S. Varadarajan's Archive

Pranab's signing statement on the 123

2008-10-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

He's still speaking live but he just said these words on the 123

"The agreeement has been passed by the U.S. Congress without amendments. Its provisions are now legally binding on both parties once it enters into force."

A good first step in clarifying India's understanding.

The Candidates on U.S. Policy toward India

2008-10-10T12:48:00.001-07:00

http://www.cfr.org/publication/14750/candidates_on_us_policy_toward_india.html

The Candidates on U.S. Policy toward India

October 3, 2008

Democratic Ticket Barack Obama	Republican Ticket John McCain
Joseph Biden Jr.	Sarah Palin

Between its burgeoning economy and major nuclear deal with the United States, India's international profile has soared in recent years. Outsourcing to India and India's role combating environmental problems like climate change are among the issues that have figured in U.S. policy discussions. The Indian-American population neared two million as of the last census in 2000, and political lobbies like the U.S. India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) have become increasingly influential. Perhaps more than any past election, presidential candidates are making a concerted effort to appeal to this constituency and its top donors. Indian voters, according to USINPAC, want immigration reform, a strong geostrategic partnership between the United States and India, and a viable plan for combating HIV/AIDS and other public health crises in India.

All of the remaining candidates serving serving in Congress voted for groundbreaking legislation aimed at opening civilian nuclear cooperation between the United States and India as well as a range of other economic deals.

Democratic Candidates on U.S. Policy toward India

Barack Obama

Obama has said he would build "a close strategic partnership" with India if he is elected president. Because India and the United States have both experienced major terrorist attacks, "we have a shared interest in succeeding in the fight against al-Qaeda and its operational and ideological affiliates," Obama wrote in a February 2008 article in India Abroad, a newspaper on Indian affairs published in New York.

The Obama campaign's June 2007 memo exposing Clinton's ties to India sparked an outcry from the Indian-American community. USINPAC denounced Obama's memo as "the worst kind of anti Indian American stereotyping." Obama apologized for the memo, which referred to Clinton as "Clinton (D-Punjab)" (Rediff.com).

Obama voted to approve the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement in October 2008. He voted in favor of the United States-India Energy Security Cooperation Act of 2006. In September 2008, Obama praised the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for deciding to allow its members to cooperate with India on nuclear issues.

South Asians for Obama published this list (PDF) of Obama's stances on issues of interest to the South Asian community in the United States.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Joseph Biden Jr.

Sen. Biden (D-DE) called U.S. ties with India the "single most important relationship that we have to get right for our own safety's sake" (Rediff.com). He faced criticism in 2006 for commenting that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent" (AP). But, Biden says, he has had a "great relationship" with the growing Indian population in Delaware. Rediff.com called Biden "the driving force" behind the United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006, which was intended to help India develop its nuclear energy program. Biden voted to approve the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement in October 2008. He called that bill's passage "a victory for U.S.-India relations," but said there is "still much to be done in India," including U.S. support for Indian energy production, counterterrorism, and public health efforts.

Biden cosponsored the Energy Diplomacy and Security Act of 2007, which calls on the secretary of state to establish "petroleum crisis-response mechanisms with the governments of China and India."

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Hillary Clinton

Sen. Clinton (D-NY) enjoys strong support from the Indian-American community (NY Sun). Indian Americans for Hillary 2008, founded by prominent hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal, plans to raise at least $5 million for the Clinton campaign (Hindustan Times).

With Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Clinton announced plans in April to form a Senate India Caucus (The Hindu), which she would cochair.

In June 2007, the Barack Obama campaign sparked controversy by circulating a memo accusing Clinton of pandering to the Indian-American community. That memo notes the "tens of thousands" Clinton has received from companies that outsource jobs to India.

Clinton voted for the United States-India Energy Security Cooperation Act of 2006.

Editor's Note: Sen. Clinton withdrew her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on June 7, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Christopher Dodd

Sen. Dodd (D-CT) voted for the United States-India Energy Security Cooperation Act of 2006. Other than that, however, little is known about Dodd's stance on U.S. policy toward India.

Editor's Note: Sen. Dodd withdrew his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 3, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

John Edwards

Edwards has said a "strong U.S.-Indian relationship will be one of my highest priorities" as president. He told the Indian American Center for Political Awareness that the United States and India should "enhance our efforts to cooperate in law enforcement, intelligence sharing, and nonproliferation." He also said he would support India's efforts to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

In late 2005, Edwards said he was "generally supportive" of the proposed U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement.

Editor's note: Edwards dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination on January 30, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Mike Gravel

Gravel's stance on this issue is unknown.

Editor's Note: Mike Gravel ended his bid for the Democraticnomination on March 26, 2008. He then ran for the LibertarianParty's presidential nomination before announcing the end ofhis political career on May 25, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Dennis Kucinich

Rep. Kucinich (D-OH) opposed the U.S. and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006, arguing that it would "threaten global security and unilaterally modify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."

Kucinich also cosponsored a May 2007 House resolution that the United States "should address the ongoing problem of untouchability in India." That resolution passed in the House, but has not yet been voted in on the Senate.

Editor's Note: Rep. Kucinich withdrew his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 25, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Bill Richardson

Richardson says the relationship between the United States and India can potentially serve to deter extremism and counterbalance China economically. He also says India should join the G8.

Richardson says if elected, he would hold an Asian Energy Summit with India, China, Japan, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the United Nations Environment Program to "adopt a ten-year strategy for a major energy transition in Asia."

In a January 2008 Foreign Affairs essay, Richardson praised the U.S.-India nuclear agreement, which he said will "help bring a great democracy, a natural ally of the United States, into the global nuclear regime."

Editor's Note: Richardson withdrew his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 10, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Republican Candidates on U.S. Policy toward India

John McCain

Sen. McCain (R-AZ), has noted India's potential to be one of the "natural allies" of the United States. He stresses the "importance of securing greater U.S. market access to [India's] economy of a billion consumers."

In a March 2008 speech, McCain said he believes India should be included in the G-8.

McCain voted in favor of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement in October 2008. He also voted for the United States-India Energy Security Cooperation Act of 2006. In a May 2008 speech on nuclear security, McCain said he supports the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Accord "as a means of strengthening our relationship with the world's largest democracy, and further involving India in the fight against proliferation." He also said the United States should "engage actively" with India to "improve the security of nuclear stockpiles and weapons materials," and to construct a secure global nuclear order that eliminates the likelihood of proliferation and the possibility of nuclear conflict."

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Sam Brownback

Sen. Brownback (R-KS) calls India "one of our most important strategic partners in Asia." Like Richardson, he has stressed India's potential role as a "counterweight" to China's economy.

Brownback, who formerly chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, has long advocated engagement with India. In 1999, he called for an end to economic sanctions intended to force India to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Brownback voted for the United States-India Energy Security Cooperation Act of 2006 in part, he said, because "India has protected its nuclear program for thirty years and has not proliferated."

Editor's Note: Sen. Brownback withdrew his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination on October 19, 2007.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Rudolph Giuliani

Giuliani views India's rapidly growing economy as a potentially lucrative market, saying the United States should "take advantage" (CNBC) of the "large number of consumers that are emerging in India." In particular, Giuliani said, the U.S. stands to "make a lot of money in India" in new energy technology.

Editor's note: Giuliani dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination on January 31, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Mike Huckabee

Huckabee's stance on this issue is unknown.

Editor's Note: Huckabee withdrew his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on March 4, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Duncan Hunter

Rep. Hunter (R-CA) has often expressed concern that too many U.S. jobs are being outsourced to countries like India and China.

Hunter voted for the U.S.and India Nuclear Cooperation Act of 2006.

Editor's note: Hunter dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination on January 19, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Ron Paul

Rep. Paul (R-TX) has addressed India in terms of U.S. policy towards Iran. He says U.S. "provision of nuclear materials to India is a clear violation of the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)], which contradicts "anti-Iran voices" claiming that Iran is violating the NPT. In fact, says Paul, Iran is entitled under the NPT to develop nuclear power "for peaceful purposes." Further, he argued, "If Iran had a nuclear weapon, why would this be different from Pakistan, India, and North Korea having one? Why does Iran have less right to a defensive weapon than these other countries?"

Paul opposed the U.S. and India Nuclear Cooperation Act of 2006.

Editor's Note: Rep. Paul withdrew his candidacy for theRepublican presidential nomination on June 12, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Mitt Romney

Romney views India as potentially profitable for U.S. marketing and investment, due to its flourishing economy and huge population. Romney said in 2005 that although outsourcing to countries like India is a problem, "we'll see new opportunities created selling products there. We'll have a net increase in economic activity, just as we did with free trade."

Editor's note: Romney dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination on February 7, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Tom Tancredo

Rep. Tancredo (R-CO), whose candidacy focused almost exclusively on immigration issues, has not often spoken about India. However, his failed proposal to end the H-1B visa program during the 108th Congress may have turned some Indian-American voters against him. USINPAC has called for the cap on H-1B visas to be eliminated altogether.

Tancredo voted for the U.S.and India Nuclear Cooperation Act of 2006.

With Rep. Kucinich and others, Tancredo cosponsored a May 2007 House resolution calling on the United States to "address the ongoing problem of untouchability in India." That resolution has not yet been voted on.

Editor's Note: Congressman Tancredo formally withdrew his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination on December 20, 2007.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Fred Thompson

Thompson's stance on this issue is unknown.

Editor's note: Thompson dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination on January 22, 2008.

Click here for this candidate's position on other top foreign policy issues.

Tommy Thompson

The former health and human services secretary has boasted of a "productive bilateral relationship" with India in the fight against HIV/AIDS. He cited funding granted for Indian scientists on AIDS vaccine research and for the expansion of "government and free market interventions in HIV, TB, and malaria treatment and prevention efforts" there.

Darshan Dhaliwal, the Indian-born head of Bulk Petroleum (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), has pledged to raise $1 million for the Thompson campaign.

Editor's note: Thompson dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination on August 12, 2007.

Australia must now help a nuclear India

2008-10-02T07:21:00.001-07:00

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/australia-must-now-help-a-nuclear-india-20081002-4sr9.html?page=-1

Australia must now help a nuclear India

Neville Roach
October 3, 2008

The reduction of carbon emissions can be tied to uranium sales.

THE deal on nuclear trade struck between George Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved by the United States Congress on Wednesday marks a new era in US-India relations. This agreement, and that with France that followed the September decision by the Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow resumption of nuclear trade with India, herald a new de facto non-proliferation framework that has profound implications for Australia's policies on climate change and the exporting of uranium.

No country faces a harder task of responding to climate change than India. With one of the lowest per capita carbon footprints in the world, it has to reduce emissions while needing more energy to sustain its recent economic growth. Clearly, with the world's largest carbon footprint, Australia has a moral obligation to make it easier, rather than more difficult, for India to generate energy in the least polluting way.

To tackle its challenge,

India will have to implement every carbon-efficient energy solution available, including solar, wind, biofuels, natural and coal seam gas and the solution strongly advocated by Australia, clean coal. However, the most effective and immediately available solution is unquestionably nuclear power, which produces zero carbon emissions.

To expand its nuclear power production substantially, India needs secure access to the latest technology as well as uranium ore. The importance of gaining such access led Singh to risk his Government by seeking a confidence vote in the Indian Parliament linked to the US nuclear deal.

As the suppliers group decision does not require India to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Australian Government

will need to review its longstanding policy to export uranium only to NPT signatories. This will have profound implications for Australia's relations with India and the world's response to climate change.

A key recommendation of the Prime Minister's 2020 summit was to engage more actively with Australia's four major regional economies — the US, Japan, China and India. The recommendation reflects India's growing importance regionally and globally. Australia is one of the biggest beneficiaries of India's rapid economic growth (Australia has a trade surplus of more than $10 billion a year) and is a major source of skilled migrants, overseas students and tourists.

The Australian Government is paying much more attention to India than ever before.

Trade Minister Simon Crean and Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith have visited India this year and have hosted visits to Australia by their Indian counterparts. The

Prime Minister is reported to be planning a visit later this year. However, the uranium issue poses the greatest opportunity, as well as threat, to the bilateral relationship.

The Rudd Government has shown great courage and global leadership by unilaterally committing to a reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and a carbon trading regime by 2010.

By taking the moral high ground, Australia is in a strong position to persuade other major emitters to follow suit. This influence can be decisive in relation to India if Australia requires it to commit to a reduction in emissions as a prerequisite for access to this country's uranium.

Australia's willingness to support the suppliers group decision and to decouple the issue of uranium exports from the group's waiver has been extremely well received in India and is proof of Australia's commitment to closer relations with India. We now need to go one step further.

While the suppliers group decision lifts the ban on nuclear trade, actual trade depends on bilateral negotiation between individual members and India. The US and French deals, with Russia certain to follow suit, will collectively meet India's technology requirements.

However, the reliable supply of uranium has still to be secured. While Canada is rumoured

to be willing to become a supplier, Australia, with the world's largest uranium reserves, holds the key.

Australia has an excellent record of adapting its policies to changing regional and global realities. A good example was the recognition of China by

the Whitlam government, a visionary decision that has yielded enormous benefits to Australia, our region and the world. A change in policy in relation to uranium exports to India would be equally visionary and generate similar outcomes.

The suppliers group decision does not preclude individual suppliers setting their own conditions for nuclear trade with India. This is what the US and France have done. Australia, too, can and should negotiate its own conditions to deal with its legitimate concerns. India's strong commitment and outstanding record in relation to non-proliferation should encourage the Rudd Government to find a win-win solution.

Without nuclear power, India cannot meet its energy needs as it strives to lift hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty. The good news is that the more India relies on nuclear power, the greater its ability to minimise carbon emissions. Australia will be seen as a true and reliable friend if it helps India in its hour of need.

Neville Roach is chairman emeritus of the Australia-India Business Council.

US-India nuclear bond? - Washington Times

2008-09-20T23:51:00.001-07:00

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/21/us-india-nuclear-bond/

HAWKINS: U.S.-India nuclear bond?

William Hawkins
Sunday, September 21, 2008

Middle East nuclear renaissance?

COMMENTARY:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Sept. 11 said she supports waiving House rules to speed passage of the U.S.-India nuclear trade agreement by the end of the year. "It does have support in the House," she said. The seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with its focus on national security, was an apt time for the speaker to talk about the pact with India. The agreement has diplomatic implications that extend far beyond even its substantial economic benefits.

Passage of the agreement with India would be a positive contrast to the U.S. cancellation of a nuclear deal with Russia on Sept. 8. The Russian deal would have allowed Moscow to establish a lucrative business in the import and storage of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world.

Given Russia's ties to rogue regimes like Iran, and questions about security at its existing nuclear sites, making it a global center for nuclear fuel storage seemed like a bad idea from its inception. The deal got a deservedly cool reception when sent to Congress for approval in May. Russia's invasion of Georgia led President George W. Bush to pull the agreement.

The U.S.-India pact has had its American critics. Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, raised initial concerns at an April 2006 hearing, arguing, "We must not undermine world support for the nuclear nonproliferation regime by saying that nuclear weapons are fine for our friends." Yet this is exactly what the United States has done for the last 60 years, and must continue to do in the real world of global power politics.

The United States directly helped Great Britain's nuclear development during the Cold War. France developed an independent nuclear deterrent. While this was often disquieting to American leaders, it was not considered a threat like the weapons deployed by Russia or China. Israel is believed to have nuclear arms, but Washington has rightly refused to consider this as the moral equivalent of an Iranian bomb. Treating friends and rivals differently is the essence of foreign policy.

Mr. Biden now supports the agreement. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, also had some initial reservations, but on Sept. 7 hailed its approval by the 45-nation Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG). He called for the deal to "expeditiously" win Senate approval, saying it is "another building block in the partnership between our two countries."

Because India is not a party to the Non-proliferation Treaty, it needed a waiver by the NSG. The agreement does have nonproliferation elements. India will place all future civilian nuclear reactors, and 14 of its current 22 reactors, under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection. It will also continue its moratorium on nuclear weapons tests. But it will not stop building nuclear weapons or the means to deliver them because of the dangerous geopolitical situation with which New Delhi must contend. India is situated between radical Islamic states to the west and a rising China to the east.

The United States cannot afford to treat India as a nation inferior in standing to China, which is rapidly building both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Washington understands "India would never accept a unilateral freeze or cap on its nuclear arsenal. We raised this with the Indians, but the Indians said that its plans and policies must take into account regional realities. No one can credibly assert that India would accept what would amount to an arms control agreement that did not include other key countries, like China and Pakistan." Miss Rice met with Indian Defense Minister A. K. Antony on Sept. 10 to put finishing touches on the agreement.

Wisdom is the ability to judge how things differ on their merits. India is clearly not Iran or North Korea. India already has a fledgling nuclear arsenal and an expanding atomic energy program. India first conducted an underground nuclear test in 1974, prompted by China's entry into the nuclear club 10 years earlier.

India then renounced the development of such weapons and as late as 1988 was calling for U.N. talks to eliminate all nuclear arms. But the rapid rise of China and the increased militancy of Pakistan heightened regional tensions. India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998, bringing new American sanctions against both countries. The sanctions on New Delhi were lifted in 2001 as President Bush gave improving relations with India a high priority.

The U.S.-India nuclear pact is an important step in creating a stabler diplomatic alignment in Asia that can support U.S. security interests in the region.

William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in defense and trade issues.

India is hungry for our uranium

2008-07-15T06:25:00.001-07:00

India is hungry for our uranium

SANDY GORDON

14/07/2008 9:43:00 AM

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/india-is-hungry-for-our-uranium/810448.aspx

The renewed possibility of an agreement between the United States and India on civil nuclear cooperation again puts the issue of the sale of uranium by Australia to India into the Rudd Government's ''in tray''.

Short of energy and uranium, and with an ambitious civil-nuclear program, India is hungry for imported uranium.

Given India has one of the world's lowest per capita rates of energy consumption and a high economic growth rate, the country has an urgent requirement for additional sources of ''clean'' energy in order to develop without contributing overly to global warming.

India is working hard to develop renewable energy sources, but these cannot cope with the rapid rise in demand. It is, therefore, burning increasing amounts of low-grade coal, which it has in abundance. In these circumstances, India regards nuclear energy as an important part of its future energy mix.

Australian uranium is not absolutely essential to India's civil nuclear program, because other countries such as Russia, France, and even China, would provide fuel should Australia refuse.

Burgeoning Australian sales on to world markets will have the general effect of loosening markets, even should Australia refuse to sell directly to India.

But India cannot understand why Australia has refused to sell to it, while agreeing to sell to China, given what India regards as China's somewhat dubious reputation on horizontal proliferation and its lack of democratic credentials. It regards sale of uranium as an ''earnest of intent'' in circumstances in which Australia has reiterated the importance of the relationship.

All that is not enough in itself to justify an Australian decision to sell, but it should be weighed up in the equation. Australia also needs to be mindful of counter-proliferation demands, and Labor needs to resolve some pressing internal issues in relation to nuclear energy.

As to the latter, it would have been a ''bridge too far'' for the Rudd Government to have agreed to sell uranium to India in an election environment and on the back of a decision to abandon the three-mines policy. Labor was also able to make electoral capital out of the Coalition's discomfiture on nuclear power and the ''not in my backyard'' syndrome. But those exigencies of the election campaign have now passed.

So the key issue becomes: would an Australian agreement to sell to India significantly undermine the non-proliferation regime?

Given the 54-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (which includes Australia) and the US itself would have agreed to free up India's civil nuclear program should current proposals proceed, it is difficult to see how an Australian holdout would make any difference in terms of proliferation, other than helping to keep Australia's credentials pure.

Should India be successfully inducted into the global civil-nuclear regime, we would have what would amount to a three-tier system one in which the N5 states (the US, Russia, the UK, France and China) would be at the top as ''legitimate'' nuclear weapons states; then would come India as a ''responsible'', but not fully legitimate, nuclear weapons state; and beneath that would be Pakistan and Israel.

This category of ''responsible'' nuclear weapons states would have all the normal strictures against horizontal proliferation applying to it, since its members would effectively have acceded to the IAEA non-proliferation regime.

Membership of the second tier would have the additional benefit of enhancing civil-nuclear safety regimes. This is an important issue for India, which cannot avoid constructing reactors near heavily populated areas, however, the existence of such a category could also be seen as an incentive to proliferate or at least as the removal of the existing disincentive built around the effective isolation from global civil nuclear trade.

There is also a wider argument concerning India's induction into the civil nuclear regime that goes beyond proliferation and greenhouse concerns.

India's rise as a responsible Asian power will greatly depend on the relationships it forges with the US and its allies such as Australia and Japan. An India left out of the civil nuclear regime would be less likely to support the current treaty regime and its objectives. And, given India's imminent rise as an important Asian strategic and economic power, this could have considerable impact on the regime itself.

So it makes sense for the Rudd Government to support India's induction into the global civil nuclear regime.

Dr Sandy Gordon is a visiting fellow with the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the ANU and author of India's Rise to Power.

A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era (2007)

2008-07-09T12:57:00.001-07:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Siddharth Varadarajan <svaradarajan@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:26 AM
Subject: A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era (2007)
To: Siddharth Varadarajan <svaradarajan@gmail.com>

A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era

Andrew Krepinevich
Robert O. Work

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20070420.A_New_Global_Defen/R.20070420.A_New_Global_Defen.pdf

Remaining to be seen is the impact that a growing US relationship with India will have on the
broader US Asian defense posture. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in 2005,
"Now India is, in effect, a strategic partner, not because of compatible domestic structures but
because of parallel security interests in Southwest Asia and the Indian ocean, and vis-à-vis
radical Islam."552 However, delays to a proposed deal between the United States and India over
US support for the development of India's commercial nuclear infrastructure prevented any
further deepening of the strategic ties between the two countries. However, on December 8,
2006, a bill proposing US-India civilian nuclear cooperation was passed by an overwhelming
majority in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate, ending the long period of
uncertainty over the fate of the deal and paving the way for improved relations between the two
countries.553 Given India's location in South Asia, the United States has many incentives to
continue to develop this strategic relationship, which may someday lead to potential new access
agreements and arrangements in the Indian Ocean.

CSBA -- Role of India in US dissuasion strategy for China

2008-07-09T12:32:00.001-07:00

Dissuasion Strategy
Congressional Briefing, US Capitol
May 6, 2008
Bob Martinage
Senior Fellow, CSBA
http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/S.20080506.Dissuasion_Strateg/S.20080506.Dissuasion_Strateg.pdf
http://csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/B.20080326.A_Cooperative_Stra/B.20080326.A_Cooperative_Stra.pdf

US should exploit the manifold concerns/
grievances of China's neighbors to both deepen
and diversify America's alliance network in Asia

Dissuade PRC from investing in
"disruptive" capabilities by
channeling investment into
relatively non-threatening areas
– Facilitate India's development of a bluewater
navy (or otherwise increase the
perceived threat to PRC SLOCs) to
encourage PRC investment in bluewater
capabilities sooner, more
vigorously, and on a larger scale than
might otherwise be the case
– Ratchet up the perceived threat to
China's home waters posed by US
attack submarines, encouraging the
PLA to shift more resources into
coastal ASW capabilities

Dissuade PRC from investing
in "disruptive" capabilities by
channeling investment into
relatively non-threatening
areas (continued)
– Expand US base-access
agreements in Central Asia to
compel the PLA to invest in more
air defenses in Western/Northern
military districts

The new Aipac -- India lobby

2007-10-02T17:03:00.001-07:00

THE NEW AIPAC?

Forget the Israel Lobby. The Hill's Next Big Player Is Made in India.

By Mira Kamdar

Sunday, September 30, 2007; Page B03

The fall's most controversial book is almost certainly "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," in which political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt warn that Jewish Americans have built a behemoth that has bullied policymakers into putting Israel's interests in the Middle East ahead of America's. To Mearsheimer and Walt, AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobbying group, is insidious. But to more and more Indian Americans, it's downright inspiring.

With growing numbers, clout and self-confidence, the Indian American community is turning its admiration for the Israel lobby and its respect for high-achieving Jewish Americans into a powerful new force of its own. Following consciously in AIPAC's footsteps, the India lobby is getting results in Washington -- and having a profound impact on U.S. policy, with important consequences for the future of Asia and the world.

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"This is huge," enthused Ron Somers, the president of the U.S.-India Business Council, from a posh hotel lobby in Philadelphia. "It's the Berlin Wall coming down. It's Nixon in China."

What has Somers so energized is a landmark nuclear cooperation deal between India and the United States, which would give India access to U.S. nuclear technology and deliver fuel supplies to India's civilian power plants in return for placing them under permanent international safeguards. Under the deal's terms, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- for decades the cornerstone of efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons -- will in effect be waived for India, just nine years after the Clinton administration slapped sanctions on New Delhi for its 1998 nuclear tests. But the Bush administration, eager to check the rise of China by tilting toward its massive neighbor, has sought to forge a new strategic alliance with India, cemented by the civil nuclear deal.

On the U.S. side, the pact awaits nothing more than one final up-or-down vote in Congress. (In India, the situation is far more complicated; India's left-wing parties, sensitive to any whiff of imperialism, have accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of surrendering the country's sovereignty -- a broadside that may yet scuttle the deal.) On Capitol Hill, despite deep divisions over Iraq, immigration and the outsourcing of American jobs to India, Democrats and Republicans quickly fell into line on the nuclear deal, voting for it last December by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Even lawmakers who had made nuclear nonproliferation a core issue over their long careers, such as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), quickly came around to President Bush's point of view. Why?

The answer is that the India lobby is now officially a powerful presence on the Hill. The nuclear pact brought together an Indian government that is savvier than ever about playing the Washington game, an Indian American community that is just coming into its own and powerful business interests that see India as perhaps the single biggest money-making opportunity of the 21st century.

The nuclear deal has been pushed aggressively by well-funded groups representing industry in both countries. At the center of the lobbying effort has been Robert D. Blackwill, a former U.S. ambassador to India and deputy national security adviser who's now with a well-connected Republican lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers LLC. The firm's Web site touts Blackwill as a pillar of its "India Practice," along with a more recent hire, Philip D. Zelikow, a former top adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who was also one of the architects of the Bush administration's tilt toward India. The Confederation of Indian Industry paid Blackwill to lobby various U.S. government entities, according to the Boston Globe. And India is also paying a major Beltway law firm, Venable LLP.

The U.S.-India Business Council has lavished big money on lobbyists, too. With India slated to spend perhaps $60 billion over the next few years to boost its military capabilities, major U.S. corporations are hoping that the nuclear agreement will open the door to some extremely lucrative opportunities, including military contracts and deals to help build nuclear power plants. According to a recent MIT study, Lockheed Martin is pushing to land a $4 billion to $9 billion contract for more than 120 fighter planes that India plans to buy. "The bounty is enormous," gushed Somers, the business council's president.

So enormous, in fact, that Bonner & Associates created an India lobbying group last year to make sure that U.S. companies reap a major chunk of it. Dubbed the Indian American Security Leadership Council, the group was underwritten by Ramesh Kapur, a former trustee of the Democratic National Committee, and Krishna Srinivasa, who has been backing GOP causes since his 1984 stint as co-chair of Asian Americans for Reagan-Bush. The council has, oddly, "recruited groups representing thousands of American veterans" to urge Congress to pass the nuclear deal.

The India lobby is also eager to use Indian Americans to put a human face -- not to mention a voter's face and a campaign contributor's face -- on its agenda. "Industry would make its business case," Somers explained, "and Indian Americans would make the emotional case."

There are now some 2.2 million Americans of Indian origin -- a number that's growing rapidly. First-generation immigrants keenly recall the humiliating days when India was dismissed as an overpopulated, socialist haven of poverty and disease. They are thrilled by the new respect India is getting. Meanwhile, a second, American-born generation of Indian Americans who feel comfortable with activism and publicity is just beginning to hit its political stride. As a group, Indian Americans have higher levels of education and income than the national average, making them a natural for political mobilization.

One standout member of the first generation is Sanjay Puri, who founded the U.S. India Political Action Committee in 2002. (Its acronym, USINPAC, even sounds a bit like AIPAC.) He came to the United States in 1985 to get an MBA at George Washington University, staying on to found an information-technology company. A man of modest demeanor who wears a lapel pin that joins the Indian and American flags, Puri grew tired of watching successful Indian Americans pony up money just so they could get their picture taken with a politician. "I thought, 'What are we getting out of this?', " he explains.

In just five years, USINPAC has become the most visible face of Indian American lobbying. Its Web site boasts photos of its leaders with President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and presidential candidates from Fred Thompson to Barack Obama. The group pointedly sports a New Hampshire branch. It can also take some credit for ending the Senate career of Virginia Republican George Allen, whose notorious taunt of "macaca" to a young Indian American outraged the community. Less publicly, USINPAC claims to have brought a lot of lawmakers around. "You haven't heard a lot from Dan Burton lately, right?" Puri asked, referring to a Republican congressman from Indiana who has long been perceived as an India basher.

USINPAC is capable of pouncing; witness the incident last June when Obama's campaign issued a memo excoriating Hillary Rodham Clinton for her close ties to wealthy Indian Americans and her alleged support for outsourcing, listing the New York senator's affiliation as "D- Punjab." Puri personally protested in a widely circulated open letter, and Obama quickly issued an apology. "Did you see? That letter was addressed directly to Sanjay," Varun Mehta, a senior at Boston University and USINPAC volunteer, told me with evident admiration. "That's the kind of clout Sanjay has."

Like many politically engaged Indian Americans, Puri has a deep regard for the Israel lobby -- particularly in a country where Jews make up just a small minority of the population. "A lot of Jewish people tell me maybe I was Jewish in my past life," he jokes. The respect runs both ways. The American Jewish Committee, for instance, recently sent letters to members of Congress supporting the U.S.-India nuclear deal.

"We model ourselves on the Jewish people in the United States," explains Mital Gandhi of USINPAC's new offshoot, the U.S.-India Business Alliance. "We're not quite there yet. But we're getting there."

miraukamdar@gmail.com

Mira Kamdar, a fellow at the World Policy Institute and the Asia Society, is the author of "Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World."

U.S. presidential campaign and India

2007-06-15T07:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.hindu.com/2007/06/11/stories/2007061103341100.htm

Hindu June 11 2007

U.S. presidential campaign and India

Derek Chollet

The strong U.S.-India relationship has deep support from both Republicans and Democrats.

WITH THE U.S. 2008 presidential campaign in full swing, nearly 20 Republican and Democratic contenders (and possibly more to join soon) are already crisscrossing the country and outlining their policy positions and platforms. This frenzy of campaigning even seems early for most Americans, but for those abroad — in India and elsewhere — it is worth asking: how does this matter to us?

All American presidential elections are consequential, but the next one seems more so. For the first time in over 50 years, no incumbent President or Vice President is in the race, making this a truly open contest to be the first post-Bush, post-9/11 President. The next President — whether Republican or Democrat — will have an opportunity to assess the successes and failures of the Bush years, and then change course accordingly.

It is fair to expect that after 2009, the world will witness a major readjustment of American foreign policy across many issues.

Every new administration spends its first few years dealing with the difficult inheritance of its predecessor, and Mr. Bush's successor will have his or her hands full — from winding down the disastrous Iraq war to reversing the animosity toward the U.S. around the world. Most analysts concede that when it comes to America's place in the world, Mr. Bush's successor will face the most difficult circumstances in U.S. history. That's why it's so significant that one of the good news stories a new U.S. administration will inherit is a relationship with India that is stronger than ever before.

For this reason, the U.S.' relationship with India will not be a major issue in the 2008 campaign. So far, the subject has hardly been mentioned at all. But it's fair to ask: what would a change in administration, especially to a Democratic one, mean for India? There are some who believe that because of Democratic concerns about nuclear proliferation (the former U.S. Ambassador, Robert Blackwill, derides them as nonproliferation "ayatollahs") and trade issues, a Democratic victory in November 2008 would somehow be bad for India or set our relationship back.

There is always a temptation for a new President to make his mark by doing the opposite of his predecessor. George W. Bush did this with his "ABC" — anything but Clinton — attitude after he took office, and the next Democrat in the White House will have plenty of incentive to return the favour. But importantly, the U.S. relationship with India was an exception to this in 2001, and there are powerful reasons to expect the same in 2009.

Importantly, the strong U.S.-India relationship has deep support from both Republicans and Democrats. While many Bush officials like to herald their work as opening a new era in U.S.-India relations, most Democrats see the past seven years as a continuation of the course set by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. To be sure, steps such as the nuclear deal are historic breakthroughs, and these have strong support from most Democrats — especially the dominant presidential contenders. The fact is that the strong U.S.-India relationship is one of the great bipartisan achievements since the end of the Cold War. At a moment where American politics is so soured by partisanship, that's no small feat.

