http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?ty...storyID=8881632

US wary about election impact on Iran nuke program

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/opinion/24fri3.html?

Star Wars' Political Bull's-eye

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_6_23.html#DE4AA66B

Iranian Bushehr Plant Could Soon Get Nuclear Fuel

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/index.htm

'Consultation is Presidential Business'
Secret Understandings on the Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1950-1974

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6529

Defining Proliferation Downward
Gordon Prather

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GG07Df05.html

Where terror and the bomb could meet
Amir Mir
Where terror and the bomb could meet
By Amir Mir

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's June 25-26 unscheduled trip to Saudi Arabia has raised many an eyebrow in Islamabad's diplomatic circles, where it is believed the visit was meant to seek the assistance of the kingdom to circumvent the ongoing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigations into reports that the Saudis might have purchased nuclear technology from Pakistan. The speculation goes that Musharraf aimed to chalk out a joint strategy on what stance the two leaders should adopt to satisfy the IAEA and address its concerns.

Saudi Arabia is under increasing pressure to open its nuclear facilities for inspection as the IAEA suspects that its nuclear program has reached a level (with Pakistani cooperation) where it should attract international attention. The pressure has also come from Europe and the United States, which want Riyadh to permit unhindered access to its nuclear facilities.

Well before the IAEA probe began, the US had been investigating whether or not the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold nuclear technology to the Saudis and other Arab countries. Acting under extreme pressure from the IAEA, the Saudi government signed the Small Quantities Protocol on June 16, which makes inspections less problematic. However, the US, European Union and Australia want it to agree to full inspections. The Saudi stand is that they will agree to the demand only if other countries do so, including Israel.

International apprehensions that Saudi Arabia would seek to acquire nuclear weapons have arisen periodically over the past decade. The kingdom's geopolitical situation gives it strong reasons to consider acquiring nuclear weapons: the volatile security environment in the Middle East; the growing number of states (particularly Iran and Israel) with weapons of mass destruction; and its ambition to dominate the region. International concerns intensified in 2003 in the wake of revelations about Khan's proliferation activities. The IAEA investigations show that Khan sold or offered nuclear weapons technology to Saudi Arabia and several Middle Eastern states, including Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Last year's unearthing of the black market nuclear technology network increased international suspicions that Khan had developed ties with Riyadh, which has the capability to pay for all kinds of nuclear-related services. Even before the revelations about Khan's activities, concerns about Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation persisted, largely due to strengthened cooperation between the two countries. In particular, frequent high-level visits of Saudi and Pakistani officials over the past several years raised serious questions about the possibility of clandestine Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation.

In May 1999, a Saudi Arabian defense team, headed by Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, visited Pakistan's highly restricted uranium enrichment and missile assembly factory. The prince toured the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant and an adjacent factory where the Ghauri missile is assembled with then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and was briefed by Khan. A few months later, Khan traveled to Saudi Arabia (in November 1999) ostensibly to attend a symposium on "Information Sources on the Islamic World". The same month, Dr Saleh al-Athel of the Science and Technology ministry, visited Pakistan to work out details for cooperation in the fields of engineering, electronics and computer science.

Interestingly, Saudi defector Mohammed Khilevi, who was first secretary of the Saudi mission to the United Nations until July 1994, testified before the IAEA that Riyadh had sought a bomb since 1975. In late June 1994, Khilevi abandoned his UN post to join the opposition. After his defection, Khilevi distributed more than 10,000 documents he obtained from the Saudi Arabian Embassy. These documents show that between 1985 and 1990, the Saudi government paid up to US$5 billion to Saddam Hussein to build a nuclear weapon. Khilevi further alleged that Saudis had provided financial contributions to the Pakistani nuclear program, and had signed a secret agreement that obligated Islamabad to respond against an aggressor with its nuclear arsenal if Saudi Arabia was attacked with nuclear weapons.

In 2003, Musharraf paid a visit to Saudi Arabia, and former Pakistani premier Zafarullah Khan Jamali visited the kingdom twice. But the US had warned Pakistan for the first time in December 2003 against providing nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia. Concerns over possible Pakistani-Saudi nuclear cooperation intensified after the October 22-23, 2003, visit of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, to Pakistan. The pro-US Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, who is next in line to succeed to the throne after Abdullah, was not part of the delegation. During that visit, American intelligence circles allege, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia concluded a secret agreement on nuclear cooperation that was meant to provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil.

However, in 2005, the US claims to have acquired fresh evidence that suggests a broader government-to-government Pakistani-Saudi atomic collaboration that could be continuing. According to well-placed diplomatic sources, chartered Saudi C-130 Hercules transporters made scores of trips between the Dhahran military base and several Pakistani cities, including Lahore and Karachi, between October 2003 and October 2004, and thereafter, considerable contacts were reported between Pakistani and Saudi nuclear scientists. Between October 2004 and January 2005, under cover of the hajj (pilgrimage), several Pakistani scientists allegedly visited Riyadh, and remained "missing" from their designated hotels for 15 to 20 days.

The closeness between Islamabad and Riyadh has been phenomenal and it is not without significance that the first foreign tour of Musharraf, who ousted Sharif in October 1999, was to Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Sharif himself, his younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif and their families live in Saudi Arabia after a secret exile deal between Musharraf and Sharif, in which Riyadh had played a key role. During Sharif's prime ministerial tenure, the Americans believe, Saudi Arabia had been involved in funding Islamabad's missile and nuclear program purchases from China, as a result of which Pakistan became a nuclear weapon-producing and proliferating state. There are also apprehensions that Riyadh was buying nuclear capability from China through a proxy state, with Pakistan serving as the cut-out.

Following Khan's first admission of proliferation to Iran, Libya and North Korea in January 2004, the Saudi authorities pulled out more than 80 ambassador-rank and senior diplomats from its missions around the world, mainly in Europe and Asia. The pullout is widely thought to have been meant to plug any likely leak of the Pakistani-Saudi nuclear link.

Before September 11, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan were the only countries that recognized and aided Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which had been educated in Pakistan's religious schools (madrassas). Despite the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, the Saudis continue to fund these seminaries that are a substitute for Pakistan's non-existent national education system and largely produce Wahhabi extremists and Islamist terrorists. Also, a substantial proportion of their curricula, including the sections which preach hatred, has also emerged from Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan, with a crushing defense burden, only spends 1.7% of gross domestic product on education (compared to 4.3% in India and 5% in the United States). An estimated 15,000 religious schools provide free room and board to some 700,000 Pakistani boys (ages six to 16) where they are taught to read and write in Urdu and Arabic and recite the Holy Koran by heart. No other disciplines are taught, but students are indoctrinated with anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Indian propaganda, and encouraged to engage in jihad to defeat a "global conspiracy to destroy Islam". These schools supplied thousands of recruits for the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and are still being used to recruit militants to fight the US-led forces and Afghan troops in that country.

While Saudi Arabia actively uses charities to promote Wahhabi extremism across the world, Pakistan has been the recipient of huge direct economic assistance from the desert kingdom. The Saudis have bailed out Islamabad over the past decade by supplying Pakistan with an estimated $1.2 billion of oil products annually, virtually free of cost. Just after the visit of Khan to Saudi Arabia in November 1999, a Saudi nuclear expert, Dr Al Arfaj, stated in Riyadh that "Saudi Arabia must make plans aimed at making a quick response to face the possibilities of nuclear warfare agents being used against the Saudi population, cities or armed forces".

Following the departure of American troops from its soil, the biggest problem for the Saudi Kingdom is how to deal with such nuclear contingencies. More recently, Saudi officials have discussed the procurement of new Pakistani intermediate-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Some concern remains that Saudi Arabia, like its neighbors, might be seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, apparently by purchase rather than indigenous development. The 2,700-kilometer range CSS-2 missiles the kingdom obtained from China in 1987 are useless if fitted only with conventional warheads. One cannot, therefore, avoid the inference that, like the Pakistan-North Korean "nukes for missiles deal", Khan might have struck an "oil for nukes" deal with Saudi Arabia on behalf of Islamabad at a time when there was a growing homogeneity of strong pan-Islamic affiliations worldwide. If Khan's interaction with the scientists of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya were similar to those during his reported visits to North Korea, norms of the non-proliferation regimes can be expected to have been more brazenly violated.

While the aspirations of a few Islamic countries to acquire nuclear weapons are wedded to the idea of the "Islamic bomb", al-Qaeda's quest for components and know-how relating to weapons of mass destruction reflect on the potential rise of nuclear terror throughout the world. The role of wealthy and politically connected Saudi Arabian families in secretly funding al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror organizations has, until now, been kept deliberately in the background by Washington, largely out of sensitivity to the precarious internal situation in Saudi Arabia itself.

King Fahd is near death, and his designated successor, Crown Prince Abdullah, is known to be more actively hostile to American foreign policy, and more sympathetic to militant Wahhabi Sunni currents in the Islamic world. Washington knows well that a head-on clash with the Saudi royal house at present would serve the interests only of the radical faction inside the Royal family. A major strategic goal of al-Qaeda's terror attacks within Saudi Arabia in recent years has been to escalate pressure on what are regarded as Westernized corrupt elements of the Saudi royal house, with the aim of replacing them with fanatical feudal Wahhabi elements - a kind of Talibanization of the Saudi Kingdom.

The internal Saudi situation is complicated by the fact that many powerful Saudi families financially support the al-Qaeda effort as part of a strategy to purge the kingdom of "infidels and Western corruption". In many cases these influential Saudis reach into the extended royal family, including the murky figure of the former Saudi intelligence chief, Turki al-Faisal, son of the late King Faisal. The Americans had accused Turki's Faisal Islamic Bank of involvement in running accounts for bin Laden and his associates.

