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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Blix hails 'positive' Bushehr plant launch

2010-08-23

One day after Iran launched its first nuclear power plant, former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has hailed "positive" cooperation between Tehran and Moscow. Iran began injecting the first supply of nuclear fuel into the Bushehr nuclear power plant on Saturday, after Russia delivered its first batch of nuclear fuel. The fact that Russia is supplying Iran with fuel is "very positive," as it demonstrates that Tehran could rely on foreign suppliers for its fuel need, Blix told the BBC on Sunday. The remarks came on the heel of similar claims by State Department spokesman Darby Holladay. Holladay acknowledged that the Iranian nuclear facility carries no risk of proliferation but stressed that launching the power plant "underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful." The west insists that Iran should exchange its low-enriched uranium abroad for fuel for a medical research reactor. However, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi has rejected such claims. "Suppose we receive the required nuclear fuel for the plant from the Russians for the next ten years, what are we going to do for the next 30 to 50 years?" the Iranian nuclear point man queried on Saturday. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that they do not "trust" the West and cannot rely on it for nuclear fuel supply. Israel and its allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program through its enrichment program. Tehran rejects the accusations, arguing that as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has the right to peaceful nuclear energy.

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Britain

Extremist threat rose after Iraq war: ex-MI5 chief

2010-07-20

Iraq posed little threat to Britain just before the 2003 invasion -- but the danger of extremist attacks surged afterwards, a former head of the MI5 security service told an inquiry Tuesday. Eliza Manningham-Buller, chief of the domestic intelligence agency from 2002 to 2007, also dismissed any connection between Iraq and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. She was giving evidence at Britain's public inquiry into the war in Iraq, which has heard from figures including former prime minister Tony Blair, who was in power when the country joined the US-led invasion. Manningham-Buller said that in 2002, MI5 had advised Blair's government that the "direct threat" from Iraq was "low". "We did think that Saddam Hussein might resort to terrorism in the theatre if he thought his regime was toppled but we didn't believe he had the capability to do anything in the UK," she said. But MI5 "did not foresee" the number of Britons who became involved in extremist plots at home -- such as the July 7, 2005 bombings in London which killed 52 people -- following the conflict, she said. "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised... a few among a generation -- who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam," she said. "During 2003-04, we realised that the focus was not foreigners. The rising and increasing threat was a threat from British citizens and that was a very different scenario to, as it were, stopping people coming in." She said MI5 was not "surprised" that British nationals were involved in terror plots. "There had been an increasing number of British born individuals... who were attracted to the ideology of Osama bin Laden and saw the West's activities in Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their fellow religionists and the Muslim world," she said. "So it undoubtedly increased the threat." Manningham-Buller also said there was "no credible intelligence" linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks. "There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection. That was the judgment of the CIA. It was not a judgement that found favour in some parts of the American machine," she said. She added that MI5 had been asked to contribute to the government's contentious 2002 dossier on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, but declined. "We were asked to put in some low-grade, small intelligence to it and we refused because we didn't think it was reliable," she said. The probe is due to report by the end of the year and will hear from former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix as well as senior military figures next week.

