Spinning its way to conflict again

Despite the Bush administration's hysteria, there is nothing in the Iranian nuclear programme that requires steps so drastic as sanctions and war. Dialogue without preconditions, combined with inspections, is the way to go.














27 February 2007
The Hindu

Spinning its way to conflict again

Siddharth Varadarajan

BASED ON what the world knows or fears about Iran's nuclear programme, is the crisis really so dire that sanctions and war are the only way of securing ourselves from the possibility of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons? This is a question every country needs to ask, now that the Iranian government's predictable refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment programme has led Washington to push for a tougher menu of punitive measures against the Islamic Republic.

For the past year and a half, every report of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran has reached two broad conclusions. First, that there has been no diversion of declared nuclear material for prohibited purposes. And, secondly, that the IAEA is not yet in a position to certify that Iran has no undeclared nuclear facilities.

In other words, the world can be assured that in all the Iranian facilities currently under international safeguards — including the Esfahan uranium conversion facility, the pilot fuel enrichment plant (PFEP), and the fuel enrichment plant (FEP) both above and below the ground at Natanz — no activities or operations prohibited by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) are taking place.

The fear, of course, is that Iran might have built — or might be building — secret nuclear facilities at other locations the IAEA knows nothing about. The United States, Britain, and Israel believe this to be the case, though they have provided no evidence to date that it is indeed so.

In order to be able to certify the absence of undeclared nuclear facilities, the IAEA needs to do two things. First, assemble as complete a record of Iran's research, experiments, and acquisitions in the nuclear field as possible. And, secondly, have the ability to inspect any location where undeclared nuclear activities might be going on. Granting international inspectors such unlimited and intrusive access is not part of the safeguards agreement that Iran or any other country has signed with the IAEA. It is only the Additional Protocol that does so. Iran, like many other NPT signatories including several who are members of the IAEA Board of Governors, is not a party to the Additional Protocol. In 2003, however, it voluntarily adhered to the Protocol's requirements, rescinding its adherence only in February 2006 when the IAEA Board voted to send its nuclear file to the United Nations Security Council.

During this period, the IAEA had the freedom to visit pretty much any location it wanted and take environmental samples as well. Though neither the Agency nor the United States has admitted as much, virtually all of those locations were pre-selected by the U.S. on the basis of its "national technical means," i.e. intelligence and espionage network. This was also the way Unscom and Unmovic operated in Iraq during the long and eventually fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction there. Needless to say, none of the Iranian locations identified by the U.S. showed evidence of undeclared, let alone prohibited, nuclear activities when IAEA inspectors visited them.

Despite this, Washington insists the Iranian nuclear programme is aimed at producing weapons and not energy. In a recent speech, U.S. Ambassador Gregory L. Schulte asked a series of pointed questions: "If the program is peaceful, why 18 years of deceit? If the program is peaceful, why not cooperate with the IAEA? If the program is peaceful, why the unexplained ties to the A.Q. Kahn [sic] network? If the program is peaceful, why does Iran possess a document on fabricating nuclear weapons components? If the program is peaceful, why the unexplained ties to Iran's military and its missile program?"

Each of these questions has an answer. To begin with the "18 years of deceit." It is often forgotten that Iran's enrichment facilities at Natanz — currently in the eye of the storm — were not developed in violation of IAEA rules. Under its safeguards agreement in force at the time, Iran was only obligated to inform the Agency of new facilities six months prior to the introduction of nuclear material. Of course, the IAEA did find Iran guilty of failure to declare other nuclear imports and experiments over an 18-year period but such failures were neither unique to Iran nor did they have any weapons-related implications. As IAEA Director-General Mohammed el-Baradei noted in a report to the IAEA Board in 2005, all of those failures have since been resolved.

Iran's secret enrichment programme did draw on Dr. A.Q. Khan, but what Mr. Schulte fails to note is the fact that Iran turned to the clandestine network only after all its open and well-publicised attempts to collaborate with the IAEA, Argentina, and China on the development of enrichment technology were scuttled by the U.S. Why did the U.S. block those legitimate efforts in the 1980s and early 1990s? What evidence did it have that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons?

