DEB RIECHMANN, AP, The Guardian, June 12, 2008
ROME (AP) - President Bush can look forward to a hearty welcome from his old friend, the charismatic Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Rome. That's not what he should expect in the streets, however, where anti-Bush sentiment over the war in Iraq still lingers.
Anti-war activists and thousands of other demonstrators planned to march through the streets of the Italian capital to protest Bush's visit, which was to include meetings with Berlusconi and the pope on Thursday. Commercial flights have been banned over Rome during Bush's two-day stay. Dozens of buses and trams have been rerouted. Thousands of policemen have been deployed as part of a tight security plan to monitor the protests that have waning energy.
Slovenia and Germany, the first two stops on Bush's trip, were devoid of demonstrators. That was evidence that trans-Atlantic relations, fractured over the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq, are on the mend, that European leaders have moved beyond their anger over the war. The Rome protests are evidence that the Italian public still opposes the Bush administration.
Unlike other European leaders, such as former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and former French President Jacques Chirac, Berlusconi supported Bush on Iraq from the start. The 71-year-old media mogul defied domestic opposition and dispatched about 3,000 troops to Iraq after the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Those troops came home, and Berlusconi, recently elected to his third stint in power since 1994, has pledged not to send any back.
More than 2,000 Italian troops, however, are deployed as part of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
Italy, along with Germany, France and Spain, have restricted their troops to less dangerous areas in northern Afghanistan. That has caused a rift because other NATO members are deployed in the more violent regions of the nation. The Italian government is reviewing the restrictions and Berlusconi's office said the premier would talk to Bush about that when they meet.
Berlusconi and Bush also were expected to discuss Italy's interest in joining with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany that are making a diplomatic push to get Iran to give up what the West believes is an effort to develop nuclear weapons. That might seem unusual for Italy, which recently surpassed Germany as Iran's largest trading partner.
But to show Italy's strong opposition to Iran's suspected nuclear ambitions, Berlusconi and his government refused to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was in Rome for a U.N.-sponsored food summit.
Bush will meet with the pope on Friday before departing to Paris to continue his farewell European tour. It will be Bush's third meeting with Benedict. The two last met in April at the White House in Washington.
---
Associated Press writer Alessandra Rizzo in Rome contributed to this report.
Showing posts with label Slovenia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slovenia. Show all posts
Kosovo’s ‘independence’ - Washington gets a new colony in the Balkans
Sara Flounders, Workers World, Feb 21, 2008
In evaluating the recent “declaration of independence” by Kosovo, a province of Serbia, and its immediate recognition as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France, it is important to know three things.
First, Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal self-government. It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and domestic policy. U.S. imperialism has merely consolidated its direct control of a totally dependent colony in the heart of the Balkans.
Second, Washington’s immediate recognition of Kosovo confirms once again that U.S. imperialism will break any and every treaty or international agreement it has ever signed, including agreements it drafted and imposed by force and violence on others.
The recognition of Kosovo is in direct violation of such law—specifically U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which the leaders of Yugoslavia were forced to sign to end the 78 days of NATO bombing of their country in 1999. Even this imposed agreement affirmed the “commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Serbia, a republic of Yugoslavia.
This week’s illegal recognition of Kosovo was condemned by Serbia, Russia, China and Spain.
Thirdly, U.S. imperialist domination does not benefit the occupied people. Kosovo after nine years of direct NATO military occupation has a staggering 60 percent unemployment rate. It has become a center of the international drug trade and of prostitution rings in Europe.
The once humming mines, mills, smelters, refining centers and railroads of this small resource-rich industrial area all sit silent. The resources of Kosovo under NATO occupation were forcibly privatized and sold to giant Western multinational corporations. Now almost the only employment is working for the U.S./NATO army of occupation or U.N. agencies.
The only major construction in Kosovo is of Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S. base built in Europe in a generation.Halliburton, of course, got the contract. Camp Bondsteel guards the strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region.
Over 250,000 Serbian, Romani and other nationalities have been driven out of this Serbian province since it came under U.S./NATO control. Almost a quarter of the Albanian population has been forced to leave in order to find work.
Establishing a colonial administration
Consider the plan under which Kosovo’s “independence” is to happen. Not only does it violate U.N. resolutions but it is also a total colonial structure. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
How did this colonial plan come about? It was proposed by the same forces responsible for the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing and occupation of Kosovo.
