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International-UN-NGOs
UN Security Council backs nuke test ban implementation
2016-09-24
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] With US Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
 invoking North Korea’s latest nuclear kaboom as a "reckless act of provocation," the UN Security Council on Friday approved a resolution urging quick global implementation of a treaty that would ban tests of such weapons.

Kerry said universal adoption of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would result in a "safer, more secure, and more peaceful planet," as the United States and 18 other council members approved the resolution, with none opposed and Egypt abstaining.

Proponents of nuclear disarmament welcomed the vote. The Washington-based Arms Control Association called it "a very important reaffirmation of the global taboo against nuclear weapon test kabooms and strong call for ratification" by key nations.

Security Council approval comes as the Comprehensive Test Ban Organization set up to administer the treaty marks its 20th anniversary. Yet Friday’s move was mostly symbolic.

The US remains one of the holdouts among the 44 countries that are designated "nuclear capable" - the United States, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistain - that still need to ratify the treaty for it to enter into force.

The UN’s CTBTO already polices the world for any sign of nuclear tests with a global network of monitoring stations that pick up seismic signals and gases released by such events. But until those eight countries embrace the treaty it is supposed to administer, it cannot go on site to inspect for tests.

The White House has lobbied Congress for support since anti-treaty minded Republicans rejected ratification 17 years ago under President Bill Clinton
...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of is...
, with Senate approval falling far short of the required two-thirds majority.

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Home Front: Politix
Obama plans major nuclear policy changes in his final months
2016-07-11
The Obama administration is determined to use its final six months in office to take a series of executive actions to advance the nuclear agenda the president has advocated since his college days. It’s part of Obama’s late push to polish a foreign policy legacy that is plagued by challenges on several other fronts.
Great. A nuclear policy conceived by a bunch of pot-addled college kids and not further developed since then. What could possibly go wrong?
President Obama announced his drive to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of them in his first major foreign policy speech, in Prague in 2009. In his first years, he achieved some successes, such as the New START treaty with Russia, the Nuclear Security Summits and the controversial Iran deal. But progress waned in the past year as more pressing crises commanded the White House's attention. Now, the president is considering using the freedom afforded a departing administration to cross off several remaining items on his nuclear wish list.

In recent weeks, the national security Cabinet members known as the Principals Committee held two meetings to review options for executive actions on nuclear policy. Many of the options on the table are controversial, but by design none of them require formal congressional approval. No final decisions have been made, but Obama is expected to weigh in personally soon.

"As we enter the homestretch of the Obama presidency, it's worth remembering that he came into office with a personal commitment to pursuing diplomacy and arms control," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told the Arms Control Association on June 6. "I can promise you today that President Obama is continuing to review a number of ways he can advance the Prague agenda over the course of the next seven months. Put simply, our work is not finished on these issues."

Several U.S. officials briefed on the options told me they include declaring a "no first use" policy for the United States' nuclear arsenal, which would be a landmark change in the country's nuclear posture. Another option under consideration is seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution affirming a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. This would be a way to enshrine the United States' pledge not to test without having to seek unlikely Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The administration is also considering offering Russia a five-year extension of the New START treaty's limits on deployed nuclear weapons, even though those limits don't expire until 2021. This way, Obama could ensure that the next administration doesn't let the treaty lapse. Some administration officials want to cancel or delay development of a new nuclear cruise missile, called the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon, because it is designed for a limited nuclear strike, a capability Obama doesn't believe the United States needs. Some officials want to take most deployed nukes off of "hair trigger" alert.

The administration also wants to cut back long-term plans for modernizing the nation's nuclear arsenal, which the Congressional Budget Office reports will cost about $350 billion over the next decade. Obama may establish a blue-ribbon panel of experts to examine the long-term budget for these efforts and find ways to scale it back.

Republican congressional leaders are already warning the administration not to use its final months to take actions they say would betray promises to Congress and weaken the United States' nuclear deterrent. On June 17, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote to Obama to warn him not to unravel their deal on nuclear modernization, which they said persuaded Congress to ratify New START. They acknowledged that the current plan may be fiscally unsustainable but pledged to work with the administration to address the shortfalls.

Opponents in Congress also believe the administration is not taking into consideration how big changes in U.S. nuclear policy would affect allies that live under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, especially in Europe and Northeast Asia. But arms control advocates, Democratic lawmakers and former officials are pressing the administration to announce as many new policies as possible. For them, Obama has one last chance to make good on his nuclear promises.

"It's pretty clear the Prague agenda has stalled," said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports groups advocating for nuclear nonproliferation. "There isn't anything that the president does that isn't criticized by his opponents, so he might as well do what he wants. He's relishing his last days in office."

By focusing on nuclear weapons, Obama sees an opportunity to cement a foreign policy legacy despite setbacks and incomplete efforts in several other areas. But by doing it unilaterally, without congressional buy-in, and in a hurried way, he risks launching policies that might not last much longer than his presidency.
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Home Front: Politix
Disarming America
2010-04-07
It's bad enough that President Obama is about to sign a new START agreement with Russia--an accord that is little more than a gift to Moscow.
The Senate will never accept it.
Perhaps they won't even though the president's party has 59 votes. Can such things be filibustered?
Not to mention that Russia has announced they'll walk out on the agreement without notice should they feel the need. This agreement is of a piece with all of President Obama's other achievements. Well done, Mr. President!
Yes, it can be filibustered.