Trade issues

While trade issues remain a point of anxiety for many Democratic constituents and politicians — and the campaign might produce some heated rhetoric — there is broad recognition of how important the economic relationship with India is. The Democratic presidential contenders recognise that outsourcing is a fact of the global economy, and instead of talking about ending trade or building economic walls with India, they talk about ensuring that the government does more to help those who suffer most. In fact, one could argue that because of their credibility with labour unions and working Americans, Democrats are better positioned to put U.S,-India trade relations on a solid footing.

Democrats have also raised concerns about the deep problems of India's neighbour, Pakistan. The Bush administration has pursued unprecedented cooperation with Islamabad — showering Musharraf with $10 billion in aid since 2002 — in exchange for cooperation in fighting terrorism. Yet most Democrats believe such cooperation has been too episodic, and that the peace deals Islamabad recently signed with pro-Taliban elders in western Pakistan have amounted to a failed policy and a Musharraf retreat. Democrats are concerned over negative trend lines in Pakistan — the lack of democracy, rising anti-Americanism, and deep social tensions. And they are alarmed that the vast majority of U.S. assistance money to Pakistan's military is going to weapons that are more appropriate for confrontation with India than rooting out Al-Qaeda. A new administration would reassess this policy and look for ways to fix it.

But most important, Democratic presidential contenders (and those who would staff their administrations) realise that in a world where the U.S. has far fewer friends and seems more isolated than ever before, the U.S.-Indian partnership can be a foundation for greater American engagement in Asia and beyond.

They believe in working to give India the place of leadership it deserves as the world's largest democracy — whether by including it on the U.N. Security Council, or as a founding member of a new "Alliance of Democracies."

In short, no serious Democrat is talking about undoing the great work the past two Presidents have done to strengthen U.S.-Indian relations. If anything, they are planning for a more ambitious agenda. So as one of the most interesting American presidential elections unfolds, America's friends in India should watch with close interest — and with the confidence in our strong partnership.

(Derek Chollet is a senior fellow at The Center for a New American Security and served in the State Department during the Clinton Administration.)

China, nuclear technology, and a US sale

2007-05-30T07:31:00.001-07:00

from the May 30, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0530/p03s01-usfp.html

China, nuclear technology, and a US sale

Critics of a deal to sell China cutting-edge reactors hope to stall it in Congress by questioning the sale's taxpayer-backed financing.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

China has its heart set on buying a cutting-edge US design for a nuclear-power reactor, and the Bush administration has said it is willing to sell because the transaction will mean jobs for Americans and pave the way for a "nuclear [power] renaissance in the US."

But critics of the mammoth $5 billion-plus sale are raising concerns that China might not use the advanced technology strictly for peaceful purposes, perhaps intending to "reverse engineer" pieces of it for military purposes.

That worry surfaced this month in a letter four members of Congress sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The May 18 letter asked whether the sale of four nuclear-power reactors to China, approved by the administration in December, could end up enhancing Beijing's military, including its ability to produce nuclear fuel for bombs and increase the stealthiness of its submarines.

"This transaction presents potential security concerns that Congress will have to consider," wrote Reps. Jeff Fortenberry (R) of Nebraska, Ed Royce (R) of California, Christopher Smith (R) of New Jersey, and Diane Watson (D) of California. All serve on foreign or international relations committees of the House of Representatives.

The sale of US civilian nuclear technology to China has long been a matter of contention. The debate is intensifying now because Westinghouse Electric Co. is expected within weeks to apply for up to $5 billion in loans from the US Export-Import Bank to finance the sale of the reactors to China. When it comes, the application will trigger a review by Congress, where critics of the deal hope to raise enough questions about it to hold it up, perhaps for good.

If approved, the deal would be the largest by far in the history of the bank, a taxpayer-supported entity charged with creating and sustaining jobs by financing sales of US goods to international buyers.

Besides security, an array of concerns

Though security concerns are paramount, any congressional hearings on the deal are likely to address the following sensitive topics, as well:

•Financing of the sale. Should US taxpayers be financing a multibillion-dollar loan to China at a time when China is running a massive trade surplus with the US? What do the taxpayers, who by some estimates contributed at least $300 million to Westinghouse Electric's advanced reactor design, get out of the deal – especially considering that a Japanese firm now owns 77 percent of Westinghouse?

•Technology transfer. China reportedly will get most of the new AP1000 technology, the latest US reactor design, as part of the sale. Some nonproliferation experts say the design of the reactor's coolant pump is of particular concern, and that China might be able to reverse-engineer it for use on its nuclear submarines. Westinghouse spokesman Vaugn Gilbert, though, says the company is bound by a federal technology transfer agreement "that precludes certain elements of that pump technology from being provided to China – therefore we will not be providing it."

Experts are concerned about the technology transfer issue and whether the sale will compromise America's technological lead on nuclear-power systems for subs.

"You're building an infrastructure that can be used and retooled to help out in [China's] naval reactor sector – and they do want this for nuclear subs," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a think tank on nuclear-policy issues.

Because China is already a nuclear-weapon nation, others don't see a problem with sharing US light-water power-reactor technology, a design considered less useful for making bomb fuel. But they do have other worries.

"Our concern is more about whether the US should be supporting building a commercial nuclear infrastructure when there are serious questions about whether the Chinese regulatory system [for nuclear-waste disposal] can do this safely," says Edwin Lyman, a nonproliferation expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group.

A boon to US industry?

Westinghouse and administration officials say the sale is economically justified and concerns about technology transfer unwarranted.

"This deal ... would affirm that the US remains a leader in the design and construction of civilian nuclear-power plants," said David Pumphrey, a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Energy (DOE) in February testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. It would also create "some 5,500 new jobs in the US," he said. He echoed DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman, who spoke in December of the deal's potential to "spur development of a nuclear renaissance in the US."

Westinghouse's Mr. Gilbert says a key benefit is simply getting the new design working the first time in China, thereby working out any glitches and lowering costs for at least 10 new plants in the US that would use the same design.

To some, however, it's unclear how much the US benefits or whether the technology will help China's military. Others question whether the deal will create enough US jobs to merit billions in public financing.

"You've got the Japanese making most of the big parts, [and] the Chinese doing at least half the construction and absorbing all the technology to do it themselves later on," Mr. Sokolski says. "I fail to see any boon to US industry."

"We don't think these economic impact and jobs estimates are done very well," says Thea Lee, policy chief for the AFL-CIO, who sits on the advisory board of Export-Import Bank. "It's been our sense that the bank's process of verifying such claims is very inadequate and that there's a lot of phony job-padding going on."

Westinghouse officials say the deal will "load Westinghouse design centers" in Pennsylvania and other states with work and create positions in 20 states – to the tune of about 5,000 jobs.

Though the deal doesn't sit all that well with Lawrence Wortzel, a commissioner with the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, he does not favor blocking it.

"While I have reservations about the financing and technology transfer to third parties, I still wouldn't recommend taking action to block the sale," he says, noting that China certainly has the money to finance the deal itself and has a huge trade surplus with the US.

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The Return of Reprocessing

2007-04-22T00:46:00.001-07:00

Nuclear Wasteland

IEEE article on the return of reprocessing

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891

Nuclear Wasteland

By: Peter Fairley

PHOTO:Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis

BLUE GLOW OF SUCCESS: Fuel assemblies cool in a water pond at the French nuclear complex at La Hague. The blue light is generated by Cherenkov radiation, which arises from a particle's traveling through a medium faster than the speed of light in that medium

For roughly a quarter century there has been a hiatus in nuclear-plant construction in Europe and North America. Now new plants are being built in France, Finland, and Russia, and new reactor proposals are gathering steam in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. But to undergo a true resurgence—which many analysts argue is necessary to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions—the nuclear power industry needs a coherent plan for dealing with its reactors' radioactive and toxic leftovers.

Burying the waste is a slow, politically painful process that leaves much to be desired. The long-planned U.S. repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been immensely controversial. Yet if built as currently planned, it may be too small when it finally opens to accommodate all the high-level waste that has piled up in the country during half a century of commercial nuclear energy.

Lately, nuclear advocates, particularly in the United States, say they've found a better solution, or at least a path to one. It's based on the recycling and reuse of spent nuclear fuel, known as fuel reprocessing in the industry's jargon. Reprocessing breaks down fuel chemically, recovering fissionable material for use in new fuels. Thus, there is less highly radioactive material that needs to be sealed in caskets, buried deep underground, or otherwise permanently isolated from humankind.

"If we do reprocessing and recycle, we can increase the capacity of Yucca Mountain 100-fold," says Phillip Finck, a nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois. Suddenly, instead of being crammed full on its opening day, Yucca Mountain would be able to handle everything the industry could throw at it until 2050 or beyond, staving off searches for additional Yucca Mountains.

As it happens, there's an ideal test case with which to evaluate that enticing proposition: France, which never backed away from nuclear energy and which has long relied on reprocessing as the linchpin of its power reactor fuel system.

The French experience clearly does show that reprocessing need not be the dangerous mess that other countries, including the United States, have made of it [see photo, "Blue Glow of Success"]. The U.S. military used reprocessing for several decades to separate plutonium from spent fuels, providing fissionable material for bombs. The result was widespread contamination—which has been in some cases irremediable—in the central Washington desert and the South Carolina coastal plain.

France, in contrast, now reprocesses well over 1000 metric tons of spent fuel every year without incident at the La Hague chemical complex, at the head of Normandy's wind-blasted Cotentin peninsula. La Hague receives all the spent fuel rods from France's 59 reactors. The sprawling facility, operated by the state-controlled nuclear giant Areva, has racked up a good, if not unblemished, environmental record.

The United States now claims to have a way of eliminating reprocessing's other major liability: the risk of spreading a supply of raw materials for bomb making. The United States officially banned reprocessing of spent fuel for power reactors in 1977, during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, who feared that proliferation of reprocessing technology would make it too easy for wayward nations or even terrorist groups to obtain the raw material for bombs. But in recent years, the U.S. Department of Energy engineers, including Finck, have developed an approach that they claim is more resistant to terrorist misuse, thereby mitigating concerns about nuclear security and proliferation. The result is that, three decades later, pressure is mounting for another look at reprocessing. The U.S. government is already supplying recycled fuels to one commercial reactor and planning tests of new proliferation-resistant reprocessing technologies.

Nevertheless, although it may be safe to proceed with reprocessing, France's experience suggests that reprocessing as done now is not ready to catalyze a full-blown nuclear renaissance. The problem in a nutshell is that without breeder reactors, which can break down the most long-lived elements in nuclear waste, reprocessing comes nowhere near achieving Finck's 100-fold reduction in that waste.

France's engineers tried harder than those in any other country to build and run breeder reactors reliably at a commercial scale, but ultimately they failed. The result is that even in France—the best real-world model of what reprocessing can accomplish—the technology remains a tantalizing but only partial solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste.

Reprocessing got its start in the early 1940s, when Manhattan Project scientists sought a way to isolate pure plutonium. According to Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986), the chemist Glenn Seaborg, the discoverer of plutonium, came up with the basic concept. A carrier molecule grabs onto plutonium that's in a particular chemical state. That allows the carrier and the plutonium to be separated from the rest of the spent fuel. Further chemistry releases the carrier, leaving a solution of nearly pure plutonium.

It was a risky endeavor from the start because of the volatile, intensely radioactive materials involved. When it was scaled up at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state to obtain the quantities of plutonium needed for bombs, immense concrete bunkers were built to house the operations [see "The Atomic Fortress That Time Forgot," IEEE Spectrum, April 2006]. The workers called them Queen Marys, after the British ocean liner, the world's biggest at the time. Inside, all the processing steps were done entirely by remote control, with technicians peering through thick windows at the machinery that moved materials through the chemical tanks. It was all part of what Bertrand Goldschmidt, an eminent French chemist who worked with Seaborg, called "the astonishing American creation in three years"—a network of laboratories and factories equivalent in size to the whole U.S. auto industry.

France's Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (CEA), a government organization, commissioned its first reprocessing plant in 1958 at Marcoule, in the south, to supply weapons-grade plutonium for the country's nascent atomic bomb program. It added an initial reprocessing unit at La Hague for the same purpose in the early 1960s. The equipment running today, however, dates mostly to a massive upgrade and expansion begun in the 1970s and 1980s. France cut a deal with five countries—Belgium, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland—to finance the modernization of La Hague. In exchange, France agreed to reprocess those countries' spent fuel and return their separated plutonium, so as to reduce high-level waste volumes and provide additional fresh nuclear fuel. Today, the Areva Group, a spin-off of the CEA, runs La Hague as well as other French fuel-cycle installations and builds reactors via a subsidiary it co-owns with Siemens.

Even some of the nuclear industry's most tenacious opponents acknowledge that the result is a technical marvel. The leader of Greenpeace France's antinuclear program, Yannick Rousselet, says he no longer cites technical challenges in his criticism of Areva. "In the past," Rousselet says, "the antinuclear movement tried to say that they would not succeed with reprocessing. But they succeeded. To be honest, at least in terms of the technical aspects, it works."

Activists such as Rousselet had reason to doubt La Hague's chemistry, essentially the same as the separation process developed by the Manhattan Project. It has proved an ecological, occupational, and humanitarian disaster nearly everywhere else. Spills and explosions at reprocessing plants in the United States, Russia, and Britain have polluted rivers and contaminated hundreds of thousands of acres. Britain's Sellafield reprocessing complex, on England's Cumbrian coast, was shuttered in April 2005 after safety authorities discovered that 83 cubic meters of highly radioactive liquids had spilled during a period of nine months.

La Hague, in contrast, has never had a serious accident or spill. It does intentionally release relatively small amounts of radioactive substances into the air and water of the adjacent English Channel, whose strong currents were a key attraction of the La Hague site—behavior that Rousselet calls irresponsible and unwarranted. But the amounts released are below licensed levels and are dropping.

Eric Blanc, the marine engineer turned chemical plant operator who serves as La Hague's deputy director, tells the growing stream of visiting U.S. politicos and utility executives that La Hague's neighbors experience an annual radiation dose below 0.02 millisieverts—roughly equivalent to the dose of solar radiation the visitors receive on their transatlantic flights. La Hague's 5000 workers absorb less radiation than they would if they were employed at a nuclear power plant.

LA Hague takes exposure seriously, nevertheless. Inside the plant, there's a bit of the atmosphere of a James Bond movie. Protection suits and respirators hang on the walls. Scores of workers in white jumpsuits sit at computer screens in a central control room, while others control radiation-resistant robots or dexterous telemanipulators to guide, clean, or repair the equipment. The robots are in the thick of the action, and the danger lies safely isolated behind walls and leaded-glass windows 1 to 2 meters thick in workshops that have not seen a human in two decades of heavy-industrial operation.

Reprocessing at La Hague takes place in two independent but interconnected lines. At the front end of each line, robotic assemblies lift spent fuel-rod bundles weighing 500 kilograms from armored shipping casks and suspend them in 9-meter-deep pools of water. The fuel bundles are at 300 °C; after cooling for four to five years, the fuel elements are fed into the plant's processing workshops to be chewed up, dissolved in nitric acid, and run through a series of chemical separation baths. The chemistry is fundamentally the 63-year-old Purex process developed in the Manhattan Project—Purex stands for "plutonium-uranium extraction"—but Areva says the separation equipment employed is more compact than its predecessors and generates less waste.

The major products of the separation are uranium and plutonium. The former, consisting of the isotopes U-235 and U-238, constitutes 95 percent of the spent fuel. The plutonium yield is just a little more than 1 percent. Most of the uranium is shipped to an Areva plant in southern France and, at the moment, stockpiled. Some analysts predict that uranium prices will eventually justify more reuse of La Hague's uranium; but for now, utilities find it cheaper to use fuel freshly made from uranium ores and enriched to the precise isotopic composition they need. As for the plutonium, it is shipped across France to the Rhône Valley, where Areva's Marcoule fuel plant blends it with uranium and fabricates it into fuel for French reactors.

The final step in the process encapsulates the high-level waste, which consists mainly of acids and solvents from the Purex process plus dangerous, extremely radioactive leftovers from the spent fuel, including isotopes of curium, cesium, and iodine. This step is called vitrification. Technicians operating remote manipulators drop the toxic blend into a bath of borosilicate glass heated to 1150 °C, then dole out the molten mix into 180-liter stainless-steel canisters. Think of a huge glass paperweight with radioactive matter inside instead of colored swirls. But this particular glass is not fragile, Blanc explains. That's the point: the glass is supposed to immobilize the isotopes, isolating them from the environment, like bugs in amber, for thousands of years.

Once processed, two bundles totaling 528 fuel rods yield one vitrification canister 1.3 meters tall and a bit less than half a meter in diameter, plus another steel canister of similar size holding the compacted metal fuel rods. Even the largest of France's reactors, which can produce 1300 megawatts, generate just 20 canisters of high-level waste per year. According to Areva, it's about a factor of 10 reduction in the mass of highly radioactive waste needing to be stored under the most stringent conditions, and a four- or fivefold reduction in volume relative to leaving a plant's spent fuel unseparated [see flowchart, " The French Nuclear System"].

Despite its record of technical success, La Hague's business lost much of its shine during the past decade. By the mid-1990s, France's European partners were rethinking the wisdom of their investment in La Hague and, one by one, stopped shipping their spent fuel. From its 1997 to 1998 peak of 1700 metric tons per year, La Hague's throughput sharply decreased by 2003 to an average of 1100 metric tons per year. In part, France's partners were responding to grassroots concerns about the security of spent fuel and plutonium shipments [see sidebar, "The Terrorist Threat"]. But the ultimate cause for the slump traces back to the demise of the next-generation reactors designed to consume La Hague's plutonium, the so-called fast breeders.

All reactors get their heat from bundles of rods filled with a fissile fuel. The rods are inserted into a core in close proximity to each other, enabling neutrons radiating from the fuel in each rod to split heavy atoms of uranium or plutonium in neighboring rods, thereby generating more neutrons, which split more atoms, and so on. In most conventional power reactors, water or graphite is employed as a moderator to slow down the neutrons, thus rendering them more likely to be absorbed by U-235 atoms, knocking out more neutrons. That is necessary because the concentration of fissionable material in the fuel is low, just a few percent. In contrast, breeder reactor fuel contains a high fraction of fissionable material, so that a moderator is not required.

There is an additional potential advantage to the breeder reactor. By surrounding the fuel rods in its core with a jacket of U‑238, which is not fissionable by slow neutrons, the reactor can produce power and simultaneously "breed" new plutonium faster than the plutonium in the fuel rods is consumed. The U‑238 atoms capture neutrons to form fissile plutonium 239.

The reason for expanding La Hague in the 1980s was to produce a first load of plutonium fuel for what was to be a fleet of breeder reactors. Energy analysts, alarmed by the oil-supply manipulations of the 1970s, had predicted a rush into nuclear power that would exhaust uranium reserves in a matter of decades. "We were projecting that by 2010 nothing but fast [breeder] reactors would be built," recalls one such analyst, Evelyne Bertel, an expert in nuclear fuel cycles at the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency, in Paris.

The United States and the Soviet Union both mounted major efforts to develop breeder reactors during the 1950s and 1960s. But it fell to France, after Carter took the United States out of the reprocessing and breeding game, to design and build the first commercial prototype.

In 1972, a consortium of companies led by the French utility Electricité de France (EDF) started work on the Superphénix. There were countless challenges. Above all was keeping the breeder's densely packed core from overheating, which could cause the fuel to melt and possibly even explode. Because the heat flux is so high in a breeder and absorption of neutrons by a moderator is undesirable, reactor designers faced a limited choice of coolants. In practice, almost all breeder designers have opted for liquid metals that are notoriously hard to handle. Liquid sodium, used in the Superphénix, is extremely corrosive and ignites explosively on contact with oxygen or water.

Starting in the mid-1980s, the Superphénix suffered a series of sodium leaks. Meanwhile the nuclear industry peaked and uranium prices crashed, eliminating the imperative to switch to plutonium fuel. The reactor went through several shutdowns and restarts before the French government finally pulled the plug for good in 1998. By then the reactor had run just 174 days at its full 1250-MW design capacity. A French government investigation in 2000 estimated that the project had cost about €9 billion (US $11.8 billion).

French industry players often blame politics for the Superphénix debacle. François Mitterrand, then president, held power through a coalition with France's staunchly antinuclear Green Party. However, the technical problems are undeniable. "The experience of Superphénix demonstrated that France built a nonmature technology," says Bertel.

With breeder reactors out of the picture for the foreseeable future, France tried to find a new role for La Hague's plutonium. The solution was to re-engineer Areva's fuel assembly plant at Marcoule, originally designed to make fuel bundles for the Superphénix, to instead produce plutonium-enriched fuel elements for conventional reactors. By blending plutonium and depleted uranium, in a ratio of 8 percent to 92 percent, the plant created so-called mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel, which can be substituted for enriched uranium fuel after just minor modifications to a conventional reactor. Today MOX fuel provides close to 10 percent of France's nuclear power generation and is also used in Belgium, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland.

The downside is that spent MOX fuel is even tougher to transport, store, and reprocess than regular used fuel. Spent MOX fuel contains four to five times as much plutonium, increasing the risk of unexpected nuclear chain reactions, called accidental criticalities, within reprocessing plants. Spent MOX is also three times as hot as spent uranium fuel, thanks to an accumulation of transuranic isotopes such as americium and curium, making it less fit for underground storage.

Therefore, according to a 2000 consensus report on reprocessing prepared for France's prime minister, spent MOX must cool for 150 years before it can go into an underground waste repository such as Yucca Mountain [see sidebar: "The Prickly Economics of Reprocessing"]. Meanwhile, spent MOX fuel is piling up quickly in La Hague's cooling ponds: the 543‑metric‑ton accumulation grows by 100 metric tons every year.

The bottom line is that burning MOX fuel makes economic sense only as the beginning of a larger process that ends with incineration in a breeder reactor, and no sense at all as an end in itself. Most of France's reprocessing customers, seeing little future for nuclear energy amid the antinuclear demonstrations of the 1980s and 1990s, accordingly saw no future for breeders either. In that context, Bertel says, pulling away from reprocessing and MOX fuel made perfect sense. As she puts it, "If you are stuck with the spent MOX fuel, why bother?"

The French government and EDF remain invested in the country's nuclear future and therefore classify La Hague's spent MOX as a strategic reserve of plutonium to jump-start future breeder reactors. This eternal hope is, in fact, an essential justification for France's fuel cycle. Japan shares France's vision and built its own reprocessing plant using Areva's designs, which started up last year; the plant is expected to eventually supply Japanese reactors with MOX fuel.

France and Japan suddenly look less isolated in their reprocessing strategy, thanks to U.S. President George W. Bush. Early last year, Bush singled out France's nuclear program for a rare bit of cross-Atlantic praise, telling the American people in a Saturday radio chat that reprocessing will "allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste." Surprisingly, Bush has endorsed reprocessing as not only a means of handling domestic nuclear waste but as a bold response to proliferation as well.

Turning a conventional argument on its head, Bush is saying that the risk of additional countries' using reprocessing to arm nuclear weapons can be lower, not greater, if the United States reprocesses. Under his proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), nations with "secure, advanced nuclear capabilities" would guarantee a steady supply of nuclear fuel to non-nuclear-weapons countries that agree to return the resulting spent fuel and the plutonium within for reprocessing, forgoing reprocessing plants of their own.

But many proliferation experts worry that Bush's plan could backfire. It's not clear that many countries will agree to forgo reprocessing, letting others do the work for them, while they themselves agree to take back the noxious wastes. If participation in GNEP is disappointing, the program could end up encouraging rather than impeding the spread of reprocessing technology—Areva, for one, is plainly interested in licensing its technology.

Whether or not GNEP attracts any takers, a movement toward reprocessing is already well established in the United States. U.S. utilities are getting their first taste of MOX fuel today, thanks to former President Bill Clinton, whose Energy Department in 1997 authorized the fabrication of surplus weapons-grade plutonium into MOX fuel for use in U.S. power plants. Clinton's DOE also awarded a contract to an Areva-led consortium to build a MOX fabrication plant at the DOE's Savannah River, S.C., site. While awaiting construction of the MOX plant—beset by lawsuits that have delayed its projected start date from 2009 to as late as 2015—Bush's first energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, gave Areva permission to produce a first load of MOX at Marcoule. The resulting fuel assemblies began producing power at Duke Power's Catawba, S.C., plant last year. (Abraham, by the way, has since signed on as chairman of Areva's U.S. subsidiary, Areva Enterprises.)

Since Bush's high-profile endorsement of reprocessing last year, nuclear players within and around the Energy Department have been lobbying Congress to support the next step toward full integration of plutonium into the U.S. nuclear industry: a reprocessing demonstration plant. The demo is needed to prove, at large scale, a reprocessing scheme called Urex+, developed at Argonne National Laboratory to be more proliferation-resistant than La Hague's. Urex+ coextracts plutonium together with other transuranic elements present in spent fuel. Such isotopes can be "burned" in a breeder reactor but would complicate the job of any would-be bomb maker, because they contaminate the explosive material somewhat.

The DOE's Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycling Program Plan, sent to Congress this past May, also calls for a demonstration of a breeder reactor fueled by Urex+. In fact, as with France's fuel cycle, the DOE plan is hard to defend unless several such breeder reactors are built. Without them, high-level transuranic waste would become a growing annoyance in the United States, much like the MOX bundles building up in La Hague's cooling ponds. Burton Richter, a Nobel laureate who leads the DOE's science panel on nuclear waste separations (and also serves on the board of Areva Enterprises), acknowledges that breeder reactors are DOE's endgame. "Everybody is in agreement that the right system ultimately results in multiple recycles in fast [breeder] reactors, so that's where things are going," Richter says.

With visions of nuclear electricity "too cheap to meter" long gone, the case for breeder reactors has shifted from creation of new fuels to management of spent fuels. Without breeder reactors, the case for reprocessing is less than compelling. Considered in isolation, the economic arguments for and against reprocessing are a wash. Most of the arguments concerning security and terrorism, too, seem moot. But until or unless breeder reactors are commercialized that can truly burn up all the residual fissile material found in spent fuels, reprocessing will simply concentrate high-level waste in a form that's hotter and harder to handle, exchanging one nuclear waste headache for another.

About the Author

Contributing Editor Peter Fairley has reported for IEEE Spectrum from Bolivia, Beijing, and Paris.

To Probe Further

A recent report to address recycling of nuclear fuels, critically, is "Managing Spent Fuels in the United States: The Illogic of Reprocessing," by Frank von Hippel. It is also available online at http://www.fissilematerials.org. "Economic Forecast Study of the Nuclear Power Option," a report to France's Prime Minister on the economics of reprocessing, was published in July 2000: http://fire.pppl.gov/eu_fr_fission_plan.pdf.

MIT's 2003 study, "The Future of Nuclear Power," is at http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower.

Greenpeace France's "Stop Plutonium" Web site is http://www.greenpeace.fr/stop-plutonium/en.

The U.S. Department of Energy sent a Recycling Program Plan to Congress in May 2006: http://www.gnep.energy.gov/pdfs/snfRecyclingProgramPlanMay2006.pdf .

Areva's La Hague Web site is http://www.cogemalahague.com.

Sidebar 1

The Terrorist Threat

IMAGE: Areva

A police-escorted truck carries pure plutonium from La Hague to Marcoule.

Heightened concerns about terrorism after 9/11 have complicated the global debate over French-style reprocessing. The de facto U.S. practice of leaving spent fuel in ponds adjacent to reactors—a tempting target for terrorists—suddenly seems more questionable than ever. But pure plutonium extracted at plants such as La Hague also could be material for dirty bombs, or even an actual atomic bomb. If a country with sophisticated facilities somehow got its hands on it, just 10 kilograms might suffice for a fission bomb.

The image of French reprocessing took a hit on 19 February 2003, when Greenpeace found a dramatic means of spotlighting the vulnerability of the supposedly top-secret plutonium shipments between La Hague and Areva's mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel plant at Marcoule: it intercepted a convoy carrying more than 138 kg of plutonium in the center of Chalon-sur-Saône, a small city in Burgundy, and invited the French media along for the show.

Sitting in Greenpeace's storefront bureau in Cherbourg, the regional capital 20 kilometers south of the La Hague plant, Greenpeace's Yannick Rousselet recounts the disquieting ease of the operation. "We just waited in front of La Hague, and within three or four weeks we knew everything," he says. By process of elimination, Rousselet's team identified the nondescript flatbed trailers carrying plutonium casks out of La Hague week after week. The trucks pulled out with their police escort at the same time and followed a consistent route and schedule. Stopping the convoy was hardly mission impossible: the convoy rolled into town right on time; a Greenpeace activist driving ahead slowed to a stop, and 25 more activists leaped from a van blocking the opposite lane to chain themselves to the flatbed truck. Rousselet says the stunned gendarmes chaperoning the shipment stepped out of their cars, popped their trunks, and quietly retrieved their weapons and armored jackets.

Greenpeace hired a London-based nuclear risk analysis consultancy, Large & Associates, to put a finer point on the demonstration by assessing a series of terrorism and accident scenarios. In the worst case the consultants studied, an armed group immobilizes a plutonium convoy in a highway tunnel just south of Paris with fuel tanker trucks, opens the plutonium canisters, and then ignites the tanker fuel. In the consultant's estimation, the resulting fire and a northerly breeze would send a plutonium plume over Paris, causing a death toll as high as 4700 and necessitating the permanent relocation of much of the French capital.

Greenpeace's maneuver made good television; however, Areva defends the safety of its shipments. It says the convoys are protected by sophisticated, secret defense systems, which remained silent for Greenpeace, because the French security forces can "differentiate between a pacifist operation and a terrorist attack." —P.F.

Sidebar 2

The Prickly Economics of Reprocessing

IMAGE: Frederic Pitchal/Sygma/Corbis

A nuclear fuel canister at La Hague: the blades facilitate air cooling of the material.

Critics of nuclear fuel reprocessing in the United States often cite its cost, hoping to offer a clean economic argument unsullied by complex issues about national security, arms control, and the environment. But comparing alternative nuclear-fuel-cycle costs is a slippery business, requiring firm long-term projections of uranium prices, estimated total costs of waste disposal procedures that have not actually been implemented yet, and a credible way of factoring in R&D expenditures covered by the military. 

In the 1970s, uranium prices were expected to go through the roof within a few decades. But that argument fell into disfavor during the last two decades of the 20th century, when nuclear construction came to a standstill worldwide. Now, with expectations of a nuclear renaissance, uranium prices have increased by a factor of more than four since 2003. Today's economists tend to discount alarmist uranium supply scenarios. Known resources are dependent on the intensity of exploration, and uranium exploration has, until recently, been meager. What's more, because uranium fuel is but a small part of total nuclear generating costs, the industry could afford to pay higher extraction costs without pricing itself out of business. 

Mainly for those reasons, an influential 2003 report on the future of nuclear power, done at MIT, concluded that possible depletion of fuel resources "is not a pressing reason for proceeding to reprocessing and breeding for many years to come." 

But if economics does not vindicate reprocessing, neither does it damn it. Although credible studies have concluded that reprocessing and producing mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel is several times more costly than using fresh uranium fuel, the cost penalty is small when viewed in context. In addition, studies pricing MOX fuel often underplay the significant uncertainties inherent in their calculations. The biggest is the ultimate cost of waste disposal, because no country is actually operating a final repository. As the MIT study warns, "the uncertainty in any estimate of fuel cycle costs is extremely large." 

Benjamin Dessus, director of the Ecotech program at France's prestigious National Center for Scientific Research, says that he has concluded economics will never settle the reprocessing debate. Eight years ago, Dessus coauthored a high-profile report on the economics of reprocessing for France's then prime minister, Lionel Jospin. It concluded that phasing out reprocessing would cut France's power costs by 1.3 percent—an answer that pleased neither side in the debate. 

"[Jospin] requested a report on economics, and we returned a report that said economics couldn't decide it," Dessus says. "He didn't want to hear that." —P.F.

Military not ready for other wars

2007-03-26T06:19:00.001-07:00

Military not ready for other wars

Troops in US lack resources, government says

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post | March 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for US troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel, and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior US military and government officials acknowledge.

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More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a "death spiral," in which the ever-more-rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops, and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.

The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the US military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran, or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery, and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said.

"We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it," General Peter Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

The Army's vice chief of staff, General Richard Cody, described as "stark" the level of readiness of Army units in the United States, which would be called on if another war breaks out. "The readiness continues to decline of our next-to-deploy forces," Cody told the House Armed Services Committee's readiness panel last week. "And those forces, by the way, are . . .also your strategic reserve."

