Al-Queda Threatened Nuclear Plant

In 2000, Greenpeace surround the Lucas Heights Nuclear Plant after reading about the arrest of Afghanistan veterans of the war with Russia – poised with the AK-47s against the wall.  “Australian prime minister an enthusiastic promoter of the WMD fraud

By Nick Beams

5 June 2003;

While the spotlight has been focused on the Bush and Blair regimes for their role in weaving the web of lies over Iraq’s “weapons o fmass destruction”, attention should also be directed to the Howard government in Australia. When it came to promoting bogus threats and circulating outright lies no one was more vociferous than theAustralian prime minister.

The New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman recently remarked that “misrepresentation and deception
are standard operating procedure” for the Bush administration. The same could equally be said of the Howard government. After a campaign of lies and deception targeting refugees during its re-election campaign in 2001—the Tampa crisis and the so-called “children overboard” affair—the government eagerly joined the Bush
administration’s war drive against Iraq, initiated in July-August 2002. On July
16 last, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer proclaimed that the world should be
worried about Iraq’s ability to build a nuclearbomb, as well as its developing
chemical and biological weapons capacity. Defence Minister Robert Hill said he
was “not surprised” by claims that Iraq was less than three years away from
developing abomb.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER: “What the Jack
Roche affair demonstrates is that the Government is vigorous in making sure it
follows up on any information it has about people who may or may not be involved
in terrorist activities.” Australian and New Zealand officials played down the
seriousness of the threat to the research reactor, some 25 km (15 miles) from
the main Olympic stadium on the outskirts of Sydney and said the risk of an attackwas low. New South Wales Police Commissioner Peter Ryan, who serves as head of security for the Sydney Olympics stated in an interview with NBC on August 28 that the reported plot to blow up the reactor during the games had been exaggerated and he did not think there was any threat.

He described the Afghan refugee group as an Islamic group allegedly involved so far only in the illegal immigration of people, money laundering and other
activities, but “certainly not terrorism.” However, Greenpeace activists,
conservation groups and nearby residents were not convinced and converged on the site of Australia’s only nuclear reactor to protest that the plant was old,
leaky and long a security threat.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported calls in
April last year for the Lucas Heights reactor to be shut down for the Sydney
Olympics, as Atlanta authorities did with a smaller research facility there
before the 1996 games in the United States. The Herald quoted a leading
anti-reactor campaigner assaying nuclear authorities in Australia acknowledged a
potential terrorism threat when they increased security at the Lucas Heights reactor during the 1991 Gulf War.