Russian and Iranian negotiators today resumed efforts in Moscow to forge a compromise agreement over Iran’s sensitive nuclear activities, Reuters reported (see GSN, Feb. 28).
The presence of top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and Russian Security Council chief Igor Ivanov advances the negotiations to a higher diplomatic plane from the working-level talks conducted last week. “It sounds as if they are combining technical expert discussions with highly placed diplomatic efforts. They are making their best efforts on both sides and I take that as a good sign,” said Rose Gottemoeller, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center (Meg Clothier, Reuters I/Yahoo!News, March 1). Tehran would not accept a compromise in which it indefinitely forgoes uranium enrichment in favor of having Russia conduct that work on its behalf, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said today, the Associated Press reported. “Definitely in this item, Iran insists as short as possible,” he said. Mottaki said Iranian negotiators would be flexible during the talks, AP reported. “The Russian plan is on the table,” he said, later adding: “We are flexible.” Despite calls from Russia to do so, Larijani said there was no need for Tehran to resume a moratorium on its sensitive nuclear activities, AP reported. “A moratorium is necessary when there is something dangerous. But all our activities are transparent,” Larijani told Interfax after arriving in Moscow. Mottaki also rejected allegations in an International Atomic Energy Agency report released Monday that Iran was not fully cooperating with the agency (Joseph Coleman, Associated Press/ABCNews.com, March 1). The U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday that the report indicates that the U.N. Security Council must take action against Iran, Agence France-Presse reported. “Iran’s cooperation (with the IAEA) remains forced and incomplete,” said Ambassador Gregory Schulte. Schulte said Iran’s nuclear effort was “not a peaceful program. This is not innocent ‘research and development.’” “This is why Iran’s leaders have lost the confidence of the international community,” he said (Agence France-Presse I/IranMania.com, Feb. 28). U.S. President George W. Bush said today that Iran must be prevented from developing nuclear weapons, AFP reported. “Iran must not have a nuclear weapon,” Bush said during a stop in Afghanistan. “And so the world is speaking with one voice to the Iranians that it’s OK for you to have a civilian nuclear power operation, but you shall not have the means, the knowledge to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said. Bush added that he continues to support Russia’s efforts to resolve the issue (Agence France-Presse II/Interactive Investor, March 1). Experts have said that the United States should consider incentives to end the standoff, AFP reported yesterday. “The trouble is that all of the steps that have been taken so far don’t seem likely to produce an acceptable outcome,” said Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and now head of the International Crisis Group. Incentives for Iran should include “withdrawal of all of the existing sanctions, diplomatic normalization, overt support for (World Trade Organization) accession and of course security guarantees,” Evans said. He added that Iran has the right to enrich uranium domestically for a nuclear energy program and should be allowed “limited” enrichment capabilities. Tehran, in turn, would need to accept several conditions, including postponing the commencement of its enrichment program for a period of years. Other experts are skeptical that any nonmilitary option would work. “I think we are getting to the moment of truth,” James Phillips, an expert on Iran at the Heritage Foundation, told AFP. “I think it’s a very increasing possibility that this is going to end in war.” “I think Iran will get caught red-handed again sponsoring terrorism and at that point there is a strong possibility the U.S. will respond militarily, including on the nuclear program,” Phillips said. John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said he also believes the United States is likely to bomb Iranian nuclear installations. Pike said opponents of the military option have not carefully considered the probable outcomes if it is not taken. “These are people who have focused on the cost of Iranian retaliation without focusing on the cost of atomic Ayatollahs,” he said (Jocelyne Zablit, Agence France-Presse III/Yahoo!News, Feb. 28). Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he pressed U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in January not to attack Iran, Reuters reported today. “I said to him word for word: ‘Listen to my advice for once,’” Mubarak said in remarks published today in the official Egyptian daily al-Gomhuria. “If an air strike (against Iran) took place, Iraq will turn into terrorist groups more than it is already. ... The Gulf area has Shiite majorities in many of the states and America is linked to vital interests in this area and has naval facilities,” he said. “Iran spends generously on the Shia in every country and these people are prepared to do anything if Iran is hit,” he added. Mubarak had opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to Reuters. Mubarak also told al-Gomhuria that Tehran would launch ballistic missiles against Israel if attacked (Reuters II/Yahoo!News, March 1).