Not much of a smoking gun

Mr. Schulte's reference to Iran's possession of "a document on fabricating nuclear weapons components" is also disingenuous. The document was voluntarily handed over to IAEA inspectors by Iran in the autumn of 2005 and was first mentioned in Dr. El-Baradei's report to the Agency's Board of Governors in November 2005. That report described it as a document "on the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms, with respect to which Iran stated that it had been provided on the initiative of the procurement network, and not at the request of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran." A subsequent report, prepared by Dr. El-Baradei's deputy, Oli Heinonen, in the run-up to the crucial February 2006 Board meeting, repeated this information but added the words "related to the fabrication of nuclear weapons components."

Despite this characterisation — which the IAEA curiously chose not to make when it first reported the existence of the document — the U.S. has not succeeded in turning the issue into a smoking gun. For one, if the Iranian story about its unsolicited receipt were false, it is unlikely that they would have voluntarily shown it to the Agency and allowed its inspectors to study it closely. Though the document has been placed under the IAEA's seal, Iran is unwilling to hand it over or allow it to be copied. This is understandable. Were it to do so, it would only be a matter of time before Washington tom-tommed its contents as "proof" of Iran's intention to produce a nuclear bomb. In any case, the IAEA apparently has a copy of the document — procured from another part of the Khan network — and hardly needs physical possession of the Iranian copy in order to study it any further.

The last of Mr. Schulte's allegations about "unexplained ties to Iran's military and its missile program" refers to the so-called evidence gleaned by the CIA from a purloined Iranian laptop. The computer supposedly contained information about Iranian research work on nuclear warheads and a secret uranium conversion programme known as "Green Salt." After months of quiet scepticism, IAEA officials have finally begun airing their misgivings about the genuineness of the laptop and its contents. On Saturday, both the Guardian and The Los Angeles Times quoted unnamed IAEA officials as expressing surprise at the fact that the entire contents of the laptop were in English rather than Farsi.

The only part of Mr. Schulte's catalogue of allegations that is even remotely accurate is Iran's lack of cooperation with the IAEA. While Tehran must go flat out to provide international inspectors the information they need to verify the completeness of its declarations, the main difficulty here is that Iran is being asked to prove a negative — that it has no undeclared activities. Matters are stuck on the extent of Iranian research into the P-2 centrifuge, where, because of the current political climate, the IAEA is unwilling to believe Iran. But even assuming the Iranians are lying about the extent of their work and have actually developed a vast underground facility full of P-2s capable of thousands of separative work units of enrichment, the best remedy is unlimited physical access by the IAEA. The irony here is that the Agency had that right until February 2006, when the IAEA Board unwisely appeased the U.S. and sent Iran's file to the Security Council.

Rather than trying to impose tougher sanctions if Iran does not immediately suspend enrichment, the international community should focus on restarting the dialogue process without preconditions. Once talks start, Iran can be expected to resume its adherence to the Additional Protocol and implement a time-bound suspension linked to the development of objective guarantees that its nuclear programme will never be misused for military purposes. Insisting on preconditions and holding out the threat of sanctions and war will not help resolve the nuclear issue. Dialogue, diplomacy, and the implementation of safeguards is the only way forward.

Keep the peace process on track

For the third time in less than a year, terrorists have attempted to derail the peace process between India and Pakistan. Handing them a victory is the last thing we should do.





20 February 2007
The Hindu

Keep the peace process on track

Siddharth Varadarajan

IN TERMS of the choice of both target and timing, it is not difficult to surmise that Sunday night's bomb blast on board the link train of the Samjhauta Express was aimed primarily at stopping the peace process between India and Pakistan.

As the indigent, divided families who travel on it every week know so well, the time the train takes to run from Delhi to Lahore can hardly be justified by the laws of locomotion or the dictates of cartography. And yet, that journey is a symbol of the civilised neighbourliness ordinary Indians and Pakistanis so desperately yearn for, a hint of what the future might bring if only the understanding and compromise its name connotes were allowed to run to its final destination.

