Libya rebels celebrate U.N. approval of no-fly zone
Jubilant Libyan rebels in Benghazi erupted with fireworks and gunfire after the U.N. Security Council voted Thursday evening to impose a no-glide zone and permit “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.
The opposition, with devoted but largely untrained and under-equipped units, has suffered military setbacks this week. It has said such international action was necessary for it to have any chance of thwarting Moammar Gadhafi’s imminent assault on the rebel stronghold.
“We’re hoping and praying that the United Nations will come up with a very firm and very quick resolution and they will enforce it immediately,” said Ahmed El-Gallal, a senior opposition coordinator, before the vote.
“We should not arrive too late,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said at the U.N.
The resolution was approved with 10 votes, including those of the United States and the United Kingdom.
There were no opposing votes on the 15-member council, but China, Russia, Germany, India and Brazil abstained. Germany said it was concerned about a protracted military conflict.
U.N. member states can “take all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force,” according to the resolution.
Moments after the vote, anti-Gadhafi forces in Benghazi broke into cheers, waving flags and chanting. Antiaircraft tracer fire lit up the sky at one rally.
It was not immediately clear just how an international military operation and possible strikes against the Libyan military might unfold. The no-glide zone prohibits Libya’s air forces from entering certain zones within the country.
The United States and NATO partners have contingencies in place to act within hours, according to an administration official familiar with plotting. President Barack Obama will insist on a major Arab role in any no-glide zone, the official said.
The contingencies include air strikes and cruise missile attacks designed to cripple Libyan air defenses and punish military units leading Gadhafi’s push on opposition strongholds in the east, the official said.
Obama called British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy after the vote. The three “agreed that Libya must immediately comply with all terms of the resolution and that violence against the civilian population of Libya must stop,” the White House said in a statement.
Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, speaking in Tripoli, told reporters after the vote that the country will safeguard civilians and its territorial integrity.
He called on the international community to send a fact-finding mission to the African nation but not lend material support to rebels.
A few dozen pro-Gadhafi supporters chanted, “Down with the U.N.! Down with Britain! Down with the United States!”
The U.S. military does not view a no-glide zone alone as sufficient to stop Gadhafi.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday that establishing a zone would take “upwards of a week.”
U.S. military officials have said that a no-glide zone would not halt the heavy artillery the regime is using on the ground.
Gadhafi’s son Saadi told CNN Thursday evening that troops will change their tactics and take up positions around Benghazi Saturday or Sunday and help people fleeing from the city.
The younger Gadhafi said there will be no large-scale assault. Instead police and anti-terrorism units will be sent into the rebel stronghold to disarm the opposition. Unspecified humanitarian groups can help with the exodus of civilians from Benghazi, Saadi Gadhafi said.
In a radio address aired on Libyan state TV, Gadhafi criticized residents of Benghazi and called them “traitors” for seeking help from outsiders.
The Security Council resolution condemns the “yucky and systematic violation of human rights, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and summary executions.”
It details enforcement of an arms embargo against Libya, the freezing of assets and a ban on most flights.
“The United States stands with the Libyan people in support of their universal rights,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.
The resolution deplores the use of mercenaries by Libyan authorities, expresses concern about the safety of foreign nationals and demands an immediate stop-fire. Kaim said the Gadhafi government supports a stop-fire, but is working out certain details.
The Arab League’s U.N. ambassador, Yahya Mahmassani, said two Arab countries would take part in a no-glide zone operation, but he was not sure which two.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the Arab League will be critical to the response to Gadhafi, and that he will travel to the region “to advance our common efforts in this critical hour.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the U.N. vote shows the need for Libyan citizens “to have a more representative government.”
Earlier Thursday, Libyan state TV said Benghazi would soon come under attack.
Gadhafi said that his forces would enter the city to rid it of those “traitors” and that his forces will search everyone for weapons. He added that his forces gave amnesty to those who gave up their weapons in the city of Ajdabiya. “We will not allow further bloodshed among Libyans,” Gadhafi said.