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International-UN-NGOs

Candidates to succeed ElBaradei review agendas before IAEA governors

2009-05-27

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors is to convene in a closed session Tuesday for presentations by the five candidates nominated to succeed current IAEA Chairman, Dr. ElBaradei. Diplomatic sources told KUNA the top three candidates are Jean-Pol Poncelet of Belgium, Ernest Petric of Slovenia, and Luis Echavarri of Spain. Diplomatic sources told KUNA the top three candidates are Jean-Pol Poncelet of Belgium, Ernest Petric of Slovenia, and Luis Echavarri of Spain. The other two candidates hoping to succeed ElBaradei next fall are Yukiya Amano of Japan and Abdul Samad Minty of South Africa. The last two have vied for the post but failed to secure the required two-thirds of the vote within the Board of Governors in an extraordinary session in late March. The board is still to set a date for a new deliberation and vote and the item is to be listed on the agenda of the regular meeting due in mid June. The IAEA's Statute states "The staff of the Agency shall be headed by a Director General. The Director General shall be appointed by the Board of Governors with the approval of the General Conference for a term of four years. He shall be the chief administrative officer of the Agency." This means the chief has to be named no later than June so that the annual General Conference in September may approve the appointment. In the March extraordinary session, the Japanese candidate secured 23, 22, and then just 19 out of 35 votes in the first, second, and third deliberation. The South African figure meanwhile secured 12, 12, and then 15 votes. The IAEA plays a vital role in encouraging member states to pursue peaceful use of nuclear technology, monitoring nuclear facilities and activity worldwide, verifying non-violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and ascertaining there are no un-declared nuclear programs. Established in 1953, the IAEA now has a staff of 2,200 from 90 countries and an annual budget of some USD 290 million. Dr. ElBaradei is the IAEA's fourth Director General since 1997. He was first appointed to the office effective December 1997, and reappointed in 2001 and 2005. The 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate follows Hans Blix (1981-1997); Sigvard Eklund (1961-1981); and Sterling Cole (1957-1961).

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China-Japan-Koreas

Patience with Pyongyang - Hans Blix

2009-04-06

It happens that desperadoes hold groups of people hostage - for instance in planes or banks. Sometimes the police or military take some quick action or try some ruse to remove the danger. Sometimes they refrain from moving an inch for fear that hostages will be killed or some disastrous explosion set off. They may seek to talk the desperado out of his corner, perhaps offer to fly a plane hijacker to another destination after releasing his hostage. In many cases, they simply wait. Often - but not always - tiredness and exhaustion bring an end without drama. Are we in a similar situation with North Korea? The big powers recognise that the threat or use of military power is not an option. Actions against key targets in North Korea could hardly be quick enough to prevent the regime inflicting horrible damage on South Korea and perhaps Japan. It need not use nuclear weapons. Seoul is within artillery range from the North. A sudden collapse of the North Korean state would also be a nightmare. So what about talking? It has been done with varying success for many years and will no doubt be continued. The US has sometimes voiced threats and increased pressures, and usually thereby made the situation more dangerous. However, even during the Bush administration (second term), the US seems to have concluded that to talk North Korea out of its nuclear programme the regime must be offered something that is more useful to it than nuclear weapons and missile programmes. Conversely, the regime knows that for doing away with these programmes, it can demand a great deal. Over the years, the North Korean regime has had good reasons to fear efforts to eliminate it through actions from outside - military attacks or subversive activities. It seems wise, therefore, that guarantees against such actions may have been placed on the table. For the North Korean government, the question may be what offers the best security - nuclear weapons of their own or a piece of paper. Perhaps a piece of paper could be made more attractive if it were signed by all the relevant great powers and combined with a peace treaty. Perhaps it would also be more credible if it were offered in the margin of the revival of international nuclear disarmament. While allowing civilian nuclear power and guaranteeing access to uranium fuel, it would have to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons, enrichment of uranium, and reprocessing on the whole Korean peninsula. The North Korean regime has often been isolated and ostracised. Although there have been good reasons for this, the country may well have felt humiliated. Against that background, the offer of diplomatic relations with the US and Japan, and normal relations with the world at large, may have considerable value as a part of a quid pro quo for dismantling the nuclear weapons programme and for other forms of engagement, for instance against the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology. Many other offers can and are already part of the sweet talk: food and economic assistance of various kinds, and energy assistance - oil and perhaps a resumption of the construction of the two light-water reactors that were part of the 1994 agreed framework. There may be limits to the persuasive power of the Chinese government, but it is significant - and there can be no doubt that Beijing has an enormous interest in using it. A nuclear-capable North Korea shooting missiles over Japan could push Tokyo in a direction that would sharply increase tensions with China. So while the security council and everybody else will condemn the latest North Korean missile tests, a resumption of the talks will be sought rather than more sanctions. Perhaps President Carter will go again to Pyongyang, reminding Kim Jong-il and the regime of the wishes of Kim Il-sung. We must hope that in the six-power talks formulas are found that can bring sufficient benefits to all sides. Such formulas are unlikely to include sufficient inspection to guarantee that no undeclared fissile material is hidden but must have guarantees against any capability to produce more such material. And what if nothing is enough to persuade the North Korean regime? If it fears that nothing but a continued demonstration of its nuclear weapons and missile power will guarantee its existence? Then we shall have to be patient, seek to prevent proliferation, and wait for another day. Hans Blix is chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and former head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq secretariat@wmdcommission.org Hans, about that UN Security Council condemnation.... anything forthcoming?

