15:38 AEDT Thu 1 Feb 2001
US sidesteps radioactive fall-out concerns
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/story_8029.asp

America's top Pacific admiral today side-stepped concern over whether one of the unintended consequences of Washington's planned missile defence systems would be radioactive fall-out on Pacific nations.

The US Navy's Pacific Commander, Admiral Dennis Blair, was addressing the Pacific Leaders Conference here on the strategic situation in the region.

Nauru's ambassador to the United Nations, Vince Clodumar, told Blair that his country was concerned that Washington was moving ahead with its so-called National Missile Defence System which would allow it to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles as far from the US as possible.

Clodumar said it was known that the system, if it became operational, could be directed at North Korea.

"If (the system) is deployed say against North Korea you do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that the interception point, the fall-out from the nuclear warhead, would be somewhere over the north Pacific and it is certainly not in the best interests of the region." Clodumar said.

He questioned whether this problem was among the reasons why the United States had not signed the protocols of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone treaty, despite indicating several years ago, that it would.

Blair declined to debate the issue.

"I think the full debate in my country about the National Missile Defence is just beginning so the considerations you raise are certainly ones which should be factored in with all the many technical and diplomatic and policy factors involved," he said.

Blair's area, which includes Korea, China, India and the South Pacific, is, he said, an area of peace.

The "points of friction" such as the India/Pakistan border and the Korean border, were historic.

"If you look at them closely all of these are the remnants of past conflicts which have been managed for many years without any conflict in some cases and containment in other cases. They are the issues of the past, rather than of the future."

He said the near future in the Pacific was one of relative peace, although he warned of piracy, drug running and illegal migration and called for further cooperation from nations in the region against transnational crime.

"The organisations which run these are well financed, they will go to the weakest spots they can find, they will attack all of us, they don't play by the rules."

AFP