Technicians work yesterday at Iran’s Isfahan nuclear facility, where they removed IAEA seals and prepared to resume uranium conversion activities (Getty Images/Behrouz Mehri). Iran Removes IAEA Seals at Isfahan Nuclear Facility Iran today removed International Atomic Energy Agency seals at its Isfahan nuclear facility, making it possible for uranium conversion work to resume at full capacity, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Aug. 9)...Full Story

Washington, D.C., Chemical-Train Ban Remains on Hold; Other Cities’ Efforts Advance By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Efforts to ban certain rail shipments of toxic chemicals are moving forward in some U.S. cities despite a lengthy court battle that has put on hold a ban the District of Columbia enacted in February (see GSN, May 17)...Full Story

U.S. Unsure if Deal With North Korea Possible U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the Bush administration’s point man on the North Korea nuclear negotiations, said yesterday it remained unclear whether an agreement on Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions could be reached in the near future, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Aug. 9)...Full Story

	Wednesday, August 10, 2005

San Francisco Seeks Boost in Transit Security Funds Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco is seeking up to $250 million in federal funds for security enhancements, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today (see GSN, Aug. 5). Rapid Transit General Manager Tom Margro said the money would be used to hire more transit police officers, train additional bomb-sniffing dogs, improve video surveillance, and invest in technology to detect explosives and biological, chemical and radiological agents. “We are actively searching for more money,” Margro said, adding that transit Police Chief Gary Gee is lobbying the Homeland Security Department for additional funds this week (Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 10). Back to top

Iran Removes IAEA Seals at Isfahan Nuclear Facility Iran today removed International Atomic Energy Agency seals at its Isfahan nuclear facility, making it possible for uranium conversion work to resume at full capacity, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Aug. 9). “We have removed the seals, the Isfahan conversion facility is fully operational,” the deputy head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, Mohammad Saeedi, told AFP (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 10 The agency has recessed a specially Board of Governors meeting on Iran until tomorrow, as diplomats today continued closed-door discussions of a European Union draft resolution calling on Iran to reinstate its nuclear freeze, AFP reported. “It’s off,” IAEA spokesman Peter Rickwood said, referring to the board meeting. The diplomats “just need more time,” he said. Nonaligned Movement countries on the board “do not want a resolution on Iran,” according to a diplomat close to the agency.  The bloc instead prefers a simple statement from the board’s chairman, the diplomat said, while Western countries “feel the credibility of the board is at stake because Iran has ignored so many of the board’s resolutions” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 10). Diplomats said yesterday that China and Russia, which each have veto authority on the U.N. Security Council, are unlikely to support tough sanctions against Tehran if the nuclear case goes before the body, Reuters reported. “There are countries that would oppose any kind of sanctions, and so it won’t fly. It will simply not fly,” said one council member. “If you have one or two veto-power countries saying no, how can you expect anything to happen?” The council might, however, support a softer rebuke, such as a travel ban on Iranian officials or a critical statement of some kind, diplomats said (Irwin Arieff, Reuters, Aug. 9). U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday he was not anxious to see Iran taken before the Security Council, noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had indicated a willingness to continue negotiations with the European powers, the Associated Press reported. “The man said he wanted to negotiate,” Bush said, adding that, if a diplomatic solution is not forthcoming, U.N. sanctions are “a potential consequence” (Deb Riechmann, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 9). Meanwhile, Russia yesterday called on Iran to halt fuel cycle work “without delay,” AFP reported. “We are convinced that the situation that has arisen now has not gone beyond the point of no return. With goodwill it can be corrected,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 9). French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said yesterday that the EU diplomatic effort with Iran could still continue, AFP reported. “We are still holding out our hand,” he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 9). Back to top       U.S. Unsure if Deal With North Korea Possible U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the Bush administration’s point man on the North Korea nuclear negotiations, said yesterday it remained unclear whether an agreement on Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions could be reached in the near future, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Aug. 9). “If we don’t get a deal, it won’t be because we haven’t tried,” Hill said. He added that participants in the six-nation talks might meet for informal dialogue prior to the next round, scheduled to begin the week of Aug. 29. That could include bilateral meetings of U.S. and North Korean officials, Hill said. Hill said he could not tell during the recent 13-day negotiating session whether North Korean leaders are sincerely reconciled to relinquishing the nation’s nuclear weapons program. “It’s hard to say,” Hill said. “There were moments when I really thought they were and there were moments when I really thought they weren’t.” “Based on what the [North Korean] negotiators were telling us, it’s a finite number of issues that separate us,” Hill said. “It sounded a little worse right as the negotiations closed because they began to put things on the table which frankly had been resolved, and I’m not too concerned about those things” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 9). Chief North Korean negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said yesterday that Washington must accept his country’s right to a nuclear energy program, the New York Times reported. North Korea’s “stand on the nuclear issue is very clear,” Kim said. “Now it’s up to the U.S. to change its policy” (Joel Brinkley, New York Times, Aug. 10). North Korea and the United States must be flexible in the next round of negotiations, Seoul’s top envoy to the talks said yesterday. “You just cannot insist, ‘My position has already been set, so you change your position,’” Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told MBC radio. He said the last round of discussions had been “too short to wipe out uncertainty in the future and distrust” between the two countries, but added that those talks “laid the basic grounds for producing an agreement, rather than just failed to produce one” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 9). South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun today asked his country’s nuclear negotiators to hold bilateral discussions with representatives from other nations during the recess, AP reported (Ji-Soo Kim, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 10). Back to top       Australia, China to Begin Uranium Sale Negotiations Australia said yesterday that any agreement in planned talks to supply China with uranium would include provisions restricting Beijing from using the material to create nuclear weapons, the Financial Times reported (see GSN, July 25). “The agreement will establish safeguards arrangements to ensure Australian uranium supplied to China is used exclusively for peaceful purposes,” said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Any uranium sales pact would be expected to follow protocols outlined in a 1985 deal between China and the United States that requires U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing for sales and that the uranium is used only for civilian projects (Tim Johnston, Financial Times, Aug. 10). Back to top

