Top U.N. nuclear watchdog inspector stands down

July 01, 2010

Reuters

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday its top investigator Olli Heinonen, head of probes into Iran and Syria, will leave his position for personal reasons after nearly 30 years at the Vienna-based agency.

Heinonen, 63, is head of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) safeguards department, tasked with verifying nations' nuclear programs are not being diverted for military use.

"We confirm that Mr Heinonen informed the director general of his intention to resign as of the end of August for personal reasons," IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6601CZ20100701

Pakistan needs nuclear deterrence, says US

July 01, 2010
The DAWN Media Group


A person no less than the US military chief has conceded that Pakistan’s nuclear programme is different from those of Iran and North Korea because it makes ‘extraordinary efforts’ to protect its nuclear weapons while there’s no reason to trust those two countries. 

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen’s statement at a public forum in Aspen, Colorado, follows a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group in New Zealand last week where the United States, contrary to media speculations, did not raise a Chinese plan to build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan.

“These are the most important weapons in the Pakistani arsenal. That is understood by the leadership, and they go to extraordinary efforts to protect and secure them. These are their crown jewels,” the admiral said. 

Resuming US-Pakistan relations that had ended in the 1990s also was important in light of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, he said. 

Dawn reported on April 29 that the US was unlikely to block the China-Pakistan nuclear deal, quoting a Washington think-tank, which observed that the US-India nuclear deal prevented the Obama administration from doing so. 

But powerful newspapers like The New York Times and the Washington Post insisted that the US would raise the issue at the NSG meeting. 

Admiral Mullen not only defended Pakistan’s efforts to protect its nuclear arsenal but also pointed out that the Pakistani programme aimed at deterring a perceived threat from India, unlike those of Iran and North Korea that Washington says would have destabilising affects around the world. 

“I have raised this issue with the Pakistani military since Day 1,” he said. “As much as we are focused on this (terrorism) threat — and the Pakistanis are more than they used to be – they see a threat in India and (having nuclear weapons) is their deterrent. They see this as a huge part of their national security.” 

As for efforts by Iran and North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons, Admiral Mullen described a different situation. “There isn’t any reason to trust (Iran),” he said. “There is an uncertainty associated with Iran that is very consistent with Iran for a long time.” 

North Korea’s desire for nuclear weapons and its increasing aggressiveness were cause for concern, the US military chief said, adding that he’d put North Korea “at the top of the list” of nuclear proliferation concerns. 

The Chinese plan for building two additional nuclear plants in Pakistan, however, was raised informally during the five-day NSG meeting but was not placed on the agenda, apparently because Beijing ignored all efforts to hold a public debate on this issue. 

In a statement issued at the end of the plenary meeting, the 46-state group of nuclear exporters said it “took note of briefings on develop- ments concerning non-NSG states. 

It agreed on the value of ongoing consultation and transparency”. 

Pakistan is not a member of the NSG, which regulates nuclear trade and generally prohibits exports to nations that have not joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons outside the pact, as does India, which received a waiver from the export control organisation in 2008 and has since finalised nuclear trade deals with a number of NSG nations. 

China, however, insists that any civilian nuclear trade with Pakistan would not violate its international commitments as it was only implementing an agreement it signed with Pakistan before joining the NSG in 2004.


By Anwar Iqbal
Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/06-pakistan-needs-nuclear-deterrence,-says-us-170-rs-02

PM assures of nuclear tech aimed for peace

June 29, 2010

Stock Watch

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reassured that nuclear technology shall be put in use only for the peace activities.

The nuclear technology supplied to India under civil atomic energy pact is aimed at protecting the nation's requirements.

At a conference with Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper, Mr. Singh said, "There is absolutely no scope whatsoever of the nuclear materials or nuclear equipment in India being used for unintended purposes."

It was further reported that the conference was followed after a civilian nuclear energy deal was signed between India and eight other nations, including the US, France and Russia.

In addition to the deal a bilateral pact has been agreed over that counts the common interests and the common threats between India and Canada. It will aim at providing better education standards at the same time cheering the relation between the two nations.

It will concentrate upon the study of earth sciences and mining and at the cultural bent it will promote bilateral initiatives and aid in bringing out the Canadian cultural content in India, and vice versa.

This deal shall materialize by late October in lieu of comprehensive economic partnership agreement.

By Ketan Sharma

Source: http://www.stockwatch.in/pm-assures-nuclear-tech-aimed-peace-27659

Nuclear proliferation in South Asia: The power of nightmares

June 24, 2010

The Economist

China’s proposed sale of nuclear reactors to Pakistan will intensify nuclear rivalry with India. But the damage will go far wider

AT FIRST sight, China’s proposed sale of two civilian nuclear-power reactors to Pakistan hardly seems a danger sign. Pakistan already has the bomb, so it has all the nuclear secrets it needs. Next-door India has the bomb too, and has been seeking similar deals with other countries.

