No to Processing German Nuclear Waste at Sellafield!

German nuclear safety authorities announced on April 12 that they will allow six cargoes of spent nuclear fuel to be shipped to Britain for reprocessing at Sellafield in Cumbria. The decision comes just days after shipments to France resumed amid widespread protests from activists who tried to block them because of the incalculable danger to human health and lives.

The authorisation from the federal Office for Protection Against Radiation covers waste from the Biblis plant in the central Hesse province, and is valid until July 31. The same authority has already given the go-ahead for transport of waste from the Neckarwestheim nuclear power station in the south-west of the country later this month. The plant, operated by GKN, is to ship three containers containing a total of 21 spent fuel rods on April 23 or 24, according to newspaper reports.

The transport of three Excellox nuclear containers will be the first such shipment of nuclear waste since the autumn of 1997.

Pete Roche, nuclear campaigner of Greenpeace UK, voicing the sentiment of large numbers of concerned people, said, "This is basically of the order of a criminal offence that Germany is sending nuclear waste over here. It’s causing radioactive pollution of our atmosphere. We are not likely to see protests on the scale of what has happened in France, but I wouldn’t say that there isn’t the same amount of opposition."

Only a few days before the announcement did a cargo of German nuclear waste finally arrive at a French reprocessing centre at La Hague after campaigners took action against this first transport in three years to France after the German government banned shipments in 1998 because of the experience of dangerous radioactive leaks. Two weeks earlier, thousands of demonstrators delayed the return of reprocessed spent fuel from France to Germany.

The BNFL plant in Cumbria was criticised in an official report last year for deficient security standards. In February last year, the Japanese government demanded that a shipment of uranium and plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel be returned to Britain.

The shipment of the German nuclear waste to Sellafield must be militantly opposed.

Gulf war veterans are twice as likely to report ill health as other service men and women. In addition, a number of inoculations and contact with pesticides have been linked to specific symptoms. These are the findings of two studies published on April 11 in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

More than 9,000 Gulf war veterans and almost 5,000 non-Gulf veterans were questioned in the research about 95 symptoms of ill health seven years after the war.

The Gulf war veterans reported every symptom more frequently. Psychological, peripheral, respiratory, and digestive symptoms, as well as concentration, were worse in those who had been to the Gulf. Gulf veterans also reported symptoms that suggested nerve damage and widespread pain twice as often as the other service men and women. There was no evidence of increased use of tobacco and alcohol by the Gulf veterans which might have otherwise accounted for their ill health.

In a separate survey of almost 8,000 Gulf war veterans, the same research team found that number of inoculations, time spent handling pesticides, and the number of days of exposure to smoke from oil burning fires were all linked to more severe symptoms. The authors conclude that the effects of inoculations and pesticide handling should be investigated further.

There appears to have been no investigation into contact with depleted uranium dust, which is also widely under suspicion for its harmful effects. Depleted uranium has been widely used in shells, and burns on impact, forming an all-pervasive fine dust.

Despite the two studies, the Ministry of Defence, which funded some of the work, claimed that "there is no evidence of a ‘Gulf war syndrome’", citing the "unreliability of self-reported data" and the "lack of objective data".

A poll was conducted among Londoners for the King’s Fund and the Evening Standard newspaper.

The poll, of 1,000 people living and working in the capital, found that most oppose giving the private sector a larger role in healthcare, with six out of ten opposed to the NHS buying in its services. The poll found strong support for the idea that the NHS should be universal and free at the point of use, and opposition to restricting it to a skeleton or safety-net service. Nevertheless, 73 per cent of those polled fear that private medical insurance will play a bigger role in healthcare in the next ten years.

According to King’s Fund chief executive Rabbi Julia Neuberger, the poll shows that while Londoners continue to support the NHS, they think that it has failed to improve under the Labour government and want more investment in it. Rabbi Neuberger said of people’s anxieties about healthcare, "They should form the starting point for a positive debate about how we can invest more in improving the nation’s health."

Britain did not do enough to prevent the foot-and-mouth virus from spreading to continental Europe, French Farm Minister Jean Glavany has said.

"When countries like the United Kingdom have destroyed their public services after the years of unbridled liberalism under Margaret Thatcher, their weakness becomes a European weakness," Jean Glavany said in an interview in last Friday’s La Croix newspaper. He was speaking as the Netherlands confirmed three new cases of the disease. The new outbreaks in the Netherlands take the total there to 25.

The German state of North-Rhine Westphalia, whose Agriculture Minister Baerbel Hoehn has repeatedly called for preventive vaccination, said on April 12 that it had applied for EU permission to vaccinate over a million animals against foot-and-mouth disease near the Netherlands border. Mass vaccination is banned by the EU. This is said to be partly on cost ground, but chiefly because it could do lasting harm to meat exports since vaccinated animals cannot be distinguished from those incubating the disease, though if all animals were vaccinated this proviso could not be sustained.

