Anger in India, as government goes for a “sweetheart deal” with US nuclear companies
‘Sweetheart’ nuclear deal for US companies sparks furore Indrani Bagchi, TNN | Sep 20, 2013, NEW DELHI: The government’s effort to find an honourable way around the constraint of the nuclear liability law without actually violating it ran into rough weather on Thursday with the opposition accusing it of seeking to dilute the law for the sake of US and other foreign suppliers.
nuclear plant, to allege that the government was seeking to dilute the provision in the nuclear liability law that would hold foreign reactor suppliers liable in cases of mishaps caused by faulty and defective equipment………. Continue reading Arms and uranium trade pact between Zimbabwe and North Korea
Zimbabwe in ‘arms for uranium’ pact with North Korea Nehanda Radio 19 Sept 13, President Robert Mugabe’s military henchmen have reportedly signed an arms trade agreement worth millions of dollars with North Korea, in return for allowing Pyongyang access to Zimbabwe’s controversial Kanyemba district, which has sparked a uranium mining race pitting Iran and other powers, Nehanda Radio has been told.
Kanyemba district is about 160 miles north of the capital, and is believed to be holding significant uranium reserves, first discovered in the 1970s by German prospectors, but never exploited due to low world prices at the time.
Several other countries have sought the rights to mine Zimbabwe’s untapped uranium deposits, and these include Russia, China and a failed bid by neighbouring South Africa and Namibia, as they scramble for the Yellow cake which is a key ingredient needed for the production of nuclear bombs. Continue reading
No nuclear weapons for Iran: President Rouhani
Rouhani says Iran will never develop nuclear weapons: NBC 
interview (Reuters) Reporting By Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Christopher Wilson and Xavier Briand, 18 Sept 13, – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a television interview on Wednesday that his government would never develop nuclear weapons and that he has full authority to negotiate a nuclear deal with the West, NBC News reported.
Speaking to the U.S. network at his presidential compound in Tehran, Iran’s new president also said the tone of a letter he had received from President Barack Obama, part of a recent exchange of messages between the two leaders, was “positive and constructive.”
“It could be subtle and tiny steps for a very important future,” Rouhani said, in another sign that he may be seeking a thaw between Iran and the West after years locked in a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Rouhani’s comments came just six days before he will be in New York to address the U.N. General Assembly, a speech that will be closely watched for fresh diplomatic overtures.
Echoing what Iranian leaders have said before, Rouhani was quoted by NBC as declaring that his government would “never develop nuclear weapons” under any circumstances………
Since Rouhani was elected president in June, the centrist cleric has called for “constructive interaction” with the world, a dramatic shift in tone from the fiery anti-Western rhetoric of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad……..http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/us-iran-nuclear-rouhani-idUSBRE98H11S20130918
Manmohan Singh tries to kow tow to USA on Nuclear Liability Law
Since 17(b) suggests Parliament intended to hold suppliers responsible even if there is no contractual liability, it is not clear how a public sector undertaking like NPCIL, which is answerable to Parliament, could give its suppliers a free pass.
Manmohan may carry nuclear liability dilution as gift for U.S. companies THE HINDU, SANDEEP DIKSHITJ. VENKATESAN It is for operator to exercise ‘right of recourse’ under section 17 of Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act
Under sustained pressure from the Obama administration, the Manmohan Singh government is looking to use the opinion of the Attorney- General to effectively neutralise a key provision of India’s nuclear liability law that would hold American reactor suppliers liable in the event of an accident caused by faulty or defective equipment.
In an opinion to the Department of Atomic Energy, which referred the matter to him on September 4, Goolam Vahanvati has said it is for the operator of a nuclear plant in India to decide whether it wished to exercise the ‘right of recourse’ provided to it by section 17 of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act.
The AG’s opinion effectively paves the way for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd, which will operate any nuclear plant using imported reactors, to repudiate a right that Parliament explicitly wrote into section 17(b) of the law to ensure that foreign suppliers don’t get away scot-free if a nuclear accident is traced back to “equipment or material with patent or latent defects or sub standard services.” Continue reading
Iran not planning to close uranium enrichment plant
 Iran will not close Fordo nuclear plant: source, Tehran Times, 17 Sept 13 TEHRAN – Iran would not suspend activities at the Fordo enrichment plant, the ISNA news agency said on Tuesday, quoting an informed source.
