Obama’s worst fear: Hijacked nukes
THE TIMES OF INDIA 12 Jan 2009,  David E Sanger, NYT News Service “……………………………….. Just last month in Washington, members of the federally appointed bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism made it clear that for sheer scariness, nothing could compete with what they had heard in a series of high-level intelligence briefings about the dangers of Pakistan’s nuclear technology going awry. “When you map WMD and terrorism, all roads intersect in Pakistan,” said Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and a leading nuclear expert on the commission. “The nuclear security of the arsenal is now a lot better than it was. But the unknown variable here is the future of Pakistan itself, because it’s not hard to envision a situation in which the state’s authority falls apart and you’re not sure who’s in control of the weapons, the nuclear labs, the materials.” ……………………………. What Obama now inherits in Pakistan is a fully dysfunctional relationship between that country and the US. Last summer, Bush signed secret orders allowing American special forces to run ground raids into Pakistani territory to root out not only al-Qaida but also a list of other militants who could be targeted by either the CIA or American military. At the end of Bush’s term, his aides handed over to Obama’s transition team a lengthy review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, concluding that in the end, the US has far more at stake in preventing Pakistan’s collapse than it does in stabilizing Afghanistan or Iraq.

THE TIMES OF INDIA January 12, 2009 Nuclear fears as danger plant is reopened in gas war with Russia Bojan Pancevski in Vienna, David Charter in Brussels and Helen Womack in Moscow

Fears were raised yesterday over a decision to restart a potentially dangerous decommissioned nuclear power plant in the centre of Europe because of a shortage of gas caused by Russia’s dispute with Ukraine.

Slovakia, defying undertakings given when it joined the European Union, said that it would reactivate a Soviet-style nuclear generator that has a record of safety problems because it had received no Russian gas since last Thursday………………………………….

Michael Spindelegger, Austria’s Foreign Minister, said that the danger of the Soviet-era reactors “must not be underestimated” and called for an investigation to determine whether Slovakia was really in a state of emergency.

The head of the Austrian Green Party, Eva Glawischnig, said: “The reactor is considered one of the three most dangerous nuclear facilities in Europe. To reactivate it means to put people in danger, and not only in neighbouring Austria.”