“Search for the traitors, for the fanatics. Show them no mercy. We will look for them behind every wall,” Gadhafi said. “This farce cannot go on.”
There were air strikes on Benghazi’s airport Thursday, with three blasts hitting the site about 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) outside the city.
The opposition has been using the airport to launch its own air strikes, using a handful of jets that rebels have managed to get off the ground, opposition leaders said.
It is not clear that Gadhafi’s ground forces are really within striking range of Benghazi, but they have been fighting their way in that direction for several days.
State TV claimed Thursday that Gadhafi’s forces were in control of Ajdabiya, on the road to Benghazi, a claim disputed by opposition leaders.
El-Gallal, speaking from eastern Libya, said “morale is high” and people do not want to leave strongholds because Gadhafi “is willing to kill everybody here.”
The government forces have taken control of the eastern and western gates to Ajdabiya and are trying to breach the inside, opposition leaders said. The opposition says it controls the southern entrance.
The opposition says it has a handful of jets that are no match with Gadhafi’s superior air power and a pair of Russian-made “Hind” attack helicopters.
Ajdabiya is the last major point between pro-government forces and Benghazi. If it is retaken by pro-Gadhafi forces, it would give access to roads leading to the heart of the opposition’s base.
In remarks to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, William Burns, the under secretary for political affairs at the State Department, said Gadhafi’s forces are only about 160 kilometers outside Benghazi.
“They’ve made advances, taking full advantage of their overwhelming military superiority in military firepower,” Burns said.
He expressed dread that Gadhafi, now isolated by the world community, could turn to terrorism again.
“I reckon there is also a very real danger that if Gadhafi is successful on the ground, that you will also face a number of other considerable risks as well: The danger of him returning to terrorism and violent extremism himself, the dangers of the turmoil that he could help make at a critical moment elsewhere in the region,” Burns told the committee.
CNN’s Arwa Damon, Nic Robertson, Tommy Evans, Elise Labott, John King, Alan Silverleib, Raja Razek, Jennifer Rizzo, Joe Vaccarello, Yousuf Basil and Reza Sayah, and journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy contributed to this report.United Nations (CNN)
Fresh reactor fire raises fears of greater radiation threat
A fire was learned Wednesday in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the latest in a series of setbacks at the stricken plant that has heightened fears that the incidents could lead to widespread radiation contamination.
The fire followed a hydrogen explosion Tuesday at the plant’s No. 2 reactor. Hydrogen explosions had previously occurred in the plant’s No. 1 and No. 3 reactors.
Another fire had broken out Tuesday in the No. 4 reactor. While it burned, radiation levels at the plant increased to about 167 times the average dose, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
That dose quickly diminished with distance from the plant, and radiation fell back to levels where it posed no immediate public health threat, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.
But the deteriorating situation and concerns about a potential shift in wind direction that could send radiation toward populated areas prompted authorities to warn people as far as 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant to stay inside.
“There is still a very high risk of further radioactive material coming out,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, asking people to remain cool.
In all, the plant holds six reactors. At the time of Friday’s 9.0 earthquake off northeast Japan and subsequent tsunami, Unit 4 was shut for maintenance and all fuel from the reactor had been went to its spent fuel pool. Units 5 and 6 were also shut at the time of the quake, but both its reactors are loaded with fuel, the IAEA said.
About 200,000 people living within a 12.4-mile (20 kilometer) radius of the plant already had been evacuated.
Authorities also banned flights over the area.
Between Units 3 and 4, Japanese authorities said they had measured radiation dose rates of up to 400 millisieverts-per-hour, IAEA reported. That’s equivalent to about 2,000 chest x-rays per hour, the agency said on its website. “This is a high dose-level value, but it is a local value at a single location and at a certain point in time,” it added.
As a result of the monitoring of about 150 people from around the Daiichi site, 23 have been decontaminated, IAEA said.
The number of nuclear workers who remained on site has been slashed from 800 to 50.