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked last month by a House panel whether he was comfortable with the preparedness of Army units in the United States. He stated simply: "No . . . I am not comfortable."

"You take a lap around the globe -- you could start any place: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to Pakistan, and I probably missed a few. There's no dearth of challenges out there for our armed forces," Pace warned in his testimony. He said the nation faces increased risk because of shortfalls in troops, equipment and training.

Pace said the unexpected demand for more troops in Iraq -- from the 10 brigades that commanders projected last year they would need by the end of 2006, to the 20 brigades scheduled to be there by June -- prompted him to recommend permanently adding 92,000 troops to the Army and Marine Corps, saying it would "make a large difference in our ability to be prepared for unforeseen contingencies."

Indeed, the recent increase of more than 32,000 US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has pushed already severe readiness problems to what some officials and lawmakers consider a crisis point. Schoomaker said last week that sustaining the troop increase in Iraq beyond August would be "a challenge." The Marines' commandant, General James Conway, expressed concern to defense reporters last week that it would bring the Marine Corps "right on the margin" of breaking the minimum time at home for Marines between combat tours. US commanders in Iraq say they may need to keep troop levels elevated into early 2008.

The troop increase has also created an acute shortfall in the Army's equipment stored overseas -- known as "prepositioned stock" -- which would be critical to outfit US combat forces quickly should another conflict erupt, officials said.

The Army should have five full combat brigades' worth of such equipment: two stocks in Kuwait, one in South Korea, and two aboard ships in Guam and at the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. But the Army had to empty the afloat stocks to support the troop increase in Iraq, and the Kuwait stocks are being used as units rotate in and out of the country. Only the South Korea stock is close to complete, according to military and government officials.

"Without the prepositioned stocks, we would not have been able to meet the surge requirement," Schoomaker said. "It will take us two years to rebuild those stocks. That's part of my concern about our strategic depth."

"The status of our Army prepositioned stock . . . is bothersome," Cody said last week.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers who received classified briefings last week on the stocks and overall Army readiness voiced alarm.

"I'm deeply concerned," said Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who last week asked the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office to investigate the stocks "as a matter of vital importance to national defense."

Representative Solomon Ortiz, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the committee's readiness panel, said: "I have seen the classified-only readiness reports. And based on those reports, I believe that we as a nation are at risk of major failure, should our Army be called to deploy to an emerging threat."

El Baradei interview on Iran

2007-02-20T05:23:00.001-08:00

FT interview: Mohamed ElBaradei

By Daniel Dombey

Published: February 19 2007 21:12 | Last updated: February 19 2007 21:12

On Monday, the Financial Times talked to Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency ahead of a crucial week in the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.

A UN Security Council resolution passed last December calls on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment – which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons grade material – by Wednesday February 21, the date that Mr ElBaradei is due to produce a report on Terhan's compliance with the Security Council's demands.

On Tuesday he is scheduled to meet Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator. Barring a last minute breakthrough, the dispute will then return to the UN, where the US will push for additional sanctions.

In his 40-minute interview with the FT, Mr ElBaradei made clear his doubts both about calls for more sanctions and the international community's emphasis on suspending enrichment. He says that it is far more important to dissuade Iran from pursuing enrichment on an industrial scale – a development that could be a mere six months away – since the country has already acquired considerable technical knowledge from enriching uranium in a "research and development" facility.

This is a transcript of his conversation with the FT.

The importance of negotiations:

FT: What hopes do you have that the Iran nuclear dispute will be resolved in a reasonable time period?

ElBaradei: I'm still quite hopeful because I don't see any other option, quite frankly. How long will it take to convince all the parties to go back to the negotiating table is a matter of speculation. I know however for sure that even if you go for a year or two for retaliation and counter-retaliation and more sanctions it will get worse for everybody, Iran of course, but also all other parts of the international community, specifically, in the Middle East which simply cannot afford an additional escalation which would lead to militancy and increase terrorism. So if we can avoid going through this painful process, knowing that it can never resolve the issue, and try to resolve the process going back to negotiation, that's obviously in the interest of everybody. Both sides understand that. Both sides understand that there's no other way except than to go to negotiation. It's just a question of how to get both sides to the negotiating table while saving face. It really is about saving face…

There's a lot of efforts by everybody trying to do that right now, a lot of it is really, more [of a] drafting process, more how to present a package in a balanced way and whereby the Iranians would feel that they have not lost face and the international community would feel that their requirements had been satisfied. I came up with this idea of double, simultaneous suspension, a time out.

FT: Which would be simultaneous rather than sequential?

ElBaradei: Correct, and that would require some sort of road map to agree on that, or a timeline if you like, that Iran will take a time out from its enrichment activities as a confidence building measure. That obviously does not impact on its right because nobody is questioning its right and this is a concern of Iran that this might compromise the right. I don't think anybody is questioning the right, it's about timing and modalities of implementing fully this right in light of the confidence deficit created. And the Security Council made clear that if Iran does suspend they are ready to suspend [sanctions].

FT: Although that was sequential, wasn't it?

ElBaradei: Yes, but really, you can say sequential a day after, it doesn't really matter if you agree in advance how this will happen, it can be simultaneous. It can even be the same day, somebody will look at it as sequential, others can look at it as simultaneous.

As I said, it is not a major hurdle to get over that, because the stakes are just too high right now in my view to go towards a confrontation route. Sanctions were all right because the international community wanted to send a message that we are concerned and they did that, but… everybody knows that sanctions are not going to resolve the issue in and of itself.

Iran's failure to comply with UN demands

FT: People expect on Wednesday you will report that Iran has not suspended because there's no sign that Iran has suspended. That's the clear expectation.

ElBaradei: Yes.

FT: So after your report there will obviously more pressure from the US to push for more sanctions. Do you think that it will be ill advised to push for more sanctions at the Security Council straight away?

ElBaradei: Obviously, short of a major change of heart, I would report that Iran has not complied with the demand of the international community to suspend. I'm going to see Mr Larijani tomorrow, who's coming to see me in Vienna. And I will continue to make a last ditch effort to try to convince them that it is in their interest to find a way to go into negotiations. If it doesn't happen and I don't see that it is going to happen overnight, I will have to report negatively.

The Security Council resolution, the previous one, 1737 [agreed in December], indicated that if Iran did not comply they will take additional measures. It's a policy judgment, I do not want to replace myself for the Security Council's judgment, but I know for sure that even with additional sanctions, if they were to go for additional sanctions, they would still, in parallel, look for ways to get Iran to the negotiating table and in compliance with the concern of the international community that the programme is not a peaceful programme. Really the whole thing is about confidence building.

Sanctions

FT: You have have real concerns about sanctions. If they begin to bite do you think they are counter productive?

ElBaradei: I have major concerns about relying on sanctions alone. Our experience without exception is that sanctions alone do not work and in most cases radicalise the regime and hurt the people who are not supposed to be hurt. So I have a major concern not about sanctions per se but sanctions alone. And sanctions have to be coupled at all time with incentives and a real search for a compromise based on face saving, based on respect.

I mean we always forget this word respect. A lot of the problems we face, fifty per cent at least if not more, is psychological. Substance is important, but fifty per cent of it is how you approach it, how you reach out to people, how you understand where they're coming from. So I will continue to say: 'Yes, it is your prerogative to apply sanctions but sanctions alone will not do it and you need to invest as much in trying to find a solution through negotiation.'"

The tensions between Iran and the US

FT: Do you think both sides have invested inadequately in negotiations?

ElBaradei: I think so. I've been on the record for saying for many years that the Iranian issue will only be resolved when the US takes a decision to engage Iran directly… The nuclear issue is the tip of the iceberg, it masks a lot of grievances, security grievances, competition for power in the Middle East, economic issues, sanctions, it has to do with human rights, support for extremist groups, there are a lot of other issues that need to be resolved. Iran could be very helpful as a stabilising force in the Middle East. The US could be very helpful in providing the security assurances that obviously lie at the heart of some of the Iranian activities.

Iran's mastering of nuclear technology and the next steps

ElBaradei: Even if the Iranian programme is for peaceful purposes there is no question that at the back of their minds this is a deterrent, that it has a deterrence value as it were. So we need to understand that. I look at things also from the global security perspective. My worry primarily is that if Iran were to be pushed out of the regime, then we have another repeat of North Korea. My worry primarily [is about] if Iran were to start chipping away at an inspection authority or ability to do any inspection. And I start to worry [about] if Iran were to develop industrial capability before we at least clarify all these outstanding issues about the history and the nature of the programme.

These are the three important issues for me from a non-proliferation point of view, much more important for me than Iran acquiring the knowledge [of how to enrich uranium]. Because even if that was relevant six months ago it is not relevant today because Iran has been running these centrifuges for at least six months.

Yes, they might acquire a little bit more, perfecting the knowledge, but to aim at denying a country knowledge is almost impossible, to say the least. And there's a big difference between acquiring the knowledge for enrichment and developing a bomb. It is almost impossible for a country to, particularly because this right is quoted under the NPT [nuclear non-proliferation treaty], and the difference between acquiring knowledge and having a bomb is at least five to ten years away. And that's why I said the intelligence, the British, intelligence, the American intelligence, is saying that Iran is still years, five to ten years away from developing a weapon.

We need, what is really important is to have, a proper diagnosis of the problem, assess the problem properly. My concern is that there has been a lot of hype about the Iranian issue because you need to assess it properly and then you need to address it properly, afterwards.

Military action

ElBaradei: What you see right now, all this talk about the use of force, it's not only counter productive but in fact does not in any way help resolve the issue. Imagine what a regime would feel if they hear that force will be used against them, in additional to being called names, in addition to talk about regime change in the past. Even if they were not going to develop a nuclear weapon today, this would be a sure recipe for them to go down that route.

FT: And how worried are you that the US or Israel might carry out military action, an air strike?

ElBaradei: I of course cannot give hundred per cent guarantees that this will not happen because you read about this all the time. I don't know whether it is hype or if there is some kernel of truth to it.

I know for sure that this would be catastrophic, counterproductive, whatever you called it because for a variety of reasons.

One, I know that what we see in Iran right now is not the industrial capacity you can [use to develop a] bomb. You have small R&D at the knowledge level… to enrich uranium. And I said a hundred times you cannot bomb knowledge.

So there is not really much to bomb. And if you [do] then [you] turn the Iranian drive or you put it in high gear for developing a nuclear weapon. We know that if you jolt a country's pride, all the factions, right, left and centre will get together and try to accelerate a programme to develop a nuclear weapon to defend themselves.

That's classic strategic thinking in any country, whether it's a democracy, a theocracy, whatever… There is a fundamental choice people need to make, which is either you understand that there is a limit to military power, that these issues mask a sense of insecurity or even competition for dominance or influence but force is not the appropriate means to address these issues. Or [you] go for the military option and then either you'll have a repeat of North Korea or you have a repeat of Iraq and these are not our greatest achievements as civilised human beings.

Iran's current nuclear capacity

FT: You talk about them having a small R&D programme. There's a certain amount of cloudiness about where they are. We know that they have two 164 centrifuge cascades above ground in the "R&D" facility at Natanz. They have also said but sometimes denied that they have two further 164 centrifuge cascades below ground in in Natanz. Is that where they are at the moment?

ElBaradei: I think that's where they are at the moment. I think they probably even have one, I'm not sure they've even installed the second one, so it is still just one, so it is still small scale,so whatever they have, what we have seen today, is not the kind of capacity that would enable them to make bombs.

FT: So have the two [cascades of centrifuges] above ground been functioning smoothly at all?

ElBaradei: They have been functioning, I think they have been functioning, they have been able to run them simultaneously, and that also shows as I said that they acquire the knowledge.

The UN demands for suspension of uranium enrichment

ElBaradei: The idea… to continue to focus only on the suspension in my view is not the right approach. You can focus on suspension because it is a confidence building measure but… if I look at it from a weapons perspective there are much more important issues to me than the suspension of this.

The ideal situation is to make sure that there is no industrial capacity, that there is full inspection, because you are asking me how much do they have underground, well I can tell you, but we are not implementing the Additional Protocol [of the NPT], so I don't have spot checks and I do not have the confidence I would have with the Additional Protocol.

FT: When did the inspectors last visit?

ElBaradei: It was last week [when] we were there. I mean the inspection is going smoothly insofar as that I think. It gives us additional authority, it's not just the spot checks. I mean spot checks are not that important, I mean frankly you go after a week, you see what's happened. But what happens is that it gives us [more insight into] R&D. For example [under the additional protocol, currently not applied by Iran, we have] authority to see manufacturing of equipment, which for now we are not able to see. Are they manufacturing more equipment to install later on, that we are not able to see at the moment.

Top priorities

ElBaradei: My three priorities as I said are [for] Iran not to go to industrial capacity until the issues are settled, confidence is built, we need full inspection, involving additional protocol, and at all costs I would like to see Iran not moving out of the [treaty based non-proliferation] system. That would set a terrible precedent and I do not want them to come back in a couple of years and say: 'Good morning gentlemen, we have nuclear weapons.'

The prospects of Iran achieving industrial scale enrichment.

FT: If you define industrial capacity as a cascade of 3,000 centrifuges or more, since if that was fully functioning it would take a year to get enough fissile material for a bomb, how far away do you think they are at the current stage of progress?

ElBaradei: I think they are still far away

FT: A year, two years?

ElBaradei: It's difficult, I really like not to take numbers, to speculate, but away from what, from developing the three thousand [centrifuges]?

FT: From getting three thousand functioning smoothly.

ElBaradei: I don't know, it could be a year, it could be six months. It could be a year, but we need to remember but as long as even they have 3,000 [centrifuges], as long as these 3,000 are under [NPT] safeguards, they cannot go beyond five per cent, people forget that… it's really a risk assessment more of tomorrow more than it is of today…

The choices ahead

ElBaradei: I don't judge intention. It's very difficult to judge. And you know it very much on which kind of environment you create in the region. If you create an environment in which Iran feels isolated, in which Iran is subject to further sanctions, then some of these worst case scenarios could take place, because then you would put the hard liners in the driver's seat, you would make the country feel more and more insecure and then some of these scenarios could happen.

If there is another narrative, based on engagement, based on dialogue, based on reconciling differences, based on stabilising Iraq, stabilising Lebanon, opening up a trade agreement with the Iranians based on providing [them] with nuclear technology, western technology, as the six party offer [tabled last year by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana on behalf of the UK, France, Germany, the US, China and Russia] promises, then this progression could be quite different, because first of all Iran would not necessarily fear that they would be attacked.

FT So the US needs to give security guarantees?

ElBaradei: Oh yes, absolutely, then we should also stop calling names and threaten regime change. And of course if we give them all the technology they need then of course it's costly anyway [to pursue their own uranium enrichment], even if they wanted to. However, we need to explore all these options…

Iran sees enrichment.. sooner or later as a strategic goal because they feel that this will bring them power, prestige and influence. They feel that this will bring them into the company of some of the large and influential [states], the 12, 13 countries with enrichment processing, even if they don't have a weapon, and to change that perception you need to then to look into the whole regional and global security position, because unfortunately a lot of that is true. A nuclear capability is a nuclear deterrent in many ways…

When you see here in the UK the programme for modernising Trident, which basically gets the UK far into the 21st century with a nuclear deterrent, it is difficult then for us to turn around and tell everybody else that nuclear deterrents are really no good for you, it does not increase your security, because all the weapon states, without exception, are either modernising, or thinking about developing new weapons not only for deterrence purpose, but actually usable [ones]. Statements have been made during the last couple of years about possible actual use, such as mini-nukes, bunker buster. So the environment is do as I say not do as I say and that is not sustainable.

What Iran needs to begin negotiations

FT: Your 'time out' idea is deliberately vague. Would it be enough for the Iranians to suspend enrichment activities since the resolution calls on them to do more?

ElBaradei: I think the resolution talks about if they suspend enrichment-related activities, [then] they will suspend sanctions. They ask them to do a host of other things, but suspension of sanctions is linked to the enrichment. And yes, there is a part of constructive ambiguity because I would like to leave people room for manoeuvre to negotiate the details.

I cannot replace myself for governments, it is governments to negotiate the details, but it is encouraging that I have not seen anyone so far reject the idea. Everyone so far is saying we like this but we want to add this or that or the other. I still think it's very much an idea that's alive and kicking. President Putin recently came in support of it, the Germans, the French said that this mutual suspension is a good idea. The Americans also did not reject it so far although they said that the Security Council resolution is clear. That's fine, but somebody needs to take it and translate it into a working solution.

FT: Have you seen any solid or substantial response from the Iranians? I know that they didn't make a big noise on Revolution Day [which Iran celebrates on11 February].

ElBaradei: That was frankly quite positive, because all the expectations were that they were going to announce that they were going to go for the 3,000 centrifuges and maybe some other stuff.

They did not do that and I think the president [Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad] said he would make that announcement in April. That to me is an effort to reach out. It's a moderate reaction, frankly. So we still have this window of opportunity, but the window of opportunity is frankly until our board meets.

Even if my report is coming out this week, I can still add and reverse judgements there until the 6th of March. So we have a window that is not very long, but still I would still like to see something happening before the board because once I go to the board then you go into this sort of autopilot process, the board would react, the Security Council would react, it then makes things much more difficult.

The US

FT: How constructive has the US been?

ElBaradei: The US has been helpful in joining the six party offer. That took a lot of time and was a step in the right direction. I still hope that eventually the IS will be able to get into direct contact with Iran about the regional issues and not only the nuclear issue because they are very much linked, the connection between the regional issue and the nuclear issue are very much linked because they are all about security, we should not delude ourselves about that.

The US building up of military force in the Gulf, I think it's not only [because of] the nuclear issue, it's.. Iraq, it's… Afghanistan, Gulf protection, we have seen that over time, people flexing muscles, and the Iranians have been making parades.

But flexing muscles and showing how much force you have, it's part of the game, but… the issues at hand are not going to be resolved by shows of force and frankly a lot of issues we are facing in the Middle East today are absolutely immune to any resolution through the use of force…

I am all for dialogue, as I am all from negotiation, not because this is a soft approach, but I know if you engage people you moderate their behaviour. If you isolate them you radicalise them. That's why I always say if you have a problem sit and talk it over but if you continue to think that dialogue is the icing on the cake and I will only do it if people are behaving well you might have to wait for very long.

North Korea

FT: Some people see the agreement on North Korea as a re-enactment of the Agreed Framework [the 1994 nuclear deal between the US and Pyongyang] but this time North Korea had nuclear weapons. So was it a mistake for the US to walk away?

ElBaradei: I leave it to the US government and the public to judge that. People refer to this agreement as the son of the Agreed Framework. Hopeful, it's a legitimate son, hopefully it will allow us to go forward. I have a lot on my plate for me now, while I'm still doing this job, to reminisce and say what we have done wrong.

We have done a lot of things wrong on this and many issues but the important thing is to focus on the future. I think this is a step in the right direction. It is not the ideal solution. Korea should not have had nuclear weapons. We have mismanaged nuclear North Korea to the point where they have a nuclear weapon so that's why I say we do not want a repeat of it in Iran…

And it is not ideal because we are going to deal [with] inspection in an incremental way, but the world is not black and white, as long as we are talking and not bombing each other, I think that is positive.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

--
Siddharth Varadarajan
Associate Editor
The Hindu
I.N.S. Building, Rafi Marg
New Delhi - 1

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US seeking favorable development of Korean nuclear issue

2006-10-31T04:36:00.001-08:00

US seeking favorable development of Korean nuclear issue
People's Daily
Oct 30, 2006

The nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a shift from secrecy to openness for the country on its possession of nuclear arms. Superficially, the nuclear test is of some concern to the United States, but it is quite possible that the United States may be the biggest beneficiary of the DPRK test.

Nuclear non-proliferation is not the US' goal

In the US national security strategy, the prevention of nuclear proliferation is simply a way to ensure national security. The US is not absolutely against nuclear proliferation; its possession of nuclear weapons is proof of this. It benefits from international cooperation in developing its own nuclear weapons. Sharing its nuclear knowledge is a form of proliferation. The Manhattan Project, for instance, was a joint nuclear research program between the US, Britain and Canada and the atomic bomb was partially built with the help of these wartime allies. Britain continued to research nuclear weapons and Canada did not. The United States' missile defense project with Japan is another such project to share nuclear knowledge. This is nuclear knowledge proliferation; the key is with whom it is shared.

The United States has no lingering points of contention with Britain and France over the development of their nuclear program, because it believes that western democratic countries, even with nuclear weapons, pose no danger to US security. The US has also accepted the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons, though Israel has refused to confirm or deny this. If Israel does in fact have nuclear weapons, this will presumably be a deterrence to attack from other countries in the region. This would be a boon for the US too as political and military pressures could be shared, increasing the security of the United States.

After the eastern democratic nation of India tested nuclear weapons, the US quickly realized that imposing sanctions was not the best direction to take. It chose instead to find ways to encourage India to be a responsible nuclear power and to help India develop into one of the economic superpowers of the 21st century. It even wanted to develop a civilian nuclear power program with India. This was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

India established a nuclear program not to defend against or attack the US, Russia, Britain, China, France or even Pakistan. India has three to seven times the amount of conventional weapons that Pakistan has. It is Pakistan that needs nuclear weapons. It is clear that the United States' deliberate violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was a move to contain other nations. US assistance to India is a kind of nuclear proliferation, vertical proliferation.

This clearly indicates that nuclear non-proliferation is not America's strategic objective. Its strategic goal is national security. The US helped India to help curb the rise of autocratic nations. As long as the US needs anti-terrorism support, the US will keep Pakistan on side as a non-NATO ally and give it billions of dollars of support. It no longer worries about the impact of a nuclear Pakistan on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It will not concern itself with the legitimacy of the Pakistani government, or investigate the legal liabilities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb.

In America's eyes, nuclear proliferation is classified into the acceptable and the unacceptable. The former benefits US security, the latter does not. When US allies break or bend nuclear rules, they are not opposed. When its rivals have nuclear weapons, the US takes a pragmatic approach. When nations not allied to the US have nuclear arms, the US faces reality and gradually grows to value its relationship with those other countries, ultimately trying to incorporate them into its global strategy.

US seeks advantageous position in region

It is important to understanding the United States' long-term utilitarian attitude toward non-proliferation, which is quite different to China's staunch opposition to any form of nuclear proliferation. China needs to grasp the US's agenda in the DPRK following nuclear testing and predict the possible evolution of US policy on the Korean Peninsula.

The United States has had to register its objection to the DPRK's nuclear test to be politically correct. China perceives this as part of the US' overall strategy in the region. The US has been monitoring the DPRK"s nuclear development for a long time and suspected DPRK of having nuclear weapons as early as a decade ago. It was fully prepared for the DPRK to take this step, and may already be resigned to the DPRK becoming a nuclear power.

The United States abandoned talks with DPRK at the end of last year. The US imposed economic sanctions on the DPRK and found reasons for the DPRK to be excluded from Six-Party talks. In the meantime, it asked China to share the responsibility of a nuclear DPRK, despite the fact that DPRK claims it was pressure from the US that forced it to develop nuclear weapons. Considering the difficulty of the mission, the requests of the United States are bound to drive a wedge between China and North Korea. The Bush administration's sanctions have caused the DPRK to believe that talks with the US have become impossible. The US is remolding North Korea's foreign policy by taking positive measures to induce the DPRK to conduct nuclear tests, imposing sanctions under the multilateral framework of the UN and weakening China's influence on North Korea.

The United States is also making strategic use of Japan and South Korea in the Korean nuclear issue. In recent years, the relationship between the United States and South Korea has weakened. South Korea insists on its Sunshine Policy for North Korea. South Korean people are more and more dissatisfied about the United States over the issue. The DPRK nuclear test will isolate the two neighboring countries, which is beneficial the US.

The next president must adjust policy on DPRK

America is confident that North Korea would not forfeit its nuclear arms and knows that a war is not a political possibility. It has to resolve the issue peaceful means, but needs to ensure the DPRK becomes a responsible nuclear state. North Korea claims it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, that it will not sell or proliferate nuclear weapons or technology and that it is not involved in international terrorist activities.

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1718 to impose sanctions on DPRK. As long as the DPRK guarantees its nuclear weapons are only for self-defense purpose, it will have no trouble with the US, at least until the next President of the United States is sworn in.

The US-led war in Iraq and the sanctions the Bush administration has imposed on the DPRK have affected North Korea's awareness of security; relations between the two countries have seriously deteriorated. Hopefully the next president of the United States will adjust its policy and hold talks with the DPRK.

North Korea has boosted its confidence in terms of security and will be more willing to interact with the US, as it is still being isolated by the broader international community. This is North Korea's position now but US will ultimately lift the sanctions it has imposed on the DPRK. The US will seek favorable development in the regional situation.

By People's Daily Online

Containment with Chinese Characteristics

2006-09-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

ontainment with Chinese Characteristics

Beijing Hedges against the Rise of India

By Christopher Griffin

Posted: Thursday, September 7, 2006

ASIAN OUTLOOK

AEI Online

Publication Date: September 7, 2006

This Asian Outlook is available here as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Although China and India have announced that their relationship is important enough to "reshape the world,"[1] Beijing views its increasingly important ties with Delhi as a means to manage India's growing strength. China has combined traditional strategic balancing and diplomatic engagement in an effort to set its own terms for India's emergence as a great power. Without American support, India is at risk of being boxed in by Beijing's containment strategy.

In an impressive display of whirlwind diplomacy, China and India have just negotiated a series of major agreements: a strategic partnership in May 2005, a memorandum on energy cooperation in January 2006, and a memorandum of understanding on military relations in May 2006. Chinese observers point to these agreements as proof that Beijing and Delhi refuse "to become sacrifices of contention between big powers" and that "neither of them has seen the growth of the other side as a threat but, instead, as a development opportunity for itself."[2]

But all is not as it seems in Asia. Indeed, the more one follows Sino-Indian relations, the more it appears that Beijing has ripped a page from what it perceives as the U.S. playbook for containing a rising power. The People's Daily recently summarized U.S. policy toward China:

There have been two tendencies in the United States in the formulation of its China policy, one holding China as a potential rival that must be contained on all sides; the other believing China's momentum is irreversible. . . . [It must therefore] be engaged to play a "responsible" and "constructive" role. Washington's China policy in recent years has turned out a combination of the two, while its [recent] acts are all-sided containments under the cloak of engagement words.[3]

As frustrating as Beijing finds this perceived policy of "all-sided containments under the cloak of engagement," it has found the approach increasingly useful in its own relationship with India.

Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai?

The modern Sino-Indian relationship opened on an optimistic note that is difficult to recall today. When Beijing and Delhi established formal relations in 1950, each had recently finished bitter struggles for independence and then stood at the vanguard of a global post-colonial movement. The implications of this sea change in international affairs appeared so profound that Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru found it necessary to introduce a new concept to describe relations among nonaligned states: Panchsheel, widely known as the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

The Chinese government embraced the concept (which appears in both countries' diplomatic statements to this day), and the Sino-Indian relationship was celebrated as forming the nucleus of a new world order. Indeed, the Indian media were encouraged by Nehru's government to use the term "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai," or "India and China are brothers," to describe the relationship.

Tensions simmered, however, beneath the smooth façade of Sino-Indian relations. The Panchsheel principles were just the introduction to a territorial settlement between Beijing and Delhi that did not resolve several major disputes, largely concerning the McMahon Line negotiated in 1914 to establish a border between British India, de facto independent Tibet, and the Republican Chinese government (which signed the agreement but did not ratify it). Nehru considered an important part of India's stature that the McMahon Line stand, while the Communist Chinese government considered it an effort to enjoy the gains of an imperial British land grab.

Conflict broke out in October 1962, when the dispute over the Sino-Indian border in the area of Aksai Chin (near Kashmir and under Chinese control but claimed by India) and Arunachal Pradesh (east of Bhutan and under Indian control but claimed by China) erupted into warfare. After clearing the Indian Army from Arunachal Pradesh, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) withdrew and established a line of control along India's claimed border.[4] China achieved all its goals in this conflict, known as the Sino-Indian War. Possession of Aksai Chin secured a direct supply route between Tibet and Xinjiang, while Nehruvian delusions of grandeur lay safely in shambles--so much so that one scholar ventured that China's "strategy as it unfolded after 1959 was designed not so much to gain possession of a few thousand miles of mountainous territory . . . as to erode India's position as a power of some consequence on the Asian scene."[5]

For the next two decades, China consolidated its 1962 victory against India by supporting strategic proxies against Indian interests, most notably in its support of Pakistan during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistani wars. Chinese policy was characterized by declarations to the effect that "should the Indian expansionists dare to launch aggression against Pakistan, the Chinese government and people will, as always, firmly support the Pakistani government and people."[6]

While the declarations of Chinese support could not save Pakistan from repeated humiliations in its fights with India, they drew lines that Delhi knew it could not cross in its fights with Islamabad without possibly triggering Chinese intervention. Meanwhile tensions along the border kept Indian forces diverted to the contested northern front, especially Arunachal Pradesh, a remote territory enveloped on three sides by foreign frontiers and dependent upon supplies delivered through the 21-kilometer-wide Siliguri Corridor. Also, beginning at some point in the 1980s, China initiated covert support for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

In the 1980s, however, Sino-Indian relations began to thaw as the leadership in Beijing sought to distance itself from both the Soviet and American Cold War camps, leading to the launch of an "omnidirectional" foreign policy in Asia. This modified approach toward the subcontinent was reflected in China's diminished verbal support for Pakistan during a near-outbreak of Indo-Pakistani hostilities over Kashmir, and likewise when the Chinese government gradually backed out of its support for Sri Lanka and Nepal during Indian disputes with those countries in 1987 and 1988.[7] Indeed, it appeared that Beijing was ready to recognize Indian ascendance in what it increasingly viewed as the strategic backwater of Southeast Asia.[8]

Nuclear Breakout, Nuclear Deal

China's new approach toward India ran into trouble after 1991, when a newly reformed Indian economy recovered from crisis and entered a period of rapid growth, allowing Delhi to climb the ranks of international arms importers quickly. While India's economic dynamism put pressure on the Sino-Indian relationship, the tipping point came on May 11, 1998, when the Indian government detonated three nuclear devices in the first of a series of tests conducted by Delhi and Islamabad that month.

The tests revealed the suspicions that Beijing and Delhi continued to harbor. In an explanatory letter that then-Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee sent to world leaders, he specifically referred to China ("an overt nuclear weapons state . . . which committed armed aggression against India in 1962") as a reason for the Indian bomb.[9] Senior Chinese statesman Qian Qichen responded that "international condemnation [of the tests] is totally justified" and pointed out that "[w]hat is particularly unacceptable is that India has gone so far as claiming that it conducted the nuclear tests because of China's threat."[10] The People's Liberation Army Daily added that the nuclear tests have "further exposed [India's] ambition of seeking regional hegemony in the military sphere."[11]

While Qian condemned India's nuclear tests, the Chinese government used its presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to craft an international condemnation. UNSC Resolution 1172 called for India and Pakistan to scrap their nuclear weapons programs and join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states. The resolution was far harsher than a U.S.-drafted statement of the four other permanent members of the UNSC.[12]

Despite its condemnation of India's nuclear weapons program, China declined to impose any sanctions on either India or Pakistan, still viewing the latter as a useful balancer on the subcontinent while Beijing entered into a period of diplomatic rapprochement with Delhi that concluded with Vajpayee's June 2003 state visit to Beijing.

The likely explanation for China's Janus-faced handling of the 1998 South Asian nuclear breakout was that while it felt threatened by India's nuclear program, it also recognized that the tests had set the diplomatic ball rolling by pulling America into the region, a process that continued through the 1999 Kargil Crisis, the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, and the near-outbreak of war between India and Pakistan following a December 2001 attack against India's parliament.

Although India and China trumpeted Vajpayee's 2003 visit to Beijing as proof of progress, the progress between the two countries was overtaken by a pair of bilateral agreements announced by India and the United States in the summer of 2005. The June 28 "New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship" overturned longstanding Chinese assumptions about India's regional power and its ties to Washington, and the July 18 Joint Statement pledged the United States to aid India's civil nuclear power program.