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International-UN-NGOs

This is Obama's chance to leave the world a lasting legacy

2008-12-14

By HELEN CALDICOTT AND TIM WRIGHT US President-elect Barack Obama has shown he has the power to change hearts and minds. Soon he'll also have the power to render the planet dead and uninhabitable for the rest of time with just the press of a button. Despite the end of the Cold War, the United States still maintains a supersized arsenal of 10,000 nuclear warheads, more than half of them deployed, and about a quarter of them on hair-trigger alert. And yet strangely, we've only used two of them in all our history. Neither Helen nor Tim were born yet when we did so, but they might ask Grandpa, the quiet, quaint fellow with the limp and the scar, as to why we did ... They come at a whopping cost of $US50 billion ($A76 billion) a year, roughly the amount needed to pay for universal health care for every US citizen. Oh yeah, right. $50 billion is a pittance as to health care needs if we sign up for Obama-care. Most of America's nuclear weapons are hundreds of times more powerful than the two atom bombs that obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Each of them directly threatens global security and human survival. As opposed to the Iranian nukes? Or the Russian nukes? No doubt Rantburgers can see who and what Helen and Tim are at this point. No doubt Barack Obama will find it more than a tad discomforting when, come January, he's granted this incredible power. Unlike the last three Oval Office occupants, he believes that the world would be better off without nuclear weapons. This is, of course, rubbish. We'd all like a world without nukes, except that we wouldn't like very much the world that would come about without nukes. In his race for the top job, he told a crowd of adoring fans that the elimination of nuclear weapons ''is profoundly in America's interest and the world's interest'', and he committed to make abolition a ''central element of US nuclear policy'' which has generated great hope among anti-nuclear campaigners everywhere. Hope to be dashed real soon now, just ask the Kos Kiddies ... But words must be met with action. Not true, ask any UN diplomat ... And it's too soon to know if Obama has it in him to steer the world towards sanity and survival. He has hopes and good wishes. Whether he has anything else we'll see, but I personally doubt it ... Will he be courageous enough to take on the military-industrial complex which stands solidly in his way? And does he have the knack to persuade other countries, in particular Russia, to jump aboard the disarmament bandwagon? He'll just look into Putin's eyes, won't he ... Clearly, the two Cold War foes have a special responsibility to lead the charge on eliminating nuclear weapons because together they possess 95 per cent of global stockpiles. As a first step, they need to end the lunacy of keeping their weapons on high-alert status, followed immediately by deep and irreversible cuts in the size of their arsenals. Attention, Helen and Tim: we've already cut our stocks substantially. We're still working to dispose of the fissible material generated from the last round of decommissioning, especially in Russia. Why don't you do something useful like persuade Iran to stop their head-long rush to get a bomb? At the earliest opportunity, all countries should come together to negotiate a new multilateral treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons, as proposed by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. It would be similar in form to laws already banning biological weapons, chemical weapons, landmines and cluster bombs. Obama could make this happen. No he couldn't. We haven't foresworn landmines and cluster bombs ourselves. Unlike the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the new protocol would include mechanisms to verify compliance. Like those we currently use for Iran and North Korea ... Importantly, it would also require the same of all nuclear-armed states meaning there's no good reason why countries like Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea shouldn't join. Of course there's good reason! What idiots. We don't have tension because we have nuclear weapons. We have nuclear weapons because we have tension. Pakistan and India developed nukes because they each wanted the ultimate counter to the other. North Korea wants nukes because it allows them to extend their national policy of threats and altercations. Iran wants nukes because it wants to be the undisputed leader of the Islamic world -- and because it wants to nuke Israel. Israel, in turn, has nukes to ensure that none of its neighbors get too frisky. Those are all good reasons why these countries won't join -- good reasons as far as THEY are concerned. Commendably, the Australian Labor Party promised before last year's federal election that in government it would ''drive the international agenda for a nuclear weapons convention''. But it hasn't followed through, choosing instead to continue the usual mantra of countries with powerful nuclear-armed allies like the US: it's too soon to be thinking about an abolition treaty. Many pundits resolutely disagree. If only we had a world run by pundits ... The influential Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which was headed by former UN weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix, argued in its 2006 report: ''A key challenge is to dispel the perception that outlawing nuclear weapons is a utopian goal. A nuclear disarmament treaty is achievable and can be reached through careful, sensible and practical measures.'' If only we had a world run by Mr. Magoo ... This October, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the idea of a new treaty in his UN Day speech, and the Dalai Lama had earlier said that a nuclear weapons convention is ''feasible, necessary and increasingly urgent''. Indeed, if we're to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and avert nuclear catastrophe elimination through a binding treaty is our only option. Now is the time to pursue it. The big issue, of course, is how you ensure that no one cheats. If there is a 'ban' on nuclear weapons, and everyone else complies, and you keep ten locked away in a cellar, you have a substantial advantage you can then use. And the fear of that keeps all the other nuclear powers from disarming. So good luck ... All countries have a legal obligation, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law, to achieve nuclear disarmament. It cannot be postponed indefinitely. This is the ruling of the world's highest court, the International Court of Justice. There is no 'customary international law'. And the ICJ is a joke, invented by Europeans and leftists to perpetuate their colonial rule on the rest of the world. The global environment is right for change. Opinion polls in Europe and the US show that the overwhelming majority of people want nuclear weapons abolished, once and for all. We also want a chicken in every pot. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. We had nuclear weapons in the Cold War to ensure that the Soviets would not invade Europe. We have nuclear weapons today because, in the end, it's in our best interests to have the ultimate counter. And hard-hitting military honchos have started questioning the usefulness of these weapons in an age of terrorism. Said honchos aren't named, but most military people aren't a fan of nuclear weapons. That doesn't mean we should eliminate them, even as we recognize that we won't nuke terrorists. History will judge Barack Obama, the next American leader, by his success or failure on this crucial issue. Ridding the planet of nuclear weapons the ultimate instruments of terror could be his single most important legacy. If that's what his legacy depends on, he's in trouble. He might wish to settle for George Bush's legacy: freeing 50 million people from tyranny. Dr Helen Caldicott is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in Washington. Tim Wright is president of the Peace Organisation of Australia. And both are useless idiots ...

