UK expels 4 Russian diplomats

Britain said on Monday it will expel four Russian diplomats to protest Moscow's refusal to extradite a key suspect over the murder of ex-Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, in a major escalation of the row.The expulsions, announced by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, were the first in over a decade amid rising tensions between Moscow and the West fueled by Litvinenko's radioactive poisoning in London last November.In fast-moving developments Russian officials said Moscow would respond to the British announcement later on Monday.The last time Britain expelled Russian diplomats was in 1996, and observers have recently warned the rift could escalate into a full-blown Cold War-style crisis.“This is a situation the government has not sought,” Miliband told lawmakers, underlining that Russia's refusal to extradite former KGB spy Andrei Lugovoi was “extremely disappointing.” Britain will also consider a range of other measures including possible consequences for visa arrangements, he said, while insisting that “This is not an anti-Russian statement.”The British announcement came after Russia confirmed to prosecutors here last week its refusal to hand over Lugovoi over the killing of Litvinenko in London.Authorities in Moscow have proposed putting Lugovoi on trial in Russia, but British prosecutors believe that would not “meet standards of impartiality and fairness,” according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office.British prosecutors allege that Lugovoi used a rare radioactive isotope to poison Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent turned Kremlin critic, during a meeting in London in November.Prosecutors announced their decision to seek formally Lugovoi's extradition on May 22, but Russia formally refused to hand him over on July 9, according to prosecutors in London.Lugovoi, in an interview broadcast earlier Monday, insisted he is innocent and called the charges against him “brazen lies.” He also renewed a claim that British secret service tried to recruit him.“I was threatened and there were attempts to force me to cooperate,” he told Sky News, adding that Litvinenko was “beyond doubt” a British spy.British prosecutors say the evidence against him involves a trail of polonium 210 on planes on which Lugovoi travelled en route to London, where Litvinenko fell ill after sharing a pot of tea with the Russian in a hotel.“My family and I were victims of a polonium attack in London. As for the plane from Moscow to London, these are brazen lies ... It's a convenient version chosen by the British justice for an internal audience,” Lugovoi said.The expulsions came as Russia and the United States are locked in a heated dispute over missile defence, with Moscow accusing Washington of provoking a “new arms race” with its plans to deploy a missile shield in central Europe.At the weekend the Kremlin announced it had frozen Russia's participation in a key post Cold War pact with Nato, the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which limits troops and arms on the continent.In Russia, the pro-government daily Izvestia said last week that Britain’s harsh rhetoric was an attempt by the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown to appear strong.

Quake in Japan Raises Fears About Nuclear Safety

Japanese authorities today suspended the operation of a nuclear power plant after a radiation leak and other damage from a deadly earthquake on the nation’s northwestern coast raised new concerns about the safety of Japan’s accident-plagued nuclear industry.
Tokyo Electric Power, an electric company that operates the nuclear plant near the city of Kashiwazaki, said it had found more than 50 problems at the plant caused by Monday’s earthquake. While most of the problems were minor, the largest included 100 drums of radioactive waste that had fallen over, causing the lids on some of the drums to open, the company said.
On Monday, the company said that the earthquake also caused a small fire at the plant, the world’s largest by amount of electricity produced, and the leakage of 317 gallons of water containing trace levels of radioactive materials into the nearby Sea of Japan.
The company announced today that it had detected tiny amounts of radioactive material in an air filter in one of the plant’s seven reactors, though the company said it was unlikely that the material had entered the atmosphere outside the reactor.
The company said it was still examining how the tainted water had leaked out, but it said the level of radioactivity was too low to endanger humans or the environment.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe criticized Tokyo Electric for being “too slow” in reporting the problems to the government and the public.
“Nuclear power can only operate with the people’s trust,” Mr. Abe told reporters. Power companies “must accurately and swiftly report what is happening,” he said.
Television footage showed rescuers digging through buildings in Kashiwazaki that were toppled by the earthquake, which local police said killed at least nine people and injured another 1,000.
Japan’s meteorological agency said the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.8; the United States Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.6.
Japan’s military used warships and trucks to carry rice balls, bread, and water to the remote region in Niigata prefecture, about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo, where the earthquake struck on Monday morning.
But relief efforts were slowed by landslides and gaping cracks in the earth that severed rail lines and roads, local media reports said.
About 13,000 residents fled their homes, the media reported. Television pictures showed many people sleeping on blankets and futons in school gymnasiums that had been turned into makeshift shelters.
In Tokyo, government ministers scrambled to reassure the public about the safety of the nation’s nuclear power plants, which have suffered a string of accidents and cover-ups in recent years.
The economic ministry, which regulates the power industry, moved swiftly to reprimand Tokyo Electric for failing to report the leak into the Sea of Japan to authorities for some six hours.
The ministry also ordered suspension of the plant’s operations until safety could be ensured, and dispatched a team of inspectors to survey the damage.
Nuclear safety can be a particularly sensitive issue in Japan, the only nation to be attacked with atomic weapons when the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in 1945.
Nuclear safety experts said the authorities apparently feared the accidents related to this week’s earthquake could raise fresh public doubts about Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, which the resource-poor nation relies on for about a third of its electricity and to lessen its dependence on energy from the Middle East.
“This will stir new debate about whether nuclear plants are safe enough,” said Haruki Madarame, a professor in nuclear safety engineering at Tokyo University. “Authorities will have to show the public that they are taking all reasonable steps to ensure safety.”
Japan is also one of the most earthquake-prone nations in the world, and it has strict regulations that are meant to prevent earthquake damage to its nuclear plants.
These regulations include building nuclear plants on solid bedrock to limit shaking from earthquakes, and erecting anti-tsunami walls at plants along the coast, like the Kashiwazaki plant.
Tokyo Electric said the damage from the earthquake did not threaten the safety of the reactors at the Kashiwazaki plant. Four reactors were operating at the time, and all shut down safely, the company said.
However, it said that the force of the shaking caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors, suggesting that the plant’s builders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region.
The chief government spokesman, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, said the designs of other nuclear plants may have to be reexamined after Monday’s earthquake to make sure they are strong enough to resist all potential earthquakes. Nuclear safety experts said Monday’s earthquake struck as power companies were examining reactors to see if they met new safety standards set last September.
The experts said the unexpected strength of the earthquake’s tremors may force authorities to set even tougher standards, and carry out fresh seismic studies to determine if they were underestimating the size of potential earthquakes.
The suspension of operations at the Kashiwazaki plant, which can produce up to 7,219 megawatts, comes as Tokyo faces the summer months of peak power use.
In March, another nuclear plant operator, Hokuriku Electric Power, shut down a reactor after admitting it had covered up a 15-minute uncontrollable nuclear chain reaction in 1999. Three years ago, Japan’s deadliest nuclear accident killed four workers at a nuclear plant when a steam pipe burst.