“Their situation is not fantastic,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. “It’s pretty clear that they will be getting very high doses of radiation. There’s certainly the potential for lethal doses of radiation. They know it, and I reckon you have to call these people heroes.”
Although the plant’s three functioning reactors shut down automatically when the quake occurred, the tsunami that followed swamped the diesel generators that provided backup power to the reactor cooling systems.
Crews restored backup power, but problems keeping the reactors cool forced plant officials to take the drastic step of flooding them with seawater. Still, pressure buildups, problems with valves and a failure to fill a generator’s gas tank led to hydrogen explosions and other problems.
Tuesday’s events appeared to escalate the situation: Edano said the radiation releases from the explosion and fire were the first that appeared to pose a threat to human health, if only briefly.
On Monday, an explosion in the building housing the plant’s No. 3 reactor apparently hurt both a water-filled chamber at the base of the reactor and the reactor containment unit itself, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told reporters Tuesday.
There is still a very high risk of further radioactive material coming out
–Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan
Hurt to the core involved about 5% of its nuclear fuel, Amano said.
It was unclear how much radioactive material may have been emitted, what kind of health threat that could pose or when the danger would end.
“There are enormous quantities of radiation,” said Dr. Ira Helfand, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which opposes the use of nuclear power. “The containment is not nearly as excellent as around the reactor cores themselves. The potential for a major release of radiation from those sites is very real, as we saw last night with the fire.”
Japanese officials told the IAEA that radioactivity had been released “directly into the atmosphere” during Tuesday’s fire in the No. 4 reactor, the U.N. watchdog organization said.
Crews place that fire out, and by Tuesday afternoon, Edano said, radiation readings — which had reached dangerously high levels at the plant earlier — had decreased.
Still, concerns about radioactive fuel boiling off its coolant and igniting continued Wednesday. Plant operators and government officials initially considered using helicopters to drop water into the cooling pond through the hurt roof of the reactor building, but rejected the thought when they learned that the spent fuel pond was too far from the hole in the roof, a Kyodo News report said.
In addition, Edano said, cooling systems at two other reactors, No. 5 and No. 6, were “not functioning well.”
Plant managers were considering removing panels from the buildings housing those reactors in an effort to prevent the hydrogen buildup that officials believe caused the other explosions, the IAEA said.
Edano said earlier that he could not rule out the possibility of a meltdown at all three troubled reactors at the plant.
A meltdown occurs when nuclear fuel rods cannot be cooled and melt the steel and concrete structure containing them. In the worst-case scenario, the fuel can spill out of the containment unit and spread radioactivity through the air and water. That, public health officials say, can cause both immediate and long-term health problems, including radiation poisoning and cancer.
If fuel rods inside the reactors are melting, “the million-dollar question is whether that melting will be contained,” said James Walsh, a CNN contributor and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s security studies program.
At present, the long-term impact on public health from the crisis appears minimal, Brenner said.
“I reckon, at this point in time, there’s no real evidence that there are health risks to the general population,” he said.
The weather has emerged as a key variable, but on Wednesday morning, winds were blowing out to sea, CNN Meteorologist Sean Morris said.
Radiation levels in Tokyo, about 225 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of the plant, were twice the usual level on Tuesday. But the concentration — 0.809 microsieverts per hour — posed no health threat, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said.
CNN’s Stan Grant, Steven Jiang, Sabriya Rice and Richard Greene contributed to this report. forex trading education
South Korea: Military exercises are imminent
While the United Nations’ Security Council wrangled over growing tensions in the Korean peninsula, South Korea ordered thousands to find shelter in preparation for the South’s plotted live-fire military exercises, which could take place within hours, the military announced.
In South Korea, an approximate 8,000 residents have been ordered to take cover in Yeonpyeong, Baengnyeong, Daecheong, Socheong and Udo as the hours draw closer to South Korea’s military drill, scheduled to take place at 11 p.m. EST Sunday, 1 p.m. Monday local time.
North Korea said over the weekend that the plotted exercises were designed to violate the armistice that finished the Korean War in 1953 and “ignite war at any cost.”