And Vlad Putin knows as much about expiration dates as Bambi ...
But Mr. Obama is now making matters far worse with his "Nuclear Posture Review," which further weakens our deterrent capabilities.

Previewing his new policy for the court stenographers at The New York Times, the president set limits on how the U.S. might use nuclear weapons, even in self-defense. Mr. Obama said the United States would commit "to not using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that adhere to non-proliferation treaties--even if those countries attack the U.S. with chemical or biological weapons."

While stopping short of a "no first use" policy, the Obama doctrine clearly constrains our potential employment of nuclear weapons. In his interview with the Times, the president said one of his goals is to "move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons, to make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances."

Some of those "circumstances" could include rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Mr. Obama's policy makes exceptions for those adversaries. Pyongyang has already demonstrated a limited nuclear capability while Iran is working actively to develop nuclear weapons. The President says our revised posture will "set an example" for the rest of the world, and persuade more nations to curb their nuclear programs.

It's tempting to ask just how well that example is working. North Korea has threatened both the U.S. and South Korea with nuclear attacks, and even shared their technology with Syria. Apparently, Pyongyang is unconcerned about our "example," or the potential for American nuclear retaliation. And the pace of Iran's nuclear program has only accelerated over the past year, suggesting that Iran has little fear of the administration and its nuclear policies.

But the decline in our nuclear forces goes well beyond our political statements, and how they play in places like Iran and North Korea. Mr. Obama is telegraphing how he would use nuclear weapons, eliminating the policy "ambiguity" that has kept enemies guessing--and served us well--for more than 60 years.

Equally distressing, President Obama remains committed to a continuing erosion in our nuclear capabilities. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney observes:

I believe that the most alarming aspect of the Obama denuclearization program, however, is its explicit renunciation of new U.S. nuclear weapons -- an outcome that required the president to overrule his own defense secretary. Even if there were no new START treaty, no further movement on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no new wooly-headed declaratory policies, the mere fact that the United States will fail to reverse the steady obsolescence of its deterrent -- and the atrophying of the skilled workforce needed to sustain it -- will ineluctably achieve what is transparently President Obama's ultimate goal: a world without American nuclear weapons.

Given the outlines of Mr. Obama's policy, it's hard to disagree. Not only will our nuclear forces grow smaller in the coming years, they will also become less capable, with the president mandating a "procurement holiday" for that category of weapons, and the infrastructure and produces them.

Additionally, the newly-negotiated Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will take a further toll on our deterrent capabilities, by cutting the number of warheads (to 1,500 for both the U.S. and Russia) and placing limits on delivery systems. By agreeing to that provision, Mr. Obama and his security team essentially traded away an American strength.

Two decades after the Cold War ended, the U.S. is the only global power with a true nuclear "triad," consisting of land-based ICBMs, sub-launched ballistic missiles and long-range nuclear bombers. Reaching treaty goals means the United States will surrender some of its advantage in those latter categories. Russia, on the other hand, has only a token ballistic missile fleet and a handful of long-range bombers. Clearly, the U.S. must make most of the cuts to comply with the new agreement.

It's also worth noting that some of the American bombers facing elimination are dual-capable systems, designed for nuclear strike missions and extended-range conventional sorties. Writing at the American Thinker, Thomas Lifson speculates that Russia's real goal wasn't a reduction in nuclear weapons, but rather, a decrease in our global, precision-strike capabilities. With fewer dual-capable bombers in the inventory, it will be more difficult to mount "shock and awe" campaigns in the future and inject U.S. power in areas that Moscow wants to dominate.

No matter how you slice it, the new START agreement (and Mr. Obama's revised nuclear posture statement) are bad policy, pure and simple. After a year in the Oval Office, the commander-in-chief still has a myopic view of the world, believing that nuclear weapons can simply be wished or negotiated away. In reality, President Obama is sewing the seeds of a new arms race. Allies in eastern Europe and the Far East (think Taiwan) that have long counted on the American nuclear umbrella will now be tempted to developed their own weapons, deducing (correctly) that the U.S. may be unwilling or unable to protect them.

Sad to say, but the new treaty and nuclear posture statement represent the worst security policy since the United States signed the Kellogg-Briand pact back in 1928. That was the agreement that "prohibited war as an instrument of national policy," except in matters of self-defense. You know how that one worked out.
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International-UN-NGOs
Clinton outlines nuke-free world
2009-10-21
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to outline key steps Washington will take to fulfill President Barack Obama's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

In a speech in Washington, Clinton will show how the world will be safer through a new US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty as well as broader ratification of a treaty banning nuclear weapons tests, officials said.

"It's going to be an important opportunity for the secretary to lay out our priorities to implement the president's vision at Prague," Clinton's spokesman Ian Kelly said.

In a speech in the Czech capital on April 5, Obama pledged to lead a quest for a world purged of atomic weapons when he unveiled a plan to cut stockpiles, curtail testing, choke fissile production and secure loose nuclear material.

"I think she'll touch on some of the steps that we're working hard on to get to that point, including a successor regime to the START treaty and also the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), which is coming up," he said.

A new review conference for the NPT is scheduled for next year.

Washington and Moscow are pursuing negotiations for a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which strictly limits US and Russian arsenals and is seen as a cornerstone of Cold War-era strategic arms control.