According to the source, Iran would not come up with any fresh proposal to the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) in New York and it would await the other side’s offers. His comments came after the Spiegel weekly published an article on Monday claiming that Iranian President Hassan Rohani is reportedly prepared to decommission the Fordo enrichment plant and allow international inspectors to monitor the removal of the centrifuges.,,,,,,,http://tehrantimes.com/politics/110850-iran-will-not-close-fordo-
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Iran’s President Rohani prepared to shut uranium enrichment plant
Rohani Ready to Shut Uranium Plant to Ease Sanctions: Spiegel http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-16/rohani-ready-to-shut-uranium-plant-to-ease-sanctions-spiegel.html By Kambiz Foroohar – Sep 16, 2013 President Hassan Rohani ready to decommission Iran’s Fordo uranium enrichment facility, near the city of Qom, in exchange for an easing of international sanctions, Der Spiegel says. *Magazine cites unidentified intelligence officials on decommissioning. *Rohani will close down Fordo, which started operations in late 2011, and allow international inspectors to monitor removal of centrifuges, according to German publication. *Rohani may demand U.S. and EU rescind sanctions against Iran, lift ban on oil exports and allow central bank to conduct business overseas: Spiegel. *Rohani is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24 in New York.To contact the reporter on this story: Kambiz Foroohar in New York atkforoohar@bloomberg.netVbcx
Syria’s chemical arsenal bad, but what about Israel’s nuclear and chemical arsenals?
Double standard: Disarming Syria puts Israel’s nuclear and chemical arsenal in the spotlight, MondoWeiss Annie Robbins on September 14, 2013 “.…..As John Kerry meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva today to discuss the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile the Wall Street Journal spotlights a “ripple effect“, the focus on Israel’s nuclear program:
GENEVA—The joint U.S. Russian push to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons is starting to have ripple effects, focusing attention on the suspected arsenal of Israel.……
But a frequent complaint among Arab countries in the region—that Israel has an undeclared but presumed nuclear-weapons program—has already resurfaced.
Syria’s government has hinted that it could raise Israel’s suspected arsenal of nuclear and other weapons as an international issue ………
Israel’s regional enemies have insisted they need chemical weapons to counter the threat of the nuclear weapons Israel is believed to possess. No other Middle East nation is thought to have such an arsenal. http://mondoweiss.net/2013/09/double-standard-disarming-syria-puts-israels-nuclear-and-chemical-arsenal-in-the-spotlight.html
Iran reduces enriched uranium stockpile
the West should speak to Iran not with a language of threats or sanctions but with a language of respect.”
Iran says it has reduced its 20 percent-enriched uranium stockpile by producing reactor fuel, Newser.13 Sept 13 By NASSER KARIMI | ASSOCIATED PRESS Iran significantly reduced its stock of 20 percent-enriched uranium by converting it to reactor fuel, a senior official said, an announcement that appears to be a bid to ease international concerns over its nuclear program. The West remains concerned over Iran’s continuing production of 20 percent uranium, which is enriched to a higher level than that used to fuel most energy reactors and is closer to the 90 percent needed for a warhead. The U.S. and its allies demand Iran halt all enrichment, which Tehran rejects.
The late Thursday announcement, from the government of moderate President Hasan Rouhani, appeared to be a signal to ease Western worries. Speaking to state television, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the country’s stocks of 20 percent-enriched uranium has fallen from 240 kilograms to around 140 kilograms as it is converted into fuel for a medical research reactor. Salehi said the remainder is also being converted.
“We have converted a remarkable part to fuel rod,” Salehi said. “The amount of 20 percent-enriched uranium is small.”…..
Salehi’s remarks came ahead of a new round of talks planned for later this month between Iran and the U.N. nuclear agency. Talks over the past years failed to reach any breakthrough.
It also came a few days after Rouhani showed a willingness to use his coming visit to the U.N. General Assembly as a point for resuming nuclear talks with world powers.
Earlier Thursday, the new Iranian envoy to the U.N. agency said in Vienna that Tehran was ready for more engagement to clarify its disputed nuclear program. However, Reza Najafi stressed Iran would never give up its “inalienable right to develop a nuclear program,” the official IRNA news agency reported Friday. “Iran is ready to engage and remove any ambiguity,” Najafi said, according to the report. He added: “If other sides want a proper response, the West should speak to Iran not with a language of threats or sanctions but with a language of respect.”