In June of 2005, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as his special envoy to lead the negotiations on Kosovo’s final status. Ahtisaari is hardly a neutral arbitrator when it comes to U.S. intervention in Kosovo. He is chairman emeritus of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization funded by multibillionaire George Soros that promotes NATO expansion and intervention along with open markets for U.S. and E.U. investment.
The board of the ICG includes two key U.S. officials responsible for the bombing of Kosovo: Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In March 2007, Ahtisaari gave his Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.
The documents setting out the new government for Kosovo are available at unosek.org/unosek/en/statusproposal.html. A summary is available on the U.S. State Department’s Web site at state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/100058.htm
An International Civilian Representative (ICR) will be appointed by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee Kosovo. This appointed official can overrule any measures, annul any laws and remove anyone from office in Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control over the departments of Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.
The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO will establish an International Military Presence. Both these appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. They are guaranteed immediate and complete access to any activity, proceeding or document in Kosovo.
These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes can be prosecuted and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision made. The largest prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel, where prisoners are held without charges, judicial overview or representation.
The recognition of Kosovo’s “independence” is just the latest step in a U.S. war of reconquest that has been relentlessly pursued for decades.
Divide and rule
The Balkans has been a vibrant patchwork of many oppressed nationalities, cultures and religions. The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia, formed after World War II, contained six republics, none of which had a majority. Yugoslavia was born with a heritage of antagonisms that had been endlessly exploited by the Ottoman Turks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and interference by British and French imperialism, followed by Nazi German and Italian Fascist occupation in World War II.
The Jewish and Serbian peoples suffered the greatest losses in that war. A powerful communist-led resistance movement made up of all the nationalities, which had suffered in different ways, was forged against Nazi occupation and all outside intervention. After the liberation, all the nationalities cooperated and compromised in building the new socialist federation.
In 45 years the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia developed from an impoverished, underdeveloped, feuding region into a stable country with an industrial base, full literacy and health care for the whole population.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the Pentagon immediately laid plans for the aggressive expansion of NATO into the East. Divide and rule became U.S. policy throughout the entire region. Everywhere right-wing, pro-capitalist forces were financed and encouraged. As the Soviet Union was broken up into separate, weakened, unstable and feuding republics, the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia tried to resist this reactionary wave.
In 1991, while world attention was focused on the devastating U.S. bombing of Iraq, Washington encouraged, financed and armed right-wing separatist movements in the Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian republics of the Yugoslav Federation. In violation of international agreements Germany and the U.S. gave quick recognition to these secessionist movements and approved the creation of several capitalist ministates.
At the same time U.S. finance capital imposed severe economic sanctions on Yugoslavia to bankrupt its economy. Washington then promoted NATO as the only force able to bring stability to the region.
The arming and financing of the right-wing UCK movement in the Serbian province of Kosovo began in this same period. Kosovo was not a distinct republic within the Yugoslav Federation but a province in the Serbian Republic. Historically, it had been a center of Serbian national identity, but with a growing Albanian population.
Washington initiated a wild propaganda campaign claiming that Serbia was carrying out a campaign of massive genocide against the Albanian majority in Kosovo. The Western media was full of stories of mass graves and brutal rapes. U.S. officials claimed that from 100,000 up to 500,000 Albanians had been massacred.
U.S./NATO officials under the Clinton administration issued an outrageous ultimatum that Serbia immediately accept military occupation and surrender all sovereignty or face NATO bombardment of its cities, towns and infrastructure. When, at a negotiation session in Rambouillet, France, the Serbian Parliament voted to refuse NATO’s demands, the bombing began.
In 78 days the Pentagon dropped 35,000 cluster bombs, used thousands of rounds of radioactive depleted-uranium rounds, along with bunker busters and cruise missiles. The bombing destroyed more than 480 schools, 33 hospitals, numerous health clinics, 60 bridges, along with industrial, chemical and heating plants, and the electrical grid. Kosovo, the region that Washington was supposedly determined to liberate, received the greatest destruction.
Finally on June 3, 1999, Yugoslavia was forced to agree to a ceasefire and the occupation of Kosovo.
Expecting to find bodies everywhere, forensic teams from 17 NATO countries organized by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes searched occupied Kosovo all summer of 1999 but found a total of only 2,108 bodies, of all nationalities. Some had been killed by NATO bombing and some in the war between the UCK and the Serbian police and military. They found not one mass grave and could produce no evidence of massacres or of “genocide.”