Turki himself maintained ongoing ties with bin Laden even after the latter fled Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s, after imprisonment by order of the king. Considered close to both bin Laden as well as Khan, it was Turki who had persuaded King Fahd to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban. The possibility of Turki having played a role in a nuclear deal between bin Laden and Khan cannot, consequently, be ruled out, especially when many members of the Pakistani military and nuclear establishments have been found involved in holding meetings with the al-Qaeda leader.

The first indications of the presence of pro-jihadi scientists in Pakistan's nuclear establishment came to notice during the US-led allied forces' military operations in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, when documents recovered by troops reportedly spoke of the visits of Pakistani nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, to Kandahar when bin Laden was operating from there before September 11. Bashiruddin was the first head of the Kahuta uranium enrichment project before Khan, who replaced Bashiruddin in the 1970s.

Subsequent investigations carried out by American intelligence discovered that bin Laden had contacted these scientists for assistance in making a small nuclear device. On February 12, 2004, Khan appeared on Pakistan's state-run television after holding a lengthy meeting with Musharraf and confessed to having been "solely responsible" for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapon materials. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan's misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan "my hero").

For two decades, the Western media and their intelligence agencies have linked Khan and the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence to nuclear-technology transfers, and it was hard to credit the idea that the successive governments Khan served had been oblivious of these activities. In the post-September 11 period, analysts continue to express fears about the possibility of extremist Islamic groups like al-Qaeda gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons or fissile or radioactive materials. Secret deals with Saudi Arabia can only aggravate such risks and concerns.

Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist affiliated with the Karachi-based monthly, Newsline.

(Published with permission from the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal )

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...08-105402-8317r

Analysis: Next year, G8 should focus on non-proliferation
Catherine Sharoky

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6598

CondiPerfidy
Gordon Prather

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When?
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The idea of an 'Islamic bomb' is not new. Extremists would love one.

By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a member of the Pugwash Council and is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

July 10 2005

One wonders what Osama bin Laden and his ilk learned from Hiroshima.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday...-home-headlines

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1688013,00.html

Netanyahu warns West it must halt Iran nuclear plans

We continue to sink wasted dollars into this program...

Missile Defense Tests May Resume in Fall

Updated 3:59 PM ET July 10, 2005
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8b8ns900&src=ap

WASHINGTON (AP) - Flight tests of the nation's missile defense system will not resume until this fall at the earliest as the military revamps the program following two failures in the past seven months, a military official says.

The military may conduct two tests by year's end, with the earliest possibly this fall, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no schedule has been announced.

It is uncertain whether the military will have a target missile ready for launch, however, and the first test may not involve an attempt to hit a target.

The delay further protracts Pentagon efforts to validate a multibillion-dollar program that supporters say will help protect the nation from intercontinental ballistic missiles. Critics say that claim remains unproven.

Even though the military occasionally activates interceptor bases in Alaska and California, they are not yet on around-the-clock alert as envisioned. The system has not had a successful intercept of a target since October 2002. Three tests have ended in failure.

The Bush administration had said the system would be working by the end of 2004.

An independent review, performed this year by experts for the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency, suggested that the rush to deploy the defenses led to inadequate quality control during the tests. The report was posted online by the Center for Defense Information, a defense policy think-tank in Washington.

Missile Defense Agency spokesman Rick Lehner acknowledged that the report raised some issues regarding quality control that, "quite frankly, we didn't pay enough attention to, and now we are."

President Bush is seeking $9 billion for the program in the upcoming budget year, $1 billion less than previously planned. Since 1983, the government has spent $92 billion to develop a system to shield the U.S. from attack by ballistic missiles.

In the two most recent tests, each costing $85 million, the interceptors failed to get out of their silos.

Last Dec. 15, the test missile did not launch because of a problem with communications software. The second test, on Feb. 14, failed because an arm that holds up the interceptor did not fully retract in the moments before it launched, officials said. The interceptor shut down automatically.

Both tests were to involve launching an interceptor from Kwajalein Island in the Pacific Ocean at a target launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska.

The system was successful in five of eight previous tests in highly scripted attempts to intercept a target missile carrying a mock warhead.

The Missile Defense Agency is putting together a new schedule for future tests, Lehner said. The goal is to make the tests more rigorous for the interceptor missiles and less likely to fail due to problems in test equipment.

Whatever becomes of the testing, the Pentagon will forge ahead this summer with installing 10 new interceptor missiles at its base in Fort Greely, Alaska, officials said. Greely has six interceptors already in place.

Two more interceptors, stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, are supposed to be able to shoot down several long-range missiles that conceivably could come from North Korea. The lack of successful tests gives some critics little confidence in the system.

"The system in Alaska and California has no demonstrated capability to defend the United States under realistic operational conditions," said Philip Coyle, a former chief of testing for the Pentagon, who criticized the earlier, successful tests as highly scripted.

The agency would need 20 or 30 more developmental tests before it will be ready for realistic testing, Coyle said.

"If it takes two or three years to get a success, at that rate, those 20 or 30 tests could take them 50 years. They obviously need to improve the pace as well as the realism, but they haven't been able to do it," he said.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GG12Dg02.html

Upping the ante in a deadly nuclear game
By William R Polk

(Republished with permission from Japan Focus)

Note: North Korea at the weekend said that it would return to the six-party talks on its nuclear program as "the US side clarified its official stand to recognize the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] as a sovereign state, not to invade it, and hold bilateral talks within the framework of the six-party talks". It is expected that the talks, which will also involve China, Russia, Japan, the US and South Korea, will be held sometime this month in Beijing, where the first three rounds of talks were staged more than a year ago.

The Guardian of June 9 reported the disappearance from the International Atomic Energy Agency of a set or sets of detailed engineering plans for making nuclear materials and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). While there never have been any significant scientific secrets on the nuclear bomb, there has been somewhat restricted engineering information that would enable others to speed up, make more cheaply and avoid obvious tell-tale aspects of acquisition. Now we must assume that production information is widely available.

It appears that this is a more important stage in the increasing insecurity of the world than may have been realized. Perhaps one sign of this lack of recognition is that, to the best of this author's knowledge, the story of the disappearance of the engineering data did not appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post or other major American newspapers. Yet, the presumed availability of this information moves us, potentially at least, into a dangerous new phase of the spread of WMD: what was once only theoretical, the so-called "nth nation" threat – "the proliferation of nuclear weapons to an indeterminate but increasingly significant number of states that now do not have them" - is or soon might be a reality. Worse, the "classical" definition of the "nth nation" must now be redefined as the "nth group" since we have to assume that whether or not they now can acquire nuclear weapons, circumstances are likely to arise soon in which groups that are not nation-states will be able to do so.

It follows that whatever the United States government is now doing to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons is not working. Indeed, US decision to revert to building a bigger, more flexible (read "usable") and more integrated nuclear force - that is a nuclear force that is not just a last resort but one that is considered an integral part of America's "normal" or on-going security policy - and the decision to pull back from treaties aimed at stopping testing and cutting back inventories of weapons are pushing the world away from "security" toward Armageddon.

In 1968, the US negotiated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in which it pledged to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, yet today, almost 40 years later, the US maintains approximately 8,000 nuclear weapons, some 2,000 of which are on a "hair trigger alert"; that is, President George W Bush could launch them within 15 minutes. And it has announced plans to add to these existing weapons. In 2004, the US government voted against reaffirming the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it apparently felt restricted its announced intention to develop a range of new weapons, including what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld outlined in a Senate hearing as a "robust nuclear earth penetrator".

Numerous other pronouncements cover "up-grading" the main nuclear force, putting weapons in outer space, etc. Former secretary of defense Robert McNamara has characterized this policy as "immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous".

Subsidiary to the NPT is the 1970 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was extended indefinitely in 1995. The purpose of this treaty was to block an important step in the process of building bombs. To give itself the scope to test its own weapons, the Bush administration has decided not to be bound by this treaty. And, while the administration announced a partial reduction of its 5,300 "operationally deployed nuclear warheads", it merely moved these to a reserve category rather than destroying them. Thus, it has set an example which presumably other nations will follow.

The good news in this somber picture is that, as former assistant secretary of defense Ashton Carter pointed out, the US helped to dissuade Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey from going "nuclear". However, this abstinence may be only temporary. Since Carter wrote his account it was revealed that at least Japan, South Korea and Taiwan had carried experiments to the point that they could quickly "weaponize" their stocks of nuclear materials.

The US cannot be blamed for the spread of nuclear weapons to China, India and Pakistan, each of which had "regional" reasons to acquire weapons, nor can it claim credit for the decision of Argentina, Brazil and South Africa to renounce nuclear weapons. They did so, apparently, because they had no regional rivals against whom they needed protection. Carter asserts, "A peaceful and just world order led by the United States is the reason why only a few of the world's nearly 200 nations are proliferation 'rogues'." This may have been true in the past, but more recently America's failure to carry out the obligation it assumed in the NPT to work toward a world-wide reduction of weapons, its decision to push ahead with its own weapons program in violation of the treaty, its preparations to resume testing, its invasion of Iraq (allegedly to stop nuclear weapons development) and its threats to other countries, have undoubtedly accentuated rather than diminished the clear and present danger in which today we live.

Since we have lived under the nuclear threat for over half a century, many of us have probably put out of our minds just what a nuclear bomb can do. Having myself participated in the US government "Crisis Management Committee" during Cuban missile crisis, taken part in the war games and other studies subsequent to it and discussed with my Russian counterparts the details of nuclear war, that memory is still painfully vivid to me. But in case it is not for others, let me briefly open one small window on it. The 2000 Report of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which McNamara quotes, gives the result of the explosion of just one small (one-megaton) weapon:

A crater as deep as a football field is long and as large as about 40 or 50 football fields

A fireball that immediately kills all life within a considerably larger area and severely or lethally burns everyone within about 3 miles

All or most buildings flattened within about 12 miles. Those effects are virtually instantaneous

Hundreds of thousands or millions more people will quickly be incinerated in resulting firestorms

Such survivors as there may be, would be burned, without any means of medical attention; starving, without any succor; terrified, without any hope, and will soon be struck down by radiation.