A disarmament expert, Najafi, 51, replaced former envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh after Rouhani came to power in August.http://www.newser.com/article/da8pic783/iran-says-it-has-reduced-its-20-percent-enriched-uranium-stockpile-by-producing-reactor-fuel.html
USA desperate to save its nuclear industry from being accountable for any accidents in India
‘Nuclear liability law poses challenge to Indo-US nuke deal’ Zee News, September 13, 2013, Washington: India’s nuclear liability law posed a tough challenge for implementing the “transformational” Indo-US nuclear deal though there is a very strong desire to move forward, Nisha Desai Biswal, President Barack Obama’s Indian-American nominee for a key post in South Asia, said. “I think that the 123 agreement was a transformational agreement between the relationship between the United States and India, she said at her confirmation hearing for the post of Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia.
“But since that deal was enacted, I think that there has been very slow and halting progress because of the nuclear liability law in India and the hindrances that that has posed to advancing civil nuke cooperation,” she said yesterday.
…..India’s Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Law allows the operator of a nuclear plant to seek damages from the supplier in case of a nuclear incident due to supply of equipment with latent and patent defects or sub-standard services. The US says the Indian law is not consistent with the Convention on Supplemental Compensation (CSC). http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/nuclear-liability-law-poses-challenge-to-indo-us-nuke-deal_876374.html
Trans Pacific Partnership an ugly attack on workers and countries other than USA
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Its Critics: An introduction and a petition The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 36, No. 3.
Sachie Mizohata and the Association of University Faculties See the petition in English and Japanese. – See more at: http://japanfocus.org/-Sachie-MIZOHATA/3996#sthash.Q1auk4dC.dpuf
- domestic court decisions and international legal standards (e.g., overriding domestic laws on both trade and nontrade matters, foreign investors’ right to sue governments in international tribunals that would overrule the national sovereignty)
- environmental regulations (e.g., nuclear energy, pollution, sustainability)
- financial deregulation (e.g., more power and privileges to the bankers and financiers)
- food safety (e.g., lowering food self-sufficiency, prohibition of mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease)
- Government procurement (e.g., no more buy locally produced/grown)
- Internet freedom (e.g., monitoring and policing user activity)
- labor (e.g., welfare regulation, workplace safety, relocating domestic jobs abroad)
- patent protection, copyrights (e.g., decrease access to affordable medicine)
- public access to essential services may be restricted due to investment rules (e.g., water, electricity, and gas)
Although the TPP negotiations have been held in the name of the people, the draft texts have been shrouded in secrecy from the public, thereby precluding public scrutiny and public input. Reportedly, the countries have signed up not to reveal the contents of the agreement for four years after the signing of the agreement. 6 All public information comes from leaked texts.
Bizarrely, the TPP makes a special exception to “a group of some 600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses.”7 The TPP is a Trojan horse, branded as a “free trade” agreement, but having nothing to do with “fair and equitable treatment. In reality, it is precisely “a wish list of the 1% ―a worldwide corporate power.”8 “Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas.”9 “The other chapters enshrine new rights and privileges for major corporations while weakening the power of nation states to oppose them.”1 – See more at: http://japanfocus.org/-Sachie-MIZOHATA/3996#sthash.Q1auk4dC.dpuf
Iran keen to restart nuclear talks for a ‘win win’ resolution
Iran to restart nuclear talks in New York The Age, September 12, 2013 – Kambiz Foroohar and Yeganeh Salehi Iranian president Hassan Rohani said his government plans to restart nuclear talks with world powers in New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly this month.
The “serious talks” should help lead to a “win-win” final outcome in the dispute over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program,Mr Rohani said in an interview on Iranian state-run television yesterday. The negotiations will involve the International Atomic Energy Agency and the so-called P5+1 group, made up of the five permanent UN Security Council members in addition to Germany, he said.
“The nuclear issue will be resolved soon if the other side is serious,” he said. “The final result should be a win-win. We are ready for it.”…… Mr Rohani plans a six-day visit to New York starting September 22. The European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton plans to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York, the EU said. http://www.theage.com.au/world/iran-to-restart-nuclear-talks-in-new-york-20130911-2tkun.html#ixzz2ehuBDrYd
Obama administration’s contradictory claims about attacking Syria
Critics see contradictions in Obama administration’s Syria claims LA Times, By Paul Richter September 8, 2013, WASHINGTON –- The planned military strikes on Syria would be “targeted, limited” and wouldn’t seek to topple the government of President Bashar Assad or even force it to peace talks.
