Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 6. Oktober 2004 / Time Line October 6, 2004
Version 3.510/06/2004
Yom Kippur krigen starter 1973.
10/06/2004
Modtageren af årets the Right Livelihood
Award offentliggøres i Stockholm.
10/06/2004
Experts sound alarm over risks from 500 sunken ships off
Iraq
By Mark Turner at the United Nations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/83d070dc-1735-11d9-bbe8-00000e2511c8.html
As many as 500 sunken ships lie in Persian Gulf waters around
Iraq, posing a serious environmental risk and hampering access to
its ports, the United Nations said yesterday.
Experts are sounding the alarm this week at a Kuwait meeting at
which the UN and donors are discussing with the Iraqi and Kuwaiti
governments how to tackle the problem.
During a survey earlier this year, in which UN experts analysed 40
sunken vessels, experts identified another 280 ships in Iraqi
territorial waters and warned there could be hundreds more. The
numbers were far higher than had been expected.
"The scope of the problem was really not known: people thought
there were 20-30 ships," said a spokesman for the UN Development
Programme. "They pose serious hazards if not cleaned or removed."
Iraq had not granted access to the waters before the second Gulf
war.
Most of the wrecks, buried under silt 6m-12m deep, date from the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and the first Gulf war in 1991, although the
UN says there are some from the most recent conflict. Their removal
is seen as crucial to any refurbishment of Umm Qasr and Al Zubayr
ports.
But according to the report, they contain a poisonous cocktail of
metals including lead, pesticides, hydrocarbons and munitions.
"Virtually all these vessels are slowly leaking substances that are
damaging to marine life and people," the UN says.
Many ships were carrying heavy crude oil, fuel oil or military
ordnance as cargo. Even those with more benign freight contain fuel
oil, battery acid, hydraulic fluid and asbestos.
10/06/2004
Funds to Rebuild Iraq Are Drifting Away From Target : State
Department to Rethink U.S. Effort
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9627-2004Oct5.html?nav=rss_world
By Jonathan Weisman and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
As little as 27 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq's
reconstruction has actually filtered down to projects benefiting
Iraqis, a statistic that is prompting the State Department to
fundamentally rethink the Bush administration's troubled
reconstruction effort.
Between soaring security costs, corruption and mismanagement,
contractors' profits, and U.S. governmental costs, reconstruction
funding is being drained away, leaving little left to improve the
lives of Iraqis, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center
for Strategic and International Studies. Senior administration
officials and congressional experts on the reconstruction effort
called the analysis credible. One senior U.S. official familiar
with reconstruction suggested as little as a quarter of the funding
is reaching its intended projects.
The State Department will acknowledge the problem in a quarterly
report to Congress today and say that the United States is trying
to accelerate aid and redirect how it is spent, U.S. officials said
yesterday. But the Bush administration is still not meeting the
goal it set this summer to inject $300 million to $400 million
monthly into Iraq's economy by Sept. 1, the officials said.
With little fanfare, Congress last week approved the Bush
administration's request to reallocate $3.46 billion from long-term
infrastructure projects to more pressing security and job-creation
programs. The transfer marks a significant refocusing of the
year-old, $18.4 billion effort to rebuild Iraq.
10/06/2004
'Take Them Out, Dude' -- Pilots Toast Hit on Iraqi
'Civilians'
by Andrew Buncombe in Washington
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
The Pentagon said yesterday it was investigating cockpit video
footage that shows American pilots attacking and killing a group of
apparently-unarmed Iraqi civilians.
The 30-second clip shows the pilot targeting the group of people in
a street in the city of Fallujah, and asking his mission
controllers whether he should "take them out". He is told to do so
and, shortly afterwards, the footage shows a huge explosion where
the people were. A second voice can be heard on the clip saying:
"Oh, dude."
10/06/2004
BAE SYSTEMS RECEIVES $35 MILLION FOR HAARP PROGRAM
http://www.na.baesystems.com/releasesDetail.cfm?a=170
WASHINGTON -- The Office of Naval Research has awarded BAE Systems
a $35.4 million contract to manufacture 132 high frequency (HF)
transmitters for installation in the High Frequency Active Auroral
Research Program's (HAARP) phased array antenna system. The
contract was finalized April 19 with BAE Systems Information &
Electronic Warfare Systems in Washington, D.C.
The HAARP program collects and assesses data to advance knowledge
of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth's
ionosphere. "We look forward to contributing to this critical
program. This is an opportunity for BAE Systems to play an
important role in expanding knowledge of the Earth's ionosphere.
Significant potential applications include long-range
communication, sensing and satellite vulnerability to nuclear
effects," said Ramy Shanny, BAE Systems vice president and general
manager for Advanced Technologies (AT).
In 1992, AT was awarded a contract to design and build the
Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), the HAARP program's primary
tool used to study ionospheric physics. The IRI is currently
composed of 48 antenna elements and has a power capacity of 960,000
watts. When installed, the additional 132 transmitters will give
HAARP a 3.6 mega-watt capacity. The HAARP build-out is jointly
funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U. S. Navy and the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
 |
 |