The terrorists who bombed the train are clearly not interested in that final destination. By murdering at least 67 passengers on the eve of a visit to India by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, their intention is to provoke another bout of tension and finger-pointing between Islamabad and New Delhi. At the very least, their aim is to make the process of travel between the two countries so fraught with danger that few will want to take on the risk and inconvenience of the journey by train, bus or even plane.

In the wake of the coordinated bombing of several commuter trains in Mumbai on July 7, 2006, the terrorists were temporarily able to seize the initiative but that mistake must not be repeated again. Then, India postponed a scheduled meeting of Foreign Secretaries and within days the atmospherics began to degenerate. Policemen in Mumbai and Delhi spoke loosely about the "pretty good evidence" they had of the Pakistani establishment's involvement and it seemed as if the peace process was going into free-fall. In the end, however, the evidence turned out to be less than clinching. The realisation also dawned that dialogue and people-to-people contact help rather than hurt the country's interests.

After some deft pre-negotiation involving the creation of a joint anti-terror mechanism, India finally felt comfortable talking to Pakistan again.

Though India was right to criticise Pakistan for the latter's failure to act against terrorist organisations and training facilities on its territory, it erred in linking the future of the peace process to an incident for which Islamabad's complicity could only be inferred but not established. Indeed, nearly seven months after the blasts, evidence of Pakistan's official complicity continues to elude Indian investigators. Unfortunately, this failure to follow through with the specific allegation will no doubt be used by Pakistan to question the validity of India's general case that terrorist groups continue to operate from its territory.

Fundamental question

At the heart of the Indian policy dilemma lies a fundamental question: is the government of Pervez Musharraf involved in the instigation, planning or execution of terrorist acts such as the blasts in Mumbai and Malegaon and on the Samjhauta Express? There is no doubt the Pakistani establishment has the capability to mount these kinds of covert operations but it is not clear what its motive would be, or what it would stand to gain from a termination of the peace process because there can no longer be any doubt over what the underlying logic of these blasts is.

But if the answer to the question of General Musharraf's involvement is `No', then does this mean there are terrorist groups on the soil of Pakistan that are able to operate independently of, and in opposition to, the Pakistani state? It is obvious that this is so. The numerous bombings that have taken place inside Pakistan such as in Karachi last year on the birthday of Prophet Muhammad, the suicide attacks on Pakistani soldiers, and the attempts that have been made on General Musharraf's own life all suggest such "independent" terrorist groups not only exist but are flourishing.

What is not clear, however, is the extent of connectivity between Pakistan's "independent" and "dependent" terrorist outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad.

Islamabad and Washington may like to pretend a Chinese Wall separates the two; in reality, there is mixing and osmosis of men and materiél. That is why the Pakistani establishment is at once both a sponsor and a victim of terrorism.

Three years after promising to act, the Pakistani government remains indifferent to the existence of terrorist groups on its territory. Prominent individuals such as Masood Azhar go in and out of house arrest but the activities of their organisations continue more or less unchecked.

At the same time, the overall scale of cross-border violence and infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir has fallen, though the scale and audacity of terrorist strikes elsewhere in India has gone up.

In assessing its general policy to Pakistan, India knows there is no viable military option or compellance strategy to deal with this problem. The massive military mobilisation during Operation Parakram proved conclusively that India has no option other than diplomacy in dealing with Pakistan.

This does not mean ending terrorism should not be the top-most priority for India. The Government should continue to insist that Pakistan fulfil its January 2004 commitment of not allowing its territory to be used for terrorism directed against India. Shutting down existing and new groups as and when they come up and arresting their leaderships is a verifiable demand that India should make. And for evidence of compliance, it need rely merely on the ample reports that the Pakistani press itself publishes from time to time, rather than on "narco-analysis" and "brain mapping" of terrorist suspects on this side.

Before using the continuation of the peace process as a lever to try and stop terror again, however, India needs to ask whether the peace process has in any way compromised its national security.