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran: We will not suspend enrichment

2008-10-03

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA says there is no technical or legal justification for Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities. Even if there were countries that would provide Iran with power plants and nuclear fuel, we would not be able to trust that they would fully meet their commitment, Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh told Press TV in an exclusive interview. His remarks came after Western media outlets misquoted him as saying that Iran would consider suspending uranium enrichment if it would receive firm guarantees of nuclear fuel delivery to the country. "A leading Iranian nuclear envoy on Thursday suggested the country could reconsider its uranium enrichment program if it gets cast-iron guarantees of regular international fuel supplies for its nuclear power plants," AFP reported, citing Soltaniyeh as saying after attending a conference in Brussels. The Iranian official responded, however, in a telephone interview with Press TV, saying that Western countries have not fulfilled their previous promises and agreements and have violated their contractual obligations. "I reject whatever is reflected otherwise," he continued. When I was asked about how Tehran would respond if various countries promise to provide guarantees, I repeated two or three times (at the conference in Brussels) that I was talking about the lack of internationally negotiated consensus over supply assurance, he explained. Former director general of the UN nuclear watchdog Hans Blix, who also attended the conference, reportedly told the Iranian nuclear envoy that Iran has every right to doubt Western guarantees. According to Soltaniyeh, Blix was well aware that America had failed to fulfill a previous contractual obligation toward Iran by rejecting to provide the country with reactor fuel or compensation. "Hans Blix said this is further indication that Iran has the right not to trust the West," Soltaniyeh said. Western powers accuse Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of seeking nuclear weaponry.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Diplomats say UN probe of Iran nukes a failure

