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Moscow says too soon to scrap nuclear weapons | Top Russian news and analysis online | 'RIA Novosti' newswire
Russia has no plans to completely abandon nuclear weapons, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
"If there were only five nuclear powers in the world and they abandoned their nuclear weapons, after which only conventional weapons - muskets, cannons, and pistols - would remain, we would have disarmed ourselves a long time ago," Sergei Lavrov told a news conference after a meeting with his British counterpart David Miliband in Moscow.
He added that there were unofficial nuclear powers, and that it was not ruled out that nuclear technology, which "is virtually available via the Internet," would spread.
He stressed the importance of nonproliferation efforts and said that nuclear disarmament "means many things, including practical agreements that will prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology anywhere in the world."
AFP: Russia to boost Obama with nuclear treaty: report
Moscow and Washington want to reach a deal on a key nuclear disarmament treaty before US President Barack Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, a Kremlin source was quoted as saying Friday.
The source, quoted in the Kommersant daily, said the Obama administration wanted to sign an agreement on replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) before the Nobel ceremony and that Moscow was willing to oblige.
"On December 10 the ceremony for awarding Nobel laureates will take place... Our partners want the document to be signed before the Nobel Peace Prize is given to Barack Obama," the Kremlin source was quoted as saying.
Cheney remarks in leak probe released - Washington Post Investigations
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he could not remember playing any role in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to FBI records released under court order (PDF) today.
After years of legal maneuvering to keep the documents secret, they were made public late today under a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. That organization provided the FBI notes to The Washington Post. Portions of the three documents, totaling 67 pages, were redacted on grounds of national security, privacy or privileged presidential communications.
Outline and Notes from the Cheney Interview (PDF)
Second document from Cheney interview (PDF)
Third document from Cheney interview (PDF)
Associated Press: Cheney told FBI he had no idea who leaked Plame ID
Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA.
An FBI summary of Cheney's interview from 2004 reflects that the vice president had deep concern about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the probe of who leaked Plame's identity to the news media. At the end of Libby's trial, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "there is a cloud over the vice president" in the leaking of Plame's identity.
NIE Reveals Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats by Gareth Porter -- Antiwar.com
The Barack Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran’s decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program tells a different story.
The Iranian decision to withdraw from the earlier agreement with the IAEA was prompted, moreover, by the campaign of threats to Iran’s nuclear facilities mounted by the George W. Bush administration in early 2007, as a reconstruction of the sequence of events shows.
Germany to U.S.: Take Away Your Nukes! - TIME
Germany's new coalition government put the finishing touches to its policy program this weekend, promising moderate tax cuts to help support the economy, a reduction in the length of compulsory military service, and the continued operation of the nation's aging nuclear power plants. No big surprises there. But one detail could have interesting international repercussions: the man designated to be foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, is pushing for the U.S. to remove its remaining nuclear weapons from German soil.
AFP: Japanese firms to develop small nuclear reactors
Japan's major nuclear reactor manufacturers have begun developing small nuclear power systems for both developed and emerging countries, a report said on Saturday.
Toshiba Corp. is developing an ultra-compact reactor with an output of about 10,000 kilowatts and has started procedures for approval in the United States, the Nikkei business daily said.
The new reactor, the Toshiba 4S, is designed to minimise the need for monitoring and maintenance, with an automatic shutdown function to ensure safety in case of problems, the newspaper said.
Fine Print: Lowering alert levels in U.S. and Russia - washingtonpost.com
The high alert levels for U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces are more political statements carried over from the Cold War than military necessities for the 21st century, according to a multinational study released last week.
The two nations "could examine how measures to reduce operational readiness can accompany the bilateral arms control process" as part of the current negotiations over renewal of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, according to the study by the EastWest Institute, a nonprofit think tank. The study, "Reframing Nuclear De-Alert: Decreasing the Operational Readiness of U.S. and Russian Nuclear Arsenals," was supported by the governments of Switzerland and New Zealand governments.
