“The parties should maintain a peaceful environment for the process of talks and avoid words or actions that might intensify differences or provoke other parties,” said Wang Yi, Chinese vice foreign minister and chief delegate to last week’s talks (Agence France-Presse, March 5).

Joint North-South Project

In Seoul, North and South Korea announced today an agreement to build their first joint industrial project beginning this summer, the Associated Press reported.

South Korean officials said they plan to build hundreds of light manufacturing facilities in a town just north of the Demilitarized Zone, where they can hire North Korean workers. However, construction will depend on a resolution to the nuclear standoff, according to South Korean officials.

“It will be difficult to conduct any major economic exchanges with North Korea until the nuclear problem has been resolved,” South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said yesterday (Sang-Hun Choe, Associated Press, March 5).


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Straw Praises Pakistani Cooperation in Investigation of International Nuclear Network


The United Kingdom is satisfied with Pakistan’s cooperation in investigating the international nuclear network revealed by the reported confession of top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday (see GSN, March 4).

Over the past two days, Straw has met with several top officials while in Pakistan, including President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri. During a press conference in Islamabad, Straw said he was pleased by results of the talks and that he had “full and through” discussions on nonproliferation with Musharraf.

As for the Pakistani scientists believed to have been involved in covert transfers of nuclear technology and information, “What happens to those involved is a matter for the Pakistani authorities and not for us,” Straw said.  “But I am satisfied with the progress the Pakistani authorities are making and the cooperation, which they are providing to the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Appearing with Straw, Kasuri called for Pakistan, along with India and Israel, to be recognized as a nuclear-weapons state. He also said Pakistan plans to enact comprehensive export control legislation.

“It will show Pakistan’s seriousness to address the question of proliferation,” Kasuri said (The News/BBC Monitoring, March 5).


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Moscow Treaty Implementation Group Has Yet to Meet


U.S. and Russian officials have not yet convened a commission intended to help implement their most recent strategic arms treaty, despite treaty language calling for the commission to meet twice a year, Arms Control Today reported this month (see GSN, Feb. 2).

The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty took effect last June and calls for a Bilateral Implementation Commission to meet at least twice a year to discuss issues related to the treaty, which requires reductions of deployed strategic nuclear weapons by the end of 2012 (see GSN, June 2, 2003).

The U.S. State Department previously said the commission would hold its first meeting by the end of 2003, Arms Control Today reported, but that did not occur. Senior U.S. and Russian officials discussed the matter during a late January meeting in Moscow, but did not schedule a start date.

Last month, the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control said the United States “is prepared” to hold commission meetings, but “no issues have arisen that require a meeting now.”

Russian media reports, on the other hand, have suggested that commission meetings have been delayed by U.S.-Russian disagreements (Arms Control Today, March 2004).


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biological

U.S. Intelligence Never Met With Source of Iraqi Mobile Laboratory Claim


The Bush administration’s claim that prewar Iraq had developed mobile biological weapons laboratories was mainly based on information from an Iraqi defector who was never questioned directly by U.S. intelligence agents, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 25).

In a February 2003 speech before the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said an Iraqi chemical engineer who had defected provided descriptions of the mobile facilities capable of producing biological weapons. That engineer, though, never had contact with U.S. intelligence, and instead provided his information through a foreign intelligence service, CIA officials said. U.S. analysts did not know the engineer’s name prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and relied solely on foreign officials to support his credibility, according to a former CIA employee and other sources.

U.S. officials are now trying to interview the engineer, but the foreign intelligence service that provided his information has refused to produce him, sources said. There is additional concern because U.S. intelligence officials have learned that the chemical engineer is related to a senior official in the Iraqi National Congress, a former Iraqi opposition group that has come under increasing criticism for providing inaccurate information on prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts, the Post reported.