China met the July 2005 nuclear deal with muddled hostility, as the Chinese government sought to criticize it without undercutting its newly improved relationship with India. On July 25, the foreign ministry stated that Beijing hoped "the relevant cooperation between [the United States] and India will be conducive to safeguarding the regional peace and stability in Asia."[13] The party mouthpiece the People's Daily meanwhile repeated criticism of the nuclear deal from American analysts, arguing that Washington viewed its relationship with India as a way to pressure China.[14]

The Chinese government has been remarkably conciliatory toward the nuclear deal, signaling that it will not veto its approval in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), where its opposition could pose a major setback. The apparent logic behind China's moderation on the nuclear deal is Beijing's perception that any adverse strategic consequences of U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation could be counteracted through similar support of Pakistan's civil nuclear program.

A March 2006 People's Daily article indicated that Beijing retains the option of acting through strategic proxies[15] to undercut any gains that the United States and its allies make as a result of the nuclear deal: "The agreement will have its 'rippling' effect, which means that Pakistan, which has a similar position as India on the nuclear issue, may make similar demands and Iran may feel even more resentful of this 'double principle' in the current nuclear dispute."[16]

Within a month of issuing this veiled threat, reports surfaced that Beijing had entered into talks with Islamabad on supplying a 2,000-megawatt nuclear power plant.[17] And China is in a strong position to press its case for cooperation with Pakistan--Beijing can make approval of its support for Pakistan a basic condition for supporting the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal at the NSG, a necessary step for Indian-American cooperation. China has thus set the stage for itself and its proxies to retain regional strategic ascendancy.[18]

Ties that Bind: Military Contacts and the Contested Border

While China is moving to contain the fallout from the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal, it is also working to maintain its longstanding conventional military superiority over Indian forces, despite the latter's recent gains. The central elements of this effort have been a combination of bilateral agreements that will give Beijing better access to India's evolving military, and unilateral moves intended to strengthen its own position along the countries' contested border and in the Indian Ocean.

Despite the global media focus on the nuclear deal in the summer of 2005, Beijing was far more concerned with a less-noted agreement signed between Indian defense minister Pranab Mukherjee and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The June 28 "New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship" committed Washington and Delhi to cooperation in thirteen substantive areas such as joint operations, intelligence sharing, and technology transfer.[19]

The New Framework is disconcerting to the Chinese government because it represents a major step forward in the development of U.S.-Indian defense cooperation that has accelerated since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The United States and India now organize regular exercises in which their militaries conduct sophisticated operations such as at-sea refueling, landing helicopters on ships at sea, and mixed force-on-force mock engagements.

The lesson of this cooperative experience for the United States and India has been that while the latter seeks to maintain its strategic autonomy, it needs American support if it is to break away from its longstanding role as a client of Russian arms--a position that left it operating the same weapons as most of its neighbors, including China--and as a player on the wrong side of the growing technological gap between the American defense industrial base and the rest of the world.[20]

Closer Indian ties to the United States defense establishment have tremendous implications for the military balance in Asia. They have first meant that the United States is moving closer to recognizing India as what the Bush administration calls a "responsible, democratic nation" that can be entrusted with responsibility for security in the Indian Ocean if U.S. forces are ever called to deploy rapidly to other theaters. And while the global superpower is inviting India to develop a dominant maritime position, Delhi's ever closer relationship with Washington will enhance its ability to do so.

Indian leaders are keen to use the strategic partnership with the United States to introduce into India advanced U.S. technology, learn America's most successful operational practices, and give India the chance to integrate its widely dispersed military into an effectively unified force. Defense industrial ties with the United States promise to make this transformation sustainable over the long term as Delhi collaborates with Washington in the design and production of new generations of weapons systems.[21]

Chinese observers have not let these developments pass without comment. On July 7, 2005, the People's Daily published an article titled "Washington Draws India in against China," in which it declared that the New Framework was "partly intended to diminish China's influence in this region and to safeguard and expand U.S. strategic interest [sic] in Asia."[22]

The article continued by pointing out that the provisions for defense industrial cooperation are "of special significance given the fact that the United States on the one hand presses the European Union to keep [its] arms embargo on China and urges Israel to cancel arms sales to China while on the other hand sign[ing] a wide-ranging defense agreement with India." Despite China's rapidly developing defense industrial base, it cannot help but acknowledge its losses in being largely cut off from American, European, and Israeli markets, especially while India has access.

The first component of China's response to these adverse developments has been to seek new routes to Delhi through political agreements that will permit greater Chinese observation of the Indian military. Most important is a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that Mukherjee signed with Cao Gangchuan, China's minister of national defense, in May 2006. The MoU commits the two countries to a regimen of joint military exercises, collaboration in counterterrorism, anti-piracy, and search-and-rescue efforts, as well as regular military exchanges.[23]

Upon signing the MoU, Mukherjee drew the guarded conclusion that India's "ties with China have reached a certain degree of maturity. . . [We] are striving to address our differences in a proactive and purposeful manner without allowing them to affect the comprehensive development of our relationship."[24] Other Chinese assessments have been more sanguine, as characterized by the People's Daily commentary that the MoU will "foster a favorable international and regional situation, and provide a strategic foundation for mutual trust" with the opportunity for India to use the framework to "play a very important and positive role in maintaining peace in the Asia-Pacific region and across the world."[25]

One Indian analyst pointed out the source of this divergence in views when he observed that the agreement appears to have three major implications for the Chinese side that Delhi does not share:

One, China has taken the growing ties between India and the United States more seriously than it took the 1998 nuclear blasts by India. Two, the MoU is undoubtedly a Chinese initiative to seek a better understanding of the thinking within the Indian armed forces. And three, the MoU will not assist in a speedier resolution of the border dispute. . . China's only way of determining the progress of military relations between India and the U.S. is by having formal ties with the Indian defense ministry.[26]

Seen in this light, it is not surprising that Beijing should be satisfied with the arrangement. And the American experience of military ties with China in the 1990s indicates that Delhi will find its new partnership a flawed one. The Sino-American relationship has been plagued by a lack of reciprocal transparency, as China sought to gain greater access to technical components of the U.S. military without raising the curtain on its own forces.[27] India may find China an eager partner at the negotiating table, but if it looks beneath China's "cloak of engagement words," it may yet find a pattern of containment.

That pattern appears to be emerging first along the Sino-Indian border, where China is bolstering its military position by upgrading its infrastructure. This move is strategic because although China has always enjoyed a position with strong operational superiority over India along the contested areas in Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, it is sensitive to the gradual deterioration of its position in the Indian Ocean as Delhi develops new generations of weapons systems with American support.

The strategic consequences of India's growing naval power are clear. Every additional barrel of oil that China imports leaves Beijing more vulnerable to a disruption of the sea lanes. If Delhi's naval modernization effort turns the Indian Ocean into India's ocean, the risk for Beijing may grow unacceptable. In response, it appears that just as Beijing has long leveraged its claims against Indian-controlled territory in Arunachal Pradesh to legitimize its occupation of Aksai Chin, it may now leverage its superiority along the Sino-Indian border to remind Delhi of the costs of conflict on the Indian Ocean.

The July 1 opening of a railway linking Beijing and Lhasa is the most important symbol of this Chinese strategy. This new link strengthens Beijing's grasp on Tibet: the number of ethnic Han Chinese arriving in Lhasa, where Chinese already outnumber Tibetans, has increased since the opening of the railway, and the PLA has also significantly enhanced its ability to deliver heavy weapons and logistical material to the region in the event of either a domestic disturbance or a conflict with India. Although one Chinese researcher has suggested that the "Indians' worries [are] unnecessary because a country's military strategy depends on its political intent," Beijing's position in Asia has benefited from reminding Delhi of China's superiority along the border.[28]

China is also redressing the Indian Ocean balance directly through the "string of pearls" strategy. In recent years, Beijing has developed port facilities in Chittagong, Bangladesh; Sittwe, Burma (Myanmar); and Gwadar, Pakistan.[29] China has launched each of these developments through bilateral trade promotion agreements under which it pays most of the costs of dredging deep water ports, but it is also an element of a naval balancing strategy, as demonstrated by a Chinese-run radar station on Burma's Coco Islands and the development of naval facilities in the Gwadar ports.

The potential drama surrounding these developments has not fully played out, but it is clear that despite recent bilateral summits in which the Chinese and Indian governments have exchanged pleasantries on cooperation to end border tensions, the dispute is unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future.[30] This will remain the case so long as China is able to bolster its strategic proxy Pakistan by strengthening its hold along the Indo-Tibetan border while developing a hedge against India's growing naval power.[31]

The Race for Resources

The aspect of Sino-Indian relations that has received the most attention in recent years is the simultaneous sprint for energy supplies. China and India each face a triple bind in the energy market: their rapid growth rates ( 9.1 percent and 6.1 percent annual GDP growth over the last decade, respectively) that fuel energy demand; their inefficient energy use that requires more additional energy input per percentage growth of GDP than more developed countries; and their dependence upon on foreign products to satisfy their energy demands (40 percent and 70 percent of crude oil consumption from imports, respectively).[32]

Energy needs have driven China and India to a series of bidding wars for energy assets across the globe, experiences that have been especially sour for India. In a bid for Kazakhstan's third largest commercial oil producer in August 2005, China outbid India when Kazakh authorities allowed Beijing to make an additional offer after the final official bid.[33] Two months later, a Chinese oil firm beat out its Indian competitor when Beijing offered to back up the commercial bid with some $2 billion in development aid (Delhi had offered a paltry $200 million aid package).[34] And in December 2005, Burma decided to build a natural gas pipeline to Yunnan Province in China rather than across Bangladesh to India, reflecting a combination of Bangladeshi indecision on the terms of the deal and Rangoon's preference to foster trade with Beijing.[35]

Although Beijing came out on top of all of the Sino-Indian gas and oil bidding wars, each fight nonetheless resulted in inflated prices for the assets that China eventually got, leading the two countries to consider joint bids for energy assets. The two sides tested the waters of cooperation in December 2004, when Chinese and Indian oil firms made a successful joint bid for a set of fields in Canada, setting the stage for a January 2006 "Memorandum for Enhancing Cooperation in the Field of Oil and Natural Gas" that permits joint bids on energy assets in third countries.[36]

Although it was an Indian initiative, the memorandum is a major victory for the Chinese government, as Delhi acquiesced to playing the role of "junior partner" in Beijing's globe-trotting campaign to secure energy resources. In addition to its symbolic significance, the new partnership means that as India and China enter into joint energy deals with third countries, they will develop common interests in the survival of what are--more often than not--unsavory regimes. Indeed, instead of creating a stable source of energy supplies, these deals are more likely to entangle India into disputes it might prefer to avoid.

While the logic that India should concede to joining the opponents it cannot beat is compelling, it is also weakens Delhi's position vis-à-vis Beijing.

Institutionalizing Chinese Leadership

Since 2001, China has pursued an increasingly ambitious strategy of using regional forums to solidify its role as primus inter pares in Asia. This presents an even greater strategic challenge for India than energy arrangements.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is the most important forum to Beijing's regional strategy. Founded under China's leadership in June 2001 as a means to coordinate cooperation among China, Russia, and the central Asian republics, the SCO was quickly marginalized by the success of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan later that year and the rapid development of security ties between Washington and several SCO members.[37]

Despite this setback, the SCO has reemerged in recent years as a significant actor as American energies have been sapped by the war in Iraq. The statement adopted at the June 2005 SCO Astana Summit formally marked the organization's rebound as a Sino-centric bloc when the member states called for Washington to establish a timeline for withdrawal from central Asia, followed immediately by Uzbek president Islam Karimov's eviction of U.S. forces from the Karshi-Kanabad airbase in southern Uzbekistan.

In the same month that SCO members delivered the Astana statement, the organization also welcomed India into the organization as an observer. Indian relations with the SCO have since been cool. While member states look at using the body as a nexus for collaboration on a wide range of political and security activities, Indian officials have repeatedly clarified that while "India is keenly interested in all activities focused on socio-economic development," it does not extend the range of cooperative fields beyond those.[38]

The divide between Chinese and Indian views was on full display when Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh neglected to attend the June 2006 SCO summit in Shanghai, indicating in the words of one observer that "India was simply too important for a guest appearance, in contrast to Iran and Pakistan, which sent their presidents . . . [and] that India does not have the compulsions of a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--in the doghouse internationally and desperate to say his piece on any available America-skeptic platform--or a Pervez Musharraf--a client of the Chinese leadership and looking to it to get some sort of parity with India in the Nuclear Supplier's Group."[39]

While Singh's hands-off approach to the SCO may demonstrate a plausible strategy for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of membership in the organization, it comes up short in light of China's recent gains as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a body founded in 1985 that also includes Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan.

In contrast to the SCO invitation for Indian membership, the SAARC invitation to China was the result of a diplomatic debacle in which the regional politics played out as "India against the rest."[40] When Delhi tried to forestall the granting of observer status to China at the Dhaka Summit last year, Nepal (then receiving Chinese military assistance in the wake of an Indian arms embargo) made China's observership a condition for supporting Afghanistan's entry into the organization, a position that received broad support, especially from Pakistan.[41]

The consequence of Delhi's capitulation is that India gained a seat in a Sino-centric, anti-American organization in exchange for giving China access to a body that is desperately looking for an additional player to challenge India's preeminence in South Asia. India's embarrassment in the SAARC membership process in 2005 will likely be a precursor to a permanent loss of influence in the organization.

China's most ambitious project for regional leadership to date was its 2005 effort to transform the proposed East Asian Summit (EAS) into a Chinese-led outgrowth of the ASEAN+3 arrangement between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations members and Japan, China, and South Korea. Tokyo sought Australian and Indian participation in the meeting, a move that received support from Southeast Asia. When the Japanese proposal prevailed, Beijing quickly moved to invite Russian participation, an acknowledgement that if China could not lead the organization, it should be downgraded to serve as a regional "talk shop." The EAS experience is a perfect example of China's strategy of combining organizations (such as the SCO) that tie India down with those that leave it behind altogether.

The latter component of China's strategy is most vividly displayed in the United Nations Security Council, in which Beijing uses its position as the sole permanent member state from Asia to guarantee that its regional competitors, Japan and India, are denied access.[42] It is possible that Security Council reform will be carried out--especially if the United States can avoid maneuvering itself into a position of de facto opposition to India's bid for membership--but only when China feels that the political consequences of unilaterally blocking progress are too risky.

In sum, China has effectively engaged the regional organizations of Asia as useful bodies through which it can alternately bring India closer to the Sino-centric fold or minimize India's voice at more critical forums. The closest that India has come to posing a credible response has been with the support of Japan, Southeast Asia, and the United States at a distance during the 2005 EAS debate.

Caveats and Conclusions

If China's recent behavior toward India can be best explained as a containment strategy designed to guarantee that India rises on China's terms, this conclusion should be qualified somewhat.

The most important caveat is that it is not obvious that the Chinese government is acting with a unified strategy. It is possible that policy toward each of the areas discussed here is being crafted independently by separate divisions of the Chinese bureaucracy. We know, however, that in recent years, China's strategy toward India has moved up the policymaking food chain in Beijing.[43] Although a well-articulated "India strategy" may not have existed for much of China's recent history, it is inconceivable that most Chinese action today does not serve an increasingly well-defined set of goals, and it is difficult to ascertain a more likely one than that which this paper has suggested.[44]

Americans should also recognize a divergence between China's economic and security interests with India; we have the same problem with Beijing. As trade between China and India grows, the relationship will develop the defining characteristic of the Sino-American relationship: tremendous gains from cooperative economic development are matched by growing stakes in bilateral disputes.[45] This trend neither foreordains nor forestalls strategic competition, but it will continue to complicate Sino-Indian relations.

If China is pursuing a containment strategy against India, it has achieved some early key victories: guaranteeing that Pakistan will maintain rough nuclear parity on the subcontinent, co-opting Indian foreign policy interests through energy collaboration, and establishing a strong leadership position in regional political forums.

For American policymakers, this trend suggests that despite noted atmospheric improvements in the Sino-Indian relationship, efforts to launch a new era of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai will ultimately falter on the longstanding disputes between the countries.[46] In contrast, Indian-American ties can benefit from India's long-term need for U.S. support if it is to effectively respond to China's containment policy.

The various fields of Sino-Indian competition are multifaceted and intersect with American interests at many junctures. Therefore, there are countless opportunities for an American role. Washington should strive to:

Drive as hard a bargain as possible at the NSG. Pakistan is not India: it has sold nuclear plans wholesale to such rogue states as Libya and North Korea and is perennially unstable. If Sino-Pakistani nuclear cooperation cannot be avoided, it should be on strictly safeguarded terms.
Continue to support India's military modernization by lowering licensing restrictions on arms exports to Delhi. The purpose should not be to fuel a Sino-Indian arms race, but to dissuade China from pursuing a path of revanchism that will unite other Asian countries against it in collaboration with the United States.
Maintain energy cooperation as a major plank of the U.S.-Indian relationship. India's efforts to secure energy resources through overseas acquisitions are inefficient, and history predicts that they will be ineffective. India could benefit most from cooperation to upgrade its energy processing and distribution infrastructure.
Consider greater American participation in Asian regional forums. SAARC has already indicated that it would welcome Washington to an observer's seat, a move that would help balance Beijing's newfound influence with the body. A U.S.-led effort to reinvigorate a more inclusive body such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation would also provide an alternative to Chinese leadership in Asia.

These policies could improve America's position in Asia and avoid some of the worst possible outcomes of Sino-Indian competition. As American policymakers debate Washington's proper role in shaping India's rise to great power status, they should keep in mind that Beijing has already chosen a leading role for itself.

Christopher Griffin is a research associate at AEI. Intern Shivani Kota provided research assistance, and editorial assistant Evan Sparks worked with Mr. Griffin to edit and produce this Asian Outlook.

Notes

1. John Lancaster, "India, China Hoping to 'Reshape the World' Together," Washington Post, April 12, 2005.

2. Shih Chun-yu, "China and India Explore New Type of Relationship between Big Powers," Ta Kung Pao, July 11, 2006.

3. "One Must Be Responsible for His Threats," Renmin Ribao [People's Daily], February 28, 2005.

4. The reasons for China's withdrawal while maintaining its territorial claims remain in dispute. Beijing claims that it was to demonstrate the country's sincere desire to settle the dispute through negotiation. Indian analysts suspect that the Chinese leadership calculated that by maintaining claims to Arunachal Pradesh, it would have a bargaining chip for negotiations over the more valued Aksai Chin. Also, the PLA had simply reached its logistical limits in the harsh terrain.

5. Nancy Jetly, "Sino-Indian Relations: Old Legacies and New Vistas," China Report 30, no. 2 (April-June 1994): 220.

6. Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu and Jing-dong Yuan, China and India: Cooperation or Conflict (London: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 19.

7. Ibid.

8. Susan L. Shirk, "One-Sided Rivalry: China's Perceptions and Policies toward India," The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know, eds. Francine R. Frankel and Harry Harding, (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 75 and 81.

9. Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 53.

10. "Qian: Nuclear Arms Race Likely if India Doesn't Stop Tests," Zhongguo Xinwen She [Chinese News Service], May 19, 1998.

11. "What Is the Intention of Wantonly Engaging in Military Ventures," Jiefangjun Bao [People's Liberation Army Daily], May 19, 1998.

12. Strobe Talbott, Engaging India, 74-75, 80.

13. D. S. Rajan, "China: Views on Manmohan Singh-Bush Joint Statement," South Asia Analysis Group, August 8, 2005, available at http://www.saag.org//papers15/paper1490.html (accessed on August 31, 2006).

14. Lu Yansong, "Short-Sighted Nuclear Deal," Renmin Ribao, August 19, 2005.

15. For the best discussion of China's use of strategic proxies as an instrument of foreign policy, see Justin Bernier, "China's Strategic Proxies," Orbis 47, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 629-643.

16. "Behind U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation," Renmin Ribao, March 4, 2006.

17. "Pak, China to Sign Nuclear Deal," Asian Age, April 11, 2006.

18. Mohan Malik, "China Opposes U.S. Nuclear Deal for Fear of 'Losing' Influence," Force, May 21, 2006.

19. Embassy of the United States to India, "New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship," news release, June 28, 2005, available at http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/ipr062805.html (accessed on August 19, 2006).

20. The notable exception in the region is Pakistan, which is a longstanding arms client of the United States. Indian strategists view each new arms sale to Islamabad as a betrayal, a continuing source of tension in bilateral relations.

21. Christopher Griffin, "What India Wants," Armed Forces Journal 143, no. 10 (May 1, 2006): 16-17.

22. "Washington Draws India in against China," Renmin Ribao, July 7, 2005, available at http://english.people.com.cn/20050707/print20050707_194676.html (accessed on August 14, 2006).

23. Christopher Griffin, "What India Wants," 17-18.

24. Sridhar Kumarawami, "Pranab Spells Out Look East Policy," Asian Age, June 12, 2006.

25. "China and India Cooperate to Find a Win-Win Path," Renmin Ribao, June 8, 2006.

26. Pravin Sawhney, "New Initiative," Force, June 13, 2006, available at http://www.forceindia.net/june/bottomline.asp(accessed on August 29, 2006).

27. Kurt Campbell and Richard Weitz, "The Limits of U.S.-China Military Cooperation, Lessons from 1995–1990," The Washington Quarterly 29, no. 1 (Winter 2006-2006): 169-186.

28. Hu Liang, "Expert Claims to Enhance Sino-Indian Relations," Ta Kung Pao, July 7, 2006.

29. For more on China's maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean, see Christopher J. Pehrson, String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power Across The Asian Littoral (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2006), 3-7.

30. Symbolizing the strength of the dispute was a recent international conference in New Delhi at which the Chinese consul general interrupted Mukherjee's remarks to announce that "China never invaded India! . . . It is untrue and irresponsible to say that China invaded India." "General Consul: China Never Invaded India," Renmin Ribao, September 8, 2005.

31. Pravin Sawhney, "New Initiative."

32. GDP figures are from the World Bank's World Development Indicators online database, available at http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/home.htm. For crude oil imports data, see "PRC, India State-Run Firms Discuss Joint Bids for Oil Assets in Kazakhstan," Agence France Presse, June 8, 2006.

33. Indrajit Basu, "India Discreet, China Bold in Oil Hunt," Asia Times Online, September 29, 2005, available at www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GI29Df01.html (accessed on May 5, 2006).

34. Amitav Ranjan, "Let's Shop for Oil, Gas Together: India, China," Indian Express, August 24, 2005, available at www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/full_story.php?content_id=76875 (accessed on May 5, 2006).

35. Anand Kumar, "Myanmar-Petrochina Agreement: A Setback to India's Quest for Energy Security," South Asia Analysis Group, January 19, 2006, available at http://saag.org//papers17Q681.html (accessed on May 5, 2006).

36. "China, India Sign Energy Agreement," China Daily Online, January 13, 2006, available at www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/13/content_511871.htm (accessed on August 28, 2006).

37. Mohan Malik, Dragon on Terrorism: Assessing China's Tactical Gains and Strategic Losses Post-September 11 (Carlisle, PA: Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002), 33-35.

38. "India Supports Basic SCO Principles: Official," Xinhua, June 13, 2006.

39. "Game in Shanghai--Ignore SCO, but not Central Asia," Pioneer, June 17, 2006.

40. "China or Bust--SAARC in a Spin," The News International (Pakistan), November 13, 2005.

41. "Countering India," Asian Age, November 17, 2005.

42. Mohan Malik, "Security Council Reform: China Signals Its Veto," World Policy Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 19-29.

43. Susan L. Shirk, "One-Sided Rivalry," 86-88.

44. Mohan Malik has also proposed a containment strategy explanation of Beijing's behavior towards India in his essay "China's Strategy of Containing India," published on February 6, 2006, by the Power and Interest News Report, available at http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_printable&report_id=434&languageid=1(accessed on September 3, 2006).

45. Trade has already shot up from $117.4 million in 1987 to $11.3 billion last year--a ninety-six-fold increase. Trade is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015, which is tremendous progress compared to recent growth but still paltry compared to the Sino-Japanese bilateral trade sum of $184.4 billion in 2005. "Sino-Indian Trade Could Reach $100 Billion by 2015," Agence France Presse, May 12, 2006; "India, China to Register Trade of 20 Bn US Dollars by 2007," Xinhua, March 16, 2006; Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu and Jing-dong Yuan, China and India, 25.

46. For an overview of Indian perceptions on improved Sino-Indian relations, see Julie A. MacDonald et al., Perspectives on China: A View from India (McLean, VA: Booz Allen Hamilton, 2005), 25-29.

US wants Central Asia economic corridor set up

2006-07-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

Dawn
12 July 2006
http://www.dawn.com/2006/07/12/top9.htm

By Our Correspondent

WASHINGTON, July 11: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
underscored the importance of establishing an economic link between
Central Asia and India through Pakistan and Afghanistan when she met
Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the State Department said.

Briefing journalists on Monday's meeting between Mr Kasuri and Ms
Rice, the department's spokesman said both the countries "have an
interest in building up those economic ties from Central Asia down
through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India" and Ms Rice and Mr Kasuri
"talked about the importance of developing that economic
infrastructure".

Spokesman Sean McCormack said both Pakistan and Afghanistan also
understand that for "realizing the full potential of this economic
integration," they must continue their common fight against terrorism.

The spokesman indicated that the Rice-Kasuri meeting primarily
focused on growing tension between Kabul and Islamabad which is
affecting the global war on terrorism.

Secretary Rice briefed Mr Kasuri on her recent meeting with Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and told him that both Afghanistan and Pakistan
have a shared interest in the stability and security and also in
economic prosperity of each other, Mr McCormack said.

He said the US was working with Pakistan and Afghanistan to address
their security concerns "on trilateral basis," endorsing the Pakistani
position that all issues concerning the war on terror should be
discussed in a trilateral forum.

Asked if Ms Rice agrees that Afghanistan and Pakistan should not
discuss their differences publicly, Mr McCormack said: "Certainly, we
would encourage them, if they have any differences, to work them out
and try to resolve them before they become a matter of public
discussion."

He, however, acknowledged that Mr Kasuri and Afghan Foreign Minister
Rangin Dadfar Spanta were "ministers in their own right and they are
going to speak their mind in public".

Trade plan would allow nuclear sales to India

2006-07-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

Trade plan would allow nuclear sales to India
Critics call deal bad foreign policy

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | July 3, 2006 | Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/07/03/trade_plan_would_allow_nuclear_sales_to_india/?p1=email_to_a_friend

WASHINGTON -- Over the past six years, the largest consortium of businesses in India spent more than $1 million on fact-finding trips to India for US members of Congress, their staff, and spouses, and on lobbying Congress to pass a law that would fundamentally change India's relationship with the United States.

Last week, the efforts of the New Delhi-based Confederation of Indian Industry and a simultaneous lobbying campaign by American industrial companies paid off: Two key congressional committees approved a controversial plan to allow trade with India involving nuclear technology and other sensitive areas.

If the full Congress approves the plan, the deal would cement a historic new US-India alliance and open the doors to billions of dollars worth of high-tech and military sales to the South Asian nation. India will become the only country in the world to gain access to sensitive US nuclear technology without signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and agreeing to give up its nuclear arsenal. In return, India would tighten its export controls and place some of its nuclear reactors under international inspections.

Supporters of the plan say it is a ``win-win" proposal, increasing business ties with one of the world's fastest-growing economies and strengthening nuclear safeguards in India at the same time.

But critics say billion-dollar business interests -- in the United States as well as India -- have trumped the decades-old policy of trying to get India to give up its nuclear weapons program. They point to the massive, behind-the-scenes lobbying effort by the Confederation and US businesses as proof.

``It is clear that business interests and US defense contractors and former US officials involved in South Asia policy have been working hard to push this deal," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. ``History has shown that US nonproliferation policy has consistently been compromised by interests in maintaining good relations or expanding business ties."

President Bush backed the proposal as a way to allow India to buy civilian nuclear reactors from the West, helping it feed its ever-growing needs for power without resorting to pollution-prone conventional power plants. Bush administration officials say the deal also provides a host of strategic advantages, including building a lasting friendship with a rapidly growing democracy in Asia, as a check on China's growing influence.

But few deny that the prospect of business opportunities worth billions of dollars helped fuel the deal. For Indian entrepreneurs, it is an opportunity to make money on privatized nuclear power plants and buy high-tech equipment that has been restricted for decades. For US businesses, it is a chance to invest in India's rapidly growing energy sector, to sell supplies to Indian nuclear reactors, and -- for the first time -- to have a shot at large-scale military contracts.

The legislation approved by the committees would lift prohibitions on civilian nuclear trade with India. Selling nuclear equipment to India has been off-limits since it developed and tested a nuclear weapon in 1974 outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Poor relations and intermittent s anctions have prevented other kinds of military trade.

``I believe that all things being equal, we will get a considerable portion of the $20 [billion] to $40 billion in acquisition that the Indians plan on making by 2020," said Raymond Vickery, a senior adviser to the US-India Business Council, the US counterpart to the New Delhi-based Confederation, which is carrying out its own extensive lobbying effort.

Vickery said that congressional approval of the deal would give Lockheed Martin a reasonable chance to get a $4 billion to $9 billion contract to supply 126 combat fighter planes to India's Navy, a contract that India would have been unlikely to approve while sanctions were in place.

Westinghouse, whose nuclear division is based in Western Pennsylvania, could help India build a civilian nuclear reactor, and Atlanta-based General Electric would be well-placed to get a contract to supply India's reactors with nuclear fuel, Vickery said.

The business prospects have spurred the US-India Business Council, which represents 200 US businesses operating in India, to hire heavyweight lobbying firm Patton Boggs to work on the issue and hold strategy meetings about how to approach skeptics on Capitol Hill. Reports on the expenses of the American group's lobbying on India have not been filed.

But one of the quietest and most persistent efforts to influence Congress on India policy has come from the Confederation of Indian Industry, which represents some of India's most profitable companies. The group was among the top international organizations paying for congressional travel between 2000 and 2005, even though they were not registered to lobby at the time, according to a review of congressional disclosure records conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

During that period, they paid more than $538,000 in travel expenses for trips by 19 Congress members, 11 spouses, and 58 congressional staffers, according to the records.

The group spent the most money on travel for Representative Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat, and his staffers, whose four trips to India cost about $40,955. McDermott, a cofounder of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, has not taken a formal position on the India nuclear proposal, according to his spokesman, Michael DeCesare.

DeCesare said the 2004 trip to India was intended to discuss AIDS in workplaces, and McDermott was not approached at that time on the nuclear issue.

Foreign organizations and governments are allowed to lobby the US government, but they must register with federal officials.

Of the 50 members serving on the House Foreign Relations Committee, eight had trips to India paid for by the Confederation, traveling or sending a staffer. One of the eight, Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, voted against the proposal last week when the committee overwhelmingly approved the deal.

In April 2005, the Confederation registered to lobby for the first time, paying Barbour Griffith & Rogers , a well-connected lobbying firm, $520,000 to lobby US government agencies, including Congress, the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Defense.

Robert Blackwill , who served as ambassador to India and deputy national security adviser under Bush, was hired by the firm to run the effort. A former foreign policy staffer for Senator Chuck Hagel assisted. In September 2005, the embassy of India also hired the firm, paying $240,000.

Businesses on both sides of the ocean have advocated closer US-India ties for years. But the issue of India's nuclear program always got in the way.

``It was like a cinder in our eye," said Frank Wisner , another former ambassador to India who once served as chairman of the US-India Business Council.

Indian officials said the legislative deal will send a signal to businesses of a lasting alliance between the two countries and give a legal framework to their new relationship.

``There are going to be opportunities for investment and infrastructure and energy that are mind-boggling," said Raminder Jassal, deputy chief of mission at the Indian Embassy.

For decades, the United States and India distrusted one another. During the Cold War, India refused to take sides and embraced a socialist economy.

After its 1974 test, India refused US demands to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which gives five countries, including the United States, a right to retain nuclear weapons but prohibits others from developing them.

US efforts to contain India's nuclear program carried a price for US businesses. For instance, General Electric had to stop supplying nuclear fuel to Indian reactors.

By the early 1990s, when India moved to a more capitalist economy, trade flourished. But in 1998, India tested a nuclear device again and Congress responded by cutting off everything from the sales of high-powered computers to World Bank loans and engine parts for India's emerging space program. Indians resented the US sanctions, feeling as though the United States refused to acknowledge their country had become a world power.

President Clinton took steps to repair the relationship, but Bush has taken the effort further. He lifted the 1998 restrictions on India and launched a dialogue about military and economic cooperation, including a forum with American and Indian executives.

In 2005, Bush hosted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India at the White House and announced that he would initiate civilian nuclear cooperation .

Last Stand: The military's problem with Bush's Iran policy (Sy Hersh)

2006-07-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

LAST STAND

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The military's problem with the President's Iran policy.