The talks made little progress under former US president George W Bush.

But Clinton said during talks in Moscow last week that US and Russian negotiators were on schedule to complete an agreement by the time the treaty expires on December 5.

A new negotiating session, set to last two weeks, opened on Monday in Geneva, with the US side headed by Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, Kelly said.

With the deadline drawing closer, "both sides are negotiating intensively and seriously," Kelly said.

"I think that both sides exchanged drafts of an agreement... There's a lot of overlap in the agreement, so there's progress in that respect," the spokesman said.

A senior State Department official said Clinton "will describe how taking steps," including those to secure a new START agreement, "will make our country safer and more secure and enhance international stability".

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said these also include ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the start of work on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.

Six countries - the United States, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, China and Egypt - have signed but not ratified the pact.

North Korea, India and Pakistan have not signed it and all three have carried out nuclear tests since 1996.
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China-Japan-Koreas
North Korea Muffs It Again, Yield About 4Kt
2009-05-27
According to early reports, Monday's North Korea event certainly seems like a deliberate explosion in the right place. However, it was too small to be a successful Hiroshima-class crude explosive device, by a factor of three or four. The reported estimates of Richter magnitude spread from 4.5-5, and the standard conversions to explosive yield suggest a yield of 2-6 kiloton-equivalents of TNT. Most of the latest Richter magnitude estimates have come in the low half of the 4.5-5 range, so it seems likely that the yield was 4 kilotons or smaller.

That's a lot of energy, much larger than the 2006 North Korean test, but it still falls far short of an expected 12-20 kiloton yield of a crude Hiroshima-style device. For comparison's sake, the first nuclear tests of all other nations that are self-announced members of the nuclear club had larger yields than this latest North Korean test.

Because the expected Hiroshima-style explosion didn't occur, there are four options as to what did happen during the test:

*the device failed to detonate properly;
*the device was a higher-tech device designed for smaller yield with less fissile matter (e.g., missile warheads or briefcase bombs);
*the North Koreans faked a nuclear explosion with conventional explosives;
*or the North Koreans detonated a larger device in a large cavity to muffle its yield.

The first option is the most likely case given what is publicly known about North Korean diplomacy and technology.

It's important to realize that nuclear tests in the past 15 years have primarily been demonstrations of power and national will, rather than driven by engineering. The two different kinds of simple bombs are uranium 235-based and plutonium-based. The United States used one bomb of each type on Japan in the closing months of World War II, with roughly similar explosive yields. The technology for a uranium 235 bomb is so simple, relatively speaking, that such a device need not be tested. To wit, the United States dropped the uranium 235 Hiroshima bomb without testing its design in a controlled detonation. Conversely, building a plutonium-based bomb represents a technical challenge because the critical mass can blow apart in a split second before the detonation reaches max efficiency. Once U.S. weapon designers confirmed the trickier detonation scheme of a plutonium device in the famous Trinity Test in 1945, confidence in the simpler uranium 235 detonation design seemed justified.

The technology for making the raw material for each device differs. Uranium 235 must be separated from the heavier isotope uranium 238 to make a bomb, so a country that buys or builds high-tech centrifuges is investing in those types of bombs. The term "enriched uranium" refers to uranium metal with an increase of the 235 isotope that's sufficient to allow an explosive chain reaction to occur. (Complete separation of the two isotopes is neither feasible nor necessary to create a weapon.) Plutonium comes from nuclear reactor waste, many stockpiles of which North Korea possesses. In other words, North Korea is attempting to make the trickier of the two devices. When arms control experts estimate North Korea to have a nuclear stockpile of 6-8 weapons, they are converting the likely amount of reactor waste that the country has produced into plutonium bombs of the World War II-era design.

When the device is built correctly (the earliest technology used a sphere with precisely timed explosions to press an array of small plutonium masses into one critical mass), the yield is 10-20 kilotons. It's unlikely that North Korea has skipped this step and gone on to more sophisticated designs that involve other elements (for instance, tritium) to generate a smaller yield from a smaller plutonium mass. China didn't. Its tests grew in size and sophistication in the 1980s and 1990s until Beijing induced seismic events that registered higher than 6 on the Richter scale. Then they stopped. Thus, I would rule out option number two.

Option number three also seems unlikely. The 2006 test was never proven to be fake, and more largely, there's no reason for Pyonyang to fake a test if it could at least attempt a real nuclear detonation. Nor has any world leader ever publicly called out North Korea for executing a failed or fake test in 2006; such a response probably would have pushed Pyongyang to attempt a second test much more quickly. It's the same reason why the United States and Europe--despite seismic data to the contrary--didn't call India's thermonuclear bluff in 1998; they wanted to reduce tensions, not raise them.

The last option--detonation in a cavity--makes no sense at all. The common assumption behind the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is that countries would attempt to evade detection. But in the twenty-first century, what good is a nuclear weapon if it can't be used to openly check adversaries? Plus, a country doesn't even need a military useful device to do so. With cable news, the ability to detonate something fissionable does the trick--at least in a political sense.

So my guess is that North Korea tried and failed to get a simple plutonium bomb to detonate correctly. Make no mistake--an inefficient nuclear weapon is nothing to dismiss. Even at the low end of its estimated yield (2 kilotons), the May 25 test released as much or more explosive energy than the largest conventional-explosive air raids during World War II. But one should be mindful of the technical challenges North Korea still faces in carrying out the threats implied by its deliberate pairing of its explosive test with test missile launches.
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International-UN-NGOs
Nuclear test-ban treaty chief: US must ratify pact
2009-04-07
Senate opponents of the nuclear test-ban treaty face "a new ballgame" 10 years after they rejected the global pact, the treaty's chief said Tuesday.