This stunning rebuttal of the imperialist propaganda comes from a report released by the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte. It was covered, but without fanfare, in the New York Times of Nov. 11, 1999.
The wild propaganda of genocide and tales of mass graves were as false as the later claims that Iraq had and was preparing to use “weapons of mass destruction.”
Through war, assassinations, coups and economic strangulation, Washington has succeeded for now in imposing neoliberal economic policies on all of the six former Yugoslav republics and breaking them into unstable and impoverished ministates.
The very instability and wrenching poverty that imperialism has brought to the region will in the long run be the seeds of its undoing. The history of the achievements made when Yugoslavia enjoyed real independence and sovereignty through unity and socialist development will assert itself in the future.
Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, traveled to Yugoslavia during the 1999 U.S. bombing and reported on the extent of the U.S. attacks on civilian targets. She is a co-author and editor of the books: “Hidden Agenda—U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia” and “NATO in the Balkans.”
In evaluating the recent “declaration of independence” by Kosovo, a province of Serbia, and its immediate recognition as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France, it is important to know three things.
First, Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal self-government. It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and domestic policy. U.S. imperialism has merely consolidated its direct control of a totally dependent colony in the heart of the Balkans.
Second, Washington’s immediate recognition of Kosovo confirms once again that U.S. imperialism will break any and every treaty or international agreement it has ever signed, including agreements it drafted and imposed by force and violence on others.
The recognition of Kosovo is in direct violation of such law—specifically U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which the leaders of Yugoslavia were forced to sign to end the 78 days of NATO bombing of their country in 1999. Even this imposed agreement affirmed the “commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Serbia, a republic of Yugoslavia.
This week’s illegal recognition of Kosovo was condemned by Serbia, Russia, China and Spain.
Thirdly, U.S. imperialist domination does not benefit the occupied people. Kosovo after nine years of direct NATO military occupation has a staggering 60 percent unemployment rate. It has become a center of the international drug trade and of prostitution rings in Europe.
The once humming mines, mills, smelters, refining centers and railroads of this small resource-rich industrial area all sit silent. The resources of Kosovo under NATO occupation were forcibly privatized and sold to giant Western multinational corporations. Now almost the only employment is working for the U.S./NATO army of occupation or U.N. agencies.
The only major construction in Kosovo is of Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S. base built in Europe in a generation.Halliburton, of course, got the contract. Camp Bondsteel guards the strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region.
Over 250,000 Serbian, Romani and other nationalities have been driven out of this Serbian province since it came under U.S./NATO control. Almost a quarter of the Albanian population has been forced to leave in order to find work.
Establishing a colonial administration
Consider the plan under which Kosovo’s “independence” is to happen. Not only does it violate U.N. resolutions but it is also a total colonial structure. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
How did this colonial plan come about? It was proposed by the same forces responsible for the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing and occupation of Kosovo.
In June of 2005, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as his special envoy to lead the negotiations on Kosovo’s final status. Ahtisaari is hardly a neutral arbitrator when it comes to U.S. intervention in Kosovo. He is chairman emeritus of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization funded by multibillionaire George Soros that promotes NATO expansion and intervention along with open markets for U.S. and E.U. investment.
The board of the ICG includes two key U.S. officials responsible for the bombing of Kosovo: Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In March 2007, Ahtisaari gave his Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.
The documents setting out the new government for Kosovo are available at unosek.org/unosek/en/statusproposal.html. A summary is available on the U.S. State Department’s Web site at state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/100058.htm
An International Civilian Representative (ICR) will be appointed by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee Kosovo. This appointed official can overrule any measures, annul any laws and remove anyone from office in Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control over the departments of Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.
The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO will establish an International Military Presence. Both these appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. They are guaranteed immediate and complete access to any activity, proceeding or document in Kosovo.
These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes can be prosecuted and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision made. The largest prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel, where prisoners are held without charges, judicial overview or representation.
The recognition of Kosovo’s “independence” is just the latest step in a U.S. war of reconquest that has been relentlessly pursued for decades.
Divide and rule
The Balkans has been a vibrant patchwork of many oppressed nationalities, cultures and religions. The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia, formed after World War II, contained six republics, none of which had a majority. Yugoslavia was born with a heritage of antagonisms that had been endlessly exploited by the Ottoman Turks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and interference by British and French imperialism, followed by Nazi German and Italian Fascist occupation in World War II.