Such a small modern bomb is roughly 70 times the power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One would utterly destroy most cities. Used in numbers they would destroy whole civilizations.

In addition to the huge inventories of the US and Russia (totaling 8,000 to 10,000 warheads), Britain, France, Israel and China each have at least 200 and perhaps twice or three times that number; India and Pakistan may each have 100 and North Korea is believed to have six comparable bombs.

After a certain point, numbers cease to have much strategic meaning. As I have shown above, the horror that would be produced by the explosion of even one small bomb makes military action virtually unthinkable against any nuclear state. Unthinkable, that is, except as a deterrent or when a truly "rogue" government is prepared to commit suicide and lose hundreds of thousands or millions of its citizens.

So, in strategic terms, acquisition of even half a dozen weapons gives the holder virtual immunity from attack. Thus, regimes that fear attack can be expected either to attempt to acquire nuclear weapons or at least to give themselves the option to do so in case of need. That is the pressing issue we face today.

Acquiring weapons is not, of course, the same as using them, although America sometimes does not draw that distinction in evaluating the presumed intentions of other states. So what does the Bush administration tell us of its intentions? The latest expose of its military policy is the March 2005 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America. [1] It proclaims that "America is a nation at war" and warns that "at the direction of the president, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing ..."

The strategy paper posits an array of "challenges" that the American government holds to be the modern equivalents to "traditional military action". [2] (That is, "aggression" as defined in international law) These include "catastrophic challenges [which] involve the acquisition, possession and use of WMD or methods producing WMD like effects [and] disruptive challenges [which] may come from adversaries who develop and use breakthrough technologies to negate current US advantages in key operational domains."

Three things in this statement immediately stand out: first, America regards these "challenges", including seeking a deterrent to attack as tantamount to attack; second, the paper indicates America's determination to project its current "advantages" to "key operational domains" which in light of other pronouncements and actions effectively encompass the whole world; and, third, the administration publicized – even on the Internet - what in my time in government would have been regarded as a top-secret national policy paper.

Putting these three points together, it is clear that the pronouncement is not so much a policy directive as a warning to actual or potential rivals or enemies. Translated, it means that states that move toward parity with the US even in their own neighborhoods (as the paper puts it, "evolve into capable regional rivals or enemies") are in danger of being attacked. Lest there be any doubt, the paper proclaims that "Proliferation of WMD technology and expertise makes contending with catastrophic challenges an urgent priority [and we will acquire means] ... when necessary to defeat them before they can be employed ... when deterrence fails or efforts short of military action do not forestall gathering threats, the United States will employ military power ... In all cases, we will seek to seize the initiative and dictate the tempo, timing, and direction of military operations ... These include preventive actions ..."

States that have been told they are in the target zone have included Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Syria. Iraq has been, at least for the time being, eliminated as an extra-territorial challenge although, of course, it remains a major adversary to American policy domestically and Syria is at least temporarily in less imminent threat.

Since the president's 2002 "axis of evil" speech, the list of enemy nations has been expanded to include Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. Current attention is focused on North Korea and Iran. What is being planned or prepared to deal with them are among the most critical issues facing our country, but I do not find that they have been given the careful attention they deserve. Here I will briefly look at what has been happening in and to North Korea and Iran and attempt to evaluate how developments fit what I think is the evolving pattern. Finally, I will draw the policy implications and suggest what Americans might do to enhance their security in light of them. I begin with North Korea.

Target: North Korea
In my government and business experience, I learned that it is often useful to imagine oneself on "the other side of the table" and to try to think (or as war gamers put it, "program") what motivates the other fellow, what he is likely to do and what effect his doing it would have on those on our side of the table. So I will try to think as though I were a North Korean policy planner or intelligence analyst for the next few minutes. What has shaped North Koreans may not be familiar to everyone so I begin by identifying what I assume are the things have created their "mindset".

North Korea was first invaded by Japan in 1592. Using the first "weapon of mass destruction", the newly invented gun, the Japanese overwhelmed the Koreans, who then had only bows and arrows. Though that invasion ultimately failed, Korea was annexed to Japan in 1910 and spent much of the next half-century under a brutal and degrading occupation. In the North in the late 1930s, an anti-Japanese movement under a former student at an American Christian mission, Kim il-Sung, waged guerrilla war on the Japanese. Then in 1945, American and Russian troops drove out the Japanese and divided their occupation zones at the 38th parallel. America sponsored the creation of a government in the South and in 1948 declared the Republic of Korea at Seoul. That government was recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate power in the whole peninsula.

In the North, furious at what he regarded as an American plot to divide Korea and ideologically driven, Kim proclaimed a rival republic. In 1950, believing that the US (which had withdrawn its forces from the South) had no strategic interest in Korea and charging that the leaders of the South were "quislings" who had collaborated with the Japanese, Kim attacked the South. In three months, his forces had occupied almost all the southern part of the peninsula. Then the quickly reintroduced American troops counterattacked and in October, General Douglas MacArthur reached the Yalu river, at which point the Chinese intervened. Russian "volunteers" also flew for the North Koreans. Fighting swayed back and forth across Korea. By the time an armistice was worked out in July 1953, 3 million Koreans had died and the whole peninsula had been badly mauled.

Since then, North Korea has evolved into a brutal, totalitarian state. Today, it has few foreign friends or allies and feels itself surrounded and targeted, especially by the US. Excluded from most beneficial contacts and trade, it has developed, at almost unbearable human cost – with its people squeezed down to only two meals a day and otherwise deprived to save resources - a powerful military-industrial complex that has now produced nuclear weapons and, apparently, sophisticated means to deliver them.

That is to say that after years of suffering and privation, it has crossed the threshold that separates the period of "acquisition" from the period of "possession" of sufficient nuclear weapons capacity to inflict unacceptable damage on potential attackers and/or their nearby allies. It could devastate South Korea, wipe out Tokyo and/or ravage Taiwan. The US Defense Intelligence Agency conceded that North Korea "probably now has nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting US soil". In the face of this growing threat, as The New York Times editorialized on May 17, "Washington appears to have no clear strategy ... That is true because once a state actually acquires even a miniature nuclear arsenal, it acquires military immunity since it is far too 'expensive' to attack, even if small and poor."

Nuclear weapons, moreover, are not North Korea's only military asset: in addition to an army estimated at 1 million soldiers, it has massed an estimated 10,000 cannon within range of the capital of South Korea and, if attacked, would almost certainly obliterate Seoul. (In that area, the 37,000 US troops are more hostage than protector.) At huge cost, it has built a vast complex of factories and virtual cities underground – in which allegedly at least 20,000 laborers are employed – and so is essentially immune to aerial strikes. It is thus both a pariah in the international community and one that is capable of defending itself.

It is clear, I think, even from a brief review of its history, that North Korea is a wounded society. Remembering generations of humiliating foreign rule, it is intensely xenophobic. Poor, nearly starving and deprived in almost every sphere, its citizens must want a better, easier, less frightening way of life. That, I take it, is the national interest of Korea. Outside observers often stop with national interest in evaluating how a nation state will act or what incentives or pressures it will respond to. This is a mistake. Quite apart from national interest, indeed sometimes diametrically opposed to it, is interest of government. The North Korean government, at whatever cost to the country, is determined to stay in power. Kim il-Sung's son and successor, Kim Jong-il must know that "regime change" is a euphemism for his overthrow and murder. What America has been saying and doing can only have underlined his sense of personal threat and, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, so strongly has he reacted that he virtually disbanded his own political party, the Korean Workers Party, and placed all of his hopes and most of his resources on his huge and well pampered army.

Bellicose pronouncements such as Bush's labeling North Korea a part of "axis of Evil" and proclaiming in March 2004 that the US would not "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea have been underlined by such actions as holding naval maneuvers off North Korea in October 2004, sending F111 stealth fighter-bombers to positions in range to attack Pyongyang, the creation or upgrading of main operating bases (unfortunately named in the military acronym "MOBs" ) within range to attack the North and cutting off oil supplies to the already impoverished nation. Kim must know that in the face of this threat, he personally has little or no room for negotiation.

This, in brief, is what I guess a North Korean policy planner would start with. So how would he advise his government. Putting myself in his shoes, I guess that he would advise that, in light of American pronouncements and actions, North Korea would be foolish to give up its nuclear force. Indeed, to deter an American attack, it should enhance its military capacity. Psychologically, moreover, it should seek to convince the US that it would fight the Americans and their allies, with what the Israelis called the "Samson option", that is, even to the point of national suicide. Further threats are likely only to convince the North Korean government of its danger and so increase its determination to protect itself at any cost. Someone must be giving Kim this advice for it is exactly what North Korea is doing. It recently closed down its electricity-producing nuclear reactors to extract some 8,000 only partially-used fuel rods which will yield enough plutonium for at least one more bomb. (International Herald Tribune, April 19).

It follows that approaching North Korea in the terms of the "National Defense Strategy of the United States of America" is self-defeating.

Target: Iran
Can Iran be addressed in terms of the 2005 national defense strategy with a different result? Unlike North Korea, which certainly already possesses nuclear weapons, intelligence specialists believe that Iran is still in the "acquisition" phase. That is, it appears not yet to have a weapon or weapons, but it is probably attempting to, and may soon, acquire them. Arguably, [3] then, in this pre-nuclear weapons period, America has room for a much more aggressive policy on Iran than on North Korea.

