Threat Assessment:  United States Condemns Iraq, Iran, Syria

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday condemned Iraq, Iran and Syria for supporting terrorism and aiding terrorist activities (see GSN, March 20).

“Terrorists have declared war on civilization, and states like Iran, Iraq and Syria are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing,” Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon press briefing.

Rumsfeld criticized Iraq over reports that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is offering financial rewards to the families of suicide bombers.

“I think I saw something like $10,000 per family,” Rumsfeld said.  “I would not consider that a very constructive move.  Indeed, I would suggest that that is very actively trying to kill innocent men, women and children.”

Rumsfeld also attacked Iran for providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda operatives and for its connection to the Karine A, a ship that attempted to smuggle tons of weapons and equipment to Palestinian militants in Israel.  Syria has assisted Iran in moving terrorists and equipment into South Lebanon for the purpose of staging attacks on Israel, he said.

“There’s no question but that the Iranians work with the Syrians and send folks into Damascus and down the … Damascus-Beirut Road and then into South Lebanon so that they can conduct terrorist attacks,” Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld, however, refused to expand U.S. President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” — which consists of Iraq, Iran and North Korea — to also include Syria (see GSN, Jan. 30).

“I wasn’t trying to expand anything at all.  I was just telling the truth,” he said.  “The truth is that Iran takes people and weapons down into Damascus and moves them … ultimately into southern Lebanon for the purpose of conducting terrorist attacks.  For me to pretend they aren’t would not be fair or accurate.”

Bush is spotlighting the poor conditions for the people of Iraq, Iran and Syria, Rumsfeld said.

“Those people in those countries are being badly treated,” he said.  Iraq, Iran and Syria are “simultaneously repressing their own people and denying them their rights and simultaneously going outside their country and attempting to finance and encourage and arm and equip people to go kill in neighboring countries.  Now that is uncivilized behavior.”

World attention also needs to focus on the roles of Iraq, Iran and Syria in terrorist operations, Rumsfield said.

“I think it’s important for people to stop and say, fine, if they are involved in terrorist activity — and there’s no question but that each of those countries are — and we think that’s bad, then we ought to say so,” he said.  “I think the world ought to know that Saddam Hussein’s idea of having a nice day is offering $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 whatever it is, to families of people who talk their children into going out and blowing up a restaurant in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.”

In addition to military operations against terrorists, the United States is also working to cut off funds for terrorist groups and to disrupt terrorist bases of operations, Rumsfield said.

“We’re working to make it clear [to] sponsors and supporters of terrorists that being a friend to terrorists, and by implication an adversary of the United States, is not in their best interest,” he said.

Rumsfeld did not extend U.S. criticism, however, to Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who also have been accused of funding terrorism.

“In the case of those countries, or in our country or Egypt or other countries, it’s individuals, and it’s an individual mullah, and it’s an individual financier who decides they want to send their money and help out those folks,” he said.  “And I think that’s wrong, and I think it’s dangerous, and I think it’s like feeding an alligator hoping it eats you last.”

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U.S. Response:  Industry Holds Out Hope for Reinsurance Bill

By Pamela Barnett

CongressDaily

Six months after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers at the hands of terrorists, and three months after most commercial reinsurance contracts came due for renewal, the dire economic consequences forecast by proponents of a federal terrorism “backstop” have failed to materialize in especially obvious or politically sensitive ways (see GSN, Feb. 28).

The insurance industry continues to insist that enacting terrorism insurance legislation is its top priority — although it has stepped back from the most overt aspects of the lobbying campaign and has instead encouraged business interests and other purchasers of commercial insurance to make their voices heard in the Senate.  Those lobbyists maintain they have made significant headway on Capitol Hill.

“We have had very good meetings with a significant number of Senate offices … and there’s virtual unanimous understanding of the importance of the issue,” Joe Rubin of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said last week.  The chamber “is very confident” those concerns will translate into legislative action this spring, he added.

However, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said that Daschle views the situation as essentially unchanged from late last year — meaning he is inclined to grant floor time for the reinsurance bill only if a deal can be reached ahead of time.