Issue of 2006-07-10
Posted 2006-07-03

On May 31st, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced what appeared to be a major change in U.S. foreign policy. The Bush Administration, she said, would be willing to join Russia, China, and its European allies in direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. There was a condition, however: the negotiations would not begin until, as the President put it in a June 19th speech at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, "the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities." Iran, which has insisted on its right to enrich uranium, was being asked to concede the main point of the negotiations before they started. The question was whether the Administration expected the Iranians to agree, or was laying the diplomatic groundwork for future military action. In his speech, Bush also talked about "freedom for the Iranian people," and he added, "Iran's leaders have a clear choice." There was an unspoken threat: the U.S. Strategic Command, supported by the Air Force, has been drawing up plans, at the President's direction, for a major bombing campaign in Iran.

Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President's plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran's nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

A crucial issue in the military's dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. "The target array in Iran is huge, but it's amorphous," a high-ranking general told me. "The question we face is, When does innocent infrastructure evolve into something nefarious?" The high-ranking general added that the military's experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. "We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq," he said.

"There is a war about the war going on inside the building," a Pentagon consultant said. "If we go, we have to find something."

In President Bush's June speech, he accused Iran of pursuing a secret weapons program along with its civilian nuclear-research program (which it is allowed, with limits, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). The senior officers in the Pentagon do not dispute the President's contention that Iran intends to eventually build a bomb, but they are frustrated by the intelligence gaps. A former senior intelligence official told me that people in the Pentagon were asking, "What's the evidence? We've got a million tentacles out there, overt and covert, and these guys"—the Iranians—"have been working on this for eighteen years, and we have nothing? We're coming up with jack shit."

A senior military official told me, "Even if we knew where the Iranian enriched uranium was—and we don't—we don't know where world opinion would stand. The issue is whether it's a clear and present danger. If you're a military planner, you try to weigh options. What is the capability of the Iranian response, and the likelihood of a punitive response—like cutting off oil shipments? What would that cost us?" Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides "really think they can do this on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the adversary," he said.

In 1986, Congress authorized the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to act as the "principal military adviser" to the President. In this case, I was told, the current chairman, Marine General Peter Pace, has gone further in his advice to the White House by addressing the consequences of an attack on Iran. "Here's the military telling the President what he can't do politically"—raising concerns about rising oil prices, for example—the former senior intelligence official said. "The J.C.S. chairman going to the President with an economic argument—what's going on here?" (General Pace and the White House declined to comment. The Defense Department responded to a detailed request for comment by saying that the Administration was "working diligently" on a diplomatic solution and that it could not comment on classified matters.)

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, "The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don't want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, 'We stood up.' "

The military leadership is also raising tactical arguments against the proposal for bombing Iran, many of which are related to the consequences for Iraq. According to retired Army Major General William Nash, who was commanding general of the First Armored Division, served in Iraq and Bosnia, and worked for the United Nations in Kosovo, attacking Iran would heighten the risks to American and coalition forces inside Iraq. "What if one hundred thousand Iranian volunteers came across the border?" Nash asked. "If we bomb Iran, they cannot retaliate militarily by air—only on the ground or by sea, and only in Iraq or the Gulf. A military planner cannot discount that possibility, and he cannot make an ideological assumption that the Iranians wouldn't do it. We're not talking about victory or defeat—only about what damage Iran could do to our interests." Nash, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "Their first possible response would be to send forces into Iraq. And, since the Iraqi Army has limited capacity, it means that the coalition forces would have to engage them."

The Americans serving as advisers to the Iraqi police and military may be at special risk, Nash added, since an American bombing "would be seen not only as an attack on Shiites but as an attack on all Muslims. Throughout the Middle East, it would likely be seen as another example of American imperialism. It would probably cause the war to spread."

In contrast, some conservatives are arguing that America's position in Iraq would improve if Iran chose to retaliate there, according to a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon's civilian leaders, because Iranian interference would divide the Shiites into pro- and anti-Iranian camps, and unify the Kurds and the Sunnis. The Iran hawks in the White House and the State Department, including Elliott Abrams and Michael Doran, both of whom are National Security Council advisers on the Middle East, also have an answer for those who believe that the bombing of Iran would put American soldiers in Iraq at risk, the consultant said. He described the counterargument this way: "Yes, there will be Americans under attack, but they are under attack now."

Iran's geography would also complicate an air war. The senior military official said that, when it came to air strikes, "this is not Iraq," which is fairly flat, except in the northeast. "Much of Iran is akin to Afghanistan in terms of topography and flight mapping—a pretty tough target," the military official said. Over rugged terrain, planes have to come in closer, and "Iran has a lot of mature air-defense systems and networks," he said. "Global operations are always risky, and if we go down that road we have to be prepared to follow up with ground troops."

The U.S. Navy has a separate set of concerns. Iran has more than seven hundred undeclared dock and port facilities along its Persian Gulf coast. The small ports, known as "invisible piers," were constructed two decades ago by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to accommodate small private boats used for smuggling. (The Guards relied on smuggling to finance their activities and enrich themselves.) The ports, an Iran expert who advises the U.S. government told me, provide "the infrastructure to enable the Guards to go after American aircraft carriers with suicide water bombers"—small vessels loaded with high explosives. He said that the Iranians have conducted exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and then on to the Indian Ocean. The strait is regularly traversed by oil tankers, in which a thousand small Iranian boats simulated attacks on American ships. "That would be the hardest problem we'd face in the water: a thousand small targets weaving in and out among our ships."

America's allies in the Gulf also believe that an attack on Iran would endanger them, and many American military planners agree. "Iran can do a lot of things—all asymmetrical," a Pentagon adviser on counter-insurgency told me. "They have agents all over the Gulf, and the ability to strike at will." In May, according to a well-informed oil-industry expert, the Emir of Qatar made a private visit to Tehran to discuss security in the Gulf after the Iraq war. He sought some words of non-aggression from the Iranian leadership. Instead, the Iranians suggested that Qatar, which is the site of the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, would be its first target in the event of an American attack. Qatar is a leading exporter of gas and currently operates several major offshore oil platforms, all of which would be extremely vulnerable. (Nasser bin Hamad M. al-Khalifa, Qatar's ambassador to Washington, denied that any threats were issued during the Emir's meetings in Tehran. He told me that it was "a very nice visit.")

A retired American diplomat, who has experience in the Gulf, confirmed that the Qatari government is "very scared of what America will do" in Iran, and "scared to death" about what Iran would do in response. Iran's message to the oil-producing Gulf states, the retired diplomat said, has been that it will respond, and "you are on the wrong side of history."

In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. "Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning," the former senior intelligence official told me. "And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: 'O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.' " At the time, a number of retired officers, including two Army major generals who served in Iraq, Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack, Jr., had begun speaking out against the Administration's handling of the Iraq war. This period is known to many in the Pentagon as "the April Revolution."

"An event like this doesn't get papered over very quickly," the former official added. "The bad feelings over the nuclear option are still felt. The civilian hierarchy feels extraordinarily betrayed by the brass, and the brass feel they were tricked into it"—the nuclear planning—"by being asked to provide all options in the planning papers."

Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, said that Rumsfeld's second-guessing and micromanagement were a fundamental problem. "Plans are more and more being directed and run by civilians from the Office of the Secretary of Defense," Gardiner said. "It causes a lot of tensions. I'm hearing that the military is increasingly upset about not being taken seriously by Rumsfeld and his staff."

Gardiner went on, "The consequence is that, for Iran and other missions, Rumsfeld will be pushed more and more in the direction of special operations, where he has direct authority and does not have to put up with the objections of the Chiefs." Since taking office in 2001, Rumsfeld has been engaged in a running dispute with many senior commanders over his plans to transform the military, and his belief that future wars will be fought, and won, with airpower and Special Forces. That combination worked, at first, in Afghanistan, but the growing stalemate there, and in Iraq, has created a rift, especially inside the Army. The senior military official said, "The policymakers are in love with Special Ops—the guys on camels."

The discord over Iran can, in part, be ascribed to Rumsfeld's testy relationship with the generals. They see him as high-handed and unwilling to accept responsibility for what has gone wrong in Iraq. A former Bush Administration official described a recent meeting between Rumsfeld and four-star generals and admirals at a military commanders' conference, on a base outside Washington, that, he was told, went badly. The commanders later told General Pace that "they didn't come here to be lectured by the Defense Secretary. They wanted to tell Rumsfeld what their concerns were." A few of the officers attended a subsequent meeting between Pace and Rumsfeld, and were unhappy, the former official said, when "Pace did not repeat any of their complaints. There was disappointment about Pace." The retired four-star general also described the commanders' conference as "very fractious." He added, "We've got twenty-five hundred dead, people running all over the world doing stupid things, and officers outside the Beltway asking, 'What the hell is going on?' "

Pace's supporters say that he is in a difficult position, given Rumsfeld's penchant for viewing generals who disagree with him as disloyal. "It's a very narrow line between being responsive and effective and being outspoken and ineffective," the former senior intelligence official said.

But Rumsfeld is not alone in the Administration where Iran is concerned; he is closely allied with Dick Cheney, and, the Pentagon consultant said, "the President generally defers to the Vice-President on all these issues," such as dealing with the specifics of a bombing campaign if diplomacy fails. "He feels that Cheney has an informational advantage. Cheney is not a renegade. He represents the conventional wisdom in all of this. He appeals to the strategic-bombing lobby in the Air Force—who think that carpet bombing is the solution to all problems."

Bombing may not work against Natanz, let alone against the rest of Iran's nuclear program. The possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons gained support in the Administration because of the belief that it was the only way to insure the destruction of Natanz's buried laboratories. When that option proved to be politically untenable (a nuclear warhead would, among other things, vent fatal radiation for miles), the Air Force came up with a new bombing plan, using advanced guidance systems to deliver a series of large bunker-busters—conventional bombs filled with high explosives—on the same target, in swift succession. The Air Force argued that the impact would generate sufficient concussive force to accomplish what a tactical nuclear warhead would achieve, but without provoking an outcry over what would be the first use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict since Nagasaki.

The new bombing concept has provoked controversy among Pentagon planners and outside experts. Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who has taught at the Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, told me, "We always have a few new toys, new gimmicks, and rarely do these new tricks lead to a phenomenal breakthrough. The dilemma is that Natanz is a very large underground area, and even if the roof came down we won't be able to get a good estimate of the bomb damage without people on the ground. We don't even know where it goes underground, and we won't have much confidence in assessing what we've actually done. Absent capturing an Iranian nuclear scientist and documents, it's impossible to set back the program for sure."

One complicating aspect of the multiple-hit tactic, the Pentagon consultant told me, is "the liquefaction problem"—the fact that the soil would lose its consistency owing to the enormous heat generated by the impact of the first bomb. "It will be like bombing water, with its currents and eddies. The bombs would likely be diverted." Intelligence has also shown that for the past two years the Iranians have been shifting their most sensitive nuclear-related materials and production facilities, moving some into urban areas, in anticipation of a bombing raid.

"The Air Force is hawking it to the other services," the former senior intelligence official said. "They're all excited by it, but they're being terribly criticized for it." The main problem, he said, is that the other services do not believe the tactic will work. "The Navy says, 'It's not our plan.' The Marines are against it—they know they're going to be the guys on the ground if things go south."

"It's the bomber mentality," the Pentagon consultant said. "The Air Force is saying, 'We've got it covered, we can hit all the distributed targets.' " The Air Force arsenal includes a cluster bomb that can deploy scores of small bomblets with individual guidance systems to home in on specific targets. The weapons were deployed in Kosovo and during the early stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Air Force is claiming that the same techniques can be used with larger bombs, allowing them to be targeted from twenty-five thousand feet against a multitude of widely dispersed targets. "The Chiefs all know that 'shock and awe' is dead on arrival," the Pentagon consultant said. "All except the Air Force."

"Rumsfeld and Cheney are the pushers on this—they don't want to repeat the mistake of doing too little," the government consultant with ties to Pentagon civilians told me. "The lesson they took from Iraq is that there should have been more troops on the ground"—an impossibility in Iran, because of the overextension of American forces in Iraq—"so the air war in Iran will be one of overwhelming force."

Many of the Bush Administration's supporters view the abrupt change in negotiating policy as a deft move that won public plaudits and obscured the fact that Washington had no other good options. "The United States has done what its international partners have asked it to do," said Patrick Clawson, who is an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a conservative think tank. "The ball is now in their court—for both the Iranians and the Europeans." Bush's goal, Clawson said, was to assuage his allies, as well as Russia and China, whose votes, or abstentions, in the United Nations would be needed if the talks broke down and the U.S. decided to seek Security Council sanctions or a U.N. resolution that allowed for the use of force against Iran.

"If Iran refuses to re-start negotiations, it will also be difficult for Russia and China to reject a U.N. call for International Atomic Energy Agency inspections," Clawson said. "And the longer we go without accelerated I.A.E.A. access, the more important the issue of Iran's hidden facilities will become." The drawback to the new American position, Clawson added, was that "the Iranians might take Bush's agreeing to join the talks as a sign that their hard line has worked."

Clawson acknowledged that intelligence on Iran's nuclear-weapons progress was limited. "There was a time when we had reasonable confidence in what we knew," he said. "We could say, 'There's less time than we think,' or, 'It's going more slowly.' Take your choice. Lack of information is a problem, but we know they've made rapid progress with their centrifuges." (The most recent American intelligence estimate is that Iran could build a warhead sometime between 2010 and 2015.)

Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council aide for the Bush Administration, told me, "The only reason Bush and Cheney relented about talking to Iran was because they were within weeks of a diplomatic meltdown in the United Nations. Russia and China were going to stiff us"—that is, prevent the passage of a U.N. resolution. Leverett, a project director at the New America Foundation, added that the White House's proposal, despite offering trade and economic incentives for Iran, has not "resolved any of the fundamental contradictions of U.S. policy." The precondition for the talks, he said—an open-ended halt to all Iranian enrichment activity—"amounts to the President wanting a guarantee that they'll surrender before he talks to them. Iran cannot accept long-term constraints on its fuel-cycle activity as part of a settlement without a security guarantee"—for example, some form of mutual non-aggression pact with the United States.

Leverett told me that, without a change in U.S. policy, the balance of power in the negotiations will shift to Russia. "Russia sees Iran as a beachhead against American interests in the Middle East, and they're playing a very sophisticated game," he said. "Russia is quite comfortable with Iran having nuclear fuel cycles that would be monitored, and they'll support the Iranian position"—in part, because it gives them the opportunity to sell billions of dollars' worth of nuclear fuel and materials to Tehran. "They believe they can manage their long- and short-term interests with Iran, and still manage the security interests," Leverett said. China, which, like Russia, has veto power on the Security Council, was motivated in part by its growing need for oil, he said. "They don't want punitive measures, such as sanctions, on energy producers, and they don't want to see the U.S. take a unilateral stance on a state that matters to them." But, he said, "they're happy to let Russia take the lead in this." (China, a major purchaser of Iranian oil, is negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with Iran for the purchase of liquefied natural gas over a period of twenty-five years.) As for the Bush Administration, he added, "unless there's a shift, it's only a question of when its policy falls apart."

It's not clear whether the Administration will be able to keep the Europeans in accord with American policy if the talks break down. Morton Abramowitz, a former head of State Department intelligence, who was one of the founders of the International Crisis Group, said, "The world is different than it was three years ago, and while the Europeans want good relations with us, they will not go to war with Iran unless they know that an exhaustive negotiating effort was made by Bush. There's just too much involved, like the price of oil. There will be great pressure put on the Europeans, but I don't think they'll roll over and support a war."

The Europeans, like the generals at the Pentagon, are concerned about the quality of intelligence. A senior European intelligence official said that while "there was every reason to assume" that the Iranians were working on a bomb, there wasn't enough evidence to exclude the possibility that they were bluffing, and hadn't moved beyond a civilian research program. The intelligence official was not optimistic about the current negotiations. "It's a mess, and I don't see any possibility, at the moment, of solving the problem," he said. "The only thing to do is contain it. The question is, What is the redline? Is it when you master the nuclear fuel cycle? Or is it just about building a bomb?" Every country had a different criterion, he said. One worry he had was that, in addition to its security concerns, the Bush Administration was driven by its interest in "democratizing" the region. "The United States is on a mission," he said.

A European diplomat told me that his government would be willing to discuss Iran's security concerns—a dialogue he said Iran offered Washington three years ago. The diplomat added that "no one wants to be faced with the alternative if the negotiations don't succeed: either accept the bomb or bomb them. That's why our goal is to keep the pressure on, and see what Iran's answer will be."

A second European diplomat, speaking of the Iranians, said, "Their tactic is going to be to stall and appear reasonable—to say, 'Yes, but . . .' We know what's going on, and the timeline we're under. The Iranians have repeatedly been in violation of I.A.E.A. safeguards and have given us years of coverup and deception. The international community does not want them to have a bomb, and if we let them continue to enrich that's throwing in the towel—giving up before we talk." The diplomat went on, "It would be a mistake to predict an inevitable failure of our strategy. Iran is a regime that is primarily concerned with its own survival, and if its existence is threatened it would do whatever it needed to do—including backing down."

The Iranian regime's calculations about its survival also depend on internal political factors. The nuclear program is popular with the Iranian people, including those—the young and the secular—who are most hostile to the religious leadership. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, has effectively used the program to rally the nation behind him, and against Washington. Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics have said that they believe Bush's goal is not to prevent them from building a bomb but to drive them out of office.

Several current and former officials I spoke to expressed doubt that President Bush would settle for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear crisis. A former high-level Pentagon civilian official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the government, said that Bush remains confident in his military decisions. The President and others in the Administration often invoke Winston Churchill, both privately and in public, as an example of a politician who, in his own time, was punished in the polls but was rewarded by history for rejecting appeasement. In one speech, Bush said, Churchill "seemed like a Texan to me. He wasn't afraid of public-opinion polls. . . . He charged ahead, and the world is better for it."

The Israelis have insisted for years that Iran has a clandestine program to build a bomb, and will do so as soon as it can. Israeli officials have emphasized that their "redline" is the moment Iran masters the nuclear fuel cycle, acquiring the technical ability to produce weapons-grade uranium. "Iran managed to surprise everyone in terms of the enrichment capability," one diplomat familiar with the Israeli position told me, referring to Iran's announcement, this spring, that it had successfully enriched uranium to the 3.6-per-cent level needed to fuel a nuclear-power reactor. The Israelis believe that Iran must be stopped as soon as possible, because, once it is able to enrich uranium for fuel, the next step—enriching it to the ninety-per-cent level needed for a nuclear bomb—is merely a mechanical process.

Israeli intelligence, however, has also failed to provide specific evidence about secret sites in Iran, according to current and former military and intelligence officials. In May, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Washington and, addressing a joint session of Congress, said that Iran "stands on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons" that would pose "an existential threat" to Israel. Olmert noted that Ahmadinejad had questioned the reality of the Holocaust, and he added, "It is not Israel's threat alone. It is a threat to all those committed to stability in the Middle East and to the well-being of the world at large." But at a secret intelligence exchange that took place at the Pentagon during the visit, the Pentagon consultant said, "what the Israelis provided fell way short" of what would be needed to publicly justify preventive action.

The issue of what to do, and when, seems far from resolved inside the Israeli government. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who is now the director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me, "Israel would like to see diplomacy succeed, but they're worried that in the meantime Iran will cross a threshold of nuclear know-how—and they're worried about an American military attack not working. They assume they'll be struck first in retaliation by Iran." Indyk added, "At the end of the day, the United States can live with Iranian, Pakistani, and Indian nuclear bombs—but for Israel there's no Mutual Assured Destruction. If they have to live with an Iranian bomb, there will be a great deal of anxiety in Israel, and a lot of tension between Israel and Iran, and between Israel and the U.S."

Iran has not, so far, officially answered President Bush's proposal. But its initial response has been dismissive. In a June 22nd interview with the Guardian, Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, rejected Washington's demand that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment before talks could begin. "If they want to put this prerequisite, why are we negotiating at all?" Larijani said. "We should put aside the sanctions and give up all this talk about regime change." He characterized the American offer as a "sermon," and insisted that Iran was not building a bomb. "We don't want the bomb," he said. Ahmadinejad has said that Iran would make a formal counterproposal by August 22nd, but last week Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, declared, on state radio, "Negotiation with the United States has no benefits for us."

Despite the tough rhetoric, Iran would be reluctant to reject a dialogue with the United States, according to Giandomenico Picco, who, as a representative of the United Nations, helped to negotiate the ceasefire that ended the Iran-Iraq War, in 1988. "If you engage a superpower, you feel you are a superpower," Picco told me. "And now the haggling in the Persian bazaar begins. We are negotiating over a carpet"—the suspected weapons program—"that we're not sure exists, and that we don't want to exist. And if at the end there never was a carpet it'll be the negotiation of the century."

If the talks do break down, and the Administration decides on military action, the generals will, of course, follow their orders; the American military remains loyal to the concept of civilian control. But some officers have been pushing for what they call the "middle way," which the Pentagon consultant described as "a mix of options that require a number of Special Forces teams and air cover to protect them to send into Iran to grab the evidence so the world will know what Iran is doing." He added that, unlike Rumsfeld, he and others who support this approach were under no illusion that it could bring about regime change. The goal, he said, was to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in a speech this spring that his agency believed there was still time for diplomacy to achieve that goal. "We should have learned some lessons from Iraq," ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said. "We should have learned that we should be very careful about assessing our intelligence. . . . We should have learned that we should try to exhaust every possible diplomatic means to solve the problem before thinking of any other enforcement measures."

He went on, "When you push a country into a corner, you are always giving the driver's seat to the hard-liners. . . . If Iran were to move out of the nonproliferation regime altogether, if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon program, we clearly will have a much, much more serious problem."

Dragon-elephant ties no zero-sum game

2006-05-29T03:08:00.000-07:00

CHINA / National

Dragon-elephant ties no zero-sum game
(Media Release)
Updated: 2006-05-29 09:33

Expressing its commitment to a multi-polar world, India has assured China that it is not pursuing a "balance of power" policy and is not being used to "contain" China.

Ahead of Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee's visit to China starting Sunday, Indian Ambassador to Beijing Nalin Surie said: "On our part let me say that India does not pursue a balance of power policy, nor has it done so in the past. Our commitment to a multi-polar world is of long standing and a basic principle of independent India's foreign policy."

"If there are more centres of economic activity, if there are more centres of political influence, if there are varied founts of culture, the more diversified the world order and regional order become, the greater the interaction among peoples and countries and the greater will be the chance of maintaining peace and security," he said.

"India seeks an international environment which is supportive of and contributes to her developmental goals," he said in a major foreign policy speech here at the prestigious Peking University on the occasion of the ongoing 10-day "India Festival". "Let me underline that diversity and tolerance are the hallmark and enduring strength of India and Indian civilization."

At the same time, the world has recognized India's emergence as a responsible nuclear weapon state and this has required India to shoulder additional regional and global responsibility, Surie said, while assuring Beijing that New Delhi is not being used to "contain" China.

His remarks came amid fears expressed by the opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal which, they claim, is aimed at containing China.

However, Surie acknowledged that the rapid development of India-China bilateral relations in recent years and "our rapid economic development has understandably begun to elicit worldwide interest, comparison and comment".

"Analysts, writers and commentators in the international media and even some academics have now begun essaying us as rivals and competitors and picking favourites from the two," he noted.

"There is no doubt a self serving element in this effort... It will benefit neither of our peoples to see our relations as a zero-sum game. Our developing bilateral relations are not a zero sum game. They are a positive sum game not only for both our countries but for Asia and I believe for the whole world," he said.

India and China together can be a great force for good, for development, for peace and common prosperity," Surie said.

"Cooperation between the two most populous and among the fastest growing economies in the world is also important for peace in the region, in Asia and the world," he said. "We have undoubtedly had a difficult phase in our relationship in the past. But that is behind us," Surie said, referring to the 1962 conflict as well as other differences between New Delhi and Beijing.

"This is clearly reflected in the June 2003 Declaration and April 2005 Joint Statement signed by our prime ministers. There is growing space for both our countries as they develop and integrate further into the global economy," he said as both Indian and Chinese governments are jointly celebrating 2006 as the "India-China Friendship Year".

Commenting on the current trends in India-China ties, Surie said they were developing and moving in the right direction. "We are engaged in the process of improving them further. While we are on this path it will be important not to be thrown off-track by rhetorical or motivated questions and scenarios of who will win - the dragon or the elephant." He acknowledged a series of high-level visits has helped ratchet the quality of the relationship to a higher plane.

On the vexed border issue, Surie noted that the two special representatives, appointed in 2003 to explore from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship the framework of a boundary settlement, have started work on the second phase of their work in right earnest.

"The second phase has now begun in right earnest. In this phase it is the expectation that the Special Representatives will draw up an agreed framework for the resolution of the boundary based on the agreed political parameters and guiding principles," he said.

Both sides have agreed at the highest level that they are not a threat to each other and both sides will qualitatively enhance the bilateral relationship at all levels and in all areas while addressing differences through peaceful means in a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable manner, he said.

"It is also our intention not to let our differences affect the overall development of bilateral relations."

Surie pointed out that if one reviews the progress in bilateral ties over the last six years it is clear that our relations have entered a dynamic phase. "The task ahead is to make this process self generating, self sustaining and to mutual benefit."

Iran could be west’s trial run — Mbeki

2006-05-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Iran could be west's trial run — Mbeki

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A205658
25 May 2006

Jonathan Katzenellenbogen
International Affairs Editor

WESTERN states could be putting pressure on Iran in a "trial run" to prevent countries without nuclear weapons from enriching uranium, President Thabo Mbeki said last night.

If Iran's peaceful nuclear ambitions were blocked, other signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which include SA, might have to forgo this right at some stage, Mbeki said at a dinner in London.

In this light, he said, Iran's rights to the peaceful use of nuclear technology needed to be protected like those of other countries.

"So the Iran thing is not unique in itself, but is a pacesetter for (what) might happen in the future," he  said.

"We believe that Iran's rights in this regard need to be protected. In part we are raising this because you get these whispers that Iran constitutes a trial run, and if there is success in terms of prohibiting Iran to do the things they are permitted by the (non-proliferation) treaty, that will be extended to all other countries."

Mbeki also warned that placing the Iranian nuclear programme before the United Nations (UN) Security Council could raise tension.

"You will have escalating actions taken by the security council which will lead to conflict that nobody should really want."

He said SA would prefer the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to handle the Iranian question.

Mbeki's remarks at the dinner, ahead of his meeting yesterday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, highlighted the stark differences between SA and the UK, the other five permanent members of the security council and Germany, which are putting pressure on Iran to drop its uranium enrichment programme.

Earlier this year, SA abstained from an IAEA vote, which was passed, proposing that Iran be referred to the security council over its programme.

"So that you not only have a small club of nuclear weapon states, but then you also have a small club of countries that can do anything at all in terms of developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," Mbeki said. He also said that "in all our interactions, the Iranians will insist that they are committed" to peaceful nuclear use and pointed to ayatollahs having issued a fatwa against the production of nuclear weapons.

SA had undertaken to help in confidence-building measures to convince the international community that Iran's intentions were peaceful, Mbeki said.

Earlier in London, senior officials from security council permanent members and Germany met to weigh up a package of incentives and threats drafted by European Union (EU) leaders to defuse the nuclear stand-off with Iran, but both sides dampened hope of a breakthrough arrangement.

Iran says it has mastered a limited   uranium enrichment cycle.

The EU package is likely to include an offer of a light-water reactor and an assured supply from abroad of fuel for civilian atomic plants so that Iran would not have to enrich uranium itself. The package will also warn of possible targeted sanctions if Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil producer, refuses the offer.

Diplomats said they would first discuss sanctions aimed at officials involved in Iran's nuclear programme before seeking ways to halt trade deals.

But some EU officials, many security analysts and the IAEA say Washington should start direct dialogue with Iran after 26 years of official silence. They believe the only way to entice Iran back to good-faith negotiations and get it to stop seeking sensitive atomic know-how would be a US pledge not to try to topple Tehran's Islamic government.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was expected to tell US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in talks in Washington yesterday that US-Iranian engagement was vital to resolving the crisis, said Vienna-based diplomats familiar with ElBaradei's thinking.

A defiant Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday urged "resistance" in the dispute, and said Iran would deliver a "historic slap in the face" to any state that tried to deprive it of nuclear technology .

In Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an address to the US congress yesterday that Iran posed a threat to Israel's existence and urged swift international action.

"A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die: the mass destruction of innocent human life." With Reuters

----
Siddharth Varadarajan
Deputy Editor
The Hindu
I.N.S. Building, Rafi Marg
New Delhi - 1

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Kremlin Voices Concern at U.S. Conventional Missile Plans

2006-05-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

Kremlin Voices Concern at U.S. Conventional Missile Plans

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, MOSCOW

05/11/06

The Kremlin voiced worry May 11 at reported U.S. plans to mount
non-nuclear warheads on intercontinental strategic missiles to strike
targets anywhere in the world within minutes with no prior warning and
called for talks on subject.
"I think this would be an irresponsible decision," said Sergei
Sobyanin, the newly-appointed head of President Vladimir Putin's
Kremlin administration, in a briefing to a group of foreign reporters.
The use of such a weapon could produce confusion and an unpredictable
response from other countries, Sobyanin said.
"This is an extremely dangerous trend," he said, adding: "There needs
to be a dialogue about this."
Although he did not directly name the United States, Putin on May 10
also raised Russia's concern over plans to put conventional warheads
on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), weapons long at the
center of the former U.S.-Soviet Cold War arms race and key
disarmament treaties.
"The launch of one such missile may trigger an inadequate response
from the nuclear powers, including a full-scale retaliatory strike
with the use of strategic nuclear forces," Putin said in his annual
state of the nation address.
A U.S. Defense Department report posted on the Internet states that
plans to incorporate conventional weapons capabilities into U.S.
strategic nuclear forces have been under investigation since Congress
called for a post-Cold War review of the country's nuclear deterrent
forces in 2001.
Western arms experts have cautioned, however, that Russia in
particular would have to be provided with some way of distinguishing a
conventionally-armed ICBM from a nuclear-tipped ICBM to ensure that
any use of such a weapon was not a nuclear strike.
U.S. experts say that conventional ICBMs would give the option of
striking a target anywhere on Earth within about 30 minutes and with a
large element of surprise, since there is no reliance on easily
detectable ships or aircraft.

--
Siddharth Varadarajan
Deputy Editor
The Hindu
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Pentagon Defends Global-Strike Plan -- Conventional warheads for SLBMs

2006-05-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

Pentagon Defends Global-Strike Plan
Wade Boese

Arms Control Today May 2006

A recently unveiled initiative to arm some U.S. submarine-launched
ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with conventional warheads has lawmakers
wondering whether dangerous misunderstandings and miscalculations
could arise with other nuclear powers, particularly Russia. Pentagon
officials downplay the possibility, contending that the benefits of
the new capability outweigh the potential risks.

The Department of Defense is asking Congress this year for $127
million to start replacing nuclear warheads with conventional warheads
on 24 Trident D-5 SLBMs. Within two years, two dozen missiles would be
equally dispersed among 12 separate submarines, which means each
vessel would carry 22 nuclear-armed and two conventional-armed
missiles. The conventional warheads, four per missile, would be either
a solid slug or a bundle of rods known as a flachette round, not
explosive warheads.

Although the Bush administration revealed its intentions to pursue
conventional global-strike capabilities in its December 2001 Nuclear
Posture Review, the SLBM option was first detailed in early February
as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review. (See ACT, March 2006.) The
so-called prompt global-strike concept behind the SLBM conversion
seeks to enable the United States to attack a target anywhere in the
world with a conventional warhead in less than an hour.

At a March 29 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces
Subcommittee, legislators expressed some unease about the SLBM
proposal. Subcommittee chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and ranking
member Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) both questioned whether submarines with
mixed loads might cause confusion for other countries about the type
of missile fired and its intended target. In such a circumstance, they
worried a country might mistakenly conclude that it was under U.S.
nuclear attack and potentially retaliate with nuclear weapons.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Peter
Flory said the Pentagon takes this concern "very seriously." However,
he and General James Cartwright, commander of U.S. Strategic Command,
minimized the danger of miscalculation. In addition to its traditional
mission of exercising operational control over deployed nuclear
forces, Strategic Command over the past few years also has been tasked
with overseeing the development and fielding of missile defenses and
global-strike capabilities.

Flory said that the United States has emergency communication
mechanisms, such as hotlines, with Russia and China "for mitigating
any potential risk of misperception." Cartwright and Flory also stated
the United States would rely on advance notification measures and
military-to-military talks to help alleviate uncertainty. They further
asserted the launch and trajectory of a conventional system could be
made to appear differently than that of a nuclear missile.