At least theoretically, America could attack, overwhelm the country and abort Iran's program to acquire nuclear weapons. Alternatively, it could deliver an aerial strike with aircraft or missiles on nuclear or other facilities, as Israel did in 1981 on the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. The Israelis have threatened to do the same to Iran. The aim would be either or both to destroy the facilities or so damage Iranian infrastructure as to humiliate and perhaps topple the regime. Is this a real possibility? And is the US willing for Iran to try it? First the possibility.

The current weapon of choice is the so-called "bunker buster", the B61-11. Engineering studies indicate that such a weapon could not penetrate more than five times its length. To burrow 50 meters, it would have to be 10 meters long. At that length, it would likely crack in half on impact. In a test on the frozen Alaskan tundra, it failed to penetrate more than about three meters. Apparently, it was unable to penetrate at all through granite or reinforced concrete, even when from dropped from 40,000 feet and traveling at 300 meters a second.

Since at least the major Iranian sites are believed to be hundreds of meters below layers of granite, they are presumably immune to this much publicized weapon. [4] Recognizing this, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld outlined to a Congressional Committee plans for a "robust nuclear earth penetrator". Such a weapon, armed even with a tiny nuclear devise (1 kiloton equivalent) would throw up about 1 million cubic meters of radioactive soil. But it would do little harm to a deeply buried site. From my personal experience with military planners, I assume that consequently they have proposed to increase the explosive force, that is, to move up from 1 kiloton toward 1 megaton, with results approaching those outlined at the beginning of this essay.

Would America be willing to use such a device or encourage or assist others to do so? The answer is yes. In a highly publicized move, the US gave the Israelis both 102 long-range aircraft (the F-16i) and 500 one-ton (conventional-explosive armed) "bunker buster" bombs, some 4,000 other powerful bombs and related guidance equipment that they would need to carry out such a strike. And when asked whether the US might ask Israel to act against Iran, Vice President Dick Cheney replied that "the Israelis might well decide to act first".

Alternatively, the US could attempt through covert action to bring about a coup detat, as it did in Iran in 1952 against the government of prime minister Muhammad Mossadegh. Or, finally, it could decide to put ground troops into the country, as it has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus, a sober Iranian government should be amenable to threats. Is this likely?

Were I planning policy for the Iranian government, I would carefully study the recent history of Iraq to see what might be in store for me. Here is what I would see: In the 1980s, with considerable help from America and Britain, Saddam was making progress toward acquisition of nuclear weapons. Flush with oil revenues, he hired experts and bought supplies from many sources. No one in the Ronald Reagan or first Bush administrations tried to deter him because he was regarded as useful in containing or defeating Iran. So, as an adviser to the Iranian government, I would at least question how determined America is, in principle, to stop the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Perhaps, I would guess, there is some flexibility in the American policy. After all, America accommodated to China, Israel, India, Pakistan and other countries' acquisition of them. It now is accommodating to North Korea's arsenal of nuclear weapons.

With American help, Saddam did defeat Iran, but his war efforts bankrupted him. Fearing that his own supporters would turn against him unless he could keep fueling the economy on which their private wealth depended, he appealed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi both to help him with further loans and to stick to Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) production quotas to keep up the price of oil. Kuwait responded that since the danger of Iran had disappeared, it no longer had any interest in financing Iraq; worse, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi far exceeded their OPEC quotas and thus forced down the price of oil from roughly $19 to $11 a barrel. Saddam became desperate enough to try to rob the Kuwait bank. That was a fatal mistake: he did not have a conventional military machine capable of defending Iraq and lacked the trump card of a nuclear weapon while he was challenging America in the one area it would not tolerate interference, access to energy. So in 1991, the first Bush administration threw him out of Kuwait. Had these events taken place later, when he had acquired a nuclear weapon, the Persian policy planner could reasonably doubt that the US would have moved militarily against him. But the timetable was dictated by forces he could not control.

Then, despite sanctions and other restraints during the Bill Clinton administration, Iraq's economic condition improved. The price of oil rose and the Iraqis rebuilt what had been destroyed in the invasion. Saddam concluded that the prospects for his regime were favorable enough that he should not, at least for the time being, take the risk of restarting his program to acquire nuclear weapons. He did not even keep his conventional military force up to date. This abstention made him more vulnerable. Since no army he could ever have built would have matched the Americans, Saddam paid the supreme price for not having nuclear weapons. His lack of nuclear weapons made it possible for the second Bush administration to attack him in 2003.

So, as an Iranian, I would draw the lessons that, first, abstaining from trying to acquire nuclear weapons would not protect me and that, second, I should take no bold action until my own program actually produced them.

Turning from what happened in Iraq, what America might do to Iran, an Iranian policy planner or intelligence analyst would see a rising tide of threat: being told that Iran is part of the "axis of evil", he would note that it is subjected to various sanctions and attempts (through pressure on European commercial suppliers) to prevent it from acquiring the means to defend itself. Iranian intelligence would report that for much of the last two years, the Americans have been over-flying Iran, pin-pointing targets as they did in Iraq before their 2003 invasion and press attaches stationed in Europe would forward Western press reports that America has infiltrated into Iran teams of special forces commandos. (Seymour Hirsch, The New Yorker, January) More disturbing still, they read on the Internet the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, which states baldly (Section III/B/2) how the Americans are creating "MOBs" from which they can quickly and relatively easily "employ military power". A glance at the map shows that Iran is almost completely surrounded by military bases in Iraq, Qatar, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey. If I am in any doubt about the capability and intent, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld publicly removed it: they said that "a US attack on Iran is not imminent but that the option remains available".

Under these circumstances, what would an Iranian policy planner advise his government to do? Soberly, he would have to face the fact that Iran has even less conventional military capacity than Saddam had. He would conclude that Iran's only hope would be to make an invasion so costly that the US would be deterred. To accomplish this, Iran has four assets: The first is that, if attacked, Iran could mount a guerrilla war. Prudently, an Iranian policy planner would urge the government to prepare itself. That advice has been taken. The Associated Press reported on March 26 that "Iran is quietly building a stockpile of thousands of high-tech small arms and other military equipment – from armor-piercing rifles to night-vision goggles ... [despite U.S.] sanctions on dozens of companies worldwide ..."

As a member of the Iranian governing coalition, the policy planner would be aware that the governing religious establishment is not popular with many Iranians, but he would also know that Iranians are firm nationalists. No more than the Iraqis in 2003 or the Cubans in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 would Iranians be out in the streets with flowers in their hands welcoming foreign troops. The 150,000 members of the Revolutionary Guard would spearhead a guerrilla resistance. They showed their fanatical devotion to their country during the Iraq-Iran war and almost certainly would do so again. Iran is large and has several times the population of Iraq; so it could, and almost certainly would, fight a protracted guerrilla war.

Iran's second asset is that an attack on it is unlikely to be popular in America. Still mired in the Iraqi "quicksand", and not doing well there, even senior American military officers believe the war could last for many years and could still fail. British predictions are even more pessimistic: some senior British officials speak of "a decades-long problem" (The Observer, February 13). America is also still far short of "victory" in Afghanistan and is encountering a bloody Taliban resurgence.

Consequently, Americans would probably not have much stomach for another guerrilla war. There are also signs that Americans are no longer exactly "flocking to the colors" and that the American military is being forced to lower its standards to meet its manpower needs. Public opinion polls report that less than half (42%) of the American population now approves of the Bush administration and only one in three Americans approves of its Republican-dominated and relatively bellicose Congress.

The third asset is that, unlike remote and isolated North Korea, Iran has foreign friends and allies. Shi'ism is a vital part of Islam and has millions of adherents outside of Iran. The oil of Saudi Arabia is produced in the largely Shi'ite Eastern province. Shi'ites constitute large parts of the populations of the Gulf states, Pakistan and even Turkey. In Lebanon, the most powerful single political group, Hezbollah, is a Shi'ite-based movement. And, of course, Iraq now has a Shi'ite-led government. (Paradoxically, ensuring the success of the Iraqi Shi'ite establishment (the marjiyah) was the most significant gift of America to Iran. [5 ]) An American attack on Iran would push the Iraqis Shi'ites into what has been heretofore a mainly Sunni resistance; it would do more to unite Sunnis and Shi'ites than any effort they could mount on their own behalf. Almost certainly, eventually if not immediately, this would enormously expand forces the Americans consider to be "terrorists", not only in Iraq but throughout the Muslim world. Moreover, as they have shown, Shi'ites are usually far more determined fighters than any other group, including the Sunni followers of Osama bin Ladin.

Iran's fourth asset is that, unlike North Korea, it is a significant trading partner with countries and multinational corporations in much of Europe and Asia. So keen to do business with Iran are many of them that they have flouted American-imposed sanctions and have sought to work toward a peaceful accommodation of Iran in the United Nations and the European Union. Before, during and after the overthrow of the Shah's government in 1979, this asset proved of great importance to Iran. It will continue to be so.

But, Persian intelligence analysts, like the rest of us, realize that governments do not always act on rational assessments. Sometimes they are driven by ideology or by political considerations unrelated to the immediate issue. Sometimes they engage in wishful thinking or listen to the siren song of those who are desperate for their help. As in Iraq, exile groups tell the Americans that the Iranian government is weak and that the people are only waiting for a signal to overthrow it or that, with a little help, they can do so. This assessment comes not only from surviving members of the old regime but also from the Mujahideen e-Khalq. So, despite what would appear to an Iranian policy planner as logical, he would wish to be certain. The best way to approach certainty would be to acquire nuclear weapons. That, after all, is what all the other nuclear powers - the US, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and now North Korea – have done.