The study reminds readers that the United States "keeps roughly 1,000 nuclear warheads on alert" atop 450 Minuteman III land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and on the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) aboard as many as four Trident subs patrolling in different parts of the world.
‘Radioactive’ ship near Alang: Inquiry ordered
An inquiry has been ordered into reports that an allegedly radioactive contaminated ship from the US has anchored off the Alang coast in Gujarat, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday.
“We have got complaints that a radioactive contaminated ship has anchored at Alang. We have already ordered an inquiry into the matter and hope to get the report within the next two days,” he told reporters in New Delhi even as environmentalists in Gujarat demanded that the US government recall the ship.
Next nuclear worry for US: Kazakhstan? | csmonitor.com
So far, the former Soviet state has cooperated with the US on nuclear issues. But a new report suggests that Kazakhstan might be looking to do business with other, less responsible regimes, too.
Washington - Does Kazakhstan want to increase its nuclear commerce – doing deals with other nations that have mixed records when it comes to weapons proliferation? That is a sensitive issue which US intelligence appears to be following closely.
Since it gained independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has cooperated with the US on key denuclearization activities. Nuclear weapons stationed on Kazakh territory were returned to Russia and their delivery systems destroyed.
AFP: US documents point to secret Japan nuclear pact
Despite decades of denials by Washington and Tokyo, US officials believe they enjoyed a secret pact to transport nuclear weapons through Japan, newly declassified documents showed.
The disclosure came after Japan's left-leaning government ended more than half a century of conservative rule and launched a probe into thousands of files to settle longstanding suspicions of a hush-hush pact.
Any evidence of an agreement would trigger charges of hypocricy as Japan is the only nation to have suffered nuclear attack and has campaigned for the worldwide abolition of the ultra-destructive weapons.
The National Security Archive at George Washington University released documents Tuesday showing US officials believed they had an understanding with Japan when the allies signed a new security treaty in 1960.
US looking to change Pak energy economy, sans N-energy
Noting that there is not going to be a magic cure for Pakistan's ailing energy sector, the Obama Administration has said the US is looking to transform energy economy of the country.
However, it made no reference to the nuclear energy as one of the option to bail out Pakistan from its deepening energy crisis.
Following the US-India civilian nuclear deal last year, Pakistan has been asking for a similar agreement with the US, but America has been resisting from it, given the concerns it has about Islamabad's past record with regard to nuclear proliferation, in particular the A Q Khan network.
BBC NEWS | Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Committee said he won it for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".
The committee highlighted Mr Obama's efforts to support international bodies and promote nuclear disarmament.
Mr Obama - woken up with the news early on Friday - said in an address at the White House that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" by the award.
He said he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of some of the "transformative figures" who had previously received the award.
Speaking outside the White House, he said he would accept the prize as a "call to action".
US hails UAE as model for nuclear power - The National Newspaper
As American concerns rise over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the UAE yesterday was once again held up as a model for countries seeking to develop nuclear energy.
In a Senate foreign relations committee hearing, high-level state department officials and an outside nuclear expert praised the UAE for agreeing to rigorous international inspections and a strict ban on enrichment and reprocessing technology.
Such transparency, they said, was a welcome contrast to Iran, which just two weeks ago revealed a secret nuclear site near Qom.
“They want to do it right; they have seen the example of Iran,” Janet Sanderson, the deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, said of the UAE Government. “They are offering the international community an alternative example of how to move forward on peaceful nuclear power.”
New U.S. missile defense plans pose no threat to Russia - Lavrov | Top Russian news and analysis online | 'RIA Novosti' newswire
The new U.S. missile shield plans present no risks for Russia, and favorable conditions are now emerging for bilateral dialogue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.
U.S. President Barack Obama in September scrapped plans to deploy a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, due to a re-assessment of the threat from Iran. Moscow fiercely opposed the plans as a national security threat.
