Scientists cite secret study to oppose Bush nuke plans

www.malaysiakini.com Jim Lobe 12:53pm Mon Mar 10th, 2003

A study by four top defence consultants within the so-called JASON group, obtained and released oún Sunday by the California-based Nautilus Institute, found that the "political effects of US first use of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) in Vietnam would be uniformly bad and could be catastrophic", given the concentration of US forces in Vietnam at the time and the ease with which Vietnamese guerrillas could deliver nuclear weapons obtained from the Soviet Union or China.

"The use of TNW in Southeast Asia is likely to result in greatly increased long-term risk of nuclear operations in other parts of the world," the scientists argued, citing possible attacks oún the Panama Canal, oil pipelines and storage facilities in Venezuela and even Israel's largest city, Tel Aviv.

"The main conclusion (of the report) is that the US offers to any likely adversary much better targets for nuclear weapons than these adversaries offer to the US," said Freeman Dyson, a Princeton University professor who was oúne of four authors of the 1966 report 'Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia'.

"This is even more true in the fight against terrorism than it was in Vietnam," he added in an interview with Nautilus director Peter Hayes.

The release of the report, for which Nautilus fought a 20-year battle with Freedom of Information Act officials at the Pentagon and the Energy Department, comes at a critical moment in US nuclear-weapons policy and the twin crises in Iraq and North Korea.