The "acquisition phase" is a time of great danger. Iranians must assume that America, Israel and perhaps others will try to stop Iran from actually getting nuclear weapons. Therefore, a prudent Iranian policy planner would advise his government to move as rapidly as possible. One objective would be to acquire a copy of the engineering plans that disappeared from the International Atomic Energy Agency; this might obviate the need for testing. Perhaps this has already been done. A second prudent action would be to deploy production facilities as secretly, widely and deeply as feasible to make their destruction difficult or impossible. This, too, has already been done. A third possible action would be to purchase components on the world market. Iran did purchase centrifuges from Pakistan. A fourth option would be to try, if possible, to buy a completed weapon. No one knows if this has happened.

(Parenthetically, to show that my hypothetical Iran policy planner is not just a woolly minded Persian mullah, a distinguished student of strategy at the Hebrew University in Israel commented [6] that "had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy".)

During this dangerous acquisition period, which might last until, perhaps, 2007 or 2008, a prudent Iranian government would seek to throw dust in the eyes of would-be attackers. The "dust" could consist of the claim that Iran's program is purely for the production of energy and so is both peaceful and legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and/or that under appropriate circumstances Iran would drop work on weapons. Diplomatically, it could hold endless discussions on terms and conditions with the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the European Union and its component governments, and, even if indirectly, with the US, seeking to drive a wedge between the Americans and other powers. [7] Numerous articles in the press show that this is exactly what has happened. [8]

Evidently, Iran has decided to press ahead with acquisition of at least the potential to acquire nuclear weapons.

Notes
[1] www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/dod/nds-usa_mar2005.htm

[2] The highlighted words appear thus in the policy paper.

[3] A recent argument for this policy is given by Kenneth M Pollack in The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (New York: Random House, 2005). In a previous book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, Pollack urged the invasion of Iraq. He now says that his advice was wrong.

[4] Benjamin Phelan "Buried Truths", Harpers, December 2004.

[5] The Iraqi Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance won almost half the votes in the recent election and dominates the government. Many of its leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, have spent much of their lives in Iran, are close to its ruling religious establishment, and share its beliefs. Its militia is Iranian-trained. Even the Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, a Sunni, has very close ties to Iran.

[6] Martin van Creveld, "Israel planning to attack Iran?" International Herald Tribune, August 21-22, 2004.

[7] Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations commented in the May 6 International Herald Tribune that Iran "has managed its nuclear negotiations rather effectively [so that the] longer the negotiations go on, the more likely it is that the United States, and not Iran, will once more stand isolated".

[8] The International Herald Tribune mostly drawing from The New York Times: eg April 6, May 16, May 19. In the May 19 article, Hossein Mousavian from the Supreme National Security Council was quoted as saying. "Iran is 100% flexible, open, ready to negotiation, to compromise on any mechanism, but not cession."

William R Polk taught at Harvard from 1955 to 1961 when he was appointed a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US State Department. In 1965 he became professor of history at the University of Chicago and founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center. Subsequently, he also became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Among his books are The United States and the Arab World, The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century, and the just-published Understanding Iraq. Other of his writings can be accessed on www.williampolk.com.

(Republished with permission from Japan Focus)

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6601

Condi Kills an EU-Iranian Agreement July 11, 2005

by Gordon Prather
Even after years of go-anywhere, see-anything inspections, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, continues to report to the IAEA Board of Governors that he can find no indication that Iran now has, ever had, or intends to have a nuclear weapons program.

Nevertheless, last week Secretary of State Condi Rice determined – pursuant to Presidential Directive 12938, as amended – that the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran had engaged in activities or transactions that materially contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Whereupon Treasury Secretary Snow immediately "blocked" all the Iranian agency's U.S. assets.

Of course, it's doubtful that the Atomic Energy Agency had any assets in the U.S. to seize. So why did Bush-Rice-Snow bother to seize them?

Apparently, so Bush could threaten this week to seize – pursuant to Presidential Directive 12938, as amended – all the U.S. assets of any foreign company who provides (or attempts to provide) financial, material, technological, or other support to the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran.

France's new foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, was in Washington to review with Condi the state of the Paris negotiations between the European Union and Iran.

Last November, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – as agents for the European Union – began negotiations with Iran on "a mutually acceptable long-term arrangement" that would (a) provide "objective guarantees" to the EU that Iran's nuclear program was exclusively for peaceful purposes," ( guarantee future EU-Iranian nuclear, technological, and economic "cooperation," as well as © provide "firm commitments" by the EU to Iran "on security issues."

Now the key to preventing nuke proliferation is the international control of the acquisition and chemical/physical transformation of certain nuclear materials. In return for a promise not to acquire or seek to acquire nuclear weapons, the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons recognizes the "inalienable right" of all signatories to acquire and transform those materials, subject to oversight by the IAEA Safeguards regime.

The EU-Iran negotiating agreement reaffirmed Iran's inalienable right under the NPT to acquire and operate – subject to the IAEA Safeguards regime – any and all nuclear fuel-cycle facilities.

However, as a "confidence-building measure," Iran volunteered to temporarily suspend its IAEA Safeguarded fuel-cycle activities and invited the IAEA to verify to the EU that suspension.

However, the Iranians made it very clear that under no circumstances would they permanently suspend all nuclear fuel-cycle facilities.

So at best, the EU can hope the Iranians would agree to EU-Iranian co-production co-ownership arrangements for reactors and other fuel-cycle facilities.

Hence, if the EU-Iranian talks are successful, numerous European entities – many having substantial U.S. assets – will be providing financial, material, technological, and other support to the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran.

Nevertheless, at a joint press conference, Douste-Blazy pledged to continue consulting with Condi as the Europeans prepare a new proposal, which might include security guarantees for Iran.

Douste-Blazy noted that in order for the EU to give Iran such security guarantees – which is Iran's "ultimate objective" in the negotiations – it would be necessary for the U.S. to endorse those guarantees

So, obviously, Condi had summoned Douste-Blazy to Washington to tell him that the success of the EU-Iranian negotiations was her "ultimate objective."

And that she had been mistaken when she determined just a few days before that the Iranians were using the Safeguarded nuclear programs at their Atomic Energy Agency to hide a secret nuke program.

And that President Bush had absolutely no intention of seizing the U.S. assets of any European entity – public or private – that was a party to any "mutually acceptable long-term arrangement" with the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran.

Obviously!

But then Douste-Blazy declared that "our ultimate objective is to insure that there is a suspension of the enrichment and reprocessing of hazardous nuclear material."

Whoa! Up until now, that hasn't been the EU's "ultimate objective." Reestablishment of normal banking and trade relations with Iran – disrupted for more than 20 years by U.S. sanctions on European entities that have attempted to do business in Iran and with Iranians – has been.

So what did Condi actually tell Douste-Blazy?

"Well, the Paris agreement is initially about suspension. But ultimately the world has to be assured that Iran cannot have this [nuclear fuel-cycle] capability. And that there will ultimately have to be objective guarantees, and we believe that means cessation."

That tears it. No EU offer that makes that voluntary suspension an enforced cessation will be acceptable to the Iranians.

So thanks to Condi's determination, there won't be an EU-Iranian agreement

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...6/20050629.html

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and Their Supporters
Office of the Press Secretary
June 29, 2005

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, in order to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency described and declared in Executive Order 12938 of November 14, 1994, regarding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them, and the measures imposed by that order, as expanded by Executive Order 13094 of July 28, 1998, hereby order:

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203((1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702((1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the effective date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:

(i) the persons listed in the Annex to this order;

(ii) any foreign person determined by the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, and other relevant agencies, to have engaged, or attempted to engage, in activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a risk of materially contributing to, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery (including missiles capable of delivering such weapons), including any efforts to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer or use such items, by any person or foreign country of proliferation concern;

(iii) any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and other relevant agencies, to have provided, or attempted to provide, financial, material, technological or other support for, or goods or services in support of, any activity or transaction described in paragraph (a)(ii) of this section, or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; and

(iv) any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and other relevant agencies, to be owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

( Any transaction or dealing by a United States person or within the United States in property or interests in property blocked pursuant to this order is prohibited, including, but not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

© Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(d) Any conspiracy formed to violate the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 2. For purposes of this order:

(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

( the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

© the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

Sec. 3. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type of articles specified in section 203((2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702((2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12938, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 4. Section 4(a) of Executive Order 12938, as amended, is further amended to read as follows:

"Sec. 4. Measures Against Foreign Persons.

(a) Determination by Secretary of State; Imposition of Measures. Except to the extent provided in section 203( of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1702(), where applicable, if the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, determines that a foreign person, on or after November 16, 1990, the effective date of Executive Order 12735, the predecessor order to Executive Order 12938, has engaged, or attempted to engage, in activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a risk of materially contributing to, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery (including missiles capable of delivering such weapons), including any efforts to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer, or use such items, by any person or foreign country of proliferation concern, the measures set forth in subsections (, ©, and (d) of this section shall be imposed on that foreign person to the extent determined by the Secretary of State, in consultation with the implementing agency and other relevant agencies. Nothing in this section is intended to preclude the imposition on that foreign person of other measures or sanctions available under this order or under other authorities."

Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to section 1 of this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12938, as amended, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1 of this order.

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be

necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

Sec. 7. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to determine, subsequent to the issuance of this order, that circumstances no longer warrant the inclusion of a person in the Annex to this order and that the property and interests in property of that person are therefore no longer blocked pursuant to section 1 of this order.

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

Sec. 9. (a) This order is effective at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June 29, 2005.

( This order shall be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

June 28, 2005.

# # #

ANNEX

Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation

Tanchon Commercial Bank

Korea Ryonbong General Corporation

Aerospace Industries Organization

Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group

Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group

Atomic Energy Organization of Iran

Scientific Studies and Research Center

http://lugar.senate.gov/reports/NPSurvey.pdf

The Lugar Survey on Proliferation Threats and Responses

http://www.nti.org/c_press/testimony_nunn9...sion_062705.pdf

"The Day After an Attack, What Would We Wish We Had Done? Why Aren't We Doing it Now?"
Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman, Nuclear Threat Initiative
Testimony Before the 9/11 Public Discourse Project
June 27, 2005

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publicati...g=zgp&proj=znpp

Nonproliferation and the G-8
Jon Wolfsthal

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...l=la-home-world

N. Korea Takes Pride in Arsenal
By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer


MT. KUMGANG, North Korea — From a glance at the tumbledown villages and the rusted-out railroad equipment, it would seem the North Koreans don't have much to boast about.

