[CTRL] South Pole Update- Weapons Inspectors To Antarctica

[William Shannon]

http://lantis.tv/release.html May 1, 2001 U.N. Sends Weapons Inspectors to Antarctica UNITED NATIONS (AMP) – Hours after an ailing American doctor was snatched from the South Pole before the onslaught of winter, the U.N. Security Council recommended on Monday that an international weapons inspection team be dispatched immediately to the bottom of the world to investigate charges of secret U.S. military maneuvers. The General Assembly must now approve the Council's endorsement before the United Nations Antarctica Commission (UNACOM) and its high-risk mission becomes official. Sources say approval is a formality now that Col. Ali Zawas , a 44-year-old Egyptian air force officer, has been nominated to head UNACOM. Zawas is the scion of a highly regarded family of diplomats and the grandson of a top American aide to U.S. Gen. Mark Clark during World War II. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. During the Persian Gulf War, Zawas flew under Allied command and shot down two Iraqi warplanes. The U.N. is trying to determine whether the U.S. carried out a nuclear test in violation of the international Antarctic Treaty. The treaty, which entered into force in 1961, establishes Antarctica as a zone of peace and bans all military activities, including the testing of weapons. The U.S. has steadfastly denied the existence of a secret military base or weapons testing on the "peace continent,” although it now admits that its National Science Foundation (NSF) is using American military personnel to construct a new base deep inside the Antarctic interior at Lake Vostok. Earlier this month, however, a classified spy satellite image of Antarctica revealed a physical anomaly two miles beneath the ice that could be a man-made structure — and not just the magnetic phenomenon the NSF claims to be studying at Lake Vostok. Furthermore, the anomaly appears to be located 300 miles away from Lake Vostok, near the epicenter of a recent quake in East Antarctica (see seismic map). That quake, its origins still under investigation, may have caused a huge chunk of ice twice the size of Delaware to break away from the Ross Ice Shelf. The United States, the only council member to issue any objection to UNACOM's formation, abstained from the vote. But sources insist the abstention was on humanitarian grounds. “The Twin Otter plane that rescued Dr. Shemenski from the South Pole a few days ago braved whiteout conditions and temperatures of 65 degrees below zero,” noted an American diplomat in New York who wished to remain anonymous. “It was a dangerous 10-hour evacuation flight across Antarctica and the crew barely got out of there alive . But that was Romper Room compared to the insanity Colonel Zawas and his U.N. weapons inspection team will face when they go in. It’s a suicidal mission that ultimately will come up with nothing but lost lives.” UNACOM will work in conjunction with the Russians, Australians and other nationals already in Antarctica and hunkered down for what promises to be a long winter of 24-hour darkness and plunging temperatures. Ronald Shemenski, 59, the only physician at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, barely escaped last week before the rescue window of opportunity closed. He had been diagnosed with potentially life-threatening pancreatitis. Eighteen months ago another American physician, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, was evacuated after she discovered a tumor that was diagnosed as breast cancer. “This time around,” said the American diplomat at the United Nations, “nobody is going to be able to save Colonel Zawas and his men.”