The problem for bill supporters is that both sides appear entrenched on their respective differences.  The Senate bill, which would have provided a short-term, coinsurance arrangement between the private insurance market and the federal government, stalled last year mostly because of differences over its tort reform language.

Proponents of reform continue to insist the federal insurance program limit the ability of terrorism victims to seek punitive damages against businesses, while opponents of limiting damages are expected to hold fast.  One Senate Democratic leadership source emphasized that Daschle is open to negotiation, but said he would not allow the bill to become a vehicle for sweeping legal reforms limiting a citizen’s right to sue.

For bill supporters, this stalemate is exacerbated by a dearth of compelling evidence of economic damage resulting from the Senate’s failure to pass legislation offsetting the new difficulties and high costs associated with obtaining terrorism risk coverage.

Julie Rochman of the American Insurance Association insisted lawmakers have a growing awareness of the crucial role that insurers played in helping the nation recover from the Sept. 11 attacks, and said the nation’s ability to recover after a future attack will be seriously eroded without legislation.  However, proponents’ inability thus far to muster concrete examples of economic damage “is one reason why the Senate is totally disinterested,” said Robert Hunter of the Consumers Federation of America.

“What we’re not going to see is a general sweeping bill that has taxpayers on the hook for anything that may happen,” he added.

Legislative proponents said the White House would be more forceful in pushing for the legislation this year.  One Treasury official recently noted that the Bush administration “stand[s] ready to engage in negotiations with the House and Senate to develop consensus legislation that can be signed into law.”

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International Response:  China Calls For U.N. Role In Nonproliferation

The United Nations must have a key role in preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said today in Beijing as the United Nations and China opened a three-day international conference, “A Disarmament Agenda for the 21st Century” (see GSN, March 27).

The possibility that terrorists could acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons means the international community must immediately “give full play to the role of the United Nations and other international organizations,” Tang said (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, April 2).

United States Faces Criticism

Tang and others at the conference criticized the United States for unilateral policies.  Tang said countries must “maintain the existing arms control legal system” and avoid unilateral actions.  “The practice of abandoning or weakening this process and seeking security through expanding unilateral military advantages will not only fail to address the problems but instead will exert serious impact on international strategic stability,” Tang said.

China opposed the U.S. decision last fall to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and develop a missile defense system (Reuters/New York Times, April 2).

Unilateral action has undermined international disarmament and nonproliferation efforts, U.N. Undersecretary General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala said at the conference’s opening. The international community must maintain the present multilateral arms control system, he added (Xinhua News Agency, April 2).

United States Responds

“The United States remains fully committed to multilateral arms control institutions,” said Mark Groombridge, the U.S. representative at the conference. “But we do need to take proliferation of weapons of mass destructions seriously, and that means calling a spade a spade,” he said in support of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty (Reuters/New York Times).

Groombridge also stated that North Korea and Iraq have violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and that those two countries plus Iran and Libya are not in compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention.

Iran Blasts U.S. Nuclear Posture Review

Hamid Asalamizad of the Iranian Foreign Ministry criticizes the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review for listing Iran, China, North Korea, Iraq, Syria and Libya as potential targets for U.S. nuclear weapons in a speech to be delivered tomorrow (see GSN, March 14).

“The Nuclear Posture Review ... threatens the very foundation of the NPT and the nuclear nonproliferation regime,” his speech says (Robert Saiget, Agence France-Presse, April 2).

Speakers Voice Need To Prevent Outer Space Arms Race

Tang and Dhanapala called on states to prevent an arms race in outer space (see GSN, March 27).  “The international community should negotiate and conclude at an early date legally binding international instruments to prevent the weaponization of and an arms race in the outer space,” said Tang (Xinhua News Agency).

The conference includes 38 participants representing 29 countries and several nongovernmental organizations. Participants will focus on defense doctrines, nuclear disarmament, preventing an outer space arms race, dealing with missile proliferation and missile defense and controlling conventional weapons (U.N. release, March 26).

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Iraq:  Blair Delays Release of WMD Report

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided not to publish an intelligence report on Iraqi WMD programs before he visits U.S. President George W. Bush later this week, British officials said Sunday (see GSN, April 1).

The British Cabinet Office has prepared a report that reportedly contains evidence Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and media reports have said the British government would release the information to the public.