The Jewish and Serbian peoples suffered the greatest losses in that war. A powerful communist-led resistance movement made up of all the nationalities, which had suffered in different ways, was forged against Nazi occupation and all outside intervention. After the liberation, all the nationalities cooperated and compromised in building the new socialist federation.
In 45 years the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia developed from an impoverished, underdeveloped, feuding region into a stable country with an industrial base, full literacy and health care for the whole population.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the Pentagon immediately laid plans for the aggressive expansion of NATO into the East. Divide and rule became U.S. policy throughout the entire region. Everywhere right-wing, pro-capitalist forces were financed and encouraged. As the Soviet Union was broken up into separate, weakened, unstable and feuding republics, the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia tried to resist this reactionary wave.
In 1991, while world attention was focused on the devastating U.S. bombing of Iraq, Washington encouraged, financed and armed right-wing separatist movements in the Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian republics of the Yugoslav Federation. In violation of international agreements Germany and the U.S. gave quick recognition to these secessionist movements and approved the creation of several capitalist ministates.
At the same time U.S. finance capital imposed severe economic sanctions on Yugoslavia to bankrupt its economy. Washington then promoted NATO as the only force able to bring stability to the region.
The arming and financing of the right-wing UCK movement in the Serbian province of Kosovo began in this same period. Kosovo was not a distinct republic within the Yugoslav Federation but a province in the Serbian Republic. Historically, it had been a center of Serbian national identity, but with a growing Albanian population.
Washington initiated a wild propaganda campaign claiming that Serbia was carrying out a campaign of massive genocide against the Albanian majority in Kosovo. The Western media was full of stories of mass graves and brutal rapes. U.S. officials claimed that from 100,000 up to 500,000 Albanians had been massacred.
U.S./NATO officials under the Clinton administration issued an outrageous ultimatum that Serbia immediately accept military occupation and surrender all sovereignty or face NATO bombardment of its cities, towns and infrastructure. When, at a negotiation session in Rambouillet, France, the Serbian Parliament voted to refuse NATO’s demands, the bombing began.
In 78 days the Pentagon dropped 35,000 cluster bombs, used thousands of rounds of radioactive depleted-uranium rounds, along with bunker busters and cruise missiles. The bombing destroyed more than 480 schools, 33 hospitals, numerous health clinics, 60 bridges, along with industrial, chemical and heating plants, and the electrical grid. Kosovo, the region that Washington was supposedly determined to liberate, received the greatest destruction.
Finally on June 3, 1999, Yugoslavia was forced to agree to a ceasefire and the occupation of Kosovo.
Expecting to find bodies everywhere, forensic teams from 17 NATO countries organized by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes searched occupied Kosovo all summer of 1999 but found a total of only 2,108 bodies, of all nationalities. Some had been killed by NATO bombing and some in the war between the UCK and the Serbian police and military. They found not one mass grave and could produce no evidence of massacres or of “genocide.”
This stunning rebuttal of the imperialist propaganda comes from a report released by the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte. It was covered, but without fanfare, in the New York Times of Nov. 11, 1999.
The wild propaganda of genocide and tales of mass graves were as false as the later claims that Iraq had and was preparing to use “weapons of mass destruction.”
Through war, assassinations, coups and economic strangulation, Washington has succeeded for now in imposing neoliberal economic policies on all of the six former Yugoslav republics and breaking them into unstable and impoverished ministates.
The very instability and wrenching poverty that imperialism has brought to the region will in the long run be the seeds of its undoing. The history of the achievements made when Yugoslavia enjoyed real independence and sovereignty through unity and socialist development will assert itself in the future.
Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, traveled to Yugoslavia during the 1999 U.S. bombing and reported on the extent of the U.S. attacks on civilian targets. She is a co-author and editor of the books: “Hidden Agenda—U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia” and “NATO in the Balkans.”
Central Europe Socialists reject U.S. missile shield
By Jan Korselt, Reuters, Sept. 14, 2007
PRAGUE (Reuters) - Central European Social Democrat parties rejected on Thursday a U.S. plan to build part of its missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying it threatened to bring about a new arms race.
Top Socialists from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia said after talks in Prague that any such system must not be built unilaterally or bilaterally.
"We are concerned about the decision to deploy the system and are at one with the large majority of our populations in rejecting it," the parties said in a joint statement, which was signed among others by Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Germany's SPD chief Kurt Beck, and Polish Socialist leader Wojciech Olejniczak.
They called on the European Union, the NATO alliance and the NATO-Russia council to consult on missile defense.