Today, many more visas are being issued to Pakistanis than in 2004. Trade is up, both direct and indirect. New transportation routes have opened up in Kashmir, Punjab and Rajasthan. Business delegations visit each other far more frequently. If any of this has led to national security being compromised on the margins — for example, some 30-odd Pakistanis who applied for visas to watch cricket two years ago have yet to return home — surely our agencies can devise a better system of address verification, information-sharing, and so on so as to minimise the risks involved in encouraging closer people-to-people contact and travel. In the long run, greater travel, tourism, and trade will enlarge the constituency of people inside Pakistan who support the normalisation of relations with India. This, in turn, could eventually alter the political dynamics within Pakistan.

It is also largely thanks to the ongoing peace process that India and Pakistan have established a common vocabulary on Kashmir, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Today, both sides agree that the solution lies in transcending the Line of Control dividing Jammu and Kashmir. This shift in thinking can hardly have endeared General Musharraf to the extremists who regard Kashmir's territory as their own sacred battleground.

It is precisely the prospect of a peaceful solution that has got the authors of the Samjhauta Express and Mumbai train blasts so worked up. Rather than allowing terrorists to dictate the pace and content of the peace process, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf must insist on keeping the initiative in their own hands. There can be no turning back now. The Samjhauta Express martyrs must not have died in vain.

India to hand over draft 123 agreement to U.S. next week

Given the stony silence that has greeted Indian queries and requests for clarification on certain provisions of the Hyde Act, major differences remain on testing, fuel guarantees and reprocessing rights. The Indian side is preparing itself for protracted, difficult and "messy" negotiations on the final phase of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.






17 February 2007
The Hindu

Draft 123 text to be given to U.S.

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: With major differences persisting on lifetime fuel guarantees for safeguarded reactors, the reprocessing of spent fuel and a reference to a future Indian nuclear test as a condition for the United States to cut off nuclear cooperation, India has drafted its own 14-clause version of the crucial bilateral nuclear agreement with the U.S. which will be handed over to American officials in Washington next Monday by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.

The draft peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement — known as the `123 agreement' after the numbered clause of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act from which it is derived — has emerged as the latest battleground over the terms and conditions under which the July 2005 India-U.S. nuclear agreement will be implemented.

Responding to criticisms about certain provisions of the Henry Hyde Act passed last December by the U.S. Congress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament that the Indian Government would be bound only by the bilateral agreement it signed with the U.S. and not by domestic American laws authorising nuclear commerce with India. He acknowledged that there were areas which "cause us concern," but said clarifications had been sought from the United States.

With negotiations over the bilateral agreement now slipping into high gear, however, the Indian side is finding its American interlocutors less than forthcoming.

Saran's visit

Highly placed sources told The Hindu that the visit the Prime Minister's special envoy, Shyam Saran, paid to Washington in January did not yield the expected clarifications and that major conceptual differences remained.

One official wryly noted that all the U.S. side has been prepared to grant so far is the correction of a typo in the Hyde Act. In the definitions section as passed, a nuclear detonation was defined in terms of the equivalent energy released by "one point of TNT." On India's insistence, this was corrected subsequently to "one pound". But other Indian queries on more substantive issues have drawn a stony silence.

Providing an account of the talks held so far on the 123 agreement, the sources said the first U.S. draft was handed over to India in March 2006. India provided its response in July, following which another U.S. draft was handed over in August. India then suggested that the negotiations be put on hold till the U.S. Congress actually enacted the proposed waiver legislation placed before it. But on American insistence, a discussion on "concepts" rather than "clauses" was held last November.

Once the Indian draft is handed over and U.S. officials have had time to study it, a team of American negotiators will travel to Delhi to take the process forward some time in the next two months.

With the Hyde Act full of provisions running counter to the letter and spirit of the July 2005 agreement, the Indian Government sought and obtained a statement by President George W. Bush on December 19 that he would not be bound by some of the law's provisions. Notwithstanding this assurance, U.S. officials are now insisting that the 123 agreement cannot deviate from the language prescribed as far as prohibiting any nuclear detonation by India is concerned. Nor are they prepared to provide India fuel guarantees over and above reactor "operating requirements" as specified by the Obama amendment in the Hyde Act.