2008-05-21

But, but, Hans Blix thinks everything is just fine! And what about the NIE? And besides, Obama says they aren't much of a threat in any case! Oh, whatever shall I believe? Iran has stymied the latest U.N. attempt to investigate allegations that it tried to make nuclear weapons, diplomats said Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, will acknowledge it was unable to follow up on the allegations in a report to be presented as early as Friday to its 35-nation board, two diplomats told The Associated Press. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei expressed optimism a month ago when he announced that Iran agreed to review intelligence collected by the U.N. agency, just a few weeks after Tehran had declared the books closed on any attempt to look into its alleged nuclear arms programs. "By the end of May we will be in a position to get the explanation and clarification from Iran" about the allegations, ElBaradei said then, describing Tehran's apparent change of heart as a "positive step." But the diplomats said Iran had again rejected the evidence presented by agency officials as bogus and refused to hold further discussions or allow U.N. experts to check into the charges. In February, IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen detailed the intelligence — and the results of the agency's own investigations — to the board at a closed door presentation. Those present at the meeting said the material included an Iranian video depicting mock-ups of a missile re-entry vehicle. They said Heinonen suggested the component was configured in a way that strongly suggested it was meant to carry a nuclear warhead. A senior diplomat at the meeting also said other documentation showed the Iranians experimenting with warheads and missile trajectories where "the height of the burst ... didn't make sense for conventional warheads." On Monday, ElBaradei said again that "we haven't seen indications or any concrete evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon." But a senior diplomat familiar with the IAEA's work recently told AP that leading agency experts considered much of the intelligence forwarded by the U.S and other nations compelling evidence that Iran engaged in secret nuclear arms work. The two diplomats, who agreed to discuss the new report Tuesday only if granted anonymity because the information was confidential, said Iranian officials reiterated during the monthlong probe their longtime position that all of the nuclear activities — including nearly two decades of clandestine work discovered only six years ago — was peaceful. One of the diplomats, who provided extensive details of the pending report, said that stance left the situation stalled. As expected, the report, which will serve as the platform for debate on Iran during the IAEA's June board meeting, will also confirm that Tehran continues to defy U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment. That refusal has drawn three sets of U.N. sanctions. Still, the diplomats said, the report will also note the enrichment program has not been greatly expanded despite pronouncements to the contrary by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In announcing major progress in Iran's push for nuclear power, Ahmadinejad said last month that Iranian scientists were putting 6,000 new uranium enriching centrifuges into place, about twice the existing number, and testing a new type that works five times faster. But the diplomat who provided details on the report said it will say the rate of expansion has been much below that touted by Ahmadinejad. He and other diplomats close to the IAEA previously said Iran has exaggerated its progress and is having problems operating the 3,000 centrifuges already in place. Additionally, the diplomat speculated Tuesday that Iran might be holding back on a quick build-up of enrichment capabilities hoping it will be easier to come to terms with the U.S. administration that will succeed President Bush, known for his hard-line Iran policies. Iran insists its enrichment program is meant only to generate electricity using nuclear reactors. But because of its past clandestine activities, including some that could have applications for weapons research, the international community is concerned that Tehran wants to enrich uranium to a purity suitable for use in atomic bombs. Iran is known to have a little more than 3,000 centrifuges operating at its underground nuclear facility in Natanz. That is the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program that is past the experimental stage and can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program that could churn out enough enriched material for dozens of nuclear warheads over time. Iran has said it plans to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment that ultimately will involve 54,000 centrifuges. If it doesn't have most them in operation already, that is.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Blix: West approach to Iran 'hypocritical'