Cartwright also made the case that the United States has a long record
of launching non-nuclear missiles without a negative incident. "Since
1968, we've launched 433 of these warheads on these missiles without
ambiguity through notification processes," Cartwright testified. The
general was referring to SLBM and land-based ICBM test launches not
involving nuclear warheads, a spokesperson from Strategic Command told
Arms Control Today April 21.

Claiming that Russia is the sole country with the current capability
to detect and respond rapidly to a ballistic missile launch, Flory
argued that "the Russians will know very quickly as they have all the
way through the Cold War and up to today what the trajectory is and
where the impact points will be."

Still, Russia detected a missile launch near Norway in January 1995
that led Kremlin leaders to be notified that the United States might
have initiated a surprise nuclear attack. Moscow did not immediately
order a counterattack and, after anxious minutes, eventually
determined that the "missile," which was a scientific rocket, posed no
threat.

Flory and Cartwright maintained that proceeding with conventional
SLBMs was worthwhile. Cartwright contended such a capability gives the
United States an option for dealing with "fleeting targets" that have
a high "regret" factor if they are not destroyed, such as
unconventional weapons threats, enemy command and control elements,
and terrorists. "In many cases, nuclear weapons are not going to be an
appropriate choice for those types of targets, and so you want a
conventional alternative," Cartwright said.

SLBMs were selected over ICBMs as the inaugural conventional prompt
global-strike option in part because of their greater accuracy and
global range. U.S. ICBM fields are in Montana, North Dakota, and
Wyoming, limiting the missiles' reach and increasing possible
overflight and miscalculation problems, particularly with Russia.

Iran's oil exchange to trade oil for euros, not dollars: Russian analysis

2006-05-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

14.05.2006 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/80261-iran_oil-0

On the 5th of May Iran registered its Oil Exchange, which will become the fifth Stock Exchange of its kind in the world. Other exchanges operate in New York, London, Singapore and Tokyo. Which exact companies will be allowed to trade at this Exchange is, like the official opening, still unknown. Yet the Iranian Exchange will be unique, as all trading will be conducted in Euros. On the already functioning Stock Exchanges business is conducted in dollars and, because of this, the specific term 'petrodollars' came into use. If the Iranian Petroleum Exchange allows the major oil companies to trade on its floor then the dollar seriously risks losing its position in the world market. This is a possibility that many experts already consider very plausible.

Will the situation change on the World Oil Market? How will the opening of the Oil Exchange affect the rate of the dollar?

The present happenings in the Oil Market are already well known – the price of oil will continue to grow. But what changes will occur with the creation of the new Exchange? From now on will all the oil have to be purchased from the Iranian Exchange? With the opening of the new exchange neither the price of milk will rise nor will it decrease in quantity. This is a fully political gesture on the part of Iran.

As concerns the introduction of trading with the euro, this corresponds perfectly with the present direction of the world economy: the dollar falls and the euro gets stronger.

If we compare the presumed turnover of the Iranian Exchange and the full turnover of the economy of the USA we will see that the same mistakes are still being made. The dollar will continue to fall while the price continues to grow on oil. The growth will continue as long as American pursues its present political agenda. The USA of course has its dividends - to raise the competitiveness of its own goods.

Iran declares that with the opening of the Exchange it hopes to reduce the influence of America on its own economy and the economy of the region. But can it achieve this?

At present the USA has practically no influence on Iran and its economy. In turn Iran does not have the potential to influence USA politics. Therefore, from the Iranian perspective, they are prepared to make their different political declarations and gestures. The end, however, is easy to miscalculate. It could lead to the liquidation of Iran's atomic aspirations.

So the creation of this new Exchange, the games of Iran, in which they continue to play, will carry on until Uncle Sam decides to put his foot down, for when he does, the games will soon come to an end.

Will Iran gain any profit from the opening of the new Oil Exchange?

Undoubtedly Iran has the potential for economic profit. Yet the creation of the Exchange will, however, not play a defining role in the in the Iranian economy, with or without the euro Iran has its own political agenda and economic motives have, for a long time, not played a very important role. One main concern is that Iran is governed, not only by political motives, but by deeply rooted religious ones as well.

Russia has now to adjust its focus of attention from the economic area to the political. By this I mean her new political energy agenda.

What's more, these new events will, in no way, have an affect on the world's economic direction. Just as the prices on oil and gas have grown, so they will continue to grow.

How long will the rise in energy prices continue?

This will eventually lead towards a crisis that will hit the economy of the oil producing countries. To begin with, I think, it will quickly strike the developing countries such as China and India, followed later by Europe and the USA.

At this very moment we are seeing the same crisis, only in a slower from, that already occurred when the Arabian countries established an embargo. Now it is just on a larger scale, though, in reality, it is the same thing.

The point is not that the 'world does not have sufficient oil' for this simply isn't true. World supplies of oil will last us yet many more years, but for the West there exists the problem of Iran, problems of the new Latin American countries, terrorism from the East, Russia, and the constant concerns of energy which still leave the West feeling very insecure. And all these problems are coming from the very countries that provide the west with its energy.

The price, therefore, continues to rise but in reality a barrel of oil is still sold at a cheap price.

However, the desire to reduce the consumption of oil in order to find different sources of energy does still not exist, despite the fact that these alternatives are now ready for development. The problem of thermal reactors is still being dealt with very ineffectively, while the use of other forms of energy are inexhaustible, and could help solve the present energy problem. In theory this is a task that will be decided in the next century.

There is, of course, the possibility to use hydrate methane, another powerful source of energy, and, if it were developed and used effectively, would provide the same amount of energy reserves as oil and gas combined.

So in fact there are solutions to the present day problems, only there is not the political desire to realize them.

And when the political situation reaches its peak, when Iran and Saudi Arabia decide to shut off the supply to the west, then it will be the west that will have to find and develop these alternative fuel sources.

Politcom

Translated by Guerman Grachev
Pravda.Ru

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Rambler's Top100

Iran's oil stock exchange, next week

2006-05-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

IRIB, 26 April 2006

Tehran, April 26 - Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said on Wednesday that the establishment of Oil Stock Exchange is in its final stage and the bourse will be launched in Iran in the next week.

He told reporters, upon arrival from Qatar where he attended the 10th General Assembly of International Energy Agency and consultations with OPEC member states, that registration of the Oil Stock Exchange is underway and the entity will operate after being approved by by Council of Stock Exchange.

He rejected a statement attributed to him saying that Oil Stock Exchange will bring to the ground the US economy and said, "I don't know who has speculated that I've not talked about US economy." Asked about conference on energy in Doha, he said that more than 60 countries and 30 oil companies and consultants took part in the conference.

Vaziri Hamaneh said that serious discussions were held including security of supply and demand, security of investment in energy and environment issues.

"The best method for security of demand in the oil sector is that consumers should be given opportunity to enter into partnership with the suppliers in investment in oil industry." He said that the conference called for diversifying energy resources and cooperation of the developed states with the countries possessing oil and gas resources.

Asked about the oil price rise, Vaziri-Hamaneh said that oil price is being influenced by political situation, whereas it should be freed from political impacts and economic and technical fundamentals should determine the oil prices.

"As long as political impacts dominate the oil market, price hike will continue," he concluded.

Euro oil bourse: Iran signs its own death warrant

2006-05-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

By Jerome R. Corsi

May 8, 2006

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50100

Last week, Iran's oil ministry granted a license to establish an Iranian oil bourse on the Gulf island of Kish, an economic free zone, to price and trade oil in the Euro, not in the dollar. This idea – strongly backed by the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – may well be the final straw that draws the United States into war against Iran.

In 2000, Saddam Hussein received U.N. permission to sell Iraqi oil for euros, not dollars. Saddam further received permission from the United Nations to convert the $10 billion oil-for-food reserve fund from euros to dollars.

Many Bush administration critics have argued that the real reason for the 2003 war against Iraq was not concern that Iraq had or would use WMD, but concern by the U.S. Treasury that Saddam Hussein was waging an international economic war to convince oil-producing nations to hold their foreign exchange currencies in the euro, not the dollar.

The proposal to establish an Iranian oil bourse first surfaced under the presidency of Khatami. The idea languished for months, until last month when President Ahmadinejad again took up the initiative and pressed for action. Iran's goal is to create a bourse where oil is priced in the euro, to compete with the dollar pricing of oil that now dominates the major international oil exchanges, the New York Mercantile Exchange, NYMEX and London's International Petroleum Exchange, IPE.

Pricing oil transactions in the euro will create more of a psychological impact. Iran's real goal is to shift the world away using the dollar as the major currency of foreign exchange holdings. This little understood market has been key to our ability to sustain our economic growth, despite the unprecedented budget deficits of the Bush administration.

Today, the U.S. Treasury is increasingly dependent upon 70 percent or more of world foreign exchange reserves being held in the dollar. China has just signed a $100 billion deal with Iran to develop the huge Yadvaran oil field. For decades to come, Iran promises to be China's major supplier of oil and natural gas. China is also the second largest holder of foreign reserve dollar holdings, second only to Japan. China has already announced their intention to block any serious sanctions coming out of the Security Council deliberations. Undoubtedly, Iran will push China to increase their foreign reserve currency position in the euro, simply to show their economic support for Iran.

We expect that the Iranian oil bourse will be relatively small and experimental at first. But for the Ahmadinejad administration to press for opening the bourse at a time when Iran's nuclear program is being discussed by the Security Council shows the extent of Iran's defiant determination to oppose the United States.

Ahmadinejad has continued to make statements threatening Israel, while asserting that economic sanctions cannot harm Iran economically. Ahmadinejad has a point. With over $200 million a day in windfall oil profits, Iran has more than enough cash flow to support their struggling economy and to fund the aggressive development of their nuclear program.

Iran should be careful, however, in also taking on the established order of international oil. Sanctions already in place shut American oil companies out of participating in Iran's rich oil markets. Iran is the fourth largest exporter of oil in the world, none of which flows directly to the United States. Already the price of oil has spiked to nearly $75 a barrel over international uncertainty with Iran's nuclear program. If a deepening Iranian crisis moves the price of oil toward $80 a barrel, while Iran is threatening to open up an oil bourse to price oil in the euro, Iran is only asking for a confrontation.

Taking on the Bush administration with a possible nuclear threat to Israel is a seriously dangerous policy whose end-game may well end up in war. If Iran wants also to seriously threaten the dollar's position as a dominant foreign reserve currency, a war becomes almost certain. The Iranian oil bourse may never be mentioned by U.S. policymakers as a official reason the United States decides to go to war with Iran, but it may end up being the straw that broke the camel's back.

Jerome R. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including co-authoring with John O'Neill the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry." Dr. Corsi's most recent books include "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil," which he co-authored with WND columnist Craig. R. Smith, and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians."

Experts: Iran oil proposal long shot

2006-05-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

Northwest Arkansas Arkansas Democrat-Gazette // THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted on Saturday, May 6, 2006

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/153888/

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran took a step on Friday toward establishing an oil market denominated in euros, a plan analysts described as highly unlikely to materialize but which in theory could have serious consequences for the U. S. economy.

Iranian state-run television said the country's oil ministry granted a license for the eurodenominated market, an idea first suggested in 2004, though just who would trade on it remains unclear.

Global oil trading is now conducted in dollars on exchanges in New York and London.

But if the Iranian market were to succeed — or if Iran simply demanded payment for its oil in euros — commodities experts said it could lead central bankers around the world to convert some dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar's value.

"If OPEC decided they didn't want dollars anymore," A. G. Edwards commodities analyst Bill O'Grady said, "it would signal an end of American hegemony by signaling an end to the dollar as the sole reserve currency status."

Iran is the fourth-largest oil producing country in the world, the second-largest in OPEC and controls about 5 percent of the global oil supply, so it has a measure of influence over international oil markets. Tehran also partially controls the Persian Gulf 's Strait of Hormuz through which much of the world's oil supply must pass.

First suggested in 2004 when reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in power, the idea of a euro-denominated oil exchange gained new life after the stridently nationalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president last summer.

Iran has sought to use its oil resources as a bargaining tool in Tehran's ongoing standoff with the West over its nuclear program.

But O'Grady and others say there are practical reasons why the Iranian threat — the subject of much discussion in some corners of the Internet in recent weeks — is largely empty.

For starters, Iran is not a very attractive site for a market, given the volatile nature of its politics, the U. S. sanctions against it and the lack of a transparent legal system.

Moreover, there is no indication that the European Union is interested in vying to become the world's central bank, which requires a willingness to run large currency deficits, he said.

PFC Energy oil analyst Jamal Qureshi said the fears stirred up by a hypothetical euro-denominated oil market in Iran or anywhere else are overblown, not least because the oil trade is just a small component of the overall global economy. Information for this article was contributed by Brad Foss of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2001-2006 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved. Contact: webmaster@nwanews.com

US, Russia spat before July G-8 summit

2006-05-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

The May artillery preparation by the US and Russia before July G8 Summit in St. Petersburg

Sergei Shakaryants

4.05.2006
http://www.regnum.ru/english/637974.html

When during the "Common Vision of Common Neighborhood" conference in Vilnius on May 4 US Vice President Richard Cheney took up the burden to openly criticize Russia for its home and foreign policies and, later, US President George Bush said himself – thereby proving that in Vilnius Cheney was speaking "not on his own behalf" — that Washington was not satisfied with "the level of democracy" in Russia, many understood that they in the White House were beginning some kind of battle against Moscow. Their goal might be to get some kind of carte blanche before the July G8 Summit in St. Petersburg to be able to pressure the Kremlin in the "Iranian dossier" issue. As you may know, it was exactly in early May that Russia and China had once again rejected the UN SC's resolution on Iran, drafted by the UK and some western countries.

However, the US and its allies might as well want to turn the St. Petersburg G8 into some kind of "public flogging" for Russia – for Cheney's indictment contains quite surprising charges: like, Moscow is allegedly "toying" with the territorial integrity of some neighboring states. Any unbiased observer could see that Cheney was, first of all, meaning Russia's official stance on the ethnic conflicts in the CIS, and so, through its vice president in nowhere but the Baltic states, the US has given a start to a process that will inevitably dismantle the CIS and — as the Americans believe — will tear away and then reshape the peacemaking formats in the CIS conflict zones. They believe that this all will allow them to push Russia out of the peace-making and -keeping operations – for example in the selfsame Abkhazia or South Ossetia. In this light, one can agree with the "forebodings" of some Azeri officials that during the G8 Summit the US may raise the problem of Karabakh too.

Georgia and Ukraine have already started the CIS dismantling. We already know what their presidents Mikhail Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko are going to offer instead, say, to Armenia or Azerbaijan — "Commonwealth of Democratic Choice" – an alternative to the failed GUUAM-GUAM — a framework that the extra-regional forces will now use to "push a-la-west democracy" from "the Adriatic to the Caspian seas" (as they said in Vilnius). However, this is a topic for a separate discussion.

Everybody understood that they in the Kremlin would not be able to pretend they did not see the openly anti-Russian meaning of what Cheney and Bush said. That's why the quick response of Russian FM Sergey Lavrov on May 6 made clear to the experts that in his annual address to the Russian parliament Russian President Vladimir Putin would not fail to outline his basic policy during his the G8 talks. Obviously, Russia began preparing for "a battle" with the US beforehand. One proof is the enhanced Russian-German diplomatic, political and business activities in January-February 2006.

Particularly, Lavrov said: "Democracy is necessary not only inside the state but also on the international arena." About Cheney's speech Lavrov said: "I thought that a person holding such an office is objectively informed of everything but his advisors or assistants must have let him down. For example, Cheney says: 'the opponents of reforms in Russia are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade.' I think one should not explain to the Russian people what gains he is talking about – the country was on the verge of breakup." Lavrov said that, in fact, the Russian authorities are seeking to preserve Russia's unity; in the last 40 years Russia has broken no single oil or gas export contract; as regards the statement that Russia undermines the territorial integrity of its neighbors – in early 90 it was exactly Russian peacekeepers who gave their lives to stop bloodshed in Moldova and Georgia. "Not to remember this is blasphemy," Lavrov noted. To clear the air Lavrov said: "One thing I agree with is Mr. Cheney's desire to see the world as a community of sovereign democracies. Russia wants to be and is becoming sovereign, strong and stable democracy and hopes that they in the world will take it as equal partner whose presence in global problem solving is indispensable. I think that such statements will not undermine the efforts we are making with the US, with Europe, with other leading counties to build a fair world with no conflicts and with countries developing stably and democratically."

That's why when on May 10 Putin appeared with his annual address to Russia's Federal Assembly, special attention was given to the paragraphs about Russia's foreign policy and security for the time being. The South Caucasus and some other CIS countries were mostly eager to know what Putin thinks about the changes in Russia's migration policy – just count how many citizens of our country are presently earning their living in Russia and sending home untaxed money transfers in freely convertible currency in order to feed their poor families. Still, we are inclined to first of all analyze the foreign policy and defense parts of Putin's address.

It should be noted that the text of this document has made it clear that Russia, at least, for today is inclined to regard the West's policy in the CIS as an ordinary rivalry. That's exactly what Putin wants to say: "now that the world is being actively rebuilt we are facing many new problems. These challenges are less predictable and nobody can say how dangerous they might be. The conflict space is actively enlarging and, which is even more dangerous, is beginning to cover our vital interests." They in the CIS and the West should understand the last phrase as an imperative signal to all extra-regional forces that Moscow will not give in "the zone of its vital interests" "without fight." It is symptomatic that today the Russian President has "as if imperceptibly" begun to use the vocabulary the US administration used in early 90 when "opening up" the whole post-Soviet space and calling it "newly independent states and "zone of American vital interests."

Let's put aside Putin's clear remarks that despite their lagging financing, Russia's defense complex and armed forces can give worthy rebuff to any persons or countries who will try to "scare" Moscow. Obviously, Russia's key strategy before the St. Petersburg G8 is that it links nonproliferation of mass destruction weapon (which first of all refers to nuclear weapon – and this is a subtle hint at the "Iranian nuclear dossier") with the new turn of arms race, including the US' deepening activities to create a national anti-missile system. Let's give a couple of quotations: "…today it's early to speak about the end of the arms race… the race is just unfolding and it is going up to a new technological level to produce a threatening arsenal of destabilizing arms (he obviously means non-conventional arms).

Experts are already discussing the plans of use of intercontinental ballistic missiles with non-nuclear warheads. But nuclear powers may inadequately react to the launch of such a missile – they may counter-act in a large-scale nuclear strike. Not everybody in the world has given up its stereotypes and prejudice…" In our view, by saying this Putin just reminded the West that Russia's national security concept has a point that allows Russia to deal response or even preventive nuclear strikes in case of a war or a threat of war. Well, this is all but "a declaration of war" against the West. Let's remind once again – "the war was declared" against Russia at the Vilnius conference by Mr. Cheney, who made an ultimatum: either you break up yourself and we call it "the deepening of the western standard democracy" or…

Even the Western media called Cheney's speech "a new Fulton speech," "cold war ghost," etc, while Putin's address is just a reminder that the challenge can be accepted. In other words, this is an ordinary strategic game until the G8 presidents dot their "i's" by themselves.

The US CIS "democratization" policy also got it from Putin. True, again indirectly: "Today the percentage of our defense expenses in GDP are comparable or a bit smaller than in big nuclear powers like France or the UK… but only absolute figures matter, in absolute figures they are just half of what those countries have and are in no way comparable to the expenses of the US. Their absolute military budget is 25 times as big as that of Russia. That's what they in the military call "their home, their fortress. They did it well. Well done! But this does not mean that we must not build our own strong home. Because we see what is going on in the world. We do see. As they say 'comrade wolf knows whom to eat.' He is eating and is not listening to anybody and seems not to be going to. What becomes of their pathos about the necessity to fight for human rights and democracy when it comes to the necessity to push their own interests? It turns out that here everything is possible with no restrictions." In our view, this is what the Kremlin actually thinks about "the fruits" of the "color revolutions" in the CIS, designed by US political technologists.

And the last point of the defensive-preventive part of Putin's address. He said that Russia has means that can overcome air defense systems and will allow Moscow to fulfill its key task – to guarantee stable peace in the world and to preserve the strategic balance of forces. Putin also made clear that the Russian army will shortly have maneuverable warheads – units that make missile flight path unpredictable for potential enemy.

Only after that did Putin announce the cardinal tasks of Russia's foreign policy – which will obviously be valid for not only this year but the whole period till the next presidential election of 2008. Here Putin said that the CIS is still a priority for Russia's FM. True, the CIS as such has already fulfilled its historical mission and should be reformed. This might be a hint that the Kremlin's political technologists are already working to transform the CIS into one or even several new organizations, which would reintegrate the actions and efforts of all the present CIS states. We have already heard their names and not once – CSTO, Russia-Belarus Union, EurAsEC, CES (common economic space).

The other key task of Moscow's foreign policy is to harmonize relations with the EU, Russia's biggest partner. There is nothing new here – the Russian President still trusts the Russian-EU bilateral agreement for creating "four common spaces." On two of the four the sides have actually been actively working in the last months. We can certainly add to this "the fifth common space" between Russia and the EU – the quickly ongoing Russian-German project of Northern gas pipeline.

As regards the US, it seems that Russia has decided to make it known beforehand that, once its major partner in the West (especially in politics and fight with terrorism), Washington, is no longer a priority in Russia's foreign policy. The US has got into the class of Russia's "special partners" along with China, India, some Asia-Pacific, Latin American and African countries. And if many experts believed that by Cheney's Vilnius speech President Bush made clear to Russia that in St. Petersburg they would have an unpleasant talks, by his speech Putin made even more clear to Bush that today they have nothing special to talk about – let's say once again: "the wolf is eating and is not listening to anybody and seems not to be going to…"

And the last task of Moscow's foreign policy is to promote the UN reforms so that it can further be "the carcass of the modern world order" — "a regulator allowing to jointly develop a new up-to-date code of behavior in the world." But, at the same time, the UN should become as efficient as possible. We can try to go deep into this problem, but it is too is a topic for separate discussion…

It's not a secret that the reason for this "attack" on Russia and those CIS countries who reject the "anti-Russian" democracy is that some of the G-8 and, primarily, the US are very much eager to get new levers of control over Moscow – at least, some new ways of political and other pressure on it. This might also be due to Russia's plans to repay its debts to the "Paris Club" ahead of time or to the US' plans to stop Russia's impartiality in the "Iranian problem?" – this may even be some complex task Russia's international enemies are trying to solve. One thing is clear: the West (the US) fears lest it might lose not only the strings that help it to manipulate Russia but also any "control" over the actions of Russian leaders – present or future. And this is quite possible. That's probably why after Putin's address Russia's Federal Assembly was told that starting from July 1, 2006 Russia will be ready to convert its ruble…

Sergey Shakaryants – expert of the Caucasus Analytical Center

The Pipes Carry Clout With the Oil

2006-05-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

The Pipes Carry Clout With the Oil

By JAD MOUAWAD
New Yor Times: May 14, 2006

AS energy-rich countries feel empowered by high oil prices, they are increasingly using a blunt instrument to make their influence felt. Call it the power of the pipeline.
New, superlong pipelines are planned for South America, the Middle East, Russia and Africa, and oil-producing countries are using them to forge political alliances, punish foes and extract concessions from customers.

"Pipelines mean political leverage," said Frank A. Verrastro, the director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

On a recent visit to Lithuania, Vice President Dick Cheney lambasted Russia for using oil and natural gas as "tools of intimidation and blackmail." Later, on a stopover in Kazakhstan, he urged energy-rich Central Asian nations to bypass Russia altogether when considering pipeline routes to the West.

President Vladimir V. Putin himself made energy security a theme this year in talks with other industrialized nations. But on the day it took over the presidency of the Group of Eight, Russia cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine over a price dispute, freezing out both its independent-minded neighbor as well as the European Union in the dead of winter.

In the end, a compromise was reached and Ukraine agreed to pay more for its gas, until then subsidized by Russia. But Russia's neighbors also learned a shocking new reality: whoever controls the taps also holds the upper hand.

Transnational pipelines have been around for more than a century, but with low prices and supplies aplenty, they had lost much of their strategic significance over time. Supertankers, first built in the early 1950's, allowed producers to ship anywhere around the world, and freed consumers from the whims of a single seller. About two-thirds of the oil trade is now carried by tankers.

But matters have changed in recent years: higher demand has put pressure on energy networks, supplies have had trouble catching up with consumption, and tensions have risen. Today, every drop counts.

"Pipelines play a critical role in an age of increased tightness in energy markets, terrorist threats to energy infrastructure, and political use of energy resources," said Anne Korin, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a research center based in Washington.

Consider the case of Iran, which wants to build a natural gas pipeline to India and is even considering extending the route all the way to China. The project, spanning about 1,600 miles at a cost of $7 billion, would provide Iran with a large market for its substantial gas reserves while helping India meet its growing energy needs. The pipeline would also add to Iran's political clout.

There are drawbacks. The pipeline must run through Pakistan's Baluchistan region, a prospect that worries India given the area's history of lawlessness.

And while Pakistan's current leaders welcome the proposed route because they would also benefit from Iranian gas, a pipeline might afford future governments with a vital means of pressuring India. The United States also strongly opposes the plan. "The last thing the United States wants is for India to be in Iran's debt," Ms. Korin said.

None of this has been lost on Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, who persuaded his neighbors to look at a 6,000-mile pipeline linking his country to Brazil and Argentina. He has named it El Gran Gasoducto del Sur, the Great Gas Pipeline of the South. With a potential cost of $23 billion, the proposal makes little economic sense; it would be much cheaper to build liquefaction terminals and ship the gas by tankers.

But Mr. Chávez's plan is not only meant to transport gas; it also carries a political message. The pipeline should be "considered one of the fundamental steps to South America's integration," according to Petróleos de Venezuela, the state oil company.

Russia has been particularly adept at balancing its economic needs and its role as an energy superpower.

When considering an oil pipeline to the Sea of Japan or straight to China, Russian energy officials waited for two years before committing themselves. China was initially favored, but after much dithering, Russia picked the longer and costlier option to its eastern seaport of Nakhodka, instead of the Chinese route to Daqing. The reason: the plan allows oil exports to Japan as well as to other potential markets, including the United States and eventually China as well.

Then there is the matter of what Mr. Cheney called "blackmail."

Last month, President Putin suggested that Russia might redirect future exports to Asia instead of Europe because of what he called "unprincipled competition" blocking the expansion of Gazprom, Russia's biggest energy company, in Europe.

"To the extent that you are concerned that countries like Russia might be using energy as political tools, one of the best ways to protect yourself is to create alternate pathways to move energy to markets," said Steven Pifer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2001 to 2004.

In the 1990's, that sort of thinking led energy planners in the United States to support construction of a pipeline to carry oil from the vast reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which are all landlocked around the Caspian Sea, through Turkey, while avoiding Russia to the north, as well as Iran, which would have provided the shortest route, to the south.

"In all these cases," Ms. Korin said, "you have a big problem with Central Asia, where there is lots of energy but few politically pleasant and unproblematic ways to get the supplies out if you don't want to be overly reliant on Russia or on Iran."

It took nearly a decade to build the $3.9 billion pipeline, which starts in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, snakes through Georgia, and ends at the port of Ceyhan, Turkey. Oil will start flowing this summer.

A big drawback for pipelines is that they are relatively easy targets for terrorists. In Iraq, hundreds of bombings have frozen exports from the northern Kirkuk fields. In Colombia, one pipeline, running from the north to the eastern Caribbean port of Coveñas, has been ruptured by so many attacks in the past two decades that it has been nicknamed "the flute."

But such concerns won't stop new projects. Mr. Pifer, who also worked at the National Security Council where he oversaw Russian affairs under President Clinton, recalled that in the 1990's the United States distributed a bumper sticker around Central Asia. It read, "Happiness is multiple pipelines."

Democrat proposes India nuclear deal compromise

2006-05-12T02:31:00.000-07:00

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

Thu May 11, 2006 5:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading Democratic lawmaker said on Thursday
that a landmark U.S.-India nuclear deal lacks the necessary support to
pass the Congress and he put forward a compromise intended to keep the
accord alive.

But a senior U.S. official said the administration believes it still
can win congressional approval of the deal without the delays and
"legislative hurdles" California Rep. Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting
record)' proposal would create.

Under the initiative announced by Lantos, senior Democrat on the House
of Representatives International Relations Committee, Congress would
welcome the deal, which would permit U.S. civil nuclear technology
sales to India for the first time in three decades.

But the proposal would delay making critical changes in U.S. law until
the two countries negotiated a formal peaceful nuclear cooperation
agreement -- implementing a political deal struck by the U.S. and
Indian leaders last July -- and until India agreed on a system of
inspections of its civil nuclear facilities by the International
Atomic Energy Agency.

Only then would Congress expedite its approval of critical changes in
the U.S. Atomic Energy Act with a yes or no vote that would bar
amendments that could further delay or scuttle the deal, a senior aide
to Lantos told reporters.

This is similar to the "fast track" mechanism that Congress has often
used to act on trade deals.

The administration, which considers the accord key to improved ties
with rising Asian power India, has met considerable resistance after
pushing Congress to quickly change the atomic energy act even before
the implementing agreement and the IAEA "safeguards" accord are
completed.

"The administration's suggested legislation to implement this bold
nuclear deal -- which I fully support -- does not have the wide and
bipartisan backing it needs," Lantos told an international relations
committee hearing.

COMPROMISE

There are too few days left on the legislative calendar to resolve the
problems so "we need to come up with a compromise that will keep the
momentum for this important agreement moving forward," he said.

State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, reacting to Lantos'
proposal, said "right now our view is to handle this differently."

Zelikow told the American Enterprise Institute think tank that Lantos'
objectives could be realized within the legislation the administration
has already put forward.

He expressed optimism Congress would approve the nuclear deal,
although he acknowledged uncertainty about when that might happen and
whether lawmakers would put conditions on it.

Zelikow said Washington and New Delhi both must do more to ensure the
agreement is enacted.

Many American non-proliferation experts and lawmakers have expressed
serious concerns about the U.S.-India deal, arguing it could allow
India to increase its nuclear weapons stockpile.

India never signed the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, developing
weapons in contravention of international norms.

Democratic Rep. Howard Berman (news, bio, voting record) of California
announced plans to introduce amendments to the administration bill,
including a demand that Congress retain the right to approve the
nuclear cooperation agreement by a majority vote.

The administration approach would avoid the enhanced scrutiny Congress
envisioned for such agreements, Democratic Rep. Edward Markey (news,
bio, voting record) of Massachusetts told the hearing.

Attempting to undercut such sentiments, Lantos said his proposal would
reassure India while "not compromising" Congress' oversight role.

"The Indian government... needs the confidence that we will adopt the
necessary legislation in order to negotiate the final details of this
agreement with the United States," he said.

The agreement has also come under attack in India.

Raid on Nuclear Fuel Market

2006-05-08T02:34:00.000-07:00

Raid On Nuclear Fuel Market

By Rudo de Ruijter

08 May, 2006
Countercurrents.org

In the background of the political joust about Iran, a few countries
are reshaping the world. They are taking possession of the global
nuclear fuel market. New IAEA regulations should keep newcomers away.
The US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Japan will become
world's nuclear filling stations. Under the auspices of the IAEA these
suppliers will dictate the rules, the prices and the currencies they
want to get paid in. Iran has become the pretext and test case for
their plans. The problems of tomorrow's world economy are being shaped
today.

Iran and the Non-Proliferation Treaty

US President Bush wants us to believe that Iran has plans for nuclear
weapons. Well, we remember, that in 2002 he accused Iraq of having
weapons of mass destruction. That turned out to be a lie, so let us
look more closely at the facts.

Iran is a member state of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from the
very first moment in 1968. [1] The NPT is a treaty not only to stop
proliferation of nuclear arms, but also to help each other to develop
civil nuclear energy. [2] In the treaty, the nuclear-weapon states
(US, Russia, China, France and England) promised nuclear disarmament.
(So far, they have not kept their promises.) The other members had to
sign agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
NPT's watchdog, for the implementation of controls. IAEA's agreement
with Iran entered into force on May 15 1974. [3]

Iran's nuclear history

At that time shah Reza ruled Iran. Thanks to the Anglo-US' operation
Ajax in 1953 he was still on the throne. From 1957 Shah Reza wanted to
develop nuclear energy in Iran. [4] The US offered all the help and
stuff he wanted: a research reactor, enriched uranium and plutonium.
The research reactor was started in 1967, but went critical soon
after. Then the French became good friends too. They promised to
repair the reactor. The shah made a $ 1 billion loan to the French for
the construction of an enrichment plant in Tricastin in the South of
France. From 1974 still more countries offered their services to the
shah. Agreements followed for five reactors and fuel from France, two
reactors and fuel from the US, regular purchases of uranium from
Australia and two reactors from West Germany. Denmark delivered 10
kilo of highly enriched uranium and 25 kilo of natural uranium.
Technical staff came in from Argentina and India, while Iranian
students went to UK and West Germany. Discussions took place with
Pakistan and Turkey for regional nuclear cooperation. The Iranian
budget for the atomic energy rose from $ 30 million in 1975 to $ 1
billion the following year, and still more reactors were ordered from
the US. By the end of 1978, with not a single reactor completed yet,
the shah ran out of money. Meanwhile, popular opposition against the
shah's blood shedding oppression rose to a climax.