If the U.S. and other key nations fail again to ratify the pact, the world will become a place with "more fissile material in more facilities with more people to handle it, representing a risk of (nuclear) terrorism," said Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the treaty's preparatory commission.

"Probably what you will have to do is revisit the benefits of the treaty from a wider perspective, from a post-2001 viewpoint," Toth told The Associated Press.

The Hungarian diplomat was in Washington to meet with Senate staff and take part in a conference on nuclear nonproliferation organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The conference was dominated by talk of President Barack Obama's speech Sunday in Prague, Czech Republic, laying out plans to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Obama said he aimed to "immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty," or CTBT.

Although a 1963 treaty bans nuclear tests in the atmosphere, oceans and space, the CTBT would ban all nuclear weapons tests everywhere, including underground, both as a step toward disarmament and to block weapons proliferation.

In 1999, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected the pact almost entirely along party lines with a 48-in-favor, 51-against vote. Approval requires a two-thirds majority. Opponents objected to the treaty's monitoring system being unable to detect a cheater's small underground nuclear test, and that the soundness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal would come under question if tests could not be conducted.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said March 27 he has begun the process of bringing the treaty back before the Senate.

Appearing on Tuesday's conference panel with Toth, physicist Sidney Drell, a longtime U.S. government adviser on nuclear weapons issues, noted that the government's weapons laboratories have since determined that the weapons' plutonium "pits" have a lifetime, "conservatively," of 85 to 100 years. "That concern, having weapons more than 20 years old, has been removed in the past 10 years," Drell said.

As for verification, Toth pointed out that his organization's monitoring system detected North Korea's very small nuclear test in 2006, and has since strengthened its capabilities. "No test of military significance can go undetected," the treaty chief said.

Meanwhile, "on the proliferation side, it is a totally new ballgame. There is a terrorist nexus," Toth told the AP. Treaty proponents point to fears that Pakistan's developing nuclear arsenal might fall into extremist hands in an increasingly unstable nation.

Pakistan and the U.S. are two of nine nations whose ratification is still required for the test-ban treaty to take effect. The others are China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran and Israel. Proponents believe a U.S. ratification could lead to these other "dominos" falling into line.

Otherwise, a total of 180 nations have signed the treaty and 148 have ratified it, including nuclear weapons powers Russia, Britain and France.
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India-Pakistan
India not to sign CTBT even if US insists: Pranab
2009-01-23
India has said that it will not sign Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) even if the Barack Obama administration presses it to do so.

In the midst of a busy diplomatic calendar when India is using coercive diplomacy against Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told India Today Editor Prabhu Chawla in Seedhi Baat programme on Aaj Tak and Headlines Today, "We will not sign CTBT or NPT. We are committed to the bilateral agreement with the US and India-specific safeguards with the IAEA."

In response to a question related to remarks made by US Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton that the US may insist on reviving the CTBT, Mukherjee said that India will continue to maintain its independent foreign policy. Mukherjees remarks came just ahead of the inauguration of the new US President Barack Obama on January 20. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Hillary had reportedly stressed that the US will make CTBT and Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) as the priority of the US administration.
Way to go, Hilde. Dubya got the Indians on our side and you're going to drive them away ...
Analysts believe that the Democrat regime under Barack Obama would strongly advocate a more hawkish approach on CTBT and New Delhi and Washington may cross swords over this.
rest at link
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India-Pakistan
Oh Bummer!
2008-11-08
In the run-up to the United States presidential election, Barack Obama posited himself as a unifier as opposed to President George W Bush and his contested legacy. Strangely -- and one suspects inadvertently -- Obama has also served to unite New Delhi's strategic affairs community. Senior members of the foreign policy establishment who were, till the other week, debating and hotly disputing the implications of the India-United States nuclear deal are back together, speaking in voice, expressing dismay and serious concern at the President-elect's plans for Jammu & Kashmir.

As is now well-known, Obama told Time magazine his administration would focus on "working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve ... the Kashmir crisis in a serious way": "Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation ... obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically. But for us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this?"

He saw a resolution of Kashmir as essential for Pakistan to be able to focus its energies on the war in Afghanistan. Obama also suggested that Bill Clinton could be his special envoy to New Delhi and Islamabad, as the White House's chosen troubleshooter for Kashmir.

What Obama articulated in that interview with Time -- and on other occasions when he mentioned Kashmir -- was actually conventional wisdom in another era, another Washington. Between, roughly speaking, August 13, 1948, when the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan adopted its first resolution on Kashmir and July 4, 1999, when President Bill Clinton virtually ordered Nawaz Sharief, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, to get his troops out of Kargil, the State Department experimented with numerous formulae on Kashmir.

However, after the Kargil war, a new verity was established. The Line of Control (LoC) was seen as sacrosanct and inviolable, a sort of de facto international border. India did not cross the LoC in the 1999 conflict and did not violate the border during the Operation Parakram stand-off in 2001-02. In the second Clinton Administration and during the Bush years, it became clear that maps would not be redrawn, boundaries would not be changed.