2008-05-15

Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix hammers world powers for their 'hypocritical' approach to the Islamic Republic's nuclear issue. In a recent interview with Channel Four News, Blix said the West's approach to Tehran's nuclear standoff is in marked contrast to that of North Korea. "The North Koreans have been offered guarantees against any attacks from outside, the Iranians have not been offered this as far as we know, nor have they been offered diplomatic relations which the North Koreans have been," said the former IAEA chief. "When you see talks now with the North Korean and the Iranian, they sit there and are told by the US and other, who retain all these weapons, you should not have all these nuclear weapons, that it is a danger for you, it is not a danger for us, it is for the safety of the world that is very hypocritical," Blix affirmed.

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Iraq

Ex-chief weapons inspector slams Iraq war as 'tragedy'

2008-03-20

Looks like Hans takes his job too seriously and can't see past Hussein's intentional misrepresentations, or the fact that WMD was only one facet of the whole problem in any case. Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, slammed the Iraq war as a "tragedy" and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts, in a comment piece published Thursday. You mean ignoring the facts according to a dictator known to be a pathological liar? Saddam was playing all sorts of games at the time, as evidenced by statements that he made in captivity that he didn't think the US or the Coalition had the cajones to attack. He got what his ignorance asked for. Writing in The Guardian on the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, described the war as "a tragedy -- for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity." How many Iraqis was Saddam killing each year on the average? How many Kurds had he gassed? How hard did the US have to work to keep him off the Kurds? What would have happened if we had walked away? Does this have anything to do with human dignity? In the sub-headline to the comment piece, Blix, who headed the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, wrote that responsibility for the war "must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago". How do you ignore the IA sterilizing every suspected WMD site as fast as the slides are put up for display? At the time of the Iraq war, Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" -- traces of which have never been found. Apparently we aren't going to discuss all the precursors that I understand were found all over the place? In his comment piece, he said the war was a "setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states" and added that in 2003, "Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody." Except Kuwait. And Iran. And SA. and Israel. And anyone who depended on ME oil. Blix wrote that had coalition troops not deposed Saddam, "he would, in all likelihood, have become another Kadhafi or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world." Let's ask Kuwaitis how they would feel about putting Saddam et. al. back in power. He said that one positive sign to emerge from the conflict was that "it may be that the spectacular failure of ensuring disarmament by force, and of introducing democracy by occupation, will work in favour of a greater use of diplomacy and 'soft power'." Means a lot coming from a milktoast who can't find his a$$ with both hands.

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Science & Technology

A Strange Little Company

2008-02-21

(Does anything about this little start-up impress you as 'odd'?) "Thorium Power, Ltd., a development stage company, engages in the development, promotion, and marketing of nuclear fuel designs in the United States. It primarily develops thorium/weapons-grade plutonium disposing fuel, thorium/reactor-grade plutonium disposing fuel, and thorium/uranium nuclear fuel." Headquarters: McLean, VA "Thorium Power Appoints Dr. Hans Blix as Senior Advisor" "...the leading developer of low-waste, non-proliferative nuclear fuel technology for existing and future reactors, today announced that a new formal agreement has been reached with Russia's Kurchatov Institute relating to the irradiation testing program for the Company's fuel designs, which has been ongoing since 2002. The agreement assigns to Thorium Power Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Thorium Power, Ltd., the worldwide rights, title and interest in and to the technical data generated from the ampoule irradiation testing of seed and blanket fuel samples in the Kurchatov research reactor over the past two years."