But if there is one undisputed point of pride in this country with a per capita income among the lowest in the world, it is the nuclear bomb.

To many North Koreans, the development of nuclear weapons vaults them into an exclusive club with the United States and China and the other great powers of the world.

"We're a nuclear power. We're not like Iraq, or Yugoslavia or Afghanistan. We can defend ourselves," boasted Kim Myong Song, a 30-year-old North Korean who was standing guard on the hiking trails at Mt. Kumgang, one of the few parts of the reclusive country open to visitors.

Pounding his fist in the air, Kim said that North Korea's nuclear weapons could demolish U.S. interests in the event of a war.

"We will turn the U.S. bases in South Korea into ashes. No U.S. base will be safe in Guam, Japan, Hawaii. Even the mainland United States won't be safe," he said.

"If we say we have nuclear weapons, you better believe it — we do," said another guard, a 34-year-old in tinted glasses who gave his name as Mr. Kim.

U.S. intelligence agencies have believed for several years that North Korea has developed a nuclear bomb. But there is disagreement about whether the government in Pyongyang can mount it on a missile and whether those missiles could reach any part of the United States.

Brian Myers, an academic and literary critic who studies North Korean literature and media, says nuclear weapons have become a key element of domestic propaganda, used by the government to convince an impoverished population that they are as well-off as anybody else despite increasing evidence to the contrary.

"Nuclear weapons are crucial to the North Koreans' sense of dignity, especially vis-a-vis the South. Without them, they are mere beggars," said Myers, who teaches in South Korea.

The North Koreans' abiding pride in their nuclear weapons is one reason it is so difficult for the government to barter them away. For more than a year, Pyongyang has boycotted six-nation talks on its nuclear program, despite offers of a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the country in exchange for denuclearization.

But over the weekend, North Korea agreed to resume the negotiations at the end of this month. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a six-day trip to Asia, said the decision was "only a start," echoing U.S. admonitions that Pyongyang must be ready to bargain when it returns to the table.

Washington is mindful that North Korea could return to the negotiations only to stall for time to reprocess more plutonium for nuclear weapons. By some estimates, North Korea may already have enough plutonium for up to nine nuclear devices.

Previous rounds of the disarmament talks have lasted two or three days, but this month's meeting may last longer, as the United States and its partners, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, will want to see concrete results before adjourning, a senior administration official said.

Peter Hayes, the head of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, said that the more closely North Korea associates its image with nuclear weapons, the harder it will be to strike a deal.

"There is a kind of nuclear nationalism that you are seeing here," Hayes said, adding that North Korea's proximity to Hiroshima and the threat of a nuclear strike by the United States during the 1950-53 Korean War has created a mind-set in which nuclear weapons have an almost mystical power.

"For four or five decades, they have been at the other end of the nuclear barrel, so it is not surprising that they are obsessed with it," Hayes said.

At Mt. Kumgang, South Korean tour guides instruct foreign tourists not to talk to North Koreans about politics — especially not about the bomb. But the guards patrolling the hiking trails appear eager to boast about their nuclear program.

North Koreans have been taught for years that they have some mysterious, all-powerful weapon that could devastate the United States, but only recently has it been explicitly named as a nuclear bomb. Those interviewed at Mt. Kumgang said they were thrilled their government announced unequivocally this year that it had developed nuclear weapons.

"There was no celebration, but people feel really good about it," said a North Korean trail guard in her 20s, elegantly dressed in a fake Burberry jacket and matching scarf, but as belligerent as her male counterparts.
. Korea Takes Pride in Arsenal

"We're not afraid of the Americans," she said, then added a note of political correctness, North Korean style, "not just because of our nuclear weapons, but because of our great general" — a reference to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

"If any country has nuclear weapons, all countries should have the right to nuclear weapons," said Kim Myong Song, the 30-year-old guard, echoing another theme of the official propaganda. He said he so keenly believed in the right to nuclear weapons that "if the United States were to attack us, I'd carry a nuclear bomb in my backpack all the way to America."

By the same token, the guard said that he wished for a nuclear-free world — yet another theme of North Korean propaganda.

"But if there is nonproliferation," he said, "it should be nonproliferation for everyone."

Proliferation News: 12 July 2005
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Proliferation Threat Assessment, 2005
(Carnegie Event, Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar)
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/npp/event...g=zgp&proj=znpp

Tuesday, July 12
Today, Carnegie presents an updated assessment of global proliferation dangers based on the new study, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats. The authors, Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar, will present their analysis—including new maps and charts from the book—and then will chair a discussion and debate of their findings with experts from the audience. Their presentation will focus in detail on the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and Iran, and the proliferation challenges stemming from the new U.S. relationships with India and Pakistan. The authors will also explain why they no longer use the term, "weapons of mass destruction."

This updated and expanded second edition of Deadly Arsenals provides the latest and most comprehensive, non-classified information available on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and missile delivery systems. All data has been updated, with new chapters on Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea.

This event will be aired as a LIVE AT CARNEGIE audiocast on the web, beginning at approximately 12:30pm.



Setting the Table for North Korea's Return
(Joel Brinkley, New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/internat...gtDwcHJfCd8Fhlg

Monday, July 11
Just hours before North Korea agreed to return to the six-nation talks on its nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated that the United States would not sweeten the offer laid on the table more than a year ago. "We are not talking about enhancement of the current proposal," she said Saturday.

But it was the promise of a better deal that appears to have persuaded North Korea to return to the talks, several administration officials acknowledged privately.

The offer - details of which have not been disclosed - came last month from South Korea, allowing the Bush administration to appear to remain faithful to the hard line that some senior officials have insisted on.
Yet at the same time, they can accede to the demands of allies for some kind of softening. "South Korea, they are the ones who made this work," a senior Asian diplomat said.



S. Korea Offers North Energy Aid
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4674785.stm

Tuesday, July 12
South Korea has offered huge amounts of free electricity to North Korea as an incentive to end its nuclear ambitions.

Seoul is proposing to lay power lines across the Korean border, as an alternative to a US-brokered nuclear power deal which collapsed in 2002. The offer came as diplomats prepared to resume six-nation talks on the North's nuclear programme later this month.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told a news conference that the power proposal would supply the same amount of electricity that the North would have received if two light-water reactors being built by an international consortium in the 1990s had been completed. That deal, known as the Agreed Framework, collapsed after Pyongyang allegedly admitted to the US in 2002 that it had a secret, enriched uranium programme.



China Key to New North Korea Talks
(Robert Marquand, Christian Science Monitor)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0712/p01s04-woap.html

Tuesday, July 12
For most of Kim Jong Il's reign in North Korea, relations between China and his isolated country have alternated between extreme suspicion and a grudging politeness based on mutual need.

The most intensive diplomacy between North Korea and China has taken place since Mr. Kim began to use his nuclear card two years ago. Now, as Kim agrees to rejoin the six-party talks in Beijing this month to discuss eliminating his nuclear-weapons program, many experts say that relations between the two states are ever more important.

China, in fact, has profited greatly from its role in the talks: It has drawn closer to both North and South Korea as a result of negotiations, while Washington has not.



N. Korea Takes Pride in Arsenal
(Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...l=la-home-world

Monday, July 11
From a glance at the tumbledown villages and the rusted-out railroad equipment, it would seem the North Koreans don't have much to boast about. But if there is one undisputed point of pride in this country with a per capita income among the lowest in the world, it is the nuclear bomb.

To many North Koreans, the development of nuclear weapons vaults them into an exclusive club with the United States and China and the other great powers of the world.



U.S. Open to Ties with North Korea
(Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times)
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20050711-120417-4958r.htm

Monday, July 11
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday left open the door to establishing diplomatic ties with North Korea if it abandons its nuclear ambitions.

She tempered this first for the Bush administration, however, by cautioning that the North's return to six-party talks on its nuclear program is not yet cause for celebration.



Missile Defense Woes Hamper Future Tests
(Associated Press)
http://washingtontimes.com/national/200507...10041-4190r.htm

Monday, July 11
Flight tests of the nation's missile defense system will not resume until this fall at the earliest as the military revamps the program after two failures in the past seven months, a military official says. The delay further hampers Pentagon efforts to validate a multibillion-dollar program that supporters say will help protect the nation from ballistic missiles such as those being deployed by North Korea and other nuclear-armed rogue states.

Even though the military occasionally activates interceptor bases in Alaska and California, they are not on around-the-clock alert as envisioned. The system has not had a successful intercept of a target since October 2002. Three tests have ended in failure. The Bush administration had said the system would be working by the end of 2004.

An independent review, performed this year for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, suggested that the rush to deploy the defenses led to inadequate quality control during the tests.



IAEA: More Questions on Iran Nuclear Program
(Paul Kerr, Arms Control Today)
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_07-08/IAEA_Iran.asp

July/August 2005
Shortly before Iran elected a new president, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials reported that Tehran had still not resolved several outstanding issues about its nuclear programs. Iran has, however, continued to adhere to its November promise to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. After meeting with the IAEA Board of Governors, agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters June 17 that Iran has been "a bit slow" to provide relevant information but expressed hope that some of the issues will be resolved by September.

Since beginning an investigation in 2002, the IAEA has revealed that Tehran conducted a variety of clandestine nuclear activities in violation of its safeguards agreement. Such agreements require states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to allow the agency to monitor their declared civilian nuclear activities to ensure that they are not diverted to military use.

