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- THE WEEK, Page 16WORLDEt Cetera
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- CLEARING THE AIR
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- Using poison gas has been a violation of international law
- since 1925, but stocking national arsenals with it has not. The
- 39-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva filled some
- loopholes last week when it finished work, after 24 years of
- negotiation, on a new treaty. It outlaws production, stockpiling
- and transfer of chemical weapons, and will take effect after 65
- nations have signed it. Some states will refuse to sign; others,
- like Russia, will hesitate because scrapping chemical weapons
- will be so expensive. For the U.S., which will sign, the price
- tag will be more than $6 billion.
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- SCRAP METAL
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- As Russia dismantles thousands of nuclear warheads, a
- dangerously large stock of highly enriched uranium is piling up.
- The U.S. announced it plans to buy at least 80 metric tons of
- the weapons-grade uranium over the next several years. It will
- be diluted and resold as fuel for commercial nuclear power
- stations. The deal -- no price attached yet -- will help keep
- the uranium out of the wrong hands and provide funds for the
- Russians to invest in improving the safety of their nuclear
- power plants. The U.S. will benefit from a long-term supply of
- relatively low-cost fuel for its power stations.
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