Al-Qaeda Building Online Training Library The al-Qaeda terrorist organization and related groups are constructing an online library of training materials that includes biological weapons recipes, the Washington Post reported Sunday (see GSN, Jan. 14). The number of radical Islamic Web sites has exploded since Sept. 11, 2001, said Gabriel Weimann, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel. Weimann began tracking such sites eight years ago, when he found a total of 12. He is now following more than 4,500, the Post reported. “They are all linked indirectly through association of belief, belonging to some community. The Internet is the network that connects them all,” Weimann said. Online topics range from producing the toxin ricin to using commercial chemicals to make a bomb, according to the Post. One 15-page Web document in Arabic, titled “Biological Weapons,” describes “how the pneumonic plague could be made into a biological weapon,” from just a small sample of a virus culture, according to a translation by Rebecca Givner-Forbes, an analyst at the Terrorism Research Center.  The manual uses information obtained from World War II-era U.S. and Japanese biological weapons programs and demonstrates “how to inject carrier animals, like rats, with the virus and how to extract microbes from infected blood … and how to dry them so that they can be used with an aerosol delivery system” (Coll/Glasser, Washington Post, Aug. 7). Back to top

Washington, D.C., Chemical-Train Ban Remains on Hold; Other Cities’ Efforts Advance By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Efforts to ban certain rail shipments of toxic chemicals are moving forward in some U.S. cities despite a lengthy court battle that has put on hold a ban the District of Columbia enacted in February (see GSN, May 17). Amid heightened concerns of terrorist threats to rail systems following the recent London attacks, momentum appears to be building in Baltimore and Chicago for legislation to address the possibility of attacks on rail tankers that ban advocates call rolling chemical weapons. “I’m actually moving forward even harder now,” Baltimore City Council member Kenneth Harris said yesterday. After introducing a proposal in March, Harris has secured a hearing date on the matter, he said: Baltimore’s council will consider the ban proposal Sept. 14. Like the Washington law, Harris’ bill and a measure introduced in June in Chicago would create security zones through which shipments of certain chemicals may pass only in rare circumstances. Several of the chemicals in question, including chlorine, have been historically used as chemical weapons. Former top presidential antiterrorism adviser Richard Falkenrath has said the danger posed by rail tanker is “rivaled only by” nuclear and biological threats and 9/11-style strikes on large buildings. A Naval Research Laboratory study indicates thousands of people could be killed in minutes by the toxins that a tanker attack could release. The fate of Washington’s measure rests with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. That court first rebuffed a bid by rail operator CSX for an injunction to stop enforcement of the ban, then saw its decision reversed by an appeals court and now finds itself with the case again. Council member Kathy Patterson, who sponsored the bill, said today that a trial is likely and could take place before the end of the year. In the meantime, the city and CSX have agreed that Washington will not enforce the ban and the company will not transport the chemicals over at least one of its two lines through the city. Last month, the U.S. Homeland Security Department announced a contract with two security companies for deployment of a new system of cameras, WMD sensors and radio-frequency train identification in Washington — prompting some observers to conclude that the federal government, which supports CSX in its case against the city, expects the shipments to resume. “That announcement was a clear indication from Homeland Security that they plan to let CSX resume routing through the middle of the capital as soon as the court case is over,” Greenpeace Toxics Campaign Legislative Director Rick Hind said yesterday. Baltimore’s Harris said he does not see Washington’s legal battle with the rail company as cause for caution on his bill, for which he claims support from 13 of the council’s 15 members. “It hasn’t persuaded me to slow down at all,” he said. In the historical railway hub of Chicago, Alderman Ed Smith introduced a bill in June that would affect not one railroad company, as in Washington, but six companies. Smith’s office said today that a City Council committee is now considering the bill. “My concern is that they are accessible to terrorists and that an attack on one of them could be devastating in the same way as New York on Sept. 11,” Smith said when he introduced the bill in June. CSX, which operates in both Baltimore and Chicago, said it is opposed on principle to bans in those cities but has not yet turned its attention to the possibilities for legal action. The company says it is required by law to transport useful but hazardous chemicals and that city bans, which it views as unconstitutional, would force it to undertake rerouting measures of potentially devastating cost. “We view [the potential rail bans] as all being centered around the same fundamental issue,” CSX spokesman Gary Sease said yesterday. Baltimore and Chicago, he said, “are obviously busy rail points for us, but, at this point, we have not studied the rerouting options that would be required to the degree that we have done so for the District [of Columbia].” “We have our hands full, of course, with the District and the continuing court case there,” Sease said. Other cities could benefit from Washington’s experience as they move forward with rail ban efforts, according to Greenpeace’s Hind. “You learn a lot from the D.C. case,” Hind said. In particular, Hind cited testimony in the case that he said demonstrates that a very small percentage of rail traffic — potentially as little as 5 percent — would be affected by a ban on shipments of the most toxic chemicals. Such numbers, he said, weaken railroads’ case that the city measures could bring them serious financial harm. “Politicians who don’t want to be insensitive to the needs of business in their community can say, ‘Wait a minute. This isn’t even 10 percent.  This isn’t even 5 percent of your business,’” Hind said. Given such numbers, he said, objections by rail companies are less a reflection of legitimate financial concerns than of a “leave-us-alone, don’t-regulate-us attitude.” Patterson said Washington’s special status as a federal district — considered, depending on the context, both a city and state — could give it an advantage in seeking a ban that will not be available to other cities. “I think they will have a more difficult time than the District of Columbia has in enacting and enforcing a law,” Patterson said today. “We are acting in our capacity as a state, which gives us greater leverage in a judicial setting than a city would have,” she said. “Secondly, there isn’t any community with the exception of Manhattan with a higher risk rating than Washington, D.C.” “That said,” Patterson added, “every community should be doing a risk assessment and acting accordingly.” While awaiting the fate of the ban law, Washington council members have begun pursuing other avenues to address the threat. Patterson and colleague Phil Mendelson introduced a bill in April that would make CSX liable for costs incurred in the District owing to railroad chemical releases or threats against shipments. The bill would also require new inspection and certification processes for hazardous shipments about to pass through the city. Meanwhile, activists are increasingly focused on action at the federal level. Lawmakers such as Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced bills to reroute shipments or require new notification procedures, so far without concrete successes. In a Washington Post commentary this month, Biden expressed grave concern about U.S. rail security. “The current state of our rail security system is worse than an accident waiting to happen,” he wrote. “It is an open invitation to terrorists.” Back to top