South Korea Offers To Supply Energy if North Gives Up Arms

By Glenn Kessler

SEOUL, July 12 -- South Korea has offered to supply the North with electric power equivalent to the output of two unfinished nuclear plants if the communist state gives up its nuclear weapons, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200...20581611960.htm

S Korea to Purchase US Spy Aircraft

By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The Defense Ministry has officially requested the United States sell its high-altitude, long-range surveillance aircraft as part of its mid to long-term arms acquisition plan, ministry officials said Tuesday.


The request was made at a subpanel session of an annual defense ministerial meeting between South Korea and the U.S., called the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), in Hawaii last month, officials said. The two allies are scheduled to hold the SCM in October.


The South Korean delegates asked the U.S. to consider selling its Global Hawks, high-flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), during the sub-panel session, adding that the U.S. has yet to make any official response.


By an international pact, the U.S. is required to receive government and Congressional approval to sell Global Hawks to other countries, as the spy aircraft is a key U.S. strategic weapon. The U.S. government approved the sale of the Global Hawk to Japan last month.


Under its five-year arms buildup plan to enhance a Ў°selfreliantЎ± defense capability, the ministry plans to purchase four high-altitude UAVs by 2008, while producing four other medium- altitude UAVs by 2016 with the countryЎЇs own technology.


The Global Hawk can fly autonomously at an altitude of 20 kilometers (65,000 feet) above inclement weather and prevailing winds for more than 35 hours, with its computer guidance system.


During a single mission, it covers an area approximately half the size of the United States, providing detailed image-based intelligence of 40,000 square miles. The 13.5-meter-long air vehicle can move at a maximum speed of 635 kilometers per hour. It costs some $45 million per unit.


South Korea is still technically in a state of war with North Korea, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 32,500 U.S. soldiers are stationed on the Korean Peninsula.



gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr

07-12-2005 21:00

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_7_12.html#7E386EBF

Book Offers More Careful View on Restricted Weapons
David Ruppe

WASHINGTON — Drawing lessons from mistaken conclusions about alleged prewar Iraqi arms, a newly revised book by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace aims to offer a more precise, better-supported assessment of global chemical, biological and nuclear arms capabilities (see GSN, Jan. 25).

A 2002 version of the book stated that Iraq likely had active nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, and that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons posed a more serious threat than those of any other country (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2002). A U.S.-led inspection team last year determined Iraq had no such weapons and that its unconventional weapons programs had not operated for years.

In Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, written by Joseph Cirincione, Jon Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar, government intelligence assertions are no longer taken at face value or repeated unchecked.

“The failure to find nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq underlined how little outsiders can know about what happens within member states without inspectors on the ground,” says the book, which was released today.

As in the previous edition, distinctions are made between capabilities for developing or producing arms, developmental programs, and actual weapons, as well as the degree to which such activities are suspected or confirmed.

“Milton Leitenberg points out that official assessments rarely distinguish between suspected, capability, developing, and weapon,” it says, citing a University of Maryland scholar.

The term “weapons of mass destruction,” so commonly used as shorthand for diverse chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, is discarded.

“A failure to differentiate these threats can lead to seriously flawed policy. For example, the repeated use of the term ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to describe the potential threat from Iraq before the 2003 war merged the danger that it still had anthrax-filled shells, which was possible, with the danger that it had nuclear bombs, which was highly unlikely,” they wrote.

The book is a 490-page update to the widely praised 2002 text, which presented what the authors deemed was the best publicly available information on global nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile programs.

The new edition meant to encourage a more precise public understanding and portrayal of suspected proliferation.

“I think we are mindful that the public perception and the public discussion about these issues has an influence on policy and we want to try and be as precise as possible in providing facts about these issues in order to produce better policy,” said Wolfsthal, deputy director for nonproliferation at the organization, in an interview.

Without really saying so, the book also aims to reform its own errors committed in the previous edition — in particular, by stating commonly accepted conclusions not sufficiently supported by available evidence.

“It’s something that we have talked about internally and I think did lead directly to the process and the method that we have in place,” Wolfsthal said.

“I don’t think it’s unfair to say that earlier editions of Deadly Arsenal did not provide precise enough data and in many ways simply took American intelligence documents as fully authoritative. And that’s something that is no longer done,” he said.

Versions of the book before 2002 were published under a different title.

Shifting Landscape

Many of the book’s updates result from the emergence of new facts, sometimes driven by major developments over the past three years, it says.

New chapters were written on Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and the global state of nonproliferation affairs.

“Since the first Deadly Arsenals came out in 2002, the landscape has entirely changed, so we’ve had to reflect that,” said Wolfsthal. “We talk about North Korea’s recent plutonium production and extraction, as well as the allegations about an HEU [highly enriched uranium] program,” he said.

“We catalogue as best we can Iran’s enrichment program, developed through the [former Pakistani nuclear weapons program leader] A.Q. Khan network, and provide up to date references and sources and details on that,” he added.

“It now appears that the entirety of their uranium enrichment program, which is the core of their alleged weapons pursuit, all came through Pakistan,” he said.

Following his detention by Pakistani authorities, Khan gave first details of years of nuclear transfers to Iran, Libya and North Korea in February 2004.

Avoiding the ‘Echo Box’

Other changes in the book result from more careful sourcing and drawing of conclusions about such weapons programs, according to Wolfsthal.

“While in the past we were willing to take U.S. intelligence assessments at face value, we now basically indicate ‘U.S. intelligence has indicated, or claims. However there is no corroborating evidence’ or ‘Secondary sources aren’t available,’” he said.

The impetus is so “people have the ability to assess these things for themselves, as opposed to falling into the echo box,” he said, providing a euphemism for oft-repeated, unsupported conventional wisdom.

The book is careful not to conclude the Pakistani proliferation network’s operation has necessarily ended.

“It is not clear if this network has shut down or merely gone further underground,” it says.

The book also is cautious not to conclude that North Korea has been able to build a nuclear weapon or, as the Bush administration has argued, that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program.

“Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, but for more than two decades Tehran has secretly pursued the ability to produce nuclear materials that can be used in weapons,” it says. “U.S. officials and intelligence services in several other nations have concluded that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapon program, although no direct evidence of weapon activities has been made public.”

The 2002 edition of Deadly Arsenals — published as the Bush administration was alleging an active Iraq nuclear weapons program as justification for possible military action — appeared to commit the “echo box” error repeatedly, stating for instance that Iraq probably had restarted a nuclear weapons program after U.N. inspectors withdrew in 1998.

“International inspectors destroyed most of Iraq’s nuclear program after the Gulf War, though it has most likely restarted since Iraq blocked inspections in 1998,” it said.

That edition also declared Iraq “the most serious proliferation threat” for biological weapons.

“Despite having signed the BWC [Biological Weapons Convention] in 1972 and ratified the accord in 1991, Iraq has clearly pursued an active bioweapons program,” it said.

It further listed Iraq at the top “in order of concern” of a list of 11 countries with the “most significant remaining national [chemical weapons] programs.”

A CIA-commissioned report last year concluded Iraq had no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs in the years prior to the March 2003 U.S. invasion.

“We drew conclusions that went beyond what the evidence supported,” Wolfsthal said, regarding the opening, analytical chapter of the 2002 Deadly Arsenals.

“There was a reflection of the public debate,” he said.

He said the technical analyses deeper in the book were more precise about what was known and not known about countries’ suspected activities.

“I think when we look at the detailed chapter on Iraq, I think we’re very comfortable about how we caveated it,” he said.

He added, “I don’t think anyone would suggest that we went as far as the administration and I think it matters not only what sort of conclusions you draw, but also what sort of recommendations you have.”

Cirincione and other Carnegie experts in a report in early 2003 disputed that Iraq posed an urgent threat to the United States warranting military attack.

“We were the only major organization that was questioning openly the Bush administration’s intelligence assessments and that we were actively pushing alternative to the military conflict in Iraq coercive inspections,” Wolfsthal said.

Will London wake up Canadians? … Canada is the only country on the al-Qaeda list that hasn’t been hit yet.
—Canadian Senator Colin Kenny, referring to an al-Qaeda document that lists Canada among the five Western countries the group considers its top targets for terrorist attacks.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young (left) discusses strategy for nuclear negotiations with Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung (center, sitting) yesterday in Seoul. Chung said yesterday that South Korea is willing to provide North Korea with electricity if Pyongyang agrees to disarm (Getty Imates/Jung Yeon-je).

North Korea Reportedly Restarts Work on Two Reactors

A North Korean nuclear reactor project could be completed by next year, and any military strike against the installation would result in “all-out war,” senior North Korean officials told a visiting U.S. newspaper columnist (see GSN, July 11).

North Korean Foreign Ministry official Li Gun said the 50-megawatt reactor would be “completed this year or next,” Nicholas Kristof wrote in today’s New York Times...Full Story



U.S. Health, Homeland Security Officials Defend Interagency Countermeasure Cooperation

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments are cooperating well and moving as quickly as they can in efforts to boost the nation’s WMD countermeasure stockpile, officials from the two agencies said today in response to legislators’ concerns (see GSN, June 17)...Full Story


Canada Needs More Terrorism Preparation, Critics Say

Despite spending more than $7.5 billion on security since 2001, Canada is ill prepared to respond to a potential terrorist attack, some critics say (see GSN, June 10).

The chairman of the Senate standing committee on national security and defense, Colin Kenny, said he hopes last week’s bombings in London will reinvigorate the effort.

“Will London wake up Canadians?” he said. “Canada is the only country on the al-Qaeda list that hasn’t been hit yet.”

Kenny was referring to an al-Qaeda document that listed Australia, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States as top targets, Macleans reported today.

Other Canadian officials disagreed that not enough has been done. Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Anne McLellan said Ottawa’s terrorism response planning has been comprehensive.