Meanwhile, the disease continues to take its toll on the agriculture industry, especially amongst the small farmers, as MAFF continues to step up its drastic slaughter programme.

Britain and the United States have put on hold 2,139 contracts which Iraq has signed with other countries under the UN oil-for-food programme since 1996. The figures come from a report released by the Iraq Trade Ministry on April 11.

The oil sector bore the brunt as 679 oil contracts were among the total shelved which were worth more than 5.3 billion US dollars, the report said. The suspended contracts also included 318 for the electricity sector, 225 for the health sector, 192 for communciations, 176 for the trade sector and contracts for other sectors such as agriculture, water and sewage, education, housing and industry, according to the report.

The report condemned the conduct of Britain and the US, saying that they "try to exacerbate the sufferings of the Iraqi people". Iraq has repeatedly condemned Britain and the US for suspending contracts signed under the UN oil-for-food programme and has often bitterly criticised the programme for going against the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people.

Foreign Office Minsiter Brian Wilson held talks with the Kuwait Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shaikh Mohammed Sabah on April 10. The talks focused on Iraq.

Holding in contempt public opinion in Britain and world-wide, which is opposed to the genocidal sanctions against Iraq, and which has seen the British government and US imperialism isolated over their bombing of the sovereign country, the Minister declared that it is "Baghdad’s policies (which) are causing suffering among the Iraqi people".

Afterwards, Brian Wilson said, "Shaikh Mohammed and I share the disappointment of the whole Arab world at Iraq’s stance at the recent Arab Summit." He failed to point out that though the summit of the Arab League failed to reach agreement over the question of Kuwait, it was united in condemning the sanctions which Britain continued to uphold. Even the contracts agreed under the "oil for food" programme, Britain and the US are continuing to hold up. This makes a mockery of Brian Wilson’s claim that "we will continue helping the Iraqi people, with whom we have no quarrel".

On April 12, the highest point of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral was occupied for 2½ hours by five Turkish protesters highlighting the ongoing hunger strike resistance of political prisoners in Turkey.

The activists hung two large banners on the rails, threw leaflets from the dome and shouted slogans.

They stated that they would continue their peaceful actions until the problems in Turkey’s prisons are solved. At present, more than 2,000 political prisoners are on a death fast to protest against the F-type isolation prisons. So far 34 of the prisoners have lost their lives, 28 of whom were killed by shooting, burning and torture, and six who have died of through the hunger strike.

Last December, the state security forces stormed the jails over four days and 28 political prisoners were killed, six of them women.

Workers, youth and students, and broad sections of the people in Turkey are continuing their struggle against the government's efforts to impose economic policies aimed at meeting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictate and attract new IMF loans. For weeks, mass demonstrations in cities and towns throughout the country have been a daily occurrence, growing in size and militancy as the government announcement of its new economic programme on April 14 drew near. Up to that time, only one of a series of 15 laws designed to comply with the IMF economic reforms has been passed. Amid strong police presence, throughout the country the people denounced the IMF dictate with slogans of: "We are not the servants of the IMF!", "We want job security!" and "Save workers and public sector employees, not bankrupt banks!".

Coinciding with the unveiling of the economic plan, the people of Turkey took to the streets in their tens of thousands on April 14 in dozens of cities and towns. Some 30,000 people, many public service workers and small traders, converged in Istanbul. In many locations, protesters were met with police violence and arrests. One hundred and twelve people were detained by police in Corum in northern Turkey. In Gazianten, 50 protesters were detained, and in Batman, five trade union activists were arrested. Ten people were detained in Eskisehir for defying police orders not to shout slogans.

Demonstrations defied bans on protest in more than 20 cities, imposed after more than 70,000 protestors converged in the capital city of Ankara on April 11, calling on Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit to resign. The demonstration was met by a massive police presence, and more than 100 people were arrested and over 200 people were injured in clashes with the police.

Since the beginning of the country's latest economic crisis on February 19, the Turkish lira has lost 47 per cent of its value against the US dollar. Prices have rocketed and an estimated 500,000 workers have been laid off.

Economic Minister Kemal Dervis, a former IMF vice-president and top official of the World Bank, announced the new economic plan on April 14 saying that everyone would have to "tighten their belts" even more. The main emphasis of his package is drastic cuts to public spending. He said that "growth is a long-term process", adding that the rate of inflation would reach 57 per cent before dropping to below 20 per cent next year. Kemal Dervis has said he hopes to get $12 billion in additional loans from the IMF. Representatives of the IMF say Turkey will only get the loans that the Minister is seeking if the government can show it is "serious about reform".

The demand is rising for the government to resign, an option the government says it has "ruled out", though the military remains in the wings. However, the working class and people have signalled clearly they will not stand for any government which rides roughshod over their interests in satisfying the demands of international finance capital. Their demand is for an economy which provides for their wellbeing in the first place and for a political system which recognises their rights as human beings.