Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 15. juni 2007 / Time Line June 15, 2007
Version 3.506/15/2007
NEWS RELEASES from the United States Department of Defense
DoD Receives Mental Health Task Force Results
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates received the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health results and forwarded them to the Congress on June 14.The department will have six months to develop and implement a corrective action plan.
"This report points to significant shortfalls in achieving goals and taking care of our service members and their families," said Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "We will continue to address the need for mental health care in order to reinforce our commitment to providing the best care in the world to our service members and their families who deserve no less."
Significant findings include:
Mental health care stigma remains pervasive and is a significant barrier to care.
Mental health professionals are not sufficiently accessible to service members and their families.
There are significant gaps in the continuum of care for psychological health.
The military system does not have enough resources, funding or personnel to adequately support the psychological health of service members and their families in peace and during conflict.
Implementation of recommendations and remedies to support our service members has already begun, to include:
Military services have established dozens of deployment health clinics around the country.
Mental health providers have been embedded in line units in Iraq and Afghanistan to perform initial treatment for combat stress and post -traumatic stress disorder.
Service members are receiving additional mental health training to de-stigmatize when they need to reach out for help.
The services are currently proactively exploring options to adequately resource their mental health care providers.
"I want to thank the members of the task force, the Congress, and especially our medical personnel who have been working so hard to provide compassionate care to our service members with the resources they have been given," Casscells said.
The Task Force on Mental Health was congressionally directed and organized in June 2006 to assess and recommend actions for improving the efficacy of mental health services provided to service members and their families.It includes seven DoD members and seven non-DoD members.
The report can be viewed on the health affairs Web site at http://www.ha.osd.mil/dhb/mhtf/MHTF-Report-Final.pdf .
06/15/2007
National Security Archive Update, June 15, 2007
U.S. OPPOSED TAIWANESE BOMB DURING 1970'S
Declassified Documents Show Persistent U.S. Intervention to Discourage Suspicious Nuclear Research
First New Declassified Collection from 'The Nuclear Vault'
Launched Today with Support from the New-Land Foundation
http://www.nsarchive.org/nukevault
Washington DC, June 15, 2007 - The unfolding controversies over the Iranian and Korean nuclear programs show the extreme difficulty of persuading a government to reverse its nuclear weapons program. Newly declassified documents on U.S.-Taiwan relations during the late 1970s, published today for the first time by the National Security Archive, shed new light on the challenges of counter-proliferation diplomacy. Even a dependent ally, such as Taiwan, tried hard to resist U.S. pressures to abandon suspect nuclear activities and kept Washington guessing whether it had really given them up.
To ensure that the Taiwanese actually shut down what appeared to be R&D for a nuclear capability, the Ford and Carter administrations continuously exerted pressure on Taiwanese leaders to stop scientists and the military from engaging in research with weapons implications. For three years in a row, 1976, 1977, and 1978, the U.S. government secretly confronted Taipei over secret activities--such as uranium enrichment work and attempts to purchase reprocessing technology--that suggested ambition to develop a weapons capability.
Washington policymakers became so worried about the direction of Taiwanese nuclear programs that they took their concerns directly to Premier Chiang Ching-kuo. Amidst U.S. demarches, inspection visits by U.S. officials, and more detailed commitments by Chiang, U.S. intrusion reached the point where the Premier complained that Washington was dealing with Taiwan "in a fashion which few other countries would tolerate."
The declassified documents highlight three episodes:
- The summer of 1976, when U.S. concerns about Taiwanese interest in nuclear reprocessing triggered a U.S. demarche (protest) and a declaration by Taipei authorities that the regime would "henceforth not engage in any activities relating to reprocessing."
- January through April 1977, when a nuclear inspection team and IAEA inspector detected suspicious activities at the Institute for Nuclear Energy Research (INER) that raised questions about the direction of Taiwanese nuclear research. This led the State Department to demand far-reaching changes, especially the "reorientation" of the research so that it was more relevant to producing power than weapons. In April Premier Chiang acquiesced in a U.S. note demanding such changes.
- August-September 1978, as a U.S. nuclear team continued to monitor the INER and picked up worrisome signs that Taiwan had a secret uranium enrichment program. This led to a new demarche and a more authoritative statement by Chiang that his government "has no intention whatsoever to develop nuclear weapons or a nuclear device."
With the publication of these documents, the National Security Archive today launches The Nuclear Vault, a special section of the Archive's Web site devoted to documentation on U.S. nuclear weapons policy issues, largely during the Cold War. With bibliographies, photo galleries, links, new documents, and other features to be unveiled during the coming months, the Archive hopes to create a source that researchers, students, and interested citizens can turn to for information on one of the most critical issues of our day.
The Archive thanks the New-Land Foundation for making the Nuclear Vault possible. With the introduction of the Nuclear Vault, the National Security Archive announces its affiliation with Nuclear Pathways http://nuclearpathways.org , a group of organizations whose purpose is to make "information on historic and current nuclear issues more accessible and comprehensible to the public, educators, and students from middle school through graduate programs."
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