According to a report released last year by Kenny’s committee, however, Canada is not well prepared to deal with a variety of scenarios, including a crude nuclear device potentially going off in one of its major cities.

The report names the Vancouver area as a prime target for such an attack, with its population of about 2 million people and relatively few streets leading out of its downtown. While Vancouver has a comprehensive emergency plan, it emphasizes natural disasters and firefighting, the report says.

Authorities have attempted to guard against the scenario of terrorists smuggling a dirty bomb into the country through a seaport, but Kenny’s committee concluded that Canada’s ports are “riddled with criminals whose mission it is to open up holes for smuggling.”

In addition, many are now concerned about security in Canada’s subway systems, Macleans reported. For example, the relative depth of Montreal’s Charlevoix metro station — 30 meters from the lowest platform to street level — means it takes passengers more than three minutes to walk from the trains out into the open air.

There are comprehensive emergency response measures in place at the station, said Odile Paradis, spokeswoman for the Societe de Transport de Montreal. In the event of an attack on the metro, Montreal police would coordinate the response, she said.

In addition, Ottawa set up a government operations center to manage response to a potential attack in spring 2004. However, according to the Kenny report, “the center is a significant ways from completion in terms of having all the infrastructure, procedures and personnel it needs in place to match the government’s pledge” (Geddes/Gilles, Macleans, July 12).

Proliferation News: 14 July 2005
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

A Blinding Flash of Light
(Carnegie Analysis, Caterina Dutto)
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/npp/publi...a=view&id=17193

Thursday, July 14
The staggering 19-kiloton magnitude of the Trinity explosion surpassed even the expectations of Los Alamos Director J. Robert Oppenheimer. Sixty years ago this week, Los Alamos scientists tested the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The test, which General Leslie Groves described as "a blinding flash of light," was a milestone of the Manhattan Project, the first large-scale effort to build a nuclear bomb. The unqualified military and scientific achievement of the Trinity test led to the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cementing the decisive U.S. victory over Japan in World War II. Trinity brought to fruition the complex, multi-pronged effort to organize fissile materials production, perfect bomb designs, assemble the fissile materials in weapons, and stage the first successful test of an implosion-type weapon.



Nuclear Numbers, Then and Now
(Carnegie Analysis, Joshua Williams and Jane Vaynman)
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/npp/publi...a=view&id=17194

Thursday, July 14
On July 16, 1945, Manhattan Project scientists and officers watched their “gadget” explode in the New Mexico desert. Soon after, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. By 1949, the U.S. had 200 nuclear weapons. In that same year, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. By 1953, both the U.S. and the USSR had developed thermonuclear (or hydrogen) bombs that were roughly 1,000 times more powerful than fission weapons. The arms race had begun.

From one weapon 60 years ago to 27,600 today, the anniversary of the atomic age is a timely occasion to assess global nuclear arsenals. In this Carnegie analysis, we provide the most current data on the status of nuclear weapons worldwide, derived from Deadly Arsenals II.



Book Offers More Careful View on Restricted Weapons
(David Ruppe, Global Security Newswire)
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_7_12.html#7E386EBF

Tuesday, July 12
In Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, written by Joseph Cirincione, Jon Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar, government intelligence assertions are no longer taken at face value or repeated unchecked.

As in the previous edition, distinctions are made between capabilities for developing or producing arms, developmental programs, and actual weapons, as well as the degree to which such activities are suspected or confirmed.

The book is a 490-page update to the widely praised 2002 text, which presented what the authors deemed was the best publicly available information on global nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile programs. The new edition meant to encourage a more precise public understanding and portrayal of suspected proliferation.



National Security Watch: Banning WMD, the Acronym
(Terry Atlas, U.S. News & World Report)
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles...14/14natsec.htm

Thursday, July 14
By now, WMD—the acronym for weapons of mass destruction—is the widely accepted shorthand for referring to mankind's most deadly weaponry. But Joseph Cirincione, one of the nation's leading experts on weapons proliferation, says it's time to stop referring to WMDs.

"We believe that that phrase confuses officials, befuddles the public, and justifies policies that more precise language and more accurate assessments could not support," he says.



Rice Claims U.S. Role in Korean About-Face
(Joel Brinkley, New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/internat...sia/14rice.html

Thursday, July 14
Returning from a six-day trip to Asia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her aides said Wednesday that North Korea's decision to return to nuclear disarmament talks was a vindication of the Bush administration's strategy and not solely the result of a South Korean offer to provide the North with electricity.

While some Asian officials, and even some administration officials, say they believe that South Korea's surprise offer last month to wipe away the North's energy problems broke the stalemate, Ms. Rice played down its significance. She portrayed it as an elaboration of the offer that the United States made during the last negotiating session, in June 2004.

"It was really a part of the June proposal that somehow North Korea's energy needs would have to be dealt with," she said, speaking to reporters on her plane. "And, of course, the South Korean proposal addresses it in a major way."



U.S. Looking Determined to Make N. Korea Talks Work
(Carol Giacomo, Reuters)
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=...ec=Worldupdates

Thursday, July 14
The United States appears to be approaching the next round of North Korea nuclear talks with greater determination, flexibility and allied unity than at any time since U.S. President George W. Bush took office in 2001.

The initiative may offer the best shot at a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis in Bush's term but also could insulate the American leader if negotiations collapse, as many fear they will.

"The public relations spin the administration wants to project is that they ... are not going to let themselves be seen as the roadblock" to negotiations, said non-proliferatin expert Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.



Iranian Nuclear Negotiator Warning Europe of Resumed Atomic Effort
(Nazila Fathi, New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/internat...ast/13iran.html?

Wednesday, July 13
Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Tuesday.

The warning from the negotiators, Hossein Moussavian and Cyrus Nasseri, suggested a possible hardening of Iran's position before a meeting with Britain, Germany and France later this month. Iran had agreed to suspend its nuclear enrichment program in return for a proposal from the European countries on the long-term cooperation of the two sides over Iran's nuclear program. Iran has said the proposal must include a plan for it to pursue nuclear enrichment.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carnegie News:
Deadly Arsenals Launch: On Tuesday, July 12, Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar, the authors of the new Carnegie weapons atlas, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats, presented a new assessment of global proliferation dangers. Click here to visit a resource page with archived audio and a slideshow presentation with new maps and charts from the book.

2005 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference will take place on November 7-8 in Washington, D.C., at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center . This year’s conference, "Sixty Years Later," will look back on the six decades of the atomic age, and look forward to solutions for today’s proliferation challenges, including Iran and North Korea. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will once again be one of the keynote speakers at the conference, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is organizing the closing plenary panel featuring Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, and a gala reception celebrating the Bulletin's 60 years of publication. Save the date! Visit our web site for updates on the conference agenda and registration information.

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http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6691

US Proliferation Rhetoric and Reality
What's fine for India is forbidden Iran
Gordon Prather
July 18, 2005

Last year, President Bush made a number of proposals to "strengthen" the existing weapons of mass destruction proliferation-prevention regime.

He proposed expanding his Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to interdict what he deems to be illicit transfers by "proliferation networks." He urged the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution criminalizing such illicit international transfers, thereby presumably legitimizing his PSI.

The president specifically urged the Nuclear Suppliers Group to close a loophole in the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons by arbitrarily limiting transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technology by NSG members to those states that already possess them.

Established in 1975, the Nuclear Suppliers Group is comprised of 44 nuclear-supplier states, including China, Russia, and the United States, that have voluntarily agreed to coordinate their export controls governing transfers of civilian nuclear material and nuclear-related equipment and technology to non-nuclear-weapon states.

NSG members are expected to forgo nuclear trade with governments that do not subject themselves to the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards regime. The IAEA has accepted the responsibility for verifying that NSG exports are not used by the importing state for any military purpose.

The NSG has two sets of guidelines listing the specific nuclear materials, equipment, and technologies that are subject to export controls.

Part I comprises materials and technology designed specifically for nuclear use, including fissile materials, nuclear reactors and associated equipment, and nuclear material reprocessing and enrichment equipment.

Part II comprises dual-use equipment that could have nuclear applications.

To be eligible for importing Part I items from an NSG member, states – irrespective of whether they are NPT signatories or not – must have in place a comprehensive IAEA Safeguards Agreement covering all their nuclear activities and facilities.

In the case of Part II equipment, IAEA safeguards are only required for the specific nuclear activity or facility where the NSG import will be employed.

India's Prime Minister comes to Washington this week to meet with President Bush with the hope – engendered by Condi Rice's recent visit to New Delhi – that Bush will intercede with the NSG and get them to relax the current requirement that they make subject to a full-scope IAEA Safeguards Agreement all their nuclear equipment and facilities – including that in India's nuclear weapons program.

Condi had whizzed down to New Delhi earlier this year to prevent India from finalizing technical and commercial contracts for a $4.5 billion natural-gas pipeline that will provide Iranian natural gas mostly to India.

What carrot did Condi offer the Indians to prevent their finalizing the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline deal?

You guessed it. The possibility the U.S. would lift sanctions imposed on India as a result of the 1998 nuclear weapons tests, supply India with additional nuclear power plants and the fuel therefor, and waive NSG guidelines on those exports.

The Indians have taken several steps to assure the U.S. and the NSG that they will not divert any of the fissile materials, nuclear reactors, and associated equipment they are allowed to import to a military purpose.

India also enacted the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems Act to "provide an integrated legislative basis to India's commitment to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." The act applies to the export, transfer, re-transfer, transit, and transshipment of material, equipment, or technology relating to weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery.

Now, the U.S. had put great pressure on Russia to apply the NSG guidelines to the construction of the first two nuclear power plants at Koodankulam. Russia successfully argued that the original contract was signed in 1988, before the new and more stringent NSG guidelines came into force in 1992.

The U.S. even attempted to prevent refu