Indian and U.S. negotiators attempted to work out differences today on separating Indian civilian and military nuclear facilities in order to finish a nuclear technology sharing agreement before President George W. Bush visits New Delhi, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 28). Officials had hoped to finalize the deal before Bush arrived today, but negotiators have not come to a consensus on which Indian facilities would be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. “We are doing very hard bargaining,” Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran. He added, though, that there was “some distance” left to cover. “We need a certain degree of clarity on our mutual commitments,” he said yesterday. “We need to make sure there are no ambiguities which may create difficulties for us in the future.” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addressed a topic that has been a point of contention between the nations. “The one thing that is absolutely necessary is that any agreement would assure that once India has decided to put a reactor under safeguard that it remain permanently under safeguard,” Rice said. Rice added that Pakistan is not eligible for a deal similar to the one the United States is negotiating with India. “Pakistan is not in the same place as India,” she said. “I think everybody understands that” (Matthew Rosenberg, Associated Press I/China Post, March 1). Rice also said that failing to come to agreement during Bush’s stay in New Delhi would not mean the trip was unsuccessful, AP reported. “We're still working on it,” she said. “Obviously it would be an important breakthrough.” “We very much would like to have a deal,” she continued. “We are continuing to work on it.” Rice added that if the deal were not completed during this trip, it would be finalized later (Terence Hunt, Associated Press/ABC News, March 1). Completing the deal would mean “recognition of India as a relevant power, as a responsible nuclear weapons state,” said C.U. Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. An agreement would be “a very big plus” as it would strengthen India’s ability to negotiate similar agreements with other countries, he told Agence France-Presse. “For India, the symbolism of being admitted into the global fold of nuclear states is enormous,” Bhaskar said. “More than the nuclear weapon, it is the access to the loop of global nuclear commerce — obtaining the uranium ore fuel that India is in dire need of — and related high-tech not just from the U.S. but other states such as Russia and France that is crucial,” he added. Bush’s visit to India would be seen as a failure if the deal is not finalized, said Lalit Mansingh, a former Indian ambassador to the United States. “From the point of view of public perception, irrespective of the substance, the visit will be seen as unsuccessful if the nuclear deal does not go through,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 28).
Despite U.S. hopes that China would pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear program, Beijing seems to be looking past the six-party negotiations forum begun in 2003, the Christian Science Monitor reported today (see GSN, Feb. 28). “Any illusions in Washington that China will be complicit in helping to bring North Korea down should be set aside,” a diplomatic source said. Instead, China last year invested about $2 billion in North Korea and has supported infrastructure improvements in what one U.S. official has characterized as a “massive carrot-giving operation.” Beijing is not using the aid to garner nuclear concessions from Pyongyang, according to the Monitor. “China has decided to change its strategy on North Korea, and is looking beyond the six-party talks and the American approach,” said Alexandre Mansourov of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. “They want to go their own way, and have decided to raise up North Korea again, to rebuild and reinvent it.” “For the first time [North Korean leader] Kim [Jong Il] has fully embraced Chinese [economic] reforms,” Mansourov added (Robert Marquand, Christian Science Monitor, March 1). North Korea, meanwhile, announced today that U.S. financial sanctions have not altered the course of Pyongyang’s nuclear development, Agence France-Presse reported. “We manufactured nuclear weapons with our own technology, funds and raw materials from A to Z,” said a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman. “As we are not dependent on the U.S. at all in the economic and financial fields, no U.S. sanctions would work on us.” The spokesman also repeated North Korean denials of U.S. claims that it was counterfeiting U.S. currency to finance its nuclear program (Agence France-Presse/ChannelNewsAsia, March 1).
A small U.S. company hopes that its technology for converting weaponized plutonium into electricity will be chosen over a rival French-developed process to eliminate Russia’s scrapped warheads, Fortune Small Business reported today (see GSN, Nov. 9, 2005). Thorium Power has conducted research for 10 years at Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute on combining warhead plutonium with the element thorium in a fuel that could be used to power existing Russian energy reactors. Washington must fund a final round of testing before the fuel can be used, Fortune reported. Areva, a French government-owned firm, has developed a process to produce mixed-oxide fuel from plutonium for use in nuclear reactors. The U.S. National Nuclear Safety Administration has already selected it to dispose of surplus U.S. warheads. The agency is also responsible for funding and managing the Russian disposal program. Agency spokesman Bryan Wilkes said Thorium Power relies on “immature technologies” and that Russia would ultimately go with the MOX process (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2005). However, an outside review conducted for the Energy Department last year recommended thorium as the best way to eliminate Russia’s surplus plutonium warheads. “The bottom line is that from a technical standpoint [thorium] looks like a good technology and from a perspective of burning weapons-grade plutonium, it is preferable to all the others,” said Regis Matzie, chief technology officer at Westinghouse Electric, the engineering firm that conducted the study. Thorium can destroy plutonium at three times the speed and at a third to half the cost of the MOX process, Matzie added. Wilkes rejected the report, and Russia has said it would not use Thorium Power’s technology. “We will use MOX,” Russian Embassy spokesman Vladimir Ryubachenko told Fortune. “We think that French technology is more reliable.” There has never been testing of MOX fuel in Soviet-designed reactors, and even its supporters have acknowledged that some 10 years of safety testing would be needed. Nonproliferation experts are concerned that the lag time could allow terrorist groups to steel material from Russia’s shelved warheads, according to Fortune. Seth Grae of Thorium Power said his company’s technology could be ready to work in Russia reactors in three years (Peter Green, Fortune Small Business, March 1).
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