Continuation of story on inside page

Senior officials told The Hindu that India was prepared to undertake never to detonate a nuclear weapon using U.S.-supplied materials or technology but could not accept a general reference to its unilateral, voluntary moratorium in a bilateral agreement. The American proposal to replace an explicit reference to a nuclear test with language terminating cooperation if an event occurs that "jeopardises supreme U.S. national interests" is being seen by Indian officials as something even more dangerous. "Tomorrow, somebody in Washington may say the arrival in an Indian port of a tanker carrying Iranian LNG jeopardises U.S. national interests," said one official. "That is why none of these references are acceptable to us".

On nuclear fuel assurances, India wants the 123 agreement to explicitly provide a legal guarantee of uninterrupted supplies for up to 40 years, or the operating life of a reactor, rather than one extra "core" that the U.S. side says would be consistent with the Hyde Act.

"We are insisting that the triangular arrangement we reached in March 2006 be respected, in which India agreed to place its reactors under safeguards in perpetuity in exchange for lifetime fuel guarantees," said an official. "In March, they agreed these two assurances were interlocking — that if fuel supplies are denied, we reserve the right to take measures in our national interest. But now they want to walk away."

On the right to reprocess spent fuel, the U.S. side earlier suggested it might be willing to build into the 123 agreement the explicit permissions mandated by the Atomic Energy Act. But indications from Washington now are that U.S. negotiators want to leave the reprocessing issue to a subsequent agreement, even though the Hyde Act does not explicitly prohibit the granting of reprocessing rights to India. This, say Indian officials, is a strategy fraught with danger given the experience of Tarapur, where India has been unable to reprocess to the U.S. the spent fuel that has accumulated over the lifetime of the U.S.-supplied reactor.

The Indian side is puzzled by the American refusal to clarify so far the reference made to "42 USC 2153" in the Hyde Act whenever Article 123 of the Atomic Energy Act is mentioned. In the printed version of the AEA, there are several U.S. code numbers listed after Article 123 but 2153 does not figure. The Indian side wanted to know whether this was also a typographical error. But so far no answer has been provided.

Americans disown Rademaker

Yesterday, I reported how Stephen G. Rademaker, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation and international security, admitted before an audience of Indian security-wallahs in New Delhi that India's votes against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Well, as one would imagine, the sh&^ hit the fan, leading to U.S. ambassador David Mulford issuing a statement basically disowning the guy, reiterating Washington's "respect" for the sovereignty of Indian decision-making (yeah yeah) and -- which is what really annoyed me -- claiming the statements attributed to Rademaker were "inaccurate".

The Hindu does not take kindly to being accused of inaccurate reporting so we have carried a rebuttal to Mulford's charge.

17 February 2007
The Hindu

`Rademaker is not a U.S. official'

Special Correspondent

New Delhi: Responding to an article in The Hindu (`India's anti-Iran votes were coerced: former U.S. official', February 16), U.S. Ambassador David C. Mulford said the individual quoted was "not a U.S. official."

The story quoted Stephen G. Rademaker, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation and international security, telling an audience at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses on Thursday that India's votes against Iran were "coerced" and that the U.S. would expect more of India in the future.

"It has always been the U.S. position that India will make decisions on the Iran issue based on its own national interests. We respect the Government of India's decisions on this matter," Mr. Mulford said in a short written statement issued by the U.S. embassy on Friday.

He added, "Mr. Rademaker is not a U.S. official and the statements attributed to him are inaccurate."

The Hindu would like to clarify that Mr. Rademaker spoke before an audience of approximately 20 people and that its Associate Editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, was present and took detailed notes of his remarks, and that the quotes attributed to Mr. Rademaker are wholly accurate.

So now we know for sure...

that India's votes against Iran at the IAEA in 2005 and 2006 were 'coerced". For that's exactly what Stephen G. Rademaker, a former senior official in Bush administration, admitted at a lecture in Delhi on Thursday. Rademaker added that India would have to "do more" in the months ahead to prove it was on the side of the "First World nations" and should immediately abandon the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Since he quit State in December, Rademaker has joined a private U.S. lobbying firm India hired to advance its case on nuclear cooperation in the Beltway. All I can is that with friends and lobbyists like these, who needs enemies.