This led to an easing of tensions. America's -- and the world's -- understandable concern is that Kashmir does not lead to a war between two nuclear powers. That aside, social, cultural and economic exchange between the two Kashmirs should be gradually expanded. Both of these are being met. The LoC is not a soft border but has softened considerably, Kashmiris from both sides can cross over, trucks with goods travel back and forth.

The danger of conflict is so minimal that Pakistan has moved troops from the Kashmir front to the Afghan front. Even within Pakistan, politicians and opinion-makers -- including President Asif Zardari, however much he counts -- have discounted the notion that Kashmir is a priority issue or that India poses a military threat.

All this does, however, seem unfamiliar to Obama. As a Foreign Office veteran in New Delhi put it, "His interest in energising the Afghan war is commendable but he has to be educated, he has to understand there is no correlation with Kashmir."

While Obama will some day be a wiser man, for the moment the fact is the "Kashmir industry" has been revived. Two generations of academics, international civil servants, United Nations (UN) busybodies, cartographers and track II seminarists have made the "Kashmir question" their livelihood. In the past 10 years many of them had gone out of business, occasionally resurfacing in think tank circles in the United States, rehashing old ideas.

The Bush Administration paid them no attention. It can be expected, however, that they will have Obama's ear -- or be consulted by his people -- for the next two years or so. That is where problems could begin for India, especially since sensitivity on Kashmir is just so high here.

The so-called "internationalisation" of Kashmir is an old story. Over the years, various models have been suggested. A plebiscite was the original plan but it could not happen because, as per the UN resolution, Pakistan was asked to first withdraw its soldiers from Kashmir, which it had invaded in 1947. The prerequisite was never met and the plebiscite became a non-starter.

Indeed, in the early 1960s, Pakistan handed over a northern tract of the original State of Jammu & Kashmir to China, to give it access from to Tibet from Xinjiang. Legally, it has been argued, this changed the ground situation and a full and fair plebiscite of the State as it was on August 14-15, 1947, is now no longer possible.

Other models, such as those of Andorra -- the notionally independent, landlocked country bordered by Spain and France -- and the Aland Islands -- the Swedish-minority autonomous enclave within Finland -- have been discussed and, for a variety of reasons, rejected.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the UN sent a series of experts and mediators, including Canada's General AGL McNaughton and the Senator Frank Graham from the United States. The most famous such visitor was Sir Owen Dixon, the Australian jurist.

The Dixon Plan saw the river Chenab as the border. It gave Ladakh to India, the Northern Areas and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to Pakistan, split Jammu and recommended a plebiscite in the Kashmir Valley. Over the years, the Dixon plan has occasionally been revisited. In 1978, Nelson Rockefeller, the former Vice-President of the United States and at the time Governor of New York, visited Srinagar and floated the idea of a new Dixon Plan.

In the 1990s, a group of non-resident Pakistanis in the United States sought to revive the "Chenab formula". It was discussed by Indian and Pakistani back-channel negotiators, but, obviously, to no avail. In recent years, President Pervez Musharraf also advocated segmenting the Jammu and Kashmir dispute into cantons and regions, but found India unwilling beyond a point.

In the worst case scenario, India could be headed for the experience it previously had when Clinton began his first term in 1992. In 1994, Robin Raphel, a Clinton favourite and the State Department official responsible for South Asia, infamously said the Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh in October 1947 -- merging his kingdom with India -- was dubious and illegal.

It was a tough period for India. There was pressure from the Clinton crowd to de-nuclearise and sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Pakistan was setting up the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The leftover jihadis from the Soviet-Afghan war had made Kashmir the Valley of Blood.

Washington was looking to do business with the occupying militia in Kabul and building gas pipelines through Afghanistan, Raphel was a key interlocutor with the early Taliban. Pakistan, with Benazir Bhutto in office and going through one of its periodic bouts of democracy, was an ally.

India waged both a military battle in Kashmir as well as a diplomatic one against America and Pakistan. It survived that round. By 1997, when Hillary Clinton came to India for Mother Teresa's funeral, Bill Clinton was beginning to change his mind. By 1999, he had seen the light.

A puzzling question remains: why would Bill Clinton want to take up a thankless job? He knows India well enough to realise it cannot possibly give away the Valley or agree to further territorial compromise in Kashmir. For the former President and his eponymous foundation, India is a happy hunting ground -- for work, projects and speeches. Would he want to risk all that? Would he want to risk fund-raising by the Indian diaspora for Hillary Clinton in New York?

An Indian Foreign Service officer takes a cynical view: "What does Al Gore have that Clinton doesn't? The Nobel Prize. The solution may be far off, but if he can get India to agree there is a problem at all ..." The upshot is obvious -- the Indian political leadership, now and after the 2009 election, will have to be rigid, unbending and absolutely stubborn. It will have to say "No" to Uncle Sam, and to Brother Obama.

While Obama may feel he needs Kashmir as the carrot to dangle before Pakistan when he asks it to take on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in FATA and the Northwest Frontier, his advisers must be mindful that he is potentially opening a Pandora's Box.