Yet the sale (really a gift, as Pakistan is broke) has caused shudders at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an informal cartel of countries who want to stop their advanced nuclear technology getting into the wrong hands. They are meeting in New Zealand, for what was supposed to be a quiet and nerdish rule-tightening session. But their efforts may now fall victim to China’s rivalry with America.

By any measure, Pakistan is a shocker. Its proliferation record would make the serial nuclear mischief-makers of North Korea blush. If the Chinese reactor deal goes ahead, the damage will be huge: beyond just stoking the already alarming nuclear rivalry between Pakistan and India.

That does not deter China, which still seethes about the way in which the Bush administration in 2008 browbeat other NSG members into exempting America’s friend India from the group’s rules. These banned nuclear trade, even civilian deals, with countries like India and Pakistan, but also Israel and now North Korea, that resist full international safeguards on all their nuclear industry.

America argued that India had a spotless non-proliferation record (it doesn’t) and that bringing it into the non-proliferation “mainstream” could only bolster global anti-proliferation efforts (it didn’t). The deal incensed not just China and Pakistan but many others, inside and outside the NSG. An immediate casualty was the effort to get all members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), who have already promised not to seek the bomb, to sign up to an additional protocol on toughened safeguards. Many have, but on hearing of the America-India deal Brazil’s president is reputed to have flatly ruled that out. And where Brazil has put its foot down, others have also hesitated.

What particularly riles outsiders is that America did not get anything much out of India in return. It did not win backing for new anti-proliferation obligations, such as a legally binding test ban or for an end to the further production of fissile uranium or plutonium for bombs. India has since designated some of its reactors as civilian, and open to inspection, but others still churn out spent fuel richly laden with weapons-usable plutonium. India can potentially make even more of the stuff. Now that it can import uranium fuel for its civilian reactors, it can devote more of its scarce domestic supplies to bomb-making.

Pakistan suffers no such uranium shortage and is determined to match India. According to analysis of satellite imagery by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, it is greatly expanding its capacity to produce weapons-usable plutonium, as well as uranium.

China has given Pakistan lots of nuclear and missile help in the past. It even passed it a tested design of one of its own missile-mountable warheads. This was one of the most damaging proliferation acts of the nuclear age, since the same design was later passed by Pakistan to Libya and possibly Iran and others.

But after China joined the NPT in 1992 and the NSG in 2004, it reined in such help, at least officially (some Chinese firms are still involved in illicit nuclear trade with several states). But on joining the NSG, it argued that it had already promised to build the second of two nuclear reactors for Pakistan at Chasma in Punjab and would therefore go ahead. Some grumbled. But it seemed a price worth paying to have China inside, playing by the NSG’s rules rather than outside, undermining them. The latest sale blows a hole in that hope.

A big leaky tent

China is trying a legalistic defence of the sale of the third and fourth reactors at Chasma. But its real point is this: if America can bend the rules for India, then China can break them for Pakistan.

Pakistan hopes that it will eventually get a deal like India’s. Some in Barack Obama’s administration have supported this, on the ground that America needs Pakistan’s support in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Israel wouldn’t mind such an exemption either.

The NSG’s damage-control efforts now centre on a new rule to bar the sale of kit for uranium-enrichment or plutonium-reprocessing to any country outside the NPT. That, predictably, annoys India.

The deal also affects efforts to contain Iran. Western diplomats seeking support for UN sanctions on the Islamic republic find themselves receiving a wigging over the double standards used with India. Iranian officials used to argue that they just wanted to be treated like Japan. It has free access to advanced nuclear technology. But unlike Iran, Japan does not repeatedly violate nuclear safeguards. Some Iranian officials now muse boldly that the big powers will eventually come to do deals with them, just as they did with India. Iran’s latest raspberry in response to a fourth round of UN sanctions was to ban two nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear guardian. Iran dislikes its reports on the regime’s dubious nuclear activities.

If Pakistan really is worried about India’s growing nuclear arsenal, diplomacy might work better than an arms race. George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment, a think tank, says Pakistan should lift its veto on a ban on the production of fissile materials for bombs. That would put India (which claims to support a ban) on the spot. Like enriched uranium, hypocrisy can be costlier than it seems.

Source:http://www.economist.com/node/16426072?story_id=16426072&source=most_commented

Japan, India hold talkson nuclear pact

July 01, 2010

The Hindu

Japan has held “constructive discussions” with India “on the contents of an agreement for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”

A Japanese government spokesman on Wednesday said the first round of talks on this issue, held in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday, was “constructive” on another count as well. The delegations led by Mitsuru Kitano on the Japanese side and Gautam Bambawale from India, discussed “the guiding principles of how to conduct negotiations in the future.”

The talks “will continue from now on” but it was “premature to say when these might conclude,” the spokesman said.

In a phone-in interview, the Japanese official, Kazuo Kodama, said the civil nuclear issue was among the topics that the prime ministers of the two countries discussed during their recent meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Toronto.