Beck said the statement was also a message to conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom the Socialists jointly rule.
"We agreed we are against any new arms build-up in Europe," Beck said.
Some critics of the anti-missile system have warned the plan could be torpedoed if a Democrat president is elected next year after Republican George W. Bush, but a visiting senior Democrat said her party was behind the project.
"We wanted to come today to make very clear that we are very supportive... of missile defense," Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, said after meeting Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra in Prague.
She added that she hoped negotiations with the Czechs and the Poles would be concluded soon.
The ruling Hungarian Socialists attended the central European socialists' meeting but refused to join in.
"The Hungarian Socialist Party believes that if Europe is exposed to a terrorist threat we have to defend ourselves," said Imre Szekeres, deputy party chief and the country's defense minister.
The United States is building the shield to guard against missiles that it says could be fired by countries such as North Korea and Iran, carrying chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
It is in talks with the rightist governments in Poland -- where it wants to put 10 ground-based interceptor missiles -- and in the Czech Republic, which is meant to host a radar base.
Russia opposes the plan, saying it would upset a delicate strategic balance between major powers and threaten its own security.
The plan has also hit obstacles in the United States.
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee cut $85 million from a $310.4 million funding request for the fiscal year starting October 1, joining the other three congressional committees with jurisdiction over the issue to recommend cutting the plan for European sites next year.
PRAGUE (Reuters) - Central European Social Democrat parties rejected on Thursday a U.S. plan to build part of its missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying it threatened to bring about a new arms race.
Top Socialists from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia said after talks in Prague that any such system must not be built unilaterally or bilaterally.
"We are concerned about the decision to deploy the system and are at one with the large majority of our populations in rejecting it," the parties said in a joint statement, which was signed among others by Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Germany's SPD chief Kurt Beck, and Polish Socialist leader Wojciech Olejniczak.
They called on the European Union, the NATO alliance and the NATO-Russia council to consult on missile defense.
Beck said the statement was also a message to conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom the Socialists jointly rule.
"We agreed we are against any new arms build-up in Europe," Beck said.
Some critics of the anti-missile system have warned the plan could be torpedoed if a Democrat president is elected next year after Republican George W. Bush, but a visiting senior Democrat said her party was behind the project.
"We wanted to come today to make very clear that we are very supportive... of missile defense," Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, said after meeting Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra in Prague.
She added that she hoped negotiations with the Czechs and the Poles would be concluded soon.
The ruling Hungarian Socialists attended the central European socialists' meeting but refused to join in.
"The Hungarian Socialist Party believes that if Europe is exposed to a terrorist threat we have to defend ourselves," said Imre Szekeres, deputy party chief and the country's defense minister.
The United States is building the shield to guard against missiles that it says could be fired by countries such as North Korea and Iran, carrying chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
It is in talks with the rightist governments in Poland -- where it wants to put 10 ground-based interceptor missiles -- and in the Czech Republic, which is meant to host a radar base.
Russia opposes the plan, saying it would upset a delicate strategic balance between major powers and threaten its own security.
The plan has also hit obstacles in the United States.
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee cut $85 million from a $310.4 million funding request for the fiscal year starting October 1, joining the other three congressional committees with jurisdiction over the issue to recommend cutting the plan for European sites next year.
More countries join US-led nuclear energy programme
by Michael Adler, AFP, Sept. 16, 2007
VIENNA (AFP) - Eleven countries joined Sunday a US-led initiative to spread atomic power but not technology which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine signed in Vienna a statement of principles for the programme, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).
It called for the "the expansion of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes worldwide in a safe and secure manner."
GNEP seeks to help states get nuclear fuel, such as uranium, so they do not produce it themselves.
It also aims to promote the use of nuclear reactors that do not present proliferation risks, such as producing plutonium, and to recycle spent nuclear fuel so that plutonium can not be separated out.
Enriched uranium and plutonium can be fuel for reactors but also can be used to make nuclear weapons.
The GNEP started as a US initiative in February 2006 and had its first meeting in May this year in Washington when the United States hosted fellow members China, France, Japan and Russia.
Nuclear power is seen by many as crucial in a world where energy demand is booming since it makes electricity without adding to the greenhouse gases which cause global warming.
The United States is seeking to promote nuclear power while guarding against the danger of the spread of nuclear weapons which arises when states like Iran develop strategic technologies such as uranium enrichment, which makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.
The United States wants GNEP to organize countries that have secure, advanced nuclear capabilities to provide fuel to other nations which agree to use nuclear energy just for power generation.