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

El-Baradei: Bombing Iran Will Cause Proliferation

2007-12-02

The USG Open Source Center Again, material translated by US officials is excluded from all but a few academics, most of whom are leftists like Juan Cole, who filter it to advance their own agenda. Ignorance in not an asset. "I hope that what was done in Iraq will not be repeated. We have all learned a lesson and I hope with all my strength that the situation in Iran will be resolved diplomatically," (said) Egypt's Mohamed ElBaradei, who is now in Buenos Aires and gave an exclusive interview to Clarin yesterday afternoon, is at the center of a storm and is working against the clock. ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is supervising the Iranian (nuclear development) plan, and he is also under pressure from the United States and its allies to harden his stance toward Tehran. Both the United States and Israel have sharply attacked the IAEA report on Iran. (Nestor Restivo) Washington was highly critical of you and of UN inspector Hans Blix when you both denied that Saddam Husayn had weapons of mass destruction. Then the United States invaded Iraq. Is this is a similar scenario?/ (Mohamed ElBaradei) In both cases it is our duty to work with objectivity. I hope that there is no parallel (between these two cases) and that we have all learned a lesson. Despite all of our differences, I do believe that everyone sees a single solution for Iran: diplomacy. (Restivo) But you know that the military option is on the table... (ElBaradei) That would not solve anything. On the contrary, it would delay the Iranian plan but in the end it would not produce a lasting solution and would generate more problems in a region that is already a huge mess, the Middle East. There is no 100 percent guarantee, but we also do not have data indicating to us that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. But we do need an additional protocol about its new facilities. (Restivo) Is it helpful for the United States or Israel to be talking about a military option? Why would Iran allow more inspections if they (the facilities inspected) might eventually become military targets? (ElBaradei) Diplomacy has more to do with pressures, sanctions, and incentives for good behavior than with force. It used to be said that diplomacy was war waged by other means, but that ended with the UN Charter, which only allows war for self-defense, in the case of an imminent threat, or if the Security Council approves it. The use of force would put pressure on Iran to manufacture nuclear weapons, while right now it does not have large industrial facilities in operation. What Iran has is a nascent and small nuclear enrichment plan. But when a country is threatened it generally ends up with a military system... Okay, the bomb-and-nation-build option is off the table. We bomb until locals are strong enough to bomb for us.