"The new plan put forward by the Obama administration to replace the project to deploy the Third Missile Defense Site offers good conditions for dialogue, and according to our assessments, does not pose the risks that were generated by the Third Missile Defense Site project," Lavrov said.
He added that the two countries would soon hold talks on missile defense.
According to the Obama administration's new plan, land-based missile-defense shields will not be implemented before 2015. Sea-based defenses will be operating in the Mediterranean up to 2015.
Nuke pact deniers face new 'refuter' | The Japan Times Online
The Foreign Ministry kept a written record of a meeting with the U.S. ambassador in 1968 in which he reminded ministry officials of a secret 1960 bilateral nuclear deal, a former senior ministry official said Tuesday, further contradicting government claims that no such pact existed.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's administration has been pressing the ministry to reveal whether there was a secret U.S.-Japan pact since assuming office last month. Up to now, the Foreign Ministry has repeatedly denied the existence of a deal despite confirmation of the pact in declassified U.S. documents and statements by former Japanese vice ministers.
According to the senior official, who once headed the ministry's former Treaties Bureau and who spoke on condition of anonymity, the records were maintained covertly by the Treaties and the North American Affairs bureaus at least until the end of the 1990s.
Depleted uranium shipments delayed - Salt Lake Tribune
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson is applauding reports that a South Carolina cleanup site is delaying its shipment of depleted uranium by at least two months.
On Tuesday, a Department of Energy official in South Carolina said 15,000 drums of depleted uranium (DU) from the Savannah River Cleanup site won't start shipping to the EnergySolutions site in Utah until December.
Savannah River Site spokesman Jim Giusti told The Associated Press Tuesday that crews are preparing 11,000 tons of waste to load onto rail cars bound for the disposal facility 80 miles west of Salt Lake City through next summer.
The delay buys the Utah Democratic congressman time to try to persuade the U.S. Energy Department to suspend shipments until the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission completes its pending review of disposing depleted uranium (DU) safely.
The U.S.-India nuclear deal--one year later | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Article Highlights
* Last October, despite opposition from the arms control community, the United States and India entered into an agreement that allowed for nuclear commerce between the two countries.
* The early returns seem to indicate that the agreement is here to stay, as already many Indian and U.S. companies are experiencing a financial windfall from it.
* With the relaxed trading guidelines, other countries such as Russia, Sweden, and France also are looking to conduct nuclear business with New Delhi.
October 8 marks the one-year anniversary of former President George W. Bush signing into law the so-called U.S.-India nuclear deal. The deal proved controversial from its inception because it ended a 34-year U.S. ban on nuclear trade with India, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And yet despite heavy criticism of the deal--especially from arms control and disarmament advocates--one year later, it appears solidly entrenched as long-term policy.
The BRAD BLOG : VIDEO: ABC's Diane Sawyer on Sibel Edmonds, FBI Whistleblower, First Amendment 'Heroine'
In advance of tomorrow's related story [Update: That story now posted here], I thought you might appreciate a quick look at the following if you've never seen it before. Diane Sawyer narrates the story of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds as she was awarded the 2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.
In the bargain, it's also worth remembering that Sawyer herself is at least aware of Edmonds, who she is, and some of what she's had to go through, further begging the question of why ABC News has failed to even note --- much less investigate and/or cover --- the recent revelations of bribery and blackmail of current and former U.S. Congressmembers and high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and the theft and sale of nuclear secrets by agents of Turkey and Israel, as detailed in her sworn deposition in August, and remarkable AmCon cover-story interview which followed it late last month...
Gareth Porter: U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up
The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility.
But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility.
Iran's notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the second enrichment facility in a letter on Sep. 21 was buried deep in most of the news stories and explained as a response to being detected by U.S. intelligence. In reporting the story in that way, journalists were relying entirely on the testimony of "senior administration officials" who briefed them at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh Friday.
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