The report, however, apparently lacks evidence strong enough to garner support for an attack on Iraq, the London Independent reported yesterday.  The British foreign intelligence service, MI6, apparently is not certain the Iraqi regime has links to al-Qaeda, according to the Independent.

The CIA, however, has indicated it believes Iraq is connected to al-Qaeda (see GSN, March 20).

The Independent reported that British officials had indicated earlier that the report would be released before the Blair-Bush meeting (Marie Woolf, London Independent, April 1).

Blair’s office said no date has been set for releasing the report, Agence France-Presse reported.

“I would not read anything significant into the fact it has yet to be published.  When we think the time has come, we will,” said a British spokesman (Agence France-Presse/Jordan Times, April 2).

Attack Not Imminent, Says British Foreign Secretary

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on BBC Radio today that U.S. military action against Iraq is not certain.

“As to this issue of military action toward Iraq, I do not believe that it is imminent,” he said (Xinhua news agency, April 2).

“Not a Council of War”

British officials said Blair and Bush would not plan an attack on Iraq during their meeting this week.

“This isn’t a decision-making summit.  This is a thinking-through-the-options summit.  We’re not going to be coming out of Texas with decisions taken.  It is not a council of war,” said Blair’s spokesman.

The spokesman added, however, that the international community cannot “bury its head in the sand” regarding the threat from Iraq.

Blair has faced opposition from within his own party regarding Iraq.  A total of 122 Labor Party members of Parliament have signed a House of Commons motion opposing an attack (Nigel Morris, London Independent, April 2).

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U.S. Response:  MIT Plans All-Purpose Armored Army Uniforms

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has won a $50 million U.S. Army contract to create a new institute to design military uniforms with capabilities such as protecting against poison gas, the Washington Times reported today.

Under the contract, MIT will create an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology, which will develop the new uniforms over the next five years.  The institute will focus on six capabilities for the uniforms:  threat detection, threat neutralization, concealment, enhanced human performance, real-time medical treatment and reduced logistical footprint.

“Our goal is to greatly enhance the protection and survival of the infantry soldier,” said Ned Thomas, an MIT engineering professor who will be director of the institute.

According to plans, the uniforms will be made out of lightweight molecular materials that enable the uniforms to be bulletproof, to act as a cast in the event a soldier breaks a bone and to alert soldiers to the presence of biological and chemical weapons, among other features.

The intended uniforms will also come equipped with spring-loaded boots that would allow wearers to leap over 20-foot high walls, and the material will change color to imitate the surrounding environment, providing better camouflage for soldiers, the Times reported.

“Imagine the psychological impact upon a foe when encountering squads of seemingly invincible warriors protected by armor and endowed with superhuman capabilities,” Thomas said (Ellen Sorokin, Washington Times, April 2).

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Iraq:  Absent Inspections, Nuclear Capability Uncertain, Chief Inspector Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

With inspectors blocked by Iraq for more than three years now, international understanding of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon have become increasingly uncertain, according to the official in charge of those inspections.

The nuclear inspectors are preparing to resume, however, as the United States steps up pressure on Iraq to allow them back in with suggestions of a U.S. attack, he said.

“We are planning to increase our resources significantly in the coming weeks,” said Jacques Baute, leader of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “Iraq Action Team.”

“We have to step up preparations, given the fact that the inspections might come back,” Baute told Global Security Newswire in a recent interview.

The team, currently just six professionals of different nationalities, may also be on the front lines of a new sanctions monitoring regime, up for approval in May, which would allow a broader array of commodities to enter Iraq, but closely restrict imports of certain items that could aid Iraq’s suspected WMD programs. The team would review contracts for forbidden items (see GSN, March 29).

Just how close Hussein might be to building a bomb is “difficult to answer technically,” he said. 

When the team pulled out in 1998, he said, “they were not ready to build a weapon, but they made major progress, they solved a majority of the problems to make a crude weapon.”

The time frame depends greatly, he said, on whether Hussein since has been able to obtain foreign expertise, he said.

Once a Very Broad Mandate

Often overlooked for its cousin the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), the IAEA Iraq Action Team of specialists since the 1991 Gulf War has been responsible for inspecting the suspected country’s nuclear weapons programs. 