So far Palestine has been the uber pan-Islamist cause, mobilising radicals from Tehran to Tunis, Jakarta to Jeddah. By giving Kashmir a profile it does not perhaps merit, by making a former American President special ambassador, by staking his own presidency on a solution, is Obama not likely to create a new "root cause" for the international Islamist brigade? In diplomacy, as it happens, there are few people more dangerous than the well-meaning.
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India-Pakistan
Text, Analysis, and Response to the NSG India nuclear waiver
2008-09-06
by Daryl G. Kimball

In an unprecedented move that will undermine the value of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the already beleaguered nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the NSG reluctantly agreed today in Vienna to exempt NPT hold-out India from its guidelines that require comprehensive international safeguards as a condition of nuclear trade.

The decision is a nonproliferation disaster of historic proportions that will produce harm for decades to come. Contrary to the Orwellian claims of the George W. Bush administration, the India-specific exemption from NSG rules and safeguards standards does not "bring India into the nuclear nonproliferation mainstream."

Unlike 179 other countries, India has not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It continues to produce fissile material and expand its nuclear arsenal. As one of only three states never to have signed the NPT, India has not made a legally binding commitment to pursue nuclear disarmament.

India's political promises on nonproliferation and a voluntary test moratorium are not in any way equivalent to the legal obligations and commitments made by the member states of the NPT. Given India's history of violating its peaceful nuclear use agreements to build nuclear weapons, India's promises provide little confidence, especially if the consequences of noncompliance are not made clear by India's future potential nuclear supplier states.

As a result, the India-specific exemption from NSG guidelines severely erodes the credibility of global efforts to ensure that access to peaceful nuclear trade and technology is available only to those states that meet global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament standards.

Also, nuclear fuel sales to India for Indian power reactors may marginally help increase India's energy output, but at the same time it will free up India's limited domestic uranium supplies to be used exclusively for bomb-making. This will lead Pakistan to follow suit and help fuel the South Asian arms race.

Making matters worse, the Bush administration resisted efforts by a group of responsible NSG states to incorporate in the NSG waiver language that would unambiguously establish the same restrictions and conditions on nuclear trade that are mandated through U.S. law (the 2006 Henry Hyde Act) and U.S. national policy.

The Arms Control Association and our allies and supporters will work to ensure that the current Congressional requirements and expectations regarding U.S. nuclear trade are fully addressed and that additional measures are taken to ensure that other nuclear suppliers do not undercut the minimal but vital restrictions, requirements, and conditions on nuclear trade mandated by Congress.

The NSG Waiver

The NSG statement on India does not meet ACA's standards or that of a large number of NSG states, nor should it satisfy key U.S. congressional leaders, but it is not the "clean" and "unconditional" waiver India was demanding either.

There were language changes made to the revised U.S. NSG proposal during the Sept. 4-6 discussions.

Because of the negotiations were tough and the real differences not fully resolved, there will likely be serious differences between India and most of the NSG about the interpretation of what the guidelines allow and don't allow and what the consequences of any violation of India's nonproliferation and disarmament commitments would be. This outcome is a failure of the NSG as a whole, the U.S. delegation, and the NSG chair Germany.

The text of the NSG's Sept. 6 statement on India -- along with the national statements issued today by Austria, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and others -- indicates that even if the NSG guidelines are not as clear as they should be or fail to include key provisions to reduce the adverse nonproliferation consequences, for all practical purposes:

- NSG states should not and will not likely engage in "full" nuclear trade with India;

- NSG states should and very likely would terminate nuclear trade with India if it resumes testing; and

- India's compliance with it pre-2005 nonproliferation commitments and the implementation of bilateral trade with India will be reviewed on a regular (probably annual) basis by the NSG.

Why? Most states will try to remain consistent with U.S. law, policy, and the U.S. interpretations of its bilateral trade agreement with India. Collectively, these bar the transfer of enrichment, reprocessing, and heavy water technology to Indian national facilities, the Hyde Act also mandates a cutoff of U.S. trade if India resumes testing, and according the State Dept's January 16 responses to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. fuel supply assurances will be invalid if India tests for any reason. See .

Linkage Between India's Commitments and the Waiver

The connection between India's nonproliferation statements and the NSG decision to allow nuclear trade and its possible termination of nuclear trade should have been clear and unambiguous. Yet, Paragraph 3 of the NSG statement undeniably says the "basis" of the India specific waiver includes its July 2005 pledges and the Sept. 5 statement by India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, which include a pledge to maintain India's nuclear test moratorium.

Following the NSG's reluctant approval of the statement on India, several states delivered national statements that clarify their views on how the NSG's policy on India shall be implemented. Among the states that delivered statements were: Austria, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.

Japan noted that the exemption for India was decided on the condition that India continues to observe its commitments, especially its nuclear test moratorium pledge. Japan noted that if India resumed testing, "the logical consequence is to terminate trade." Most of the other statements also made this point.

Germany, and perhaps others, added that it expects India to take further nonproliferation and disarmament measures, including "entry into force of the CTBT and a termination of fissile material production for weapons."

Therefore, if India tests, the NSG would immediately meet in an emergency session (as already allowed for in the NSG guidelines) and the widespread expectation would be for all NSG states to terminate nuclear trade immediately. And despite the Indian government's false representations to its public and parliament, neither the United States nor other responsible nuclear suppliers are going to feel obliged to respect earlier fuel supply guarantees or help find some other country to supply India with nuclear fuel if India tests for any reason or violates its safeguards commitments.

Permanent Safeguards: Paragraph 2.a refers to India's March 2006 "separation plan" which says India will put at least 8 additional nuclear power reactors under safeguards by 2014. The inclusion of this language was resisted by Inda, which has still not formally filed the list of facilities its will actually put under safeguards with the IAEA.