16 February 2007
The Hindu

India's anti-Iran votes were coerced, says former U.S. official
`New Delhi should walk away from Iran pipeline project'

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: A former ranking official of the Bush administration acknowledged on Thursday that India's votes against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 and 2006 were "coerced."

In a talk on `Iran, North Korea and the future of the NPT' at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Stephen G. Rademaker — who quit his job as Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation and International Security at the U.S. State Department last December — said the July 2005 nuclear agreement had helped bring about a big change in India's attitude towards "non-proliferation."

"The best illustration of this is the two votes India cast against Iran at the IAEA," he said, adding: "I am the first person to admit that the votes were coerced."

A key role in the entire process was played by the Congressional hearings on the nuclear deal, the former State Department official noted.

Congressional vote

"In the end, India did not vote the wrong way," he said. And India's votes against Iran, in turn, "paved the way for the Congressional vote on the civilian nuclear proposal last year."

Mr. Rademaker joined the State Department in 2002 as Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and was put in charge of the combined bureaus of arms control and non-proliferation in 2005. At the end of 2006, he quit the U.S. government to take up a job with Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the lobbying firm whose clients include the Government of India.

During the time he served in the State Department, Mr. Rademaker was involved in bilateral negotiations with India on nuclear matters. He also headed the U.S. delegation to two meetings of the Nuclear Suppliers Group held soon after the July 2005 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

Though the civil nuclear bill had now cleared Congress, said Mr. Rademaker, "more is going to be required [of India] because the problems of Iran and North Korea have not been solved."

The former Bush administration official claimed Iran was developing nuclear weapons and that the international community was going to have to take tougher measures to persuade Iran to change course. "Whether there will be more U.N. sanctions or more measures taken outside the U.N. context, we'll have to see." Russia, said Mr. Rademaker, was "not fully cooperating" with the U.S.

"If the U.N. Security Council acts against Iran, this would make things easier for countries like India. But if things go in the direction of increasing economic pressure by a coalition of countries like the U.S, Europe and Japan, India will have to make a choice," he said. India would have to decide whether to join these countries in the economic measures they took. "It is India's prerogative to decide, but should it (not join), it would be a big mistake and a lost opportunity," he added.

The July 2005 Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement had "opened a door for India to further its integration with the industrialised world and it would be bad for India to squander this opportunity," Mr. Rademaker said. "So I hope India, for its own self-interest, decides to participate (in these measures)."

`A low cost way'

As a "first step" towards tightening the screws on Iran, India should withdraw from the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project, the former U.S. official argued. "This would send a strong message to Iran, while not hurting India's economic interests" because the pipeline was unlikely to be economically viable, he claimed. "I am not sure what kind of investor would put up money for a pipeline running from Iran through Pakistan. What happens if there is an incident in Kashmir?"

Walking away from the IPI pipeline project, said Mr. Rademaker, would, therefore, be "a low cost way of India demonstrating its commitment to non-proliferation."

He clarified that the U.S. did not consider the Iran pipeline to be a "litmus test" for India. But scrapping the project "would be a smart thing for India to do." India, he stressed, "needs to stop thinking of itself as a Third World country... and start aligning itself with the First World countries."

Asked about the possibility of U.S. military action against Iran, Mr. Rademaker said, "I have never been a proponent of military strikes against Iran because I am not persuaded they would be effective."

Déjà vu on the Korean peninsula

After first pushing North Korea to test a nuclear weapon, the Bush administration has settled for a deal it could have had in 2002 or 2005. Does the new policy reflect a change of heart? Or is it merely a way of buying time with one part of the `axis of evil' while seeking to confront another?













14 February 2007
The Hindu

Déjà vu on the Korean peninsula

Siddharth Varadarajan

DRAMATIC THOUGH the latest breakthrough on the North Korean nuclear issue undoubtedly is, its true political significance lies in the anodyne title the participants in the Six-Party talks gave the piece of paper they all signed up to in Beijing on Tuesday: "Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement."