UNSCOM was given responsibility over biological and chemical weapons, and ballistic missiles with a range of more than 150 kilometers.  It was replaced by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in December 1999.

Similar to UNSCOM, the Iraq Action Team was created by a U.N. Security Council resolution, but it was given an unusually large mandate.  It could go anywhere, try to talk to anyone, collect any document and use any technology to uncover and dismantle Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.

“It was part of a cease-fire resolution. Iraq had no other choice to accept,” said Baute, a French physicist.

Inspections Effective?

The team proved effective.  In eight years, it performed more than 1,500 inspections, investigating, cataloging, clarifying, destroying and monitoring clandestine Iraq activities.

While inspections were its primary focus, the team’s field operations also included monitoring the Iraq environment for signs of illicit nuclear activity, monitoring activities in industrial facilities that might be used for bomb-building, gathering documentation, and interviewing technical specialists.

The team believes it removed all known weapon-grade nuclear material, highly enriched uranium and plutonium, took into custody all known remaining uranium compounds, destroyed and rendered harmless all known facilities and equipment dedicated to nuclear efforts and monitored all known dual-use equipment that could be used for such efforts.

“As of December 1998, there was no dedicated capability left. The buildings were destroyed, the dedicated equipment was destroyed, the nuclear materials, the weapon-grade material was removed,” Baute said.

The team’s accomplishments, however, do not mean Iraq’s program was destroyed, experts say.

“Historically, the agency is one that assures the world that nuclear weapons are not being made in places we know about, which of course doesn’t do us that much good,” said Gary Milhollin, executive director of the Wisconsin Project for Nuclear Arms Control.

“The question mark that hovers over their activities is whether they can find secret sites, and if they do get one, whether they can get into it.”

Watching from Without

Prevented by Iraq from fulfilling their mandates, action team and UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq and inspections were suspended in December 1998.  Since then, Iraq has only allowed a single visit each year for inspectors to verify under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that a single quantity of nuclear material has not been diverted to a weapons program.

The team since has tried to keep tabs from abroad using satellite imagery, including commercially available imagery, and other information and analyzing the large amounts of information it previously obtained.

Baute says all of that it is a poor substitute for conducting field activities. Satellite imagery enables the team to monitor changes to known sites, and possibly identify new sites for possible future inspection, he said.

“What do we know now?  We know that at some sites … there has been reconstruction in certain spots, or construction of new buildings. So what?” he said. “Those who are totally paranoid would say, these new walls are the demonstration that a nuclear program has resumed and those who are on the opposite side would say walls do not show anything.”

Whereas the team may have achieved 95 percent certainty of knowledge of Iraq’s program, with satellite imagery “we can reach maybe 5 percent, and nothing more,” he said.

“It’s nothing compared to what we were able to do before with field activities,” he said.

Would Inspections Work Again?

Amid the heated U.S. domestic and international debate over whether or not the United States should use military force against Iraq to topple Hussein or end the country’s suspected WMD programs, many experts have argued inspections would be an insufficient solution to stopping Iraq’s nuclear program.

The Guardian last month reported criticism by former UNSCOM leading official Charles Duelfer and former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter that IAEA inspections are “ineffectual.”

“The Iraqis have never been known to allow inspectors into sites that were previously unknown, or to even provide documents that inspectors did not already have,” said Milhollin.  “I don’t think there is any reason to hope the Iraqis will do anything different than before.”

The Bush administration, nevertheless, has been urging Iraq to allow the inspectors to return and operate unfettered.

“If success means disarming Iraq and forcing compliance, even with …  the unified support of the Security Council, they won't succeed, because it's very difficult to compel compliance — and especially with this regime,” Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department official in both the Clinton and current Bush administrations, told a congressional committee last month.

Einhorn said, however, that even if they were denied access to incriminating information, inspectors could play an important role in gathering information on suspicious facilities.

“I asked a number of my friends in the intelligence community … what they know about Iraq now, and what they feel about the inspectors not being there. And they are losing touch,” he said.

Baute acknowledged the team might have difficulty detecting some activities, such as theoretical work done on a computer or the machining of small pieces of equipment.

