urg:::MOX Shipment 'NBomb'; US No 2 ABM

[Gavin Mudd]

'N-bomb' may float past Australia

By Paul Daley
London
June 16 2002


In the next 10 days two gunboats will sail from Takahama in Japan on a
hazardous 18,000-nautical-mile journey to Barrow-in-Furness, an industrial
port on the north-west coast of England.

Aboard one boat will be 225 kilograms of weapons-grade nuclear fuel made
from uranium and plutonium oxides - enough, critics say, to build up to 50
massive nuclear bombs and contaminate much of the Earth many times over.

Irish, Australian, Asian and South Pacific intelligence officers, military
chiefs and diplomats refer privately to the ships as "the floating N-bomb".
But to the Japanese and British Governments, both of which remain
intractable in the face of mounting international pressure, the boats are a
necessary - and defensible - byproduct of a deal gone wrong.

Within weeks, if the fears of Australian diplomats and military leaders are
founded, the two ships, Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, will pass from
Asia through the Pacific Islands, along the east coast of Australia, through
the Tasman Sea, across the Indian Ocean and through the Atlantic Ocean on
its way to the Sellafield nuclear processing plant near Barrow-in-Furness.
"By our reckoning this plutonium will pass spitting distance through at
least five regions where there are known al Qaeda sympathisers or groups
which can be proven to be funded directly by (Osama) bin Laden or al Qaeda,"
a South Pacific intelligence source told The Sunday Age. "And that's just in
the Asia Pacific... the risk beyond Cape Town is, we believe,
unquantifiable."

An Irish official said that Ireland had always been opposed to the
Sellafield plant just across the Irish Sea, because of the risk to the
country of contamination from an accident at the plant or en route.

"Now there can be no doubt, since September 11, that these shipments form a
serious terrorist target, that the whole box and dice is a whole lot more
dangerous. Common sense tells you that, standard threat assessments tell you
that and the UK and the US tell you that - it's part of their standard
rhetoric in the war against terror," the official said.

"They (the ships) will move slowly, they are not well-armed and the fear is
not that terrorist groups will attempt to hijack the load and make N-bombs
out of it, but that they will attempt to detonate the load as close to land
as possible. We know they can fly planes and we know they can drive boats."

Such fears were compounded this week by disclosures that American
intelligence networks had foiled a plot by al Qaeda operatives to blow up -
possibly by using small, lightweight speedboats laden with explosives -
heavily armed British naval ships in the Strait of Gibraltar.

It is the first evidence that al Qaeda has targeted British military forces
outside Afghanistan. Sources maintain it has worried the British Ministry of
Defence that the two boats carrying the nuclear material could be targets.

Bin Laden activists have a proven capacity to inflict death at sea; a
suicide bomber rammed the battleship USS Cole, killing 17 American crew in
October, 2000. It is a tactic, intelligence sources say, that they picked up
from the Sea Tigers, the nautical branch of the separatist Tamil Tigers,
which has carried out sea-borne suicide bombings with dramatic effect
against the Sri Lankan Navy.

Australia, despite the best efforts of diplomats in London and Canberra, has
apparently not been able to determine which route the ships will take.

The British Government, citing "security concerns", refuses to disclose the
route; it is also unwilling to provide extra security for the fleet.

"I can tell you there is deep concern about this... not least because the
British will not engage with us on the security concerns it raises," an
Australian security source said. "This shipment might be intended to go past
our doorstep, with no security but the second ship, and they won't tell us
yet."

The reason for the shipment began in late 1999 when documents were
discovered at the publicly-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) plant at
Sellafield, which showed that quality controls on some of the company's
nuclear fuel export products had been forged.

The Japanese power utility, Kansai Electric - BNFL's biggest client - had
asked for the documents to ensure that the plutonium fuel pellets it had
recently received were appropriate for Japanese reactors. BNFL insisted the
product had been properly product-controlled and the paperwork was correct.

Not surprisingly, Japan lost faith in BNFL when the British Government's
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate uncovered the shortcomings. Japan
insisted that Britain retrieve the material.

The German power industry, BNFL's second biggest client, was also affected.
The error was, however, compounded in Germany's case because some of the
suspect material had been burning in one German reactor since at least 1996.


Copyright © 2002 The Age Company Ltd

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US missile plans fire Russian ire
By DREW BROWN in Washington and ERIC ENGLEMAN in Russia
15jun02


RUSSIA has withdrawn from the START II nuclear weapons treaty, only hours
after a US announcement it would develop a missile defence system.

The Russian move followed President George W. Bush's earlier announcement
that his missile system would be in place as quickly as possible.

The system, which would fire missiles to knock out US-bound missiles in
mid-air, breaches the 1972 treaty, from which the Bush Administration
withdrew last year.

Critics have warned Mr Bush's decision could spark a new arms race with
Russia or new rivals.

Russia reacted to the news by withdrawing from START II, signed in 1993,
which would have reduced each country's nuclear warhead stockpile to 3000 to
3500 each.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the country "no longer
considers itself committed to the international legal obligations" of START
II.

The US Congress ratified the treaty in 1996 and the Russian parliament
followed suit in 2000, but Russian lawmakers linked START II to preservation
of the 1972 treaty.

In a written statement yesterday, Mr Bush described that treaty as a relic
that prevented the US from defending itself against missile attacks by
terrorists and hostile nations.

"As the events of September 11 made clear," Mr Bush said, "we no longer live
in the Cold War world for which the ABM treaty was designed. We now face
threats from terrorists who seek to destroy our civilisation by any means
available to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and
long-range missiles."

The 1972 ABM treaty was the centrepiece of successful nuclear arms control
between the US and the former Soviet Union for 30 years.

The treaty banned the two countries from building systems to defend against
attack from nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was designed to
reduce the threat of nuclear war by denying each side the ability to launch
a pre-emptive strike without massive retaliation.

It is the first major arms control agreement from which the US has withdrawn
unilaterally.


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