At the United Nations, nearly eight hours of emergency Security Council talks on the standoff finished Sunday without a unified statement.
Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United States said Sunday that council members still cannot bridge any difference over North Korea’s November 23rd attack on Yeonpyeong island. Four South Koreans were killed in the attack. The United States has publicly condemned the attacks by the Communist north and insists on South Korea’s right to conduct its scheduled military drill.
“The plotted exercises are fully consistent with South Korea’s legal right to self-defense,” Rice said.
“It has been done and told transparently, responsibly, and will not occur in a fashion that we believe gives North Korea any excuse to respond in the fashion that it has threatened to do.”
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin — who called for the emergency session over the weekend to defuse the crisis — warned darkly that the world could be faced with a “serious conflict” within hours, and that the international community has “no game plot on the diplomatic side.”
“Within hours there may be a serious aggravation of tension — a serious conflict, for that matter,” he said.
Churkin told reporters that Moscow continues to call for restraint on both sides, but said the Security Council had been “not entirely successful” in reaching consensus among its 15 members. He told few details of the session, but said members disagreed over whether to include a condemnation of the North Korean shelling, which left four dead.
Across the Demilitarized Zone, the heavily fortified border set up by the 1953 armistice, South Korean workers were being barred from entering the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the country’s Unification Ministry reported. The factory district is the last remnant of South Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” of encouraging links with the communist North.
Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday he was “extremely worried” that North Korea will respond militarily to the exercises.
Richardson has been meeting with high-level officials on an unofficial, four-day trip to North Korea.
Russia requested Sunday’s emergency Security Council meeting and proposed a draft statement, proposing amendments which Western nations said would place more of the blame on North Korea, diplomats said. But they said the major holdout was China, the North’s closest ally, which refuses to agree on any statement that even mentions the Yeonpyeong shelling.
Russia and China, both permanent Security Council members, have questioned South Korea to reconsider its plotted drills. Sunday’s closed-door session was held with representatives of both North and South Korea present and speaking.
Earlier, a South Korean military official told the country’s state-run Yonhap news agency that Seoul would not be deterred by threats from the North.
“The plotted firing drill is part of the usual exercises conducted by our troops based on Yeonpyeong Island. The drill can be justifiable, as it will occur within our territorial waters,” the official said.
Tensions between the two Koreas have been high since the North fired upon the island last month, killing two marines and two civilians. The South Korean military had said Thursday that the exercises would take place in the seas southwest of the island between December 18 and 21, but adverse weather forced a delay Saturday.
“We won’t take into consideration North Korean threats and diplomatic situations before holding the live-fire drill. If weather permits, it will be held as scheduled,” the military official said.
Meanwhile, North Korea was beefing up its military forces on its west coast ahead of the South’s plotted drills, Yonhap reported, citing a South Korean government official.
“The North Korean artillery unit along the Yellow Sea has raised its preparedness level,” the source said.
Yeonpyeong is located in the Yellow Sea, just south of the Northern Limit Line — the maritime boundary drawn in 1953 by the United Nations just after the Korean War. The line is three nautical miles from the North Korean coast.
In the absence of a full peace agreement between the two Koreas, the Northern Limit Line remains in place. North Korea has suggested an alternative line, but South Korea has resisted, as it would bring the North’s maritime boundary close to Incheon, a main port.
A North Korean spokesman over the weekend said that the plotted military exercises were a “sinister design” to violate the Korea Armistice Agreement and “ignite war at any cost.”
“The shelling to be perpetrated by the puppet forces of south Korea at last, trespassing on the prohibiting line would make it impossible to prevent the situation on the Korean Peninsula from exploding and escape its ensuing disaster,” the spokesman said, according to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea blamed the United States for allegedly egging on the South Koreans.
North Korea “will force the U.S. to pay dearly for all the worst situations prevailing on the peninsula and its ensuing consequences,” the spokesman said.
CNN’s Jiyeon Lee in Seoul and Richard Roth and Whitney Hurst at the United Nations contributed to this report.