Nuclear Policy News - March 5, 2010

FISSILE MATERIAL

China Looks to North Korea Nuclear Talks Before July

Reuters by Huang Yan and Chris Buckley 

U.S. criticized on Iran sanctions

WP by John Pomfret and Colum Lynch

Pakistani, Indian Leaders Could Meet in Washington

GSN

Iran in Its Intricacy

NY Times by Roger Cohen

How to Read Brazil's Stance on Iran

CFR First Take by Matias Spektor

EAST ASIA
1. China Looks to North Korea Nuclear Talks Before July
Reuters by Huang Yan and Chris Buckley
BEIJING (Reuters) - China wants stalled six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear arms activities to restart before July, a senior Chinese diplomat said, warning that progress was by no means certain.

2. 'US Ready to Improve Ties With NK After Disarmament'
Korea Times by Jung Sung-ki
The top U.S. diplomat here said Thursday the administration of President Barack Obama is ready to take steps to improve ties with North Korea, if the communist state lives up to its denuclearization pledge.

3. Myanmar-North Korea Ties Worry Washington
GSN
The United States has initiated a concerted effort to convince the military-led government of Myanmar to halt purchases of military technology from North Korea, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Jan. 29).

MIDDLE EAST
4. U.S. criticized on Iran sanctions
WP by John Pomfret and Colum Lynch
The Obama administration is pushing to carve out an exemption for China and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council from legislation pending in the Senate and the House that would tighten sanctions on companies doing business in Iran, administration and congressional sources said.

5. GAO: What does the US export to Iran? Who knows?
AP by Sharon Theimer
Sloppy records make it hard to tell exactly what the United States is exporting to Iran, despite sanctions meant to ensure only humanitarian goods and no military items go there, congressional investigators say.

6. U.S. diplomat: Iran wants more enrichment
CNN by Tom Evans
As the United States steps up its push for tough new sanctions against Iran, a top American diplomat said Thursday that hopes of a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions are fading.

7. Lieberman to U.S.: Embargo Iran like Cuba
Haaretz by Barak David
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday that he doubted the United Nations would follow through with Western demands for harsher sanctions over Iran's contentious nuclear program, and urged the United States to impose its own embargo similar to the one it has held on Cuba for the last 50 years.

8. Iran threatens to drop nuclear offer if new UN sanctions approved
RIA Novosti
Iran threatened on Thursday to give up its counter-proposal to the UN nuclear watchdog on a uranium swap, if new sanctions were adopted against the Islamic Republic.

9. China backs diplomacy, not sanctions, on Iran
AP by Dith M. Lederer
Western powers pressed for new sanctions against Iran on Thursday but China and Russia called for diplomatic negotiations as the best way to achieve a peaceful settlement of the dispute over Tehran's nuclear program.

10. Syria suggests Israel planted nuclear traces by air
Reuters by Mark Heinrich
Syria suggested on Thursday that Israel dropped uranium particles onto Syrian soil from the air to make it look as if a covert nuclear weapons plant was being built there, diplomats at a U.N. nuclear watchdog meeting said.

SOUTH ASIA
11. Pakistani, Indian Leaders Could Meet in Washington
GSN
Leaders from Pakistan and India are expected to talk informally at a nuclear security summit next month in Washington, Indo-Asian News Service reported yesterday (see GSN, March 2).

RUSSIA/FSU/EUROPE
12. French nuclear tests in Algeria leave toxic legacy
Reuters by Lamine Chikhi
Radioactive material is seeping out from this Sahara desert mountain where French scientists conducted nuclear tests in the 1960s, contaminating the soil and poisoning relations between France and Algeria.

13. Russia to maintain but not build up nuclear deterrent - Medvedev

RIA Novosti

Russia is not planning to build up its strategic potential, but will keep its nuclear weapons, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.

MULTILATERAL ARMS CONTROL AND NONPROLIFERATION

U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS STRATEGY AND POLICY
14. U.S. Missile Defenses Enhanced to Deal With Growing Threat, General Says

GSN

A senior U.S. Defense Department official said the rising risk of missile attack has led the United States to pursue a concerted expansion of its missile defenses, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 2).

15. Screening Of All U.S.-Bound Air Cargo Still Years Away

GSN by Chris Strohm (CongressDaily)
It could take the Homeland Security Department another two years to ensure that all cargo is screened for weapons of mass destruction before being flown into the United States on passenger airplanes, much longer than originally estimated, a senior department official told lawmakers Thursday (see GSN, March 19, 2009).

OPINIONS
16. Iran in Its Intricacy

NY Times by Roger Cohen
A year has passed since President Obama’s groundbreaking Nowruz offer to Iran of engagement based on mutual respect. Iran is now a different country, its divided regime weaker and confronted by the Green movement, the strongest expression of people power in the Middle East and a beacon for the region.

17. Hoping Sanctions Work but Readying Gas Masks

NY Times by Ethan Bronner
Preparations for a strike against Iran’s nuclear program are as evident as ever: the introduction of an attack drone capable of flying hundreds of miles, the frequent open talk of a possible attack, the distribution of new gas masks to the public.

18. Talking to Iran has helped the US

Guardian by Samuel Charap and Brian Katulis
Critics argue that the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report proves that the Obama administration's policy of engagement has been a waste of time, allowing Iran to make progress toward a bomb without feeling the pain of tougher sanctions. But this myopic view ignores the fact that engagement has created an unprecedented international consensus on the need for coercive action.

19. On Iran Sanctions, Is the U.S. Spinning Its Wheels?

Time by Tony Karon
Iran came out on top in a high-powered diplomatic simulation of the nuclear standoff held at Harvard late last year — an exercise that played out the conflict based on the real-life positions and inclinations of all the main players. Former National Security Council Iran expert Gary Sick, who led Team Iran in the exercise, wrote afterward that, for Washington, "the pursuit of sanctions in this game, as in the real world, became an end in itself, with little impact on Iran or its ability to continue [uranium] enrichment." And that appears to be a fair assessment of the Obama Administration's current Iran efforts.

20. The Iranian Riddle

Time by Trita Parsi
Iran is the 21st century equivalent of 1930s Russia — a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The Iranians haven't stumbled upon this mystifying state coincidentally, and the enigma isn't the result of outsiders' failure to try to understand them. Rather, the Iranian government has a deliberate policy aimed at confusing the outside world about its goals and decision-making processes. "There is an intention out there to confuse," a noted Iranian professor told me in Tehran a few years ago. The rulers in Tehran think that opacity and the perception of unpredictability buy them security.

21. How to Read Brazil's Stance on Iran

CFR First Take by Matias Spektor
The obstacles to U.S. efforts to tighten UN sanctions against Iran were apparent in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's March 3 meetings in Brasilia. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, "It is not prudent to push Iran against the wall," and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim called sanctions potentially "counterproductive."