“We would have been able to detect anything of significance that would have been a major step in the direction of Iraq’s objectives of obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he said.

The team had fewer access problems than UNSCOM, he said, since it focused less on inspecting government areas, such as office buildings and presidential palaces, and more on industrial sites with special technical capabilities.

The strategy was “simply based on the fact that you don’t build a bomb with paper, you need to produce components, you need to enrich material,” he said.

That the action team encountered less resistance, Milhollin said, shows, “the Iraqis found the IAEA to be far less a threat than UNSCOM … far more user-friendly.”

He said, though, the team did destroy a great number of their facilities, “to their credit,” and it “may have a decent chance” of uncovering Iraqi attempts to produce highly enriched uranium, which he said can be difficult to hide.

The presence of inspectors also served as a “significant” deterrence factor, Baute said.

A 1998 State Department report similarly said, “UNSCOM and IAEA inspections have hindered Iraq's nuclear program.”

“No one challenged our conclusions at the end of 1998,” said Baute.

“When we were in Iraq, both IAEA and UNSCOM, nobody was writing that Iraq was currently working on biological weapons, chemical weapons, of course nuclear weapons,” he said.

“Since we are not in the field, Iraq can work on it and nobody will ever know,” he said.

Iraq’s Capabilities Uncertain

U.S. intelligence recently acknowledged the difficulties in assessing the state of current, suspected nuclear weapons efforts absent inspections.

“Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the U.N. or the U.S. to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs,” the CIA said in an unclassified report to Congress.

“There is evidence of increased efforts to procure nuclear related material and technology, and that nuclear research and development work has begun again,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote in the London Times March 5.

According to a report last month in the British newspaper the Observer, a recent Iraqi defector has claimed his company helped construct and maintain a series of hidden bunkers where secret chemical, biological and nuclear activities are taking place (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2001).

Although the Iraq Action Team identified remaining significant technical hurdles Iraq needed to overcome to acquire a nuclear weapon, as of December 1998, Baute declined to estimate a date that Iraq might get a weapon, saying it depends greatly on Iraq’s ability to tap foreign expertise and technology.

The team never found “any indication there was significant help” from foreign scientists or otherwise, he said, other than the help from declassified documentation, from the U.S. Manhattan Project in particular, and foreign publications.

“We’ve seen some minutes of meetings [suggesting otherwise], but that’s absolutely laughable,” he said.

The U.S. intelligence report said it believes Iraq has been attempting to buy materials that could help it with a nuclear program.

“A sufficient source of fissile material remains Iraq’s most significant obstacle to being able to produce a nuclear weapon,” it said.

“They have everything else, a workable bomb package,” said Milhollin.  “They’ve demonstrated they can do everything else.”

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North Korea:  Country Reportedly To Comply with Agreed Framework

North Korea will comply with the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it promised to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for construction of two modern nuclear reactors, the state-run Korean Central Broadcasting Station reported Friday, according to the Seoul Yonhap news agency.

U.S. statements that North Korea has violated the agreement by developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology are “completely false,” the station reported.  “It is the United States that has not complied with the Agreed Framework.”

The station said North Korea continues to comply with the agreement despite delays in the construction of the U.S.-sponsored nuclear reactors and major electricity losses since the country shut down its Soviet-designed reactors (Seoul Yonhap, March 30 in FBIS-EAS, April 1).

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Anthrax:  U.S. Military Likely To Resume Vaccinations, Rumsfeld Says

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday said the Pentagon is likely to resume its anthrax vaccination program for U.S. troops (see GSN, March 1).

“There are a series of technical questions that are being looked at as to how one might do it and in what format and in what sequence,” Rumsfeld said.  “It’s an important issue, and, goodness knows, you want to do it right.”

Rumsfeld said he was waiting for recommendations on when and how to restart the anthrax vaccination program.  Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers is considering details of the plan, Rumsfeld added.  Advisers to Myers have recommended that the vaccine program begin as soon as there are enough doses of vaccine, Pentagon officials said (Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, April 2).