Paragraph 2.b of the NSG statement on India also refers to the maintenance of facility-specific safeguards in accordance with IAEA standards and practices including Gov. 1621, which means that the safeguards agreement puts India's materials and facilities under indefinite safeguards that Indian cannot legally terminate unilaterally. The Government of India has suggested to its parliament that this is not the case.

Enrichment and Reprocessing Transfers: International safeguards cannot prevent the replication or possible use of sensitive fuel cycle technologies transferred to India for "civilian" purposes for use in its military sector. The NSG should have explicitly banned such technology transfers. India Paragraph 3.a in the NSG statement on India maintains that Paragraphs 6 & 7 of the current NSG guidelines will continue to apply. This means that NSG states must continue to exercise "utmost restraint" with respect to transfers of sensitive dual use technologies and enrichment and reprocessing technologies to India or any other state.

In addition, in the course of the NSG meeting, the United States confirmed that participating NSG governments expressed assurances that they did not intend to transfer enrichment or reprocessing technology to India.

Review of the Implementation of the Statement: Paragraph 3.c and 3.e require NSG suppliers to report on their nuclear transfers to India and consult regularly on India's implementation and compliance with India's its nonproliferation commitments and bilateral nuclear cooperation with India.

India and the NSG: In Paragraph 2.f, the NSG statement notes that India has pledged to harmonize its export policies with that of the NSG and that India commits to adhere to all NSG guidelines. But contrary to India's demands, India may not "participate" in future NSG decisions or the development of future guidelines. Instead, India may be consulted by the NSG chair regarding future policies. One of those policy discussions will soon be aimed at establishing clearer limitations on the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology, including a ban on any transfers to non-members of the NPT.
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India-Pakistan
India gets Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver
2008-09-06
Vienna (PTI): In a major success for India's nuclear ambitions, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on Saturday granted it a crucial waiver that will enable it to carry out nuclear commerce, ending 34 years of isolation enforced in the wake of the 1974 Pokharan nuclear tests. The unprecedented decision of the 45-nation nuclear cartel giving exemption to a country which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a landmark step in the implementation of the Indo-US nuclear deal that will now go to the US Congress for approval.

"After protracted negotiations, the NSG on Saturday adopted an exemption for nuclear exports to India," the Austrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "There is a sense of relief. I am particularly happy that the waiver (for India) meets with international nuclear non-proliferation architecture," Peter Launsky, Austrian foreign ministry spokesman said after an unscheduled meeting of the NSG here. Austria, along with Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland had expressed strong reservations over the waiver being given to India that forced the grouping to have an unscheduled meeting on Saturday after two days of deliberations failed to produce a consensus.

China, which had on Friday joined these countries, on Saturday did not oppose the waiver but raised some questions regarding specific issues. After the consensus was adopted, Beijing expressed its stated position.

Some changes have been made to the revised draft of the waiver to assuage concerns of the sceptic countries but details of the exact changes were still not available. Hectic behind the scene negotiations marked the diplomatic triumph for India in which the US played a major part by talking to the naysayers in extended late night discussions.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement yesterday reaffirming India's commitment to non-proliferation and disarmament goals and the reference to its voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing appears to have played a major role in placating the countries that had strong views on proliferation. The four countries were initially not fully satisfied with the statement and wanted this commitment to be incorporated in the US-steered draft waiver. They also wanted inclusion of the consequences that would follow a nuclear test.

But India had been opposed to inclusion of any conditionalities which it felt would undermine its sovereign right to undertake a nuclear test. New Delhi is not a member of the NSG which takes decisions on the principle of consensus.

US acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John Rood, who steered Washington's campaign in the NSG, described on Saturday's decision as "landmark". He said it was an "important moment" for strengthening non-proliferation regime.

Asked what was the main factor that led to the breakthrough, Launsky said on Friday's statement of Mukherjee assuaged the concerns of Austria and like-minded members making a contribution in achieving the objective. The relief is also there for Austria particularly in the Indian Government's plan for separation of 14 power plants that will come under the inspection of the UN atomic watchdog IAEA. Austria also issued a statement saying it withdrew its objections after Mukherjee's statement which, it said, was decisive. The US officials also contended that transferring nuclear technology to India will bring its atomic programme under closer scrutiny and boost international non-proliferation efforts.

"This is a historical moment for the NSG, for India and for India's relations with the rest of the world," Rood said, adding the "very important" statement issued by Mukherjee yesterday played a major role in discussions at the meeting.

He underscored that it was "a critically important moment" for meeting the energy needs of India and dealing with global challenge of clean energy. Rood appreciated NSG members for their willingness to approach the dialogue constructively and in a manner in which "even with regard to most serious concerns, there was willingness to find a way, to reach a kind of compromise that is necessary in multilateral negotiations.

"Countries had particular concerns, particular historical experience" but they approached the issue with the required "constructive and cooperative" attitude, he added. Britain said it was happy that a compromise had been reached. "We're very pleased that we were able to reach a compromise that everyone could live with," British envoy Simon Smith said.

The NSG was founded after India's 1974 atomic tests.