In his U.N. presentation, Powell also cited an Iraqi major, who had defected and was provided to the United States by the Iraqi National Congress, as supporting the chemical engineer’s claims, according to the Post. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had previously “red-flagged” the major as providing questionable information on Iraqi mobile biological facilities, but agency analysts did not relay their cautionary assessment, the Post reported.

CIA Director George Tenet is expected to be questioned today about the prewar claims of Iraqi mobile biological facilities during an appearance before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Post reported (see related GSN story, today; Walter Pincus, Washington Post, March 5).


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U.S. Post Offices Saw 20,000 Powder Scares Since 2001


U.S. Post offices have reported more than 20,000 cases of suspicious powder found in packages and letters since the 2001 anthrax attacks, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, March 3).

The vast majority of the cases have been false alarms, raised over substances from the mundane — dust, talc and soap — to the more exotic — powdered alfredo sauce, pudding mix and ground lentils.

“A person will see something on a machine, the floor, a case, leaking out of an envelope or box,” said Patrick Donahoe, the U.S. Postal Service’s chief operation officer. “They have been instructed, if they see something like that to consider it dangerous,” he said.

Donahoe said there is no pattern to the false alarms, but more of the incidents have occurred in the East than in the West, perhaps because the anthrax attacks occurred in East Coast cities and workers in that region are more sensitive to such events occurring again.

Officials said they were unable to estimate the costs of investigating suspicious powder incidents, but postal inspector Molly McMinn said that responding to false alarms drained postal resources (Associated Press/USA Today, March 4).


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New Board to Advise U.S. Scientists on Dual-Use Research

By Marina Malenic
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration yesterday announced the creation of a national scientific council to advise scientists on preventing sensitive biological research from falling into the hands of terrorists (see GSN, Sept. 5, 2003).

“The very same tools developed to better the health and condition of humankind can also be used for its destruction,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson yesterday.

In addition to its advisory role, the 25-member National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity would develop a voluntary code of conduct for scientists engaged in biological research. The board would also set guidelines for identification of research that might need additional security and prepare educational material on biosecurity.

A panel of experts at the National Academy of Sciences recommended in October that an advisory board be created. Members cited concerns about the potential misuse of the “tools, technology or potential knowledge base of research for offensive military or terrorist purposes” (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2003).

The new initiative would not directly regulate scientific research, said John Gordon, President George W. Bush’s special assistant for homeland security.

“Our response must be carefully measured lest we do more harm than good in the name of biosecurity, and lest we somehow stifle the needed research that is so important to all of us,” he told Voice of America news yesterday. “Heavy-handed government regulation isn’t the answer, but I think there is a very appropriate government role,” Gordon added.

The board’s creation was a “step in the right direction,” Gigi Kwik, professor of medicine at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told Global Security Newswire. She added that the advisory and exploratory role of the board is appropriate.

“HHS appropriately did not make this a regulatory directive,” Kwik said. “Science does not work well with top-down regulation, particularly this very gray area of dual-use research,” she added.

Kwik also said decisions about what types of research to pursue and how to pursue them are best left to local institutions within the scientific community.

“Scientists listen to and respect their institutional leaders, and one of the most important things this board can do is to establish a good relationships with scientific community and to develop a culture that is good for both science and for national security,” she said.


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chemical

Libya Submits Chemical Weapons Declaration


Libya’s chemical weapons program has 23 metric tons of mustard agent, one inactive production site and two storage facilities, according to an initial Libyan declaration described today by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (see GSN, March 4).

No filled chemical munitions have been found in Libya, said the agency, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In addition to the declaration, Libyan officials submitted a plan for the destruction of their chemical weapons and related facilities, the OPCW said. The organization’s executive council will review the plan at its next session, scheduled to begin March 23.

In a brief statement, OPCW Executive Director Rogelio Pfirter praised the progress Libya has made in eliminating its chemical weapons program.

“By voluntarily submitting a full and accurate declaration that will be carefully scrutinized by all states parties, Libya is fully complying with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. This is good for Libya, the region and the international community since it strengthens this multilateral disarmament regime and represents a tangible step towards the ultimate elimination of these weapons of mass destruction,” Pfirter said (OPCW release, March 5).