Mr. Kodama, who had accompanied Japanese leader Naoto Kan for the G20 summit and related meetings, quoted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as saying that he was “pleased” with the beginning of consultations for a possible civil nuclear pact between the two countries. In response, Mr. Kan emphasised that “there exists a large potential for Japan to cooperate in the area of India's peaceful use of nuclear energy,” said Mr. Kodama.

Unrelated to the Japanese view on these talks in Toronto and Tokyo, it is understood that Japan has not softened its position on the importance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

By P.S Suryanarayana
Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article493965.ece

Iran says nuclear talks to resume with Brazil, Turkey

June 29, 2010

Reuters

Iran said on Tuesday it would soon resume nuclear talks with Turkey and Brazil -- a tentative first step back to international negotiations after Tehran was hit with a new wave of sanctions over its disputed nuclear work.

Iran has belittled the U.N., U.S. and European sanctions and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday he would return to long-frozen talks with world powers but on certain conditions only, and not before the end of August.

His foreign minister said talks would start before then with the two countries with which it agreed a nuclear fuel swap deal in May -- echoing a U.N.-brokered pact that Tehran backed out of late last year -- and which voted against the U.N. sanctions.

"There were some contacts with the foreign ministers of the three countries (Iran, Turkey and Brazil)," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference. "A joint meeting is on the agenda and we will announce it in the coming one or two days."

Iran has held no substantive talks with world powers since the deal in principle on the fuel swap struck with Russia, France and the United States in October.

The pact would have seen Iran sending 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (LEU) -- about 70 percent of its stockpile at the time -- abroad in exchange for specially processed fuel rods needed to keep the Tehran medical research reactor running.

In a turnabout, Iran agreed in talks in May with Brazil and Turkey to part with 1.2 tons of LEU. But by then Iran's LEU reserve had doubled in size, devaluing the swap's terms in Western eyes since it would no longer divest Iran of enough LEU to prevent its use for an atom bomb, if refined to high purity.

So the May agreement proved too little too late to prevent a new batch of punitive sanctions from the United Nations, European Union and United States.

Meanwhile, Iran has increased suspicions abroad by launching enrichment up to a level of 20 percent purity, asserting this will yield raw material for making the reactor fuel rods without foreign help -- but at the same time advancing much of the way down the road toward weapons-grade enrichment.

NEW IRANIAN CONDITIONS

Russia, which backed the U.S.-led push for further sanctions but has since complained about the United States and the European Union issuing stricter unilateral measures, said on Tuesday it wanted to get back to talks with Tehran.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he wanted talks between Iran, the United States, Russia and the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency focusing on providing Iran with reactor fuel rods so it would need to escalate enrichment itself.

"In the wake of the Brazilian and Turkish initiative, Russia, along with the United States, approached the director of the IAEA and proposed we arrange a meeting of technical experts from our three countries, including Iran, to discuss the possibility of supplying fuel for the experimental reactor in Iran, so that there will be no need for Iran to enrich the uranium to a level of 20 per cent," Lavrov said.

"I hope very much that Iran will respond positively and that this will help prevent the situation from deteriorating," he told reporters during a visit to Israel, which considers Iran's nuclear campaign an existential threat.

On Monday, Russia complained to the U.N. Security Council about what U.N. diplomats said was Germany's seizure of items bound for a nuclear power plant in Iran, saying such moves were "not in line" with U.N. rules.

On June 19, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that France was ready to talk with Iran at the IAEA "without delay," using the Tehran declaration by Iran, Brazil and Turkey as a starting point [ID:nPAB008398].

The West fears Iran's nuclear work is aimed at developing the means to build bombs because of its history of secrecy and restricting IAEA inspections. Tehran says it will be solely for generating electricity and isotopes for medicine and farming.

Ahmadinejad has called on the major powers to "clarify" three things before talks could resume: their attitude to Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal, their stance on commitments to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and whether they come to the table as Iran's friend or its enemy.

World powers were likely to dismiss such conditions as irrelevant to the main issue -- Iran's refusal to negotiate limits and transparency with respect to its nuclear activity.

"Somehow implying there's a linkage between the Iranian issue and the Israeli issue ... will certainly not make life easier," said a Western diplomat versed in the Iran issue.

"Saying that as a punishment that they only want talks in the third week of August -- this is posturing which we shouldn't take too seriously ... We need to wait for Iran's official response on the (swap) plan and the offer of talks from the EU."

(Additional reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow and Sylvia Westall in Vienna; Writing by Robin Pomeroy and Mark Heinrich; editing by Janet McBride)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65S31520100629

Obama, Saudi King Abdullah urge Iran over nuclear program

June 29, 2010

Reuters

President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Tuesday voiced "strong support" for international efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program, which the West says masks a secret drive to develop the capability for an atomic bomb, the White House said.

Obama and the King also expressed hope "proximity talks between Israelis and Palestinians will lead to the resumption of direct talks with the aim of two states living side-by-side in peace and security," the White House said in a statement.

(Reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE65S62620100629