Their compliance would be monitored by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Sunday that GNEP had no specific projects yet.
"Our task today is to formally commit to the principles espoused by GNEP and to begin discussions with like-minded countries that seek to develop civilian nuclear power in a safe and secure manner and who, not coincidentally, have been reaching out to us," Bodman said in a speech at the GNEP meeting, which also included 22 candidate partner and observer countries.
Bodman later told reporters that GNEP is "not committed to any (one particular technology)" but is "looking at everything that is available."
"What we are attempting to do is to start looking long-term . . . how we should go about developing nuclear power on a safe and affordable basis" while protecting "against proliferation," Bodman said.
"We have a lot to do here just to get ourselves organized," he added.
Asked if the GNEP initiative was coming too late, with Iran for instance already enriching uranium, Bodman said: "It may have been better to do this 10 years ago and not now."
But "we're trying to do the best we can given the set of circumstances that confront us," Bodman said.
Joining GNEP does not entail obligations, such as giving up the right to enrich uranium, the US energy secretary said.
Dennis Spurgeon, assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said "the idea behind GNEP is countries voluntarily coming together for a common good."
GNEP is "not supplanting the IAEA in terms of safeguards. We'll need them more than ever," Spurgeon said.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the GNEP meeting that the program is "a major initiative that is badly needed and is very timely."
"We need energy because again without development there is misery, there is conflict, there is war," ElBaradei said.
Some of the new countries, like Lithuania and Poland, a strong coal user, do not yet have nuclear power but want to develop it.
Polish Economy Minister Piotr Wozniak said his nation wanted to "change our energy mix."
VIENNA (AFP) - Eleven countries joined Sunday a US-led initiative to spread atomic power but not technology which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine signed in Vienna a statement of principles for the programme, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).
It called for the "the expansion of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes worldwide in a safe and secure manner."
GNEP seeks to help states get nuclear fuel, such as uranium, so they do not produce it themselves.
It also aims to promote the use of nuclear reactors that do not present proliferation risks, such as producing plutonium, and to recycle spent nuclear fuel so that plutonium can not be separated out.
Enriched uranium and plutonium can be fuel for reactors but also can be used to make nuclear weapons.
The GNEP started as a US initiative in February 2006 and had its first meeting in May this year in Washington when the United States hosted fellow members China, France, Japan and Russia.
Nuclear power is seen by many as crucial in a world where energy demand is booming since it makes electricity without adding to the greenhouse gases which cause global warming.
The United States is seeking to promote nuclear power while guarding against the danger of the spread of nuclear weapons which arises when states like Iran develop strategic technologies such as uranium enrichment, which makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.
The United States wants GNEP to organize countries that have secure, advanced nuclear capabilities to provide fuel to other nations which agree to use nuclear energy just for power generation.
Their compliance would be monitored by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Sunday that GNEP had no specific projects yet.
"Our task today is to formally commit to the principles espoused by GNEP and to begin discussions with like-minded countries that seek to develop civilian nuclear power in a safe and secure manner and who, not coincidentally, have been reaching out to us," Bodman said in a speech at the GNEP meeting, which also included 22 candidate partner and observer countries.
Bodman later told reporters that GNEP is "not committed to any (one particular technology)" but is "looking at everything that is available."
"What we are attempting to do is to start looking long-term . . . how we should go about developing nuclear power on a safe and affordable basis" while protecting "against proliferation," Bodman said.
"We have a lot to do here just to get ourselves organized," he added.
Asked if the GNEP initiative was coming too late, with Iran for instance already enriching uranium, Bodman said: "It may have been better to do this 10 years ago and not now."
But "we're trying to do the best we can given the set of circumstances that confront us," Bodman said.
Joining GNEP does not entail obligations, such as giving up the right to enrich uranium, the US energy secretary said.
Dennis Spurgeon, assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said "the idea behind GNEP is countries voluntarily coming together for a common good."
GNEP is "not supplanting the IAEA in terms of safeguards. We'll need them more than ever," Spurgeon said.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the GNEP meeting that the program is "a major initiative that is badly needed and is very timely."
"We need energy because again without development there is misery, there is conflict, there is war," ElBaradei said.
Some of the new countries, like Lithuania and Poland, a strong coal user, do not yet have nuclear power but want to develop it.
Polish Economy Minister Piotr Wozniak said his nation wanted to "change our energy mix."
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