Officials said US President George W Bush personally lobbied with allies for the waiver.
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India-Pakistan
Nuclear soothsayers’ group
2008-08-08
By Arundhati Ghose

At a meeting at the US think tank, the Brookings Institution, a day before the adoption by the IAEA Board of Governors of the recommendation of the director general to approve the India-specific safeguards agreement, Robert Einhorn, a former US official dealing with non-proliferation and a nuclear absolutist, said that he was confident that “if the Nuclear Suppliers Group makes a decision by secret ballot, the proposal for a special exemption (for India) will fail”. However, he added, somewhat ruefully, since there would be no secret ballot, the decision was likely to “favour India because a vast majority of NSG members will not want to disappoint India or the US”.

Reactions from the Vienna IAEA meeting were mixed: some saw the approval as an endorsement of the agreement itself, others have highlighted the “concerns” voiced by a large number of states during the debate as indicative of opposition — to the agreement and to India. Notwithstanding Einhorn’s prediction, there is no doubt that those “concerns” will become much more sharply focused in the NSG. India has asked the United States to push for a “clean and unconditional” waiver for India from the restrictions placed by the NSG on international nuclear commerce; the US appears now to be making a distinction between a “clean” waiver and an “unconditional” one.

Before turning to likely “conditions” that may become the focus of debate in the NSG, it may be necessary to revisit the origins of the NSG to understand why the discussions there may be different from the ones in the IAEA.

The NSG was set up in 1975, primarily to implement sanctions on nuclear commerce with India, as a reaction to India’s Peaceful Nuclear Explosion in 1974. It needs to be remembered that PNEs were an accepted concept at that time and are exempted, even today, in the text of the NPT. The NPT came into force in 1970, and Pokharan I was seen as the defiance by a weak country of the will of the powerful. China and France continued nuclear testing for weapons purposes, when they were not members of the NPT. In 1992, the NSG included in their guidelines dual-use technologies — any item or technology which might contribute to a sanctioned country’s nuclear programme — even if the import was for non-nuclear sectors. This was further reinforced by the “catch-all” lists which could include any items, even those not specifically mentioned in the guidelines.

Later, NSG guidelines, which are meant exclusively for non-nuclear weapon states, demanded that these states accept safeguards on all facilities since the non-nuclear weapon states had voluntarily given up their right to manufacture nuclear weapons. There is a strange irony in the fact that the organisation which was set up in reaction to India’s first nuclear test should today be faced with a proposal to issue a waiver of its guidelines exceptionalising India.

Quite naturally, the issue of India conducting more nuclear tests will be one of the focal points of discussion in the NSG at its next meeting. This was reflected in the debate in the IAEA Board of Governors on August 1— a number of countries, even among those that supported the India-specific safeguards agreement, called for India to adhere to the CTBT; others expressed concern at the inherent linkage between the duration of the safeguards agreement and the supply of fuel. This, in their view, would undercut the ability of the NSG to react to any future testing by India. Of the five NPT nuclear weapon states, three — Russia, the United Kingdom and France — have signed and ratified the CTBT. The US and China have not — India has not even signed the treaty and Pakistan’s position would invariably reflect India’s. Even though there is no overt reference to testing in the 123 Agreement, US laws requiring a “right of return” of equipment and material in the event of a nuclear test remain intact, unamended by the Hyde Act. Other countries in the NSG may wish to include some reference to testing in the decision to grant an exemption to India from its restrictive guidelines. The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, has made it clear that the NSG guidelines are meant for non-nuclear weapon states; India has nuclear weapons and is not in violation of any laws or obligations as it is not a member of the NPT. He was clear that India retained the option to “walk out” of the entire exercise, if unwelcome conditions were attached to the NSG decision. Some might believe that India is in so deep, particularly after the domestic drama of the last few weeks, that it may not be in a position to walk out; this would be a misreading of the situation. It has been India’s reaction to unwelcome international legally binding constraints to walk out of a situation rather than accept a situation and then hope for the best.

Another focal point of debate is likely to be the exceptionalising of India: however, since there has been a consensus already on such exceptionalisation in the IAEA, it is not likely to be a major stumbling block. Other issues such as a moratorium on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes are also likely to be raised, though India’s positive participation in the CD on the FMCT will be a point in its favour.

It needs to be noted that the NSG only issues guidelines: each participating state will decide, on the basis of its own export control laws, how it should implement the guidelines. To that extent, even if there is a clean waiver, India will have to negotiate with supplier countries on an individual basis, before commercial contracts can be signed for the import of reactors, technology or fuel.

The choice before the NSG should be clear; if the waiver is not acceptable to India, it would be free to go its own way. This would surely not be in the interest of the global non-proliferation regime. On the other hand, a clean waiver would make India a powerful partner in the struggle against proliferation and the efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

The writer is former ambassador of India to the United Nations in Geneva. In 1996 she vetoed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at the Conference on Disarmement
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India-Pakistan
India will not sign Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, says PM
2008-06-12
New Delhi, June 11, 2008. India will not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that prevents it from conducting further nuclear tests and impinges on its sovereignty, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday.

Addressing new recruits of the Indian Foreign Service at a function, the prime minister also stressed that the nuclear deal India had signed with the US protected its "national interests".

"Despite the fact that we are not a signatory to the NPT (Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty), and we have also said that if the CTBT came into being we will not sign it, there is no pressure from the US on India to sign the NPT or any other international arrangement of that sort to enter into nuclear cooperation for civil energy," Manmohan Singh said.
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