From shah Reza to Khomeini

The opposition against the shah had grown since 1953, when popular
hero and Prime Minister Mossadeq had been overthrown by a joint coup
of the CIA, the English and the shah. [5] Mossadeq had successfully
strived to nationalize the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (BP). Sued by
England, Mossadeq had won the case at the International Court in The
Hague. [6] During the coup, the shah initially fled the country, but
came back after the army had succeeded to beat down the protests of
the population. In 1960, to please his American friends, he granted
diplomatic immunity to all US' personnel working in Iran. A young
opponent, called Ruhollah Khomeini dared to criticize the shah
publicly. The first time he was jailed and recidivist a few years
later he was expelled. The shah's oppression increased over time. In
riots many hundreds of opponents were killed and thousands injured. By
1977 all opposition movements finally united and in January 1979 the
shah definitely fled the country. Khomeini returned to Iran in triumph
and on April 1st 1979 the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by
referendum. In November 1979, when Iranian students heard that the
shah had gone to the US, they stormed the US embassy in Tehran to
claim the extradition of the shah in order to summon him to trial. A
long hostages crisis followed. A US' attempt to free them failed.
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, a good friend of the US at that
time, invaded Iran, announcing he would be in Tehran within three
days. However, the war between Iraq and Iran would last 10 years and
cost hundreds of thousands of lifes. With the end of the Warschau Pact
in 1989 and Saddam's mistake to invade Kuwait, the US attitude toward
Iraq made a 180-degree turn. Iraq and Iran were both US' enemies now.
But since these countries detain 10.5 and 10 percent of world's oil
reserves respectively and the US is world's biggest consumer (with 25
percent of world's oil production), it was foreseeable the US would
not just ignore these countries. The US now has less than 2 percent of
world's oil reserves. Its dependency on foreign oil is rapidly
increasing and, according to Bush, 60 percent today. [7]

The accusations against Iran: 130 Grams of Uranium

On June 16 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency announced, that
Iran had not reported a uranium import of 1991 and the subsequent
stocking and processing. That is true. But from a confidential IAEA
document of June 6 2003 we learn, that this import contained just 130
gram of uranium. [8] According to article 37 of the official agreement
between the IAEA and Iran, in force since May 15 1974, nuclear
materials containing less than 1 kilo of uranium are exempted from the
IAEA safeguards. [9] The IAEA accusations made the world believe that
Iran had transgressed the rules.

Similar jousts are about the Additional Protocol. During the embargo
against Iraq, when proof had to be found of weapons of mass
destruction and Saddam was not willing to grant more rights to the UN
inspectors, the IAEA had developed additional rules to make controls
easier. The new rules also make it easier to discriminate among
members: excessive rules for one country, friendly rules for others.
In June 2003 only 33 of the 188 members of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty had accepted to sign the Additional Protocol. Nevertheless the
US and a delegation of the European Union formed by France, Germany
and the United Kingdom, wanted to force Iran to sign the Additional
Protocol. In exchange, the three European countries (E3) promised to
come up with interesting commercial deals. Iran was willing to hear
what they had to propose. This is not so surprising. 30 percent of
Iran's oil goes to Europe and 40 percent of its imports come from
Europe. Spring 2003, Iran had even switched its oil sales from dollars
to euros, which is good for Europe and bad for the US, since it
weakens the dollar. During the talks about new commercial deals with
the Europeans Iran voluntarily agreed to suspend its research program
for uranium enrichment and to grant additional rights to the IAEA for
extended checking of their nuclear facilities. After repeated Iranian
requests it became clear, that the E3 countries did not intend to
deliver the promised deals. They just wanted to keep the talks going
on indefinitely, meantime preventing Iran from enriching uranium. Iran
resumed its program and re-established the contractual conditions for
the IAEA controls. This resulted in the attempt of the US and E3 to
have the UN Security Council condemn Iran.

US' agenda: The oil, the dollar and the foreign debt…

So, if the so-called proofs against Iran appear to be fabricated, what
is the real issue? I think the general idea is clear to all. With its
excessive energy consumption the US thinks, it is necessary to have
pro-US governments in Iraq, Iran and, for the UNOCAL pipeline project,
also in Afghanistan. During the Cold War Saddam Hussein in Iraq and
shah Reza in Iran were useful US' allies, but these days are over.
Thanks to Bush we now have wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is
located in between. Considering the reputation the US has built up in
Iran a spontaneous arising of a pro-US government is not likely to
happen soon.

The second thing that explains more immediately Bush aggressive stance
against Iran is its part in the weakening dollar. A new Iranian oil
bourse, if successful, may even trip up US' hegemony. [10]

In a glance, this is how it works. World's oil and gas is traded in
US-dollars. Since 1971 the US has had the advantage to be the
petrodollar supplier of the world. Supplying dollars to foreign
countries means, the US can print money and purchase goods, services
and investments with it. Since the foreigners need these dollars to
buy oil, and keep them also in use in the international trade outside
the US, the US has never had to deliver anything in return. Merely
supplying money means free shopping. This is how US' foreign debt grew
to 3,200,000,000,000 dollars today. And if some day the world gets
tired of the abuse and does not want US-dollars anymore, their massive
offers of dollars on the exchange markets would immediately push the
exchange rate down, the dollar would become worth next to nothing and
the foreign debt would vanish. So it is very advantageous to deliver
currencies that are permanently needed and wanted abroad.

But with today's' sky rocketing debt, the dollar has become
vulnerable. When Saddam Hussein switched to the euro on November 6
2000 [11, 12], the exchange markets were temporarily overflowed by
dollars. With Iran considering a similar switch since 1999 and maybe
more OPEC countries to follow [13], speculations and decreasing trust
set in motion a long and continuous descent of the dollar, which
risked leading to its collapse. [14] By the end of 2002 the dollar
rate had fallen 18 percent. [15] This probably explains, why the US
could not wait and on March 20 2003 even overruled the UN Security
Council to invade Iraq. The Iraqi oil trade has been switched back to
dollars on June 6 2003. [16] From spring 2003, Iran also switched to
the euro, and during the two years that followed the dollar rate lost
another 12 percent.

The US free shopping advantage only works insofar foreign countries
need additional dollars. So, each time when oil prices rise on US
controlled International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) of London and New
York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), more dollars are needed in the
world. [17] As 85 percent of the oil trade takes place outside the US,
for each extra dollar needed inside the US, seven dollars are needed
outside and result in free shopping. To increase the foreign dollar
demand still further, the US Federal Reserve sells Treasury Bonds to
foreigners, which reduces the amount of dollars abroad. This increases
foreign demand for dollars and raises the exchange rate. To stop the
exchange rate from rising continually, new dollars have to be
"delivered" to the foreigners, resulting again in free shopping. If
the US wants to lower the dollar rate it can just import more. In
fact, as long as world demand for dollars keeps growing, the US can
decide itself about the rate of their currency and enjoy free
shopping. For the year 2004, the latter represented an advantage of
3,000 dollar per US' inhabitant. Recently, foreigners are not so
willing anymore to fuel US' fairy credit carrousel. The US tries to
seduce them with higher interests, but foreign demand for bonds stays
insufficient. The only remaining way to obtain enough new credit is to
increase world's demand for dollars by making the oil prices rise on
IPE and NYMEX. And that is what is happening since mid 2004.

Here, once again, an Iranian initiative endangers US' credit
carrousel. Iran wants to establish an independent non-dollar oil
bourse. Assuming it succeeds in creating enough trade to establish a
recognized world oil price, and assuming they keep the price stable,
oil prices on IPE and NYMEX cannot rise freely anymore. The credit
carrousel may stop. The Iranian Oil Bourse will not only reduce the
power of IPE and NYMEX, it will also have its influence on the
exchange rate between dollars and euros. If oil gets cheaper in euros,
there will be a rush on euros. And vice versa. The US and EU both see
this bourse as a risk. The opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse had been
scheduled for March 20 2006, the Iranian New Year. It is now announced
for the first week of May 2006. [18]

Seeking allies

To take measures against Iran the US needs allies. Allies are useful
for cost sharing of operations and to let them clean up the mess, as
in Afghanistan and Iraq. The best way to gain allies is to have your
enemies condemned by a UN Security Council resolution. That means the
US has to convince the other veto-holding countries. Of course, that
would not work, if the US disclosed its real reasons. The US had to
come up with something better, which could unite and reward all of the
veto-countries. Well, veto-countries are the victor states of the
Second World War. They happen to have in common to be nuclear weapon
states, all disposing of uranium enrichment facilities. So how about a
project to reward them with the exclusive rights for uranium
enrichment and for the supply of nuclear fuel to the
non-nuclear-weapon states? [19]

The strange European delegation

Then, in the diplomatic stage-play about Iran, Bush is joint by the
UK, France and Germany, the so-called E3. They would represent the
European Union. This strange composition of an EU-delegation starts to
make sense, when we notice that these countries are the European
countries possessing enrichment facilities. Camouflaged under the flag
of the European Union they have their own special interest in
enrichment and reprocessing.

How European are these E3 countries? In fact, as European
representatives, France and Germany make a strange case in willing to
get their trade partner Iran condemned by the UN Security Council. It
indicates they are playing poker for high stakes. They deliberately
risk disrupting an Iranian oil market priced in euros, either through
a direct conflict against Iran or by allowing the US to obtain an
embargo.

Bush, if he does not obtain his embargo, would probably not even mind
to see the Iranian power plants under construction bombed once again,
to make Iran consume its oil, instead of selling it in euros. And what
role does the UK play in this EU-delegation? Well, with its IPE oil
market always playing in symbiosis with NYMEX, and its subsequent
impossibility to adopt the euro, they serve as the messenger-boy of
the White House. As usual.

The tone of the E3 talks with Iran is not the one you would normally
expect between trade partners who wish to improve their relations. The
reports about the discussions are long litanies of obligations the E3
seeks to impose to Iran. Iran is treated like the naughty schoolboy,
who will have to obey one way or the other. [20] In January 2006,
French President Chirac even covertly threatened with a possible
nuclear attack. Of course such an attitude can only be
counter-productive.

Russia and China

To reach a Security Council resolution with sanctions against Iran the
US, France, UK and Germany have to convince Russia and China not to
use their right of veto. Since Russia and China are enrichment
countries too, that seemed easy, but failed until now. Russia and
China do not want any armed intervention against Iran. Russia still
bears the scars of the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, with hundreds of
thousands of irradiated citizens, new generations with genetic
deformations, and unsolved plutonium radiation problems for hundreds
of centuries to come. It has not build any new reactors since then.
Russia has a more shaded view on world's nuclear future. Besides, it
still has fossil energy sources. China has good relations with Iran
for the supply of oil and gas during the coming decades. If it wants
to let Iran down, it would have to foresee alternatives for their high
needs of energy. Besides, China does not seem to share the aggressive
stance of the US and the E3.

Is enrichment in non-nuclear-weapon states dangerous?

Natural uranium contains 0.7 percent of U-235 atoms, against 99.3
percent of mostly U-238 atoms. To use it as nuclear fuel the
proportion of U-235 atoms has to be increased to 3 to 5 percent. To do
so, the uranium must first be purified and converted into a gas. In
this form batteries of centrifuges can filter out a few of the heavier
U-238 atoms in a long and energy swallowing process. Risks in the
enrichment process are those of the chemical industries and not so
much the low radiation. This uranium is not suitable to make bombs.
For bombs you need a degree of enrichment of at least 90 percent. [21]
If a country, as for instance Iran, decided to develop such highly
enriched uranium, it could take 3 to 5 years to produce sufficiently
for a bomb. Besides, according to scientists, for high enrichment much
larger centrifuge facilities are used. The oft-repeated but mistaken
belief, that one could fabricate unnoticed highly enriched uranium in
a civil nuclear plant, now serves Bush' contention that enrichment
should remain in the hands of world's nuclear-weapon states.

Birth of a new world order

The idea of limiting enrichment capability to the nations that already
have it is not entirely new. The accusations against Iran, the
successful misleading of journalists, politicians and diplomats had
created the ideal circumstances to speed up its realization. The idea
appeared in a UN brochure in 2004. [22] Then it was still in the form
of a call for a voluntary and time-limited moratorium on the
construction of new facilities for enrichment and reprocessing. In
February 2005 the United Nations further elaborated the idea as the
Multilateral Nuclear Approach (MNA) [23]. Already in April 2005
Ambassador Kenzo Oshima of Japan's mission to the UN put the question,
"if the MNA would not not unduly affect the peaceful use of nuclear
energy by those non-nuclear-weapon states that carry out nuclear
activities in faithful and transparent compliance with their NPT
obligations."

On February 6 2006 the US' Department of Energy announced its version
of the idea in their plan for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
(GNEP). The following day, at the Oarai Conference in Japan, this GNEP
is presented as an idea of IAEA's head ElBaradei and a proposal of
Bush. [24] And, of course, such a supreme idea should not lack of
glamour. So, a few days later, DOE compliments itself as follows:
"Finally, the partnership arrangement between fuel-cycle and
reactor-only states envisioned by GNEP will help supply the world with
clean electrical power by offering non-fuel-cycle nations commercially
competitive and reliable access to nuclear fuel, in exchange for their
commitment to forgo the development of enrichment and recycling
technologies. "

Questionable elements

The new world order comes in the form of new safeguards within the
IAEA control system. Considering the spirit of the Additional Protocol
we should not count on equal rights or fair relations.

Within the Non-Proliferation Treaty countries, only the nuclear-weapon
states, plus Germany, the Netherlands and Japan have enrichment
facilities today. [25] The rest of the NPT countries would see their
rights to enrich uranium taken away. In exchange, they will get the
solemn promises of the nuclear-weapon states, that the latter will
always deliver the nuclear fuel. Promises? Weren't these the countries
that promised in 1968 to strive for their nuclear disarmament? As we
know, they did not keep their word up to now. Worse, France has even
developed a new generation of nuclear weapons to make the step to
nuclear war easier and progressive. This year, France and the US are
still using their nuclear arsenal to threaten the world.
Non-nuclear-weapon states should now give away more rights and become
dependent of IAEA's club of nuclear fuel suppliers?

To seduce non-nuclear-weapon states, this new plan promises lower
electricity prices. Today, on a global scale, enrichment facilities
would have about twice the capacity the world needs. By preventing the
construction of new enrichment facilities, a better use could be made
of the existing capacities. This would enable lower prices for
enriched uranium, and thus of electricity… Should we believe these
words? The enrichment industries are not driven by the concern to
lower world's electricity prices. In spite of the world's
over-capacity the Europeans are considerably expanding their
production in the UK, Netherlands and Germany. They strive for more
market share and more profit! And if by new IAEA regulations no new
competitors are allowed on the market, this can only result in
excessive pricing of enriched uranium, and thus of electricity.

The new plans foresee a highly regulated and closely monitored fuel
supply distribution system. The IAEA would become the intermediate
between fuel producing and fuel consuming members. At first glance
this may look like a trustworthy construction, since the IAEA is a UN
body. However, the IAEA is also the policeman in the system. I do not
think it is wise to let policemen trade with the parties they should
inspect. Besides, the UN is not some sort of democratic and integer
government that would be able to guarantee their policemen's
impartiality.

The plans for the distribution system recommend minimal national
stocks and joint regional buffers in different host-countries.
Strange, isn't it? The purpose of minimal stocks inside the countries
and regional stocks elsewhere is hardly to defend as a security issue.
Even with enormous stocks of 3.5 percent enriched uranium you cannot
produce any nuclear weapon. Why would the IAEA want countries to
dispose of only small quantities of fuel at a time? I fear there is
only one plausible answer: to keep the non-nuclear-weapon states in a
firm grip. That is a lot of power for our NPT-watchdog. This power
goes far beyond what is needed for their inspections. Even far beyond
the needs of a safe nuclear fuel distribution system. This is pure
power to overrule nations' sovereignty. If a nation does anything that
the watchdog or its masters do not want, the fuel tap can simply be
closed to obtain its immediate submission. It smells like a
dictatorship on world-level. Of course, the fuel supplying countries
will never be affected. They produce their own fuel.

In theory the master of the IAEA is the United Nations Organization.
But does it work that way in reality? The IAEA has a difficult role,
because it cannot ignore tensions and conflicts of interest between
NPT members. The IAEA's independence from parties' national interests
is constantly under strain. Its limited budget forces the IAEA to make
choices, which are influenced by occurring conflicts. During the
embargo against Iraq, we witnessed an IAEA driven crazy by Bush, who
demanded each time more and more thorough controls. The dog was sent
out over and over to make sure Iraq could be safely invaded. Although
the IAEA has the obligation to keep all sensitive information from
their investigations undisclosed, the US military constantly received
sensitive information, with which they prepared the invasion in 2003.
(And finally, to invade Iraq, Bush simply overruled the UN's Security
Council…)

Today, we see the same US' influences in the IAEA's investigations in
Iran. Bush shouts and the dog runs to search for the stick. The rules
for the new world order are presented as "an idea of ElBaradei and a
proposal of Bush.". I presume that both plans, the IAEA's
Multi-National Approach (NMA) and Bush' Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership (GNEP), will merge into a final version dictated by the
US.

Of course, getting a firm grip on all non-nuclear-weapon states as
soon as they get addicted to nuclear energy is a major strategic coup.
But there are far more advantages for the nuclear fuel suppliers.
United under the umbrella of the IAEA, the market will be completely
regulated. As all of them cooperate in the same organizations and all
of them will be interested in the highest possible earnings, together
they will set world's nuclear fuel price. Just like today's world's
oil prices are decided on the market places of IPE and NYMEX, nuclear
fuel prices will be decided by the happy few.

Now comes the tricky part. Nuclear fuel has to be paid for. The
question is: in what currency (or currencies) will the customers have
to pay? These currencies will become the most needed and wanted
currencies in the world. You can compare it to today's US-dollar.

Apparently these currencies have not been decided yet. But, if each
fuel supplier asks to be paid in its own currency, the world would
widely accept Japanese yens, Chinese Yuan renminbi, Russian Rubles,
euros, English pounds and US-dollars. There will probably be some
preferential order due to each supplier's capacity to deliver nuclear
fuel. Each of these countries will know the advantages of the supply
of their currencies to the rest of the world. Of course, in the long
run, each of them will also experience the negative effects on their
economies and, after decades, let their currency collapse to get rid
of the built up debt. In short, this is what can happen with multiple
world currencies. However, the fact that the plans mention, that the
IAEA should become the intermediary between suppliers and customers,
makes it reasonable to suppose that the IAEA will decide in which
currency the customers will have to pay. Bush surely hopes that this
will be the dollar. When nuclear fuel has to be paid exclusively in
dollars, demand for US-dollars and therewith the US hegemony will be
assured for many decades to come.

The UN theatre

With the project for a new world order prepared discretely in the
background, we now have an anti-Iranian alliance of the US and E3.
They smell the opportunity for a coup to seize world's nuclear fuel
market. To succeed, they would just need some legal sauce on the
prohibition of uranium enrichment by non-nuclear-weapon states, with
Iran as example. And a UN Security Council resolution would be enough,
if it legalizes IAEA's stand that it can forbid countries to enrich
uranium.

Of course, they would make it impossible for Iran to stay within the
Non-Proliferation Treaty then. To succeed their coup, they will have
to take care, that Iran does not leave the organization before a
resolution is successfully voted. For if so, there would not be any
ground for a resolution anymore. Countries outside the
Non-Proliferation treaty, like Israel, India, Pakistan, Cuba and
Brazil are free to enrich uranium and do what they want.

The question is: will the US and E3 succeed in seducing Russia and China?

In the event, that such a coup of the nuclear-weapon states would
succeed, it would probably put the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the
UNO under enormous strain. These organizations might loose all
credibility and see many non-nuclear-weapon states leave. The result
may be opposite to what these organizations were designed for.

[1] NPT members:
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Tracking_Ch02map.pdf

[2] NPT text:
http://disarmament2.un.org/wmd/npt/npttext.html (See article IV)

[3] Agreement IAEA-Iran:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/
Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc214.pdf

[4] Iran's nuclear history:
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/1825_1826.html

[5] Growing opposition against the shah:

http://www.countriesquest.com/middle_east/
iran/history/growing_opposition_to_the_shah.htm

[6] Mossadeq: http://www.iranchamber.com/history/
oil_nationalization/oil_nationalization.php

[7] 60 percent dependency on oil imports:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=
ar4D7HVGikXo&refer=top_world_news

[8] 130 gram of uranium:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/iaea0603.html (last line)

[9] article 37 of IAEA's agreement with Iran: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/
Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc214.pdf

[10] How can the dollar collapse in Iran?
http://www.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Zeitfragen/
__Collapse_in_Iran/__collapse_in_iran.html

[11] Fred Eckhard stating UN's permission for Iraq's switch to the
euro: http://www.un.org/News/briefings/
docs/2000/20001031.db103100.doc.html

[12] Statistics of Iraqi oil exports in euros:

http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/background/oilexports.html

[13] Colin Nunan, Petrodollar or Petroeuro:
http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/nunan.htm

[14] IMF warning over dollar collapse:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2097064.stm

[15] dollar rates, historical data:
http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/data.html

[16] Financial Times, June 5th 2003

[17] Oil markets, exemple: http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_
leuffer/leuffer200410010726.asp

Speculation and fear can, per definition, be influenced.

[18] Iranian Oil Bourse May 2006:
http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=212013&n=32

[19] GNEP: http://www.gnep.energy.gov/

[20] E3 report: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/
Documents/Infcircs/2005/infcirc651.pdf

[21] Uranium enrichment: http://www.uic.com.au/nip33.htm

[22] UN brochure 2004: http://www.un.org/secureworld/brochure.pdf

[23] NMA expert group February 2005:
http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/NENP/NPTDS/Downloads/
SMR_CRP1_SRWOSR/2005/RCM1/Add%20materials/mna-2005_web.pdf

[24] ElBaradei's idea and Bush' proposal. February 7, 2006:
http://www.jaea.go.jp/04/np/documents/sym05_01_endo_en.pdf

[25] Map of world's nuclear fuel stations:
http://www.wise-uranium.org/umaps.html?set=enr

Indian nuclear pact raises doubts in Congress

2006-05-08T02:12:00.000-07:00

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

FT May 4, 2006

The White House is facing serious obstacles in its bid to secure
legislation approving its landmark civilian nuclear energy agreement
with India.

Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, this week met members of the
Senate India caucus to boost support for the deal, which would allow
India to receive nuclear technology and fuel for its civilian nuclear
reactors. In exchange, India would place some facilities under
international safeguards, and separate its civilian and military
programmes.

Ms Rice probably expected a sympathetic ear from the pro-India
senators, but instead met with criticism from Richard Lugar, the
Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, who had
been invited to join the group.

Mr Lugar, one of the leading non-proliferation advocates in Congress,
was expected to back the administration, but according to three people
familiar with the discussions, he expressed strong reservations to Ms
Rice. He was most concerned that the White House wants Congress to
give it authority to implement the deal before lawmakers receive
details of the final agreement.

Under the arrangement, Congress could not amend the deal. While it
could cancel it, that would require an extremely unlikely two-thirds
majority to override a presidential veto. Mr Lugar was irritated when
Ms Rice professed ignorance of this.

One congressional aide said lawmakers were "astonished" that Mr Lugar
appeared willing to stand up to the administration.

Lawmakers are concerned that they are being asked to approve the deal
without knowing details such as what safeguards India will negotiate
with the International Atomic Energy Agency. They also want to see
whether the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 45-nation body set up after
India held a nuclear test in 1974, will support the deal.

Andy Fisher, Mr Lugar's spokesman, said Mr Lugar had not reached an
opinion on the deal. He added that there were both compelling reasons
to accept the deal, and some concerns, but he said he expected the
Senate to move ahead with legislation this year.

The White House, which desperately wants a foreign policy success in
election year, received more bad news when Dennis Hastert, the
Republican House speaker, was quoted by India's media last month
during a visit to New Delhi as saying Congress would not vote on the
deal before the November midterm elections. Two people said Mr Hastert
received a reprimand from the White House over the comment.

Mr Bush has also lobbied Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the
House international relations committee, although one congressional
aide said he appeared not to have made up his mind. Tom Lantos, the
ranking Democrat, has expressed initial support, but he has raised
concerns about India's military relationship with Iran after New Delhi
recently allowed Iranian ships to make port calls.

Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state who was
instrumental in improving US-Indian relations, said in a recent
interview with the FT that he was concerned the administration had not
secured as good a deal as possible with India.

Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations
committee, who initially gave his tentative support, last month also
chastised the administration for not sharing information about
negotiations with India, saying the deal was not a "slam dunk".

A congressional aide who supports the deal said lawmakers were also
angry that the administration had still not responded to questions
raised when Ms Rice testified before the House international relations
committee and Senate foreign relations committee last month.

Mr Lugar's spokesman said the administration was expected to provide
responses soon.

Australia, China Conclude Nuclear Deal

2006-05-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Arms Control Today
May 2006

Paul Kerr

Australia and China April 3 concluded two agreements to increase nuclear cooperation. Although the agreements must still be ratified by each country before entering into force, they appear to pave the way for Canberra to help supply Beijing’s expanding nuclear power industry.

In doing so, Australia brushed aside domestic concerns that the agreement could indirectly augment China’s nuclear arsenal. Canberra also denied that it was planning to change policy and allow similar uranium sales to India.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Chinese Foreign Minster Li Zhaoxing signed the agreements, including relevant safeguards, governing the transfer of nuclear material from Australia to China, as well as cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The agreements will enter into force 30 days after each side has fulfilled all relevant “domestic requirements.” They are to remain in force for an initial period of 30 years.

Beijing mines its own uranium but is trying to secure access to additional supplies as it seeks to increase its nuclear power-generating capacity to cope with increases in energy demand. Australia is the world’s second-largest producer of uranium, according to a 2004 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It is not yet clear when the transfer would begin. Australia’s resource minister, Ian MacFarlane, said that Canberra is still “some distance” from exporting uranium to China, Xinhua Financial Network News reported April 3.

The agreements must enter into force before the uranium can be transferred, although contracts can be concluded before then. Downer stated April 3 that the agreements must still be reviewed by the Australian parliament but did not specify a date for the review. An Australian diplomat told Arms Control Today April 24 that “[t]he review process takes several months. At this stage, we do not have an estimate for when it will be completed.”

No specific nuclear cooperation agreements have yet been concluded. But such cooperation is “likely to include” research at a new reactor belonging to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, according to a fact sheet from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Canberra has declared repeatedly that the agreements will not help China augment its nuclear weapons arsenal. Downer stated April 3 that the agreements “establish strict safeguards arrangements and conditions” to ensure that Australian uranium, as well as “any collaborative programs in applications of nuclear technology…[are] used exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

According to the nuclear material supply agreement, China is not to use Australian nuclear material for “direct military applications,” such as fissile material for nuclear weapons or fuel for nuclear reactors used for powering naval ships or submarines.

China acceded to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992 as a nuclear- weapon state. Australia will supply nuclear material only to Chinese nuclear power facilities under IAEA safeguards, which allow the agency to monitor those facilities to ensure they are not used for military purposes. Beijing’s military facilities are not under such safeguards, according to Australia’s foreign affairs department. Australia and China must still agree on a list of facilities that will receive uranium.

In the event that the IAEA stops administering its safeguards, the two countries can “arrange for the application of safeguards satisfactory to both parties.”

The nuclear material supply agreement also places other restrictions on China. For example, Beijing is required to obtain Canberra’s permission before reprocessing spent reactor fuel, producing uranium with a uranium-235 isotope concentration of 20 percent or more, or transferring nuclear material to countries that do not have a nuclear transfer agreement with Australia.

China currently enriches uranium for its nuclear reactors as well as for some of its nuclear weapons. Uranium used in weapons typically contains about 90 percent uranium-235.

Reprocessing spent reactor fuel can produce plutonium for use as fissile material or as fuel in certain specialized nuclear reactors. China does not currently use plutonium for reactor fuel, but it does use plutonium in its nuclear arsenal.

According to Australia’s foreign affairs department, Canberra can suspend or terminate the nuclear material transfer agreement if Beijing does not abide by either the agreement’s terms or by China’s IAEA safeguards arrangements.

Moreover, Australian officials denied that the deal would free up indigenous Chinese uranium and thereby help Beijing increase its arsenal. The officials noted that China is widely believed to have ceased production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. However, unlike the other four nuclear-weapon states under the NPT— France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States— China has yet publicly to announce a moratorium on fissile material production.

Asked whether Australia plans to supply uranium to India, Downer said in an April 4 interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that the two countries could “certainly not” conclude such an agreement “under present circumstances.” Australian law prohibits Canberra from exporting uranium to countries that have not signed the NPT.

Washington has recently concluded an agreement with New Delhi that would allow India to obtain U.S.-supplied fuel for its nuclear reactors. Congress must still approve the Bush administration’s proposed changes to U.S. law, which currently prohibits such transfers (See "Congress Ponders Conditions for U.S.-Indian Deal").

ACT: Congress Ponders Conditions for U.S.-Indian Deal

2006-05-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

Arms Control Today
May 2006

Wade Boese

Indian and U.S. government officials have warned that their proposed civil nuclear cooperation deal should not be tampered with, lest it unravel. Yet, even U.S. lawmakers supportive of the deal have said congressional conditions should be expected, while some foreign nuclear suppliers and Indian politicians are also resisting giving the deal a free pass.

U.S. law has significantly restricted civil nuclear trade with India since New Delhi’s 1974 test of a nuclear device that made use of U.S. and Canadian nuclear imports slated for peaceful purposes. Over the next three decades, India secretly pursued a nuclear weapons program, shielded nearly all of its nuclear enterprise from international oversight, conducted a series of nuclear tests in May 1998, and accrued an estimated arsenal of 50-100 nuclear weapons.

Citing India’s rising status and growing energy needs, President George W. Bush pledged last July to help revive U.S. and global nuclear commerce with India. Toward this end, Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March approved a plan dividing India’s nuclear complex into civilian and military sectors. (See ACT, April 2006.)

Washington provided New Delhi March 14 with a draft bilateral cooperation agreement that would govern U.S. exports to the civilian portion of India’s nuclear apparatus. Such agreements are required by the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. Formal negotiations on the agreement await India’s counterproposal, according to a Department of State official interviewed April 18 by Arms Control Today. “We have made ourselves available whenever India is ready,” the official said.

Although the agreement remains to be negotiated, the Bush administration is urging Congress to pass legislation that would make it easier for it to take effect once it is completed. In particular, instead of requiring the negotiated agreement to win the approval of a majority of members in each congressional chamber, the administration is essentially asking Congress to allow the agreement to enter into force after 90 days if two-thirds of the House and Senate do not vote to block it.

In April 5 appearances before both the Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations Committees, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the administration’s approach. While saying that “we’re prepared to work with the Congress on concerns,” Rice also told the House committee, “we can’t be in a position of having to renegotiate this agreement.” She further asserted that “anything that would suggest that we are somehow turning this into an arms control agreement would be particularly problematic.”

Rice was primarily alluding to frequent criticism that the administration should have secured an Indian commitment to end India’s production of fissile material—plutonium and highly enriched uranium—for weapons purposes. Without such a cessation, questions could arise about whether nuclear trade with India’s civilian nuclear infrastructure could be contributing to New Delhi’s military sector. France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States all have halted production of fissile material for weapons while China is understood to have done so.

In addition, without such a halt in fissile material production, the size to which India’s nuclear stockpile could grow would remain uncapped. Rice acknowledged to the Senate committee that “we didn’t set out to constrain the [Indian] strategic program in this agreement.”

Yet, Rice contended that the administration did not expect India to increase its nuclear arsenal substantially. India maintains its goal is having a “minimum credible deterrent,” although it has not explained what this means. “Credible minimum deterrent is a self-explanatory term that requires no further elucidation,” a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated April 8.