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Weapons Incinerator Exceeded Allowed PCB Levels


An incinerator at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama exceeded air pollution limits during trials last year, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, March 4).

Designed to destroy aging chemical weapons, the incinerator has been used since August to eliminate M55 rockets containing sarin nerve agent and small amounts of PCBs.

Westinghouse, the company that operates the incinerator, released the test results yesterday but said the emissions were within safety limits. A company spokesman did not know what actions would be taken as a result of the new data.

“We really don’t know how it’s going to impact the program at this point,” said spokesman Donovan Mager.

PCBs were once regularly used in electrical insulation, but were banned in the 1970s due to fears over a possible link with cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency developed standards for their use and destruction.

PCBs were manufactured in Anniston for decades, and the city has a history of PCB contamination.

Earlier this week, the Army and EPA met with Anniston community group members to discuss the findings. David Baker, president of Community Against Pollution, said he is not concerned about the news.

“I’m not afraid of the release of PCBs out there,” he said. “We’re accustomed to sitting in it all day long in a sense,” he added (Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle, March 4).


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Newport Chemical Depot VX Byproduct Can Be Shipped Off-Site for Treatment, Company Says


DuPont has determined that the byproduct from the destruction of VX stockpiles at the U.S. Army’s Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana can be safely transported and disposed of at a facility in New Jersey, Today’s Sunbeam reported today (see GSN, Dec. 19, 2003).

The company said that hydrolysate, which is created when VX is treated through neutralization, can be safely disposed of at the Chambers Works’ Secure Environmental Treatment Unit in Pennsville Township. DuPont has also said that the byproduct can be safely shipped from the Newport depot to the New Jersey facility.

“There is no question that we can safely transport and treat this wastewater,” SET engineer Todd Owens said yesterday. “Through our reports, we certainly feel the assessments conclusively indicate we can do this project,” he said (Tara Grassia, Today’s Sunbeam, March 5).

Meanwhile, the Army is seeking to modify an environmental permit to allow contractors to store materials used in the neutralization process at the Newport depot in a warehouse currently approved to store hazardous waste, according to the Associated Press. A public hearing on the proposal has been scheduled for next week (Associated Press, March 5).


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missile1

Russian Experts Aided Iraqi Missile Projects in Violation of U.N. Sanctions, U.S. Officials Say


Russian engineers working for a private company secretly aided former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in developing prohibited ballistic missiles, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 31).

U.S. investigators working in postwar Iraq have learned that Russian engineers helped Iraq in its attempts to develop missiles capable of traveling beyond the U.N.-allowed range of 150 kilometers, according to U.S. officials. The Russian engineers worked on Iraqi-related projects in both Baghdad and Moscow and some were in Iraq as recently as 2001, according to people familiar with intelligence on the issue. 

Any work on such missiles violated U.N. sanctions against Iraq, according to the Times.

Questions have been raised as to whether Russian officials knew of the engineers’ involvement in Iraq missile projects because some of the engineers had previously worked for a Russian aerospace design center, according to the Times. A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington denied any knowledge of the allegations.

“The U.S. has not presented any evidence of Russian involvement,” embassy spokesman Yevgeny Khorishko said (James Risen, New York Times, March 5).

Iranian Missiles Had Russian Gear, U.S. Official Says

Meanwhile, the United States has learned that Iran developed ballistic missiles using Russian-made components, U.S. Undersecretary of State Stephen Rademaker said.

In an interview published yesterday in the Russkii Kurier, Rademaker said the United States learned that some Iranian short- and medium-range missiles are equipped with “Russian gear.” Rademaker also said that while Russian officials told him that Russia does not proliferate missile technologies, “I consider the matter open all the same” (Vitaly Strugovets, Russkii Kurier/Defense and Security, March 5).

 


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