In plain English, that means let us just go back to where we started before and try and get our steps right this time.

For, the `Joint Statement' in question is the equally dramatic agreement reached by North Korea and its five interlocutors — the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan — at the end of the fourth round of their talks on September 19, 2005, for the eventual denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. In that statement, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) specifically committed itself to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and to IAEA safeguards." And the U.S. agreed to normalise its relations with North Korea and respect the latter's sovereignty.

The 2005 joint statement, in turn, essentially repeated the broad principles that the U.S. and North Korea had already agreed to on October 21, 1994, under the Agreed Framework.

If, despite these two agreements, Pyongyang felt compelled to take the provocative and irresponsible step of testing a nuclear weapon last October, the fault for this lay almost entirely with the U.S.

First, by gratuitously abusing North Korea in January 2002 for being part of the so-called `axis of evil,' President George W. Bush undermined the fragile political basis on which the 1994 Agreed Framework rested. Later that year, Washington scuttled the core economic bargain that underlay it — providing Pyongyang with alternative `safe' sources of energy such as heavy oil and light water reactors in exchange for the graphite-moderated reactors and plutonium reprocessing facilities that were under construction at Yongbyon at the time.

Once the Agreed Framework collapsed, it was only a matter of time before North Korea resumed work on the nuclear weapons programme it had earlier been willing to abandon. In January 2003, it formally renounced its membership of the NPT. Realising that its strategy of confronting the DPRK might not have been very wise, the Bush administration desperately turned to China for help in restarting a process of dialogue. Under Beijing's chairmanship, the six-party talks process began in August 2003 but it was only when the U.S. negotiator, Christopher Hill, was given a proper mandate to negotiate that the landmark Joint Statement of September 2005 became possible.

This is when hardliners in the Bush administration launched the second instalment of Operation Scuttle.

Even as the Joint Statement was being negotiated and signed by Mr. Hill, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions through the backdoor on the North Korean Government. By targeting the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA) through which most of Pyongyang's foreign trade was routed, President Bush hoped to be able to drive an even tougher bargain with the DPRK's Kim Jong-Il.

But in the end, the BDA affair proved to be the straw that broke the international non-proliferation regime's back: On October 9, 2006, North Korea exploded a nuclear weapon. The device may have been crude, and the test may actually have flopped, but it certainly managed to destroy what little credibility still remained of the Bush administration's disastrous nuclear diplomacy.

Undeterred, the U.S. sought to use the United Nations Security Council to penalise North Korea for an act that was no more illegal than the nuclear tests India and Pakistan had conducted as non-NPT adherents in 1998. Beijing, which initially went along with the Bush administration's tough approach, realised the potentially dangerous dynamics of what was happening and pulled the plug on Washington. South Korea, too, made it clear it did not support a policy of coercion, leaving Japan as the only other interlocutor to endorse the John Bolton line of naval interdictions and tough sanctions.

If Tuesday's agreement is a direct product of Chinese exertions on both the U.S. and the DPRK, it also reflects the Bush administration's new-found willingness to embrace pragmatism and compromise. Under siege because of the Iraq fiasco and facing mounting international criticism of its bellicose language towards Iran, the U.S. has chosen to cut its losses in the Korean peninsula. For now, at least, because the February 13, 2007 deal requires less initially of North Korea than the earlier agreements did while requiring the U.S. to do more than ever before. This means there are going to be people in Washington who will question the wisdom of the agreement. And some day, they may gain the upper hand.

Normalisation first

As things stand, North Korea has committed to verifiably shutting down Yongbyon within 60 days pending its "eventual abandonment." On its part, the U.S. will ensure the provision of 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil (HFO). Though not a formal part of the deal, Mr. Hill has said the U.S. will also withdraw its financial sanctions against the DPRK within 30 days.

Between the first and second phase of implementation — when North Korea is expected to list all its nuclear facilities and also disable them — another 950,000 tonnes of HFO will be provided as humanitarian assistance. More importantly, in language that has been more explicitly spelt out than any previous accord, the U.S. has committed itself to bilateral talks aimed at moving towards full diplomatic relations. It has also agreed to "begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK."