Like the Bush administration, Indian government officials are adamantly opposing any possible changes to the Bush-Singh framework. Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told reporters March 31 in Washington that the agreement “emerged from exceedingly complex and tough negotiations” and that a “very, very delicate state of balance” resulted. “Now if you start making revisions and changes, that balance is likely to be offset,” Saran warned.

Still, several legislators indicated to Rice April 5 that they are uncomfortable with the administration’s approach. “We’re being asked to, in advance, approve an agreement, the details of which we won’t know at the time,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) complained.

Some lawmakers, even deal supporters, told Rice to expect changes to the legislation. “It is my studied view that this legislation passing Congress will not be the same as was introduced and there will be conditions that will be added,” observed Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), who is currently co-chair of the congressional caucus on India and Indian Americans. Similarly, the ranking member of the House International Relations Committee, Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), said, “The administration will not get all it wants from our committee, but neither will our committee get its entire wish list.” Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) had already stated in March that conditions were a possibility. (See ACT, April 2006.)

Senators not only registered reservations about approving legislation before a final agreement was concluded but also expressed concerns about acting before knowing the outcome of negotiations between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the safeguards India will institute. Safeguards are measures designed to deter and detect the misuse of civilian nuclear facilities and technologies to build nuclear arms. Indian Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar made an initial visit to the IAEA in April to discuss the issue.

Although saying he was “probably going to support this,” ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Joseph Biden (D-Del.) declared, “Congress should not give up its power under existing law without knowing what the India peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement and India’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA will contain.” Echoing Biden, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said, “I am uncomfortable voting…without seeing those safeguards.”

Rice sought to alleviate their concerns, noting that “nothing in this legislation can take effect until the president determines that there is an acceptable agreement with the IAEA.” However, she emphasized that Congress should not wait on the safeguards. “We believe that the proper sequence is to go ahead and pass the legislation, to negotiate the bilateral agreement…and then to have the IAEA safeguards fully negotiated.”

But some in Congress are leery of letting the president alone determine whether the safeguards are adequate. Indeed, the only criterion of the legislation that is not left up to the president’s determination is if India conducted another nuclear test. Rice noted that, in such a case, “the deal from our point of view would at that point be off.”

There has been some speculation, including at least one news report, that Washington has assured India that it will have the nuclear fuel it needs even if the United States halted nuclear commerce with India after a nuclear test. The State Department official interviewed April 18 denied such a possibility, saying that Washington has not committed to “go around U.S. law.”

Still, as part of the March separation plan, the United States pledged to assist India in developing “a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors.” If this reserve was sufficiently built up, it would, in effect, assure India of nuclear fuel even if it conducted a nuclear test triggering the termination of the U.S.-Indian bilateral cooperation agreement.

The State Department official reported that the draft U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement contains a provision ending the whole arrangement in the event of an Indian nuclear test. This is standard practice for all U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements with countries not officially recognized as nuclear-weapon states, which India is not. Only countries that conducted nuclear tests before January 1, 1967 are deemed nuclear-weapon states by the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). New Delhi has not joined this treaty.

India has objected to the nuclear test clause in the draft agreement. A Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson told reporters in New Delhi April 17 that “such a provision has no place in the proposed bilateral agreement.”

This stance may reflect the Singh government’s sensitivity to domestic Indian public opinion in light of charges from opposition parties that India has struck a bad deal. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asserted April 6 that “ India has ended up giving more and more concessions.” In particular, he condemned as “not acceptable” that the agreement would “convert a voluntary moratorium on further tests by India into a legally binding commitment for all times to come.” BJP President Rajnath Singh recommended five days later that India should consider walking away from the deal.

Although Indian complaints are that the deal is too strict, other countries are concerned it is too lenient. At a March 22-23 Vienna meeting of the voluntary Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), roughly half of the participating states raised questions about the agreement, several critically. Group members vow to abide by certain nuclear commerce guidelines, including a rule that eligible export recipients not recognized by the NPT as nuclear-weapon powers must subject all their nuclear facilities to safeguards, which India refuses to do.

Washington is urging the group, which operates by consensus, to adopt a proposal that would exempt India from this regulation. Given the numerous questions surrounding the proposal, diplomatic sources have told Arms Control Today that it is highly unlikely that the NSG will act on the U.S. proposal at the group’s May 29-June 2 plenary in Rio de Janeiro. When it might take up the issue is uncertain, but Rice told House committee members that the administration views NSG action as “at the end of [the] trail.”

Several U.S. lawmakers expressed concerns to Rice that the U.S. initiative might lead other NSG members to lobby for similar exceptions for their preferred customers. Of particular concern was that China might seek changes for Pakistan, which is a nuclear rival of India.

Rice dismissed this prospect, saying that Washington has repeatedly told Pakistan that it was not eligible for a similar arrangement as India because of Islamabad’s poor proliferation record, particularly Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s black market activities. (See ACT, March 2004.)

Islamabad, however, is not happy about the deal. A Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson derided the U.S. approach April 10 as “discriminatory.” The spokesperson added, “Instead of making exception for one, a package deal would have been preferable.”

When Congress may act on the administration’s legislation for the deal remains uncertain. The two committees are holding additional hearings in May, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) told reporters on an April visit to India that Congress might not vote on the matter until after this November’s congressional elections. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) also told Rice April 5 that Congress would carry out “exhaustive deliberations” before reaching any conclusions.

UN Security Council draft resolution on Iran

2006-05-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

Financial Times, May 3 2006

The Security Council:

• Recalling the Statement of its President, S/PRST/2006/15, of 29 March 2006,

• Reaffirming its commitment to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and recalling the right of States Party, in conformity with Articles I and II of that Treaty, to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination,

• Noting with serious concern the many reports of the IAEA Director General and resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors related to Iran's nuclear programme, reported to it by the IAEA Director General, including IAEA Board Resolution GOV/2006/14,

• Noting with serious concern that the IAEA Director General's report of 27 February 2006 (GOV/2006/15) lists a number of outstanding issues and concerns on Iran's nuclear programme, including topics which could have a military nuclear dimension, and that the IAEA is unable to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran,

• Noting with serious concern the IAEA Director General's report of 28 April 2006 (GOV/2006/27) and its findings, including that, after more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran's nuclear programme, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern,

• Noting with serious concern that Iran has not taken the steps required of it by the IAEA Board of Governors, reiterated by the Council in its statement of 29 March and which are essential to build confidence, and in particular Iran's decision to resume enrichment-related activities, including research and development, its recent expansion of and announcements about such activities, and its continued suspension of co-operation with the IAEA under the Additional Protocol,

• Concerned by the proliferation risks presented by the Iranian nuclear programme, mindful of the threat to international peace and security and its responsibilities in this regard, and determined to prevent an aggravation of the situation,

• Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

• Calls upon Iran without further delay to take the steps required by the IAEA Board of Governors in its resolution GOV/2006/14, which are essential to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful purpose of its nuclear programme and to resolve outstanding questions,

• Decides, in this regard, that Iran shall suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA, and suspend the construction of a reactor moderated by heavy water,

• Expresses the conviction that such suspension as well as full, verified Iranian compliance with the requirements set out by the IAEA Board of Governors, would contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution that guarantees Iran's nuclear programme is for exclusively peaceful purposes, and underlines the willingness of the international community to work positively for such a solution which will also benefit nuclear non-proliferation elsewhere,

• Calls upon all States to exercise vigilance in preventing the transfer of items, materials, goods and technology that could contribute to Iran's enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and missile programmes,

• Strongly supports the role of the IAEA Board of Governors, commends and encourages the Director General of the IAEA and its Secretariat for their ongoing professional and impartial efforts to resolve outstanding issues in Iran, underlines the necessity of the IAEA continuing its work to clarify all outstanding issues relating to Iran's nuclear programme, and calls upon Iran to act in accordance with the provisions of the Additional Protocol and to implement without delay all transparency measures as the IAEA may request in support of its ongoing investigations,

• Requests in [blank] days a report from the Director General of the IAEA on the process of Iranian compliance with the steps required by the IAEA Board and the above decisions, to the IAEA Board of Governors and in parallel to the Security Council for its consideration,

• Expresses its intention to consider such further measures as may be necessary to ensure compliance with this resolution and decides that further examination will be required should such additional steps be necessary,

• Notes that full verified compliance by Iran, confirmed by the IAEA Board, would avoid the need for such additional steps,

• Decides to remain seized of the matter.

USAF Interest in Lasers Triggers Concerns About Anti-Satellite Weapons

2006-05-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

USAF Interest in Lasers Triggers Concerns About Anti-Satellite Weapons

By JEREMY SINGER
Space News Staff Writer

posted: 28 April 2006
05:20 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force's interest in experimenting with laser technology is being criticized by some members of Congress who complain the service is moving toward the development of anti-satellite weapons without a policy debate about the wisdom of deploying such weapons.

U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, raised the issue during an April 26 markup session on the Pentagon's 2007 defense budget request.

Sanchez said during the markup that she had planned to introduce an amendment to the 2007 defense authorization legislation that would have stripped funding from the Air Force's request for the Advanced Optics and Laser Space Technology program. However, Sanchez said she chose not to offer that amendment after she secured an agreement from Rep. Terry Everett (R-Ala.), chairman of the strategic forces subcommittee, to limit the reduction to just those experiments specifically labeled in the Air Force's budget justification materials as having application to anti-satellite weapons.

US plans Asian power pipeline

2006-04-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

US plans Asian power pipeline

The Telegraph

Friday, April 28, 2006 http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060428/asp/nation/story_6155186.asp#

Washington, April 27 (AFP): The US wants to spearhead a mammoth project transmitting electricity from Central Asia across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India, a senior state department official said.

Under the plan, a regional power grid stretching from Almaty to New Delhi will be fed by oil and gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and hydropower from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

"This vision is within our grasp," Richard Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, told a congressional hearing yesterday.

"Within the next few years, we expect to see private investment lead to the establishment of a 500 kilovolt power line transmitting much-needed electricity from Central Asia across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India," he said.

The US, he said, would like to have a strategic dialogue with the countries to advance regional economic development and integration, of which the high-voltage power project was a critical component.

Central Asia has an abundance of existing and potential oil, gas and electricity sources that the growing economies of South Asia need.

"Together with other donors, we are exploring ways to export electricity from Central Asia to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India," Boucher said.

He added that in partnership with multilateral development banks and other donors, Washington wanted to help "build new links" among the countries of the broader region and connect them more closely to the rest of the world.

"One of our leading objectives is to fund a greatly expanded Afghan power grid, with connections to energy sources in Central Asia. It's a winning solution for both sides, providing much-needed energy to Afghanistan and serving as a major source of future revenue for countries like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan," he said.

Boucher said the "opening" of Afghanistan had transformed it from an "obstacle" separating Central and South Asia into a "bridge" connecting the two. "And this in turn opens exciting new possibilities."

U.S., India Differ on Nuke Test Moratorium Language

2006-04-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire April 25, 2006
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2006_4_25.html#BE7F882A

WASHINGTON — The United States and India have not yet resolved a difference over whether an Indian vow to refrain from future nuclear testing should be included in the text of an agreement to open civil nuclear trade, a senior U.S. official said yesterday (see GSN, April 7).

India unilaterally vowed to maintain its roughly eight-year moratorium on nuclear testing when President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first publicly announced the potential deal in July 2005.

Indian officials last week, however, publicly objected to U.S. language in a draft text for the agreement proposed this year reportedly saying India would continue to refrain from testing. U.S. Ambassador to India David Mulford, visiting Washington yesterday, said the matter remained under negotiation but could be managed.

“It’s a matter to be discussed,” Mulford said, responding to a question following a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

He denied that the difference could be a potential showstopper for the deal.

“It’s just a question of time and dedicated effort by the skilled people who are involved on both sides. And as Congress comes to judge this situation, I think they will see that this is really not an issue,” he said.

For the deal to go through, the U.S. Congress must waive U.S. export control restrictions on nuclear trade with India in place since the late 1970s due to New Delhi’s nuclear weapons program and tests in 1974 and 1998.

Resistance to a Binding Moratorium

What the dispute means from a U.S. legal perspective is not clear. Current U.S. law and proposed statutory changes by the Bush administration clearly would require canceling U.S. nuclear trade if India tested again, regardless of what is in the agreement.

Officials in New Delhi have said they have no problem with those legal requirements, noting that U.S. law does not obligate India to refrain from testing.

They have said, though, that they would oppose any agreements obligating India to refrain from testing. India also has refused to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

“The United States had shared with India some weeks ago a preliminary draft agreement on India-U.S. civil nuclear cooperation under Article 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act,” Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told reporters in New Delhi, according to an April 18 Times of India story.

“Among the elements suggested by the U.S. side is a reference to cooperation being discontinued were India to detonate a nuclear device. In preliminary discussions on these elements, India has already conveyed to the United States that such a provision has no place in the proposed bilateral agreement,” the spokesman reportedly said.

Mulford’s statements yesterday appeared to support that position. He said that U.S. willingness to accept an Indian declaration that it would not test — rather than requiring it in a binding agreement language — had not changed.

“India made its own unilateral declaration confirming its policy that it wasn’t going to do any more testing. That is there. That is what was agreed. There is no change in the goal posts,” he said.

He suggested the dispute over the not-publicly-released deal text could be managed with a change of language. “There will have to be some sort of wording arrangements there, which have not been agreed,” he said.

Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act requires that the administration submit to Congress for approval the text of nuclear cooperation agreements before any cooperation can take place.

U.S. critics have charged that India would face little disincentive against resuming testing once it had obtained nuclear technology and other benefits from the deal, such as relaxation of international export control restrictions.

They have noted that a provision of the deal would obligate the United States to help India build a strategic store of nuclear fuel and establish an international group of nuclear suppliers that would assure a continuous supply of nuclear reactor fuel in the event that U.S. cooperation ended.

“This deal provides incentives for India to resume nuclear testing,” said Henry L. Stimson Center President Emeritus Michael Krepon.

Brazil does nuclear work without fuss

2006-04-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Brazil does nuclear work without fuss

Enriching uranium: The nation, on the same path as Iran, has not attracted nearly the same scrutiny

By Peter Muello
The Associated Press
Salt Lake City Tribune, 4/21/2006 12:25 AM

RESENDE, Brazil - As Iran faces international pressure over developing the raw material for nuclear weapons, Brazil is quietly preparing to open its own uranium-enrichment center, capable of producing exactly the same fuel.
   Brazil - like Iran - has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and Brazil's constitution bans the military use of nuclear energy.
   Also like Iran, Brazil has cloaked key aspects of its nuclear technology in secrecy while insisting the program is for peaceful purposes, claims nuclear weapons experts have debunked.
   While Brazil is more cooperative than Iran on international inspections, some worry its new enrichment capability - which eventually will create more fuel than is needed for its two nuclear plants - suggests that South America's biggest nation may be rethinking its commitment to nonproliferation.
   ''Brazil is following a path very similar to Iran, but Iran is getting all the attention,'' said Marshall Eakin, a Brazil expert at Vanderbilt University. ''In effect, Brazil is benefiting from Iran's problems.''
   While Iran leads a war of words against nuclear-armed Israel and has defied a U.N. Security Council request to stop all uranium enrichment, Brazil is peaceful and democratic. It doesn't have border disputes, is not in an arms race, and strives for good relations with all nations. Its last war ended in 1870.
   ''Brazil doesn't cheat on the Nonproliferation Treaty and it does not exist in an area of high tension,'' said David Albright, a former U.N. inspector who runs the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
   The U.S. Embassy in the capital, Brasilia, referred all questions to the State Department in Washington, where spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed any parallel between Brazil's nuclear program and Iran's.
   ''My understanding is they have a peaceful nuclear program,'' he said Thursday.
   Still, Brazil's enrichment program - and its reluctance to allow unlimited inspections - has raised suspicions abroad.
   ''Brazil is beginning to be perceived as a country apparently wanting to reevaluate its commitment to nonproliferation, and this is a big part of the problem,'' said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
   The government-run Industrias Nucleares do Brasil S.A. has been conducting final tests at the enrichment plant, built on a former coffee plantation in Resende, 90 miles west of Rio de Janeiro. When it opens this year, Brazil will join the world's nuclear elite.
   Brazil has the world's sixth-largest uranium reserves, but until the plant becomes operational, it can't use the fuel for energy without shipping it to and from URENCO, the European enrichment consortium.
   Brazil says its plant will be capable of enriching natural uranium to less than 5 percent uranium-235, an isotope needed to fuel its two reactors. Warheads need ore that has been enriched to 95 percent uranium-235, a material Brazil says it can't and won't produce.
   ''If you can enrich to 5 percent, you're decades away from enriching to 90 percent,'' Odair Dias Goncalves, president of the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission, told The Associated Press. ''You need a whole new technology that we don't have.''
   But former U.N. inspector Albright said he worked with Goncalves at the Brazilian Physics Society on a project to show that the Brazilian centrifuges could be used to produce highly enriched uranium, even if that wasn't their intended use.
   Brazilian leaders insist the fuel will be used for the nation's $1 billion nuclear energy industry. Already Latin America's biggest nuclear power provider, Brazil plans up to seven new atomic plants to reduce its dependence on oil and hydroelectric power and plans to export enriched uranium to provide energy for other countries.

Ex-Iranian nuclear negotiator makes call for ‘less emotion’

2006-04-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

Ex-Iranian nuclear negotiator makes call for 'less emotion'

Published: FT, April 20 2006 18:54 | Last updated: April 20 2006 18:54

Hassan Rowhani, Iran's former top security official, has called for "more balance . . . more reason, and less emotion" in Tehran's approach to the nuclear crisis.

His remarks, reported yesterday by the official ISNA news agency, were unusually direct in advocating negotiations with the west and in criticising Iran's policy since the fundamentalist Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad won last June's presidential election. Such candour reflects concern among pragmatic conservatives as the UN Security Council's April 28 deadline approaches for Iran to suspend all nuclear activities.

Mr Rowhani led Tehran's nuclear negotiations with the European Union for two years before stepping down last year as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) after Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's victory.

Mr Rowhani, still a heavyweight in Iran's ruling elite, sits on the SNSC along with Ali Larijani, who replaced him as SNSC secretary.

"Unfortunately, with the new administration, nuclear policy and tactics were changed," Mr Rowhani said. "Although these tactics had some success, we still had to pay a hefty price."

Mr Rowhani was apparently referring to Iran resuming nuclear research in January, which prompted the showdown with the Security Council. But he also attacked the general ap-proach of President Ahmadi-Nejad and new security officials, criticising those who "never want to sit with foreigners . . . because they feel if we do, we will [always] be deceived".

In reviewing the state of talks with the EU when Mr Ahmadi-Nejad became president, Mr Rowhani said negotiations had reached the point where the Europeans "accepted our activities in Isfahan and Natanz".

Mr Rowhani probably meant that the EU was ready to accept Iran converting raw uranium into feeder gas, done at Isfahan, and its nuclear pilot plant at Natanz in return for Iran agreeing long-term suspension of industrial-scale enrichment. The Europeans have always publicly denied this.

While not mentioning the US by name, Mr Rowhani reflected the pragmatists' view that direct talks with Washington might be needed to resolve Iran's international concerns, including the nuclear issue.

He attacked "those who consider getting close to foreigners to be like getting close to Satan", a term parallelling Iran's depiction of the US as the "Great Satan".

This key division within the conservative camp was shown last month when fundamentalists opposed Iran's announcement that it was ready to talk to the US over Iraq – a proposal on hold until a new Iraqi government is formed.

Mr Rowhani and Mr Larijani are the two SNSC representatives of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – which reflects Ayatollah Khamenei's desire to keep both conservative factions involved and his pivotal role in deciding how Iran should manage the looming crisis.

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New U.S. strategy anticipates China as a threat

2006-04-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

New U.S. strategy anticipates China as a threat

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 20, 2006

The Bush administration has adopted a bold new strategy for countering the emergence of a threatening China with policies that were drawn up several years ago and started being implemented in the past several months.
    The "hedge" strategy is a response to the September 11, 2001, attacks and the crisis over the April 1, 2001, midair collision between an EP-3 surveillance aircraft and a Chinese interceptor jet, according to U.S. national security officials involved with the policy.
    The 23-member EP-3 crew was forced to make an emergency landing at a Chinese military base on Hainan Island and were imprisoned there for 11 days.
    Months after the incident, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met with President Bush in Crawford, Texas, along with then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to map out plans for a new strategy to deal with China, the officials said.
    The meeting concluded with an agreement that U.S. efforts to develop better military-to-military relations with China were not effective in influencing China's powerful communist-dominated military. The Chinese military remains a "party army," whose first loyalty is to keeping the Communist Party in power. All agreed a new U.S. posture was needed to dissuade China from becoming a more threatening power.
    The hedge strategy was developed as part of a broader shift in policy toward Asia. It is based on Mr. Rumsfeld's belief that future threats are hard to predict, and therefore the United States must prepare for unexpected dangers.
    "We learned after 9/11 that we're totally unable to predict things," said a senior defense official involved in the new strategy.
    "It was a sobering experience, 9/11 was, because we have a whole bunch of war plans and con plans in the can that worked for the U.S. government in the past," said one Rumsfeld aide involved in China policy. "But we've learned that you can't plan for everything so you have to have a very adaptive posture and you have to have very adaptive [weapons] platforms and an adaptive strategy."
    Other contributors to the new strategy include Andrew Marshall, head of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, and Michael Pillsbury, a key China adviser.
    The first steps in the new strategy were approved in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, even though China was not mentioned specifically in that defense strategy paper. The latest review, however, makes explicit references to China emerging as a future threat.
    Before the new hedge strategy was adopted, China policy was a major topic of debate within government. Pro-business officials, primarily within the commerce and state departments, sought to play down the threatening aspects of China's development. National security officials at the Pentagon mainly argued that unless pressure is applied and the United States takes steps to counter the Chinese, the threat will grow.
    The debate was largely ended on Mr. Rumsfeld's terms, officials said, including the use of tight secrecy and strategic misdirection to avoid provoking Beijing into an arms race.

More muscle, with eye on China

2006-04-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

More muscle, with eye on China

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 20, 2006

The Pentagon is engaged in an extensive buildup of military forces in Asia as part of a covert strategy to strengthen and position U.S. and allied forces to deter -- or defeat -- China.
    The buildup includes changes in deployments of aircraft-carrier battle groups, the conversion of nuclear-missile submarines and the regular dispatch of bombers to areas close to targets in China, according to senior Bush administration officials and a three-month investigation by The Washington Times.
    Other less-visible activities that are part of what is being called a "hedge" strategy include large-scale military maneuvers, increased military alliances and training with Asian allies, the transfer of special-operations commando forces to Asia and new requirements for military personnel to learn Chinese.
    President Bush approved elements of the first phase of the strategy within the past several months. The key architect is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The State Department's point man on the strategy is Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, who has led three rounds of strategic talks with China in the past several months.
    Mr. Bush will express U.S. concerns about China's hidden military buildup during his meeting today with Chinese President Hu Jintao, but will not discuss the hedge strategy, administration officials said.
    Officials said the objective of the Asian buildup is to dissuade China from becoming a hostile power and to have the military capability to swiftly defeat the communist nation in a conflict using military forces that are forward-deployed in Asia or are available to be moved on short notice from Alaska, Hawaii, California and elsewhere.
    Bush administration national security officials said most of the military moves are being carried out in ways designed to avoid provoking Beijing. Masking the buildup is not strategic deception, they said, but is part of what is called strategic denial: playing down the focus on China and highlighting the global nature of overall U.S. military transformation.
    "I'm partly saying to them, 'Look, if you, the Chinese, are not transparent as you grow and you become more influential, and you add to your military, you will recognize that others are going to respond to that,' " Mr. Zoellick told The Times. "And if you are not transparent, if you're not emphasizing cooperation with people, they're going to respond in ways that build their defenses, not only their own military defenses but how they work with others."
    Japan, Australia, India and nations in Southeast Asia also share U.S. worries about China, he said.
    A senior defense official involved in Asia policy said the rapid force transformation that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld approved will take place in three to five years. It will give U.S. forces in Asia and other parts of the world much more power and speedier response times to international crises, whether they involve China, North Korea or Iran.
    The island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean is a key element in the plan because strategic bombers deployed there can reach targets throughout Asia within three hours. A total of $5 billion is being spent to improve the U.S. territory for ships, submarines and bombers.
    Much of the force enhancement involves naval weaponry. For example, the Navy is reorganizing the operating methods of aircraft-carrier battle groups in ways that will double their ability to project power. Once transformed in two or three years, the Pentagon can dispatch four carrier battle groups at once in Asia. In the past, because of maintenance schedules and crew limitations, only two carriers were battle-ready on short notice.
    Other planned naval enhancements in Asia include the deployment to Guam of attack submarines and the addition of two strategic missile submarines, and perhaps as many as four. The converted boomers, as the missile submarines are called, each will be outfitted with up to 150 cruise missiles.
    The large missile submarines also will play a key role in moving special-operations forces covertly to conflict areas in Asia. The Pentagon is considering the deployment of the 1st Special Operations Group to Japan, officials said. Marine commandos also are being readied to be able to counter the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
    Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, said concerns about China are "fairly significant, and I think it's fair to say that it's growing."
    To meet the challenge, the Navy will add one more carrier battle group to its Pacific Fleet. Additionally, it is shifting 60 percent of submarine forces to the Pacific and Asia in the next few years.
    "Obviously, the outcome I seek is one of peace and security and stability," Adm. Mullen said during a recent breakfast with reporters. "There are just a lot of questions about the significance of the Chinese investment in missiles, in submarines, in ships, in technology, in capabilities that make you wonder, 'Why so much so fast?' And clearly, putting ourselves in what I would call a strong deterrent position is very important."
    The buildup by the Air Force in Asia includes plans to upgrade Anderson Air Force Base in Guam so strategic bombers, including B-2 and B-1 bombers, can be based there for faster deployment. The bomber forces will be part of Air Expeditionary Forces that are moved there routinely on temporary but regular deployment.
    The defense official said the bomber forces, which are equipped with a large number of precision-guided bombs such as cruise missiles and Joint Direct Attack Munitions, are "creating a capability that is exponentially more powerful in a new location."
    "I don't think that is missed by people [in the region]," the official said, noting that North Korea already has protested bomber deployments in Guam.
    Additionally, the Pentagon plans to build a new long-range strategic bomber in the next 15 years that will have the capability to conduct deep strikes in Asia with a large number of precision-guided munitions.
    The U.S. ground forces' role in the Asia strategy will include repositioning forces in the Western United States, Japan and Guam. The Pentagon plans to dispatch the headquarters of the Army's I Corps, now based at Fort Lewis, Wash., to Japan in the coming years to be ready to fight in Asia.
    The Marines also are moving the headquarters element of the Marine force from Okinawa to Guam. The transfer is part of a force realignment in Japan, but a Marine general revealed last year that the deployment to Guam will have the added benefit of protecting the headquarters against a decapitating missile attack from China or North Korea.
    Missile defenses also play a role in the strategy. The current system -- designed to stop long-range missiles from North Korea -- will be adapted in the coming years, both through U.S. enhancements and development of a Japanese missile defense system.
    The force restructuring has been accompanied by public statements by high-ranking U.S. military and civilian defense officials who have tried to minimize the U.S. activities and emphasize that China, which itself is involved in an aggressive arms buildup, poses no immediate threat.
    The low-key approach is similar to China's strategy of building up its forces in ways designed to avoid provoking the "hegemon," what China has used as code for the United States in its internal military and Communist Party writings. Outwardly, China continues to insist that its military and economic growth pose no threat.
    "The Chinese, tragically, have brought this on themselves," said Michael Pillsbury, a China affairs specialist who first identified China's covert anti-U.S. strategy for the Pentagon several years ago. "Their history and culture make it impossible for China to accept American leadership and forces them to use secrecy and subterfuge in their buildup, while ignoring Secretary Rumsfeld's appeals for openness."
    Other elements of the hedge strategy include development of systems that will be capable of countering Chinese space weapons, which are viewed as a future threat. The Pentagon also has directed the military to develop Chinese-language skills and to have a cadre of Chinese speakers available if the military needs to "surge" its ability to communicate in the language. The requirement was couched in terms of learning several other languages as priorities, as well, including Farsi and Central Asian languages.
    Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, declined to directly address the China elements of the hedge strategy. In an e-mail exchange, Adm. Fallon said the force "transformation actions presuppose neither a specific potential adversary nor discrete threat."
    Military exercises in Asia also will play a key role in the hedge strategy. The Navy this summer plans the largest aircraft-carrier exercises in the Pacific in decades. Naval maneuvers slated to begin in June in the western Pacific will include three carrier strike groups. Each group includes at least three warships, an attack submarine and a support ship.
    Two carrier groups then will participate in Pacific Rim exercises in July near Hawaii. Those will include forces from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Chile, Peru and other nations. An August naval exercise will include an Atlantic Fleet carrier.
    Additional military exercises are being held with U.S. friends and allies. For example, the Navy's 7th Fleet currently holds 100 exercises per year and will increase that number. It will include exercises with India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan.
    "The Chinese or anybody else has to ask themselves: 'What is it the Americans are doing differently now with their carrier battle groups ... that allows them to do this now and will allow them to do it any time they want to?' " the senior defense official said.
    The answer is different operating procedures, including a changed maintenance schedule and "crew swapping," in which crews on ships are replaced with fresh, land-based sailors to allow for longer deployments.
    "You're creating a capability that you didn't have before just by the way that you're operating the same basket of assets you had before," the official said. "So this is a big signal. Now is this a hedge? I guess it's a hedge that says we can't predict where we're going to have to fight, so we're going to have to be organized differently."
    All branches of the U.S. military also have been conducting secret war games that use China as an adversary. The war games have been kept secret to avoid alerting the Chinese.
    Officially, the branches are told to conduct exercises at higher rates than they did in the past and to consider a range of adversaries, including China. The true purpose, however, is to be prepared to respond to a Chinese military move against Taiwan, an attempt by China to seize oil-rich territory in Russia or Southeast Asia, or to control strategic sea lanes from the Middle East to Asia, defense officials said.
    Mr. Zoellick said his talks with the Chinese have been helpful in trying to persuade China to become a responsible "stakeholder" in the current U.S.-led international system but that Beijing's doubts remain.
    The Chinese are wary of the current international system and recognize U.S. leadership of it but have not accepted the sole superpower role.
    "I don't get a sense that they don't feel they can work with the United States," Mr. Zoellick said. "But I think they, of course, want to assess under what terms and whose rules." China's questions "really go more to stakeholder in an international system and who defines the system," he said.

  Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

IAEA informed of Iran's P-2 centrifuge programmes

2006-04-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

Report - IAEA informed of Iran's P-2 centrifuge programmes

By DPA
Apr 17, 2006, 19:00 GMT

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1156094.php/Report_-_IAEA_informed_of_Irans_P-2_centrifuge_programmes

Tehran - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has already been fully informed of Iran\'s research programmes on P-2 centrifuges, the news agency ISNA reported Monday.

An unnamed nuclear official told ISNA that following the successful test of the P-1 centrifuges, Iran started research on the P-2 projects.

The New York Times had quoted United States security officials as saying Iran\'s use of P-2 centrifuges was worrisome as the process would not only accelerate the enrichment process but production of an atomic bomb.

The Iranian source termed the process as \'quite usual\' and even already documented on the IAEA internet site.

Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani was quoted earlier Monday by ISNA as saying Iran would follow the research on P-2 centrifuges \'strictly within IAEA regulations.\'

The source further confirmed that a new group IAEA inspectors will come to Tehran by the end of the week but denied the visit of a nuclear delegation to Vienna on Tuesday.

In the meantime Iran on Monday called on the countries meeting in Moscow to discuss the row over the country\'s nuclear programme to be \'rational.\'

\'We ask the participants in Moscow to adopt a rational approach and avoid repeating threats,\' Larijani told Khabar news network.

Russia has invited the United States, China and the European Union to fresh talks on the Iranian nuclear programme on Tuesday in Moscow.

ISNA news agency on Monday quoted Larijani as saying that \'if the proposals were rational and with perspective, Iran might accept one of them,\' but he did not elaborate further.

\'The era of threats and big rhetoric are over, they will not change Iran\'s stance,\' Larijani said, referring to last week\'s call by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for United Nations Security Council \'consequences\' against Iran.

Rice said Tehran\'s defiance of international demands to come clean about its nuclear activities and suspend uranium enrichment required the security council to examine \'the full range of options.\'

Larijani reiterated Iran\'s commitment to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as the country\'s readiness for IAEA inspections.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said Sunday that Iran still wanted to settle the nuclear dispute with the West through diplomacy.

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