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U.S. Response:  Secretary Thompson Names Acting CDC Director

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has chosen David Fleming to be interim director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

Fleming, CDC deputy director for science and public health, will head the CDC until a replacement is found for former CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan (see GSN, Feb. 22).  CDC officials James Hughes and Julie Gerberding will become interim heads of the CDC’s anti-bioterrorism efforts, according to the Journal.  Hughes and Gerberding are director and deputy director, respectively, of the agency’s National Center for Infectious Diseases (see GSN, March 26).

Michael Osterholm, a bioterrorism consultant for the Health and Human Services department, will act as Thompson’s representative to the CDC during the interim period (Wall Street Journal, April 1).

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China:  Short-Range Missiles Increase Near Taiwan

China has recently deployed additional short-range ballistic missiles on the coast across from Taiwan, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 21).

In the last two weeks, China has moved 20 CSS-7 short-range missiles to a base near the city of Yongan, according to U.S. officials cited.  The CSS-7 deployment could lead to the United States selling Aegis-equipped naval destroyers to Taiwan, officials said.

China has up to 400 deployed missiles that could reach targets in Taiwan from several missile bases, according to U.S. intelligence sources, the newspaper said.  China has been deploying short-range ballistic missiles across from Taiwan at the rate of 50 per year, according to a defense official, who added that China has improved the accuracy of its short-range missiles.

China could inflict “great damage” to Taiwan with its missile forces, said Adm. Dennis Blair, outgoing commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, before the House Armed Services Committee last month.

“Where we are right now is that China is capable of causing a great deal of damage to Taiwan, damage that cannot be stopped by the Taiwanese armed forces or by forces of the United States, if they were ordered in,” Blair said.  “However, China is not now capable of taking and holding Taiwan and satisfying that goal of China” (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, April 2).

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Nuclear Waste:  Industry Spent $25 Million on Yucca Lobbying, Report Says

A report by Public Citizen released yesterday said the nuclear power industry spent more than $25 million in congressional lobbying efforts in 2000, the last time Congress debated the issue of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada (see GSN, March 29).

More than 160 lobbyists, paid by the nuclear industry, worked on nuclear waste legislation and Yucca Mountain funding issues, according to the report by Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.

“The filings leave no doubt that nuclear waste was one of the top reasons the industry was throwing around so much money in 2000,” the report said.

The nuclear power industry is likely to spend as much, if not more, this year on congressional lobbying efforts, according to a Public Citizen policy analyst.

“I have absolutely no doubt the nuclear power industry is going to spend more money lobbying in 2002 than in 2000, due to the urgency of this (Yucca Mountain) issue and their own pronouncements,” said Hugh Jackson, the report’s lead author.

There is nothing wrong with the nuclear industry lobbying Congress on behalf of its own interests, said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main lobbying group of the nuclear industry.

“We live in a democracy, and our industry has a right to have an input into the process just as everyone else has and just as these people have,” Kerekes said, speaking of Yucca Mountain opponents.  “They just don’t like the outcome.”

Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) have attempted to persuade Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn to push for approval to add additional millions of dollars to the state’s anti-Yucca Mountain fund, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“That is the whole argument, that these guys in the nuclear industry have a bottomless pit of funds.  They’ve opened their wallets to do whatever it takes to sell this thing,” said Nathan Naylor, a Reid spokesman.

“You have to be able to respond in kind, maybe not at the same level,” Naylor said.  “We really do need resources to respond to these guys” (Steve Tetreault, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 2).

Nevada Misses West Wing Tie-In

A lack of funding is preventing Nevada from running an anti-Yucca Mountain advertisement during this week’s episode of NBC drama series The West Wing, which centers on a uranium fuel rod transport accident.

“There is no doubt this is a missed opportunity, but there will be others,” Naylor said.

It would cost Nevada $400,000 to air the advertisement during the program, which would take up much of the funds allocated for the state’s anti-Yucca Mountain public relations measures, Naylor said.  Nevada last year allocated $4 million for a legal and media campaign against Yucca Mountain, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.  An additional $10 million is needed, Reid and Ensign said.

Nevada could send its anti-Yucca Mountain message for less by targeting important states instead of a nationwide effort, Naylor said.

“If we spend the little bit we have, then what would we do afterwards,” he said.  “We have to be mindful of the rest of this fight” (Sean Whaley, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 2).

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