They would also be punishing and “consequential” and would so scare Assad that he would never use chemical weapons again. U.S. airstrikes would change the momentum on the battlefield of the Syrian civil war. But the war will grind on, unchanged, perhaps for years.
As administration officials lay out their case in favor of a punitive attack on Syria, they have been making all of these seemingly contradictory contentions, confusing supporters and providing rhetorical weapons to their opponents.
The contradictions stem from the basic challenge the White House faces: how to reassure the large anti-war contingent in the Democratic Party, as well as conservative opponents of overseas intervention, that strikes won’t open the way to another war, while convincing hawks and more militant internationalists that the strikes will do enough to make the mission worthwhile.
It’s possible to square most of the administration’s arguments – if one believes that a military strike can be so precisely calibrated as to harm the Assad government just enough, but not too much. But as a political case, the effort has so far proven hard to sell.
If officials lean too far in one direction, they risk losing supporters on one side or the other. But when they voice both sides of their case, they risk presenting an argument that is incoherent…….. http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-contradictions-obama-syria-20130908,0,4466835.story
Iranian President Rouhani takes a moderate line on Syria, nuclear talks
Rouhani outflanks hardliners on Syria, nuclear talks SMH, September 6, 2013 Ramin Mostaghim and Carol J. Williams Tehran: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears to be outmanoeuvring hard-liners with his move to take control of stalled nuclear negotiations and in curbing bombastic declarations to defend ally Syria from threatened US airstrikes.
In sharp contrast with the bellicose posturing of his predecessor, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Rouhani has kept expectations low that Iran will provide military aid to Syrian President Bashar Assad if Western forces attack his government.
Another former president and influential backer of Mr Rouhani, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, last week was reported to have publicly blamed Dr Assad’s forces for an alleged chemical weapons attack August 21 on the suburbs of Damascus that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians……….: http://www.smh.com.au/world/rouhani-outflanks-hardliners-on-syria-nuclear-talks-20130906-2t9oa.html#ixzz2eGAIakBW
Iran’s Foreign Minister to now be nuclear negotiator
Iran Foreign Ministry to lead nuclear talks http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/09/20139515176846972.htm President tasks ministry with handling negotiations, in shift away from security officials setting Tehran’s strategies. 05 Sep 2013 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has tasked the Foreign Ministry with handling the country’s nuclear negotiations with world powers, in a shift away from security officials setting Tehran’s strategies for the talks.
The announcement on Thursday came three weeks before Iran and the UN atomic watchdog are to resume talks in Vienna over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.
Since 2007, negotiations have been conducted by Saeed Jalili, head of the country’s Supreme National Security Council, who was seen by Western diplomats as an uncompromising ideologue.
Last month, the president named ex-foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi to head the country’s Atomic Energy Organisation and career diplomat Reza Najafi as envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran’s most powerful authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, retains the final say on any proposed deals.The last round of negotiations in April with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany again fell short of any breakthrough.
But some believe more progress can be achieved under Rouhani, a relative moderate who was elected in June and has pledged a more conciliatory and transparent approach to foreign policy than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The six world powers have demanded Tehran cease enrichment of uranium to a fissile purity of 20 percent to reduce concerns that it could be used for nuclear weapons, allegations Tehran has repeatedly denied.
During his role as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, from 2003-2005, Rouhani accepted the suspension of the enrichment programme. Rouhani said last month that Iran was ready for serious talks, but he said there could be no surrender of the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy and that Iran would not give up uranium enrichment.
West taking a gentler approach to Iran at nuclear meeting
West to hold back from targeting Iran at U.N. nuclear meeting By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Thu Sep 5, 2013 (Reuters) – World powers will refrain from raising pressure on Iran at a U.N. nuclear meeting next week to give its new moderate president time to show he is serious about moves to reduce tensions over its atomic activity, Western diplomats say…….. “There has definitely been a change in tone from the Iranian government which we recognize and welcome,” a Western envoy said, speaking ahead of next week’s governing board meeting.
“We have to give them at least the time to translate their words into action,” the envoy added, noting there were no plans – unlike previous board meetings – to push for a resolution to chide Iran over its refusal to curb sensitive atomic activity…….. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSBRE9840IL20130905
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14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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