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Iraq

Shattering Conventional Wisdom About Saddam's WMD's

2007-11-16

By John Loftus We live in an age of documents. There are no more secrets, only deferred disclosures. Saddam Hussein's secret documents are measured by the shelf-mile and stored inside a secure but dusty facility near U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and in several subsidiary sites. Armed guards protect the unread dossiers. Three shifts of two hundred translators each work around the clock. Perhaps 5% of these captured documents have been studied so far, but their contents are about to shatter much of the conventional wisdom concerning Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The absolutists on either side of the WMD debate will be more than a bit chagrinned at the disclosures. The documents show a much more complex history than previously suspected. The "Bush lied, people died" chorus has insisted that Saddam had no WMD whatsoever after 1991 - and thus that WMD was no good reason for the war. The Neocon diehards insist that, as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the treasure-trove is still out there somewhere, buried under the sand dunes of Iraq.[1] Each side is more than a little bit wrong about Saddam's WMD, and each side is only a little bit right about what happened to it. The gist of the new evidence is this: roughly one quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990's. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid to late 1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003, but were stolen from under the Americans’ noses and sent to Syria. Syria is one of eight countries in the world that never signed a treaty banning WMD, and now is the storehouse for much of what remains of Saddam's WMD Empire. This was the target of the recent Israeli air strike. There are only a few people in the world who were close to being right all along about Saddam's WMD. One of them was Yossef Bodansky, a noted intelligence analyst and former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.[2] On page 496 of Bodansky’s book, "The Secret History of the Iraq War" he makes the astounding assertion that: ".. .The United States had long known that Saddam moved virtually all production capabilities to Libya and Sudan somewhere between 1996 and 1998. Subsequently, in the summer of 2002, with Tehran's consent, the residual chemical weapons production capabilities were shipped to Iran..."[3] In other words, is Bodansky is right (and he usually is) as late as 2002, Saddam still retained a CW production capability and then sold it to the Iranians on the eve of war.[4] The CIA has now acknowledged that they had a highly-placed spy in Saddam's cabinet who agreed that Saddam had gotten rid of all of his production facilities, but the super spy claimed that Saddam still retained a lethal stockpile of finished chemical weapons in early 2003. The latter information, about the remaining CW stockpile, turns out to have been incorrect, but neither the CIA nor their Iraqi super spy knew it at the time.[5] After Saddam's brother-in-law Kemal Hussein defected to Jordan in the mid 1990's and exposed some (but not all) of the numerous Iraqi WMD programs, Saddam started over from scratch on WMD production, using a small and secret cadre of new program leaders. Among the newly-disclosed documents are Saddam's actual tape recordings of the meetings of this special group for WMD. The National Security Agency has confirmed[6] that the tapes are authentic and that the voiceprints are unquestionably those of Saddam and his elite WMD advisers. The CIA's super-spy, excluded from this working group, apparently did not know that it even existed. (His voice appears nowhere on the tapes.) He simply could not have known what Saddam was doing with his WMD programs, let alone with his CW stockpile.[7] Most of the audio recordings of the secret WMD group are undated, as the CD on which they were found is a compilation of tapes of various WMD meetings stretching over a decade. But their tone is consistent not only with other recorded WMD meetings but with the newly-released document intelligence archives, many of which are revealed here for the first time through the assistance of author and geopolitical analyst Mr. Ryan Mauro.[8] Mauro cautions that "the recently declassified documents have the potential to shatter any conclusions or judgments about what Saddam Hussein's regime was up to. Until all these documents are translated and analyzed, it is premature to reach any conclusion." Translating shelf miles of documents, however, may take decades. In the meantime, enough of Saddam's secret files have been translated to illustrate one clear trend over time: through the time of Hans Blix and the run-up to the invasion, Saddam had absolutely no intention of destroying his WMD. In the last year of his regime, Saddam was in fact still trying to expand his chemical weapons capability. In January 2002, his advisors discussed research into a precursor for Sarin nerve gas.[9] In September 2002, for example, only seven months before the war, Saddam's Military Industrial Commission approved the illegal production of the precursor chemicals used to make Tabun nerve gas.[10] Four days later, another office discussed plans to import a banned compound, phosphorus pentasulfate. The UN had required Iraq to prove that it had destroyed all of its stocks of this chemical, which is a precursor for VX nerve gas. Instead, they were importing more of it.[11] In October 2002, Saddam's Director of Planning ordered more than forty tons of various chemicals which, when mixed together, would make Zyclon B – the poison gas used by the Nazis to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust.[12] Saddam's scientists appear never to have met a poison gas they did not like. The secret planning for banned chemical weapons in 2002 was no last-minute decision of desperation on the eve of war. Rather, it typified Saddam's long, well-thought-out plan to deceive the UN – an ongoing project that went back more than a decade. For example, Saddam's intelligence service sent out a memo in 1997 ordering his staff not to destroy any WMD but to conceal prohibited materials, "hide equipment and documents....make sure that labs are cleaned of any traces of chemical or biological substances."[13] That was the real Saddam: hide the WMD documents, clean up the tell-tale evidence. Beginning in 1998, Saddam’s staff went into overdrive to conceal their illegal WMD programs: "The researchers [sic] that cannot be declared and that is related with the previous prohibited programs of WMD and how to make sure that information about these researchers will not leak to the outside world."[14] Files from 1999, marked “Top Secret”, confirm that the Iraqi army had a "chemical platoon" that was undergoing training in every form of illegal chemical weapons.[15] By 2001, the regime ensured that their chemical platoons had mobile shower vehicles for decontamination.[16] Similarly, the production of mobile labs (which the Duelfer report concluded had ended in 1997) were still being manufactured in 2002.[17] Rest at link.

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