Pakistan Sends Tribal Leaders to Salvage Truce Broken by Taliban

The government on Monday dispatched a team of tribal elders to meet with leaders of militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal region in an attempt to salvage a fragile peace deal that unraveled in the wake of last week’s siege of the Red Mosque.
The location of the meeting was in North Waziristan’s main town, Miran Shah, an intelligence official told The Associated Press.
The already fractious North-West Frontier Province tribal region was beset over the weekend by bombings and suicide attacks by militants, who have been angered by the assault on the mosque. The death toll exceeded 70, nearly as many as the government said had been killed last week in the Red Mosque standoff in the capital, Islamabad.
Taliban leaders in North Waziristan called off the peace deal over the weekend, after Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, deployed troops to several checkpoints in the region.
Under the truce, signed last September, the military had agreed to pull back to its barracks and take down checkpoints in exchange for a suspension of hostilities from the militants, who agreed to halt cross-border attacks on American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Government officials said they would allow tribal elders to enforce the peace deal in return for millions of dollars in financial aid. Critics said all the deak did was let the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup and plan attacks inside the country and across the border.
The September agreement was the latest in a series of sometimes contradictory steps taken by the Pakistani government to restore law and order in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where civilian administration has steadily eroded in recent years.
The Musharraf government has alternately tried to bludgeon, buy off and appease militants operating in the tribal areas, sometimes sacrificing Pakistani troops, and other times negotiating deals with some of the most feared militant commanders, who now appear to have rejected the agreement altogether.
A letter circulated Monday by the Taliban in North Waziristan said the peace pact had been scrapped “in the larger public interest.” It warned the tribal police not to aid military and paramilitary troops, and urged tribal elders not to cooperate with the government.
It also called on local tribesmen to refrain from harming civil servants working for public service departments like health, education and agriculture. “Anyone caught by the Taliban while causing any harm to employees of these departments would be considered thieves, and would be punished publicly,” the letter said.
The government team dispatched to salvage the peace accord was led by Maulana Syed Nek Zaman, a tribal member of Parliament, who met with various militant commanders at a seminary on Monday.
At the same time, Akram Khan Durrani, the chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province, warned at a news conference that any annulment of the peace pact would have dangerous repercussions for the country.
The scuttling of the accord comes as General Musharraf faces mounting troubles, including a backlash from militants and the religious right in the aftermath of the Red Mosque standoff, as well as months of pro-democracy protests from a wide cross-section of Pakistani citizens.
Even before its failure, the peace accord had not brought the security the government intended. American and NATO commanders in Afghanistan say the Taliban continue to use Pakistan’s tribal areas as a rear base. In early June, the United States National Security Council warned that the Taliban had regrouped and reorganized inside Pakistan. That same month, the Interior Ministry warned General Musharraf that the Taliban’s influence was increasingly spreading outside the tribal areas to other parts of the country.
What connection the Taliban or Al Qaeda may have had to the militants holed up in the Red Mosque remains unclear; what is known is that the clerics leading the mosque and its adjoining seminary had been agitating for Taliban-style rule in Pakistan.
They had also long enjoyed the support of the government. But they became an embarrassment for the Musharraf administration after they sent vice squads across the capital, most recently kidnapping several Chinese nationals who worked in an acupuncture clinic that the seminary students said was a brothel.
The eight-day siege of the mosque and its adjacent seminary for women and girls ended Wednesday after intense fighting for more than 36 hours between Pakistani special forces and the militants. The military put the death toll at 76.
Government officials have said in recent days that they suspect that the dead included foreign fighters. The government has also repeatedly said the fighters surrounded themselves with civilian hostages, but furnished no details.