Iran Improves Range, Accuracy of Shahab 3 Missiles Iran said yesterday that its Shahab 3 missile is now able to strike within one yard of a target 1,200 miles away from the launch point, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, July 28). Before the improvements, the missile was capable of hitting targets 800 miles away, said Gen. Ahmad Vahid, a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.  “We have been working on the missile’s range since we started manufacturing it,” Vahid said (Associated Press/Ha’aretz, Aug. 9). Back to top

EPA Releases Yucca Radiation Exposure Limits The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed permissible radiation levels for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, July 27). Assistant EPA Administrator for Air and Radiation Jeffrey Holmstead said that under the proposed standard, a person living next to the facility would be exposed to the same levels of radiation as a person living in Denver, Colo. A federal appeals court last year rejected the previous EPA radiation standard for Yucca. Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the new standard is “clearly a positive step.” “Should this proposed rule become final, it is a standard that the Department of Energy believes it can meet,” he said. Critics said the standard is too lenient. “You could build a repository in Disneyland and meet this standard,” said Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Robert Loux. Under the standard, the Yucca facility would have to be designed so that nearby residents would be exposed annually to less than 15 millirems of radiation. This amount is roughly equivalent to a single chest X-ray. The standard would change in 10,000 years, allowing exposure to 350 millirems through the air and unlimited exposure through groundwater. This standard is based on the level of background radiation in the United States and would last 1 million years, according to the Times. The agency allows up to 100 millirems of exposure at the atomic bomb test site in Nevada.   Each year, people are exposed to between 300 and 400 millirems of radiation from radon, the sun and cosmic radiation, the Times reported. The Energy Department and the National Academy of Sciences said the canisters holding the nuclear waste would be expected to break down after 10,000 years.  “We thought it would be bad, but not this bad,” said Joe Egan, an attorney who represented Nevada in a lawsuit that forced the new standard. “They gave the repository a complete pass and established an unprecedentedly lenient standard. It would be by far the most lenient standard in the world if it were to be adopted as proposed.” “What the agency released today is nothing more than voodoo science and arbitrary numbers,” said Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a critic of the dump. Nevada vowed to go back to court to fight the standard. “If this bogus new standard, or anything close to it, ends up being adopted by EPA, Nevada will sue them again,” said state Attorney General Brian Sandoval (Steven Bodzin, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 10).   Back to top

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