Nowhere does the agreement oblige North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and return to the NPT. The goal of "early denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula" is mentioned as the eventual goal but it is clear that all of the abovementioned steps — including the normalisation of diplomatic and economic relations between the U.S. and the DPRK — are conditions precedent for this to happen.

The contrast with Washington's policies towards Tehran couldn't be more glaring. Purged by the White House following last November's Congressional elections, John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has said the deal "undercuts" U.N. Security Council resolution 1718 imposing sanctions on North Korea. "I think the Iranians have only to follow the same example," he told CNN in an interview.

If Tuesday's agreement is implemented sincerely by Washington — as the 1994 and 2005 agreements should have been — the reciprocal steps outlined provide the Korean peninsula its best shot at peace, stability, and denuclearisation. It has taken the region 60 years to reach this point but the hawks in the Beltway are still looking for ways to renege. The danger is that when the political balance of forces in Washington — and the military balance of forces in West Asia, where the other parts of the "axis of evil" have yet to be neutralised — change, the latest deal might end up going the way of the earlier ones.

Iranians rally in defence of right to nuclear energy

Show of popular support boosts embattled President








12 February 2007
The Hindu

Iranians rally in defence of right to nuclear energy

Siddharth Varadarajan

TEHRAN: In a spectacle that was part scripted and part carnivalesque, thousands of schoolgirls gaily waved Iranian flags, sang songs, bellowed out slogans at the top of their voices condemning America and defending their "legitimate right to peaceful nuclear energy" before succumbing to the youthful diversions that any outing might provide: sharing snacks and laughter, and generally having a jolly good time.

Strong feelings

As the 28th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution approached, the Iranian authorities had done their best to get the people of Tehran to demonstrate their support for the Government's nuclear plans.

By the time the grand rally in Tehran's Azadi Square ended on Sunday afternoon, it certainly seemed as if hundreds of thousands of citizens had heeded the call. "Some are basiji, or militia, and some are ordinary citizens," an Iranian photographer told this reporter. "But they are all here because everyone feels strongly about our right to nuclear energy."

Despite the early morning cold, the first lot of girls came streaming in at around 7.30. Some were in school uniform, others in black chadors, often with blue jeans visible underneath. As they assembled neatly right in front of the dais where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to make his address, the loudspeakers played an old revolutionary song, `Balkhizi' or `Stand up.' From the opposite entrance, though at some distance from the media's viewing stand, came the boys. Further away were two vast enclosures stretching up to the Azadi monument — the vast gateway built by the Shah in memory of his father but now an icon of the city — one for men, the other for women.

Rumours scotched

In his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad began by attacking those who were spreading rumours that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was ailing. "With the blessings of God, the leader is in fine health and is carrying the flag of Iranian glory on his shoulders." After hailing the recent achievement of Iranian scientists in the fields of AIDS and spinal cord research, the President turned to the question of nuclear energy.

IAEA supervision

Iran's nuclear energy programme was under the complete supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and all IAEA's reports had confirmed the fact that there had been no diversion for prohibited purposes, he said. "Despite the fact that they are supervising everything in Iran, America says it doesn't trust us. But they are not looking for trust. They are looking to deprive us of nuclear technology."

On Iraq, Mr. Ahmadinejad said the U.S. went in to find weapons of mass destruction and end dictatorship. "Today there is neither dictatorship nor WMDs. So why are you still there? What are you looking for?" Blaming the U.S. for provoking violence between Shias and Sunnis, he said the recent arrest of Iranian diplomats inside Iraq would get America nowhere.

'Face of Iran'

Giving an account of Iran's nuclear negotiations with the European Union, the Iranian president said the last time the Iranian fuel enrichment programme was suspended, it took two and a half years to be restarted. "We asked them why they are insisting on the suspension of enrichment as a precondition and they replied that they would lose face otherwise. But is the face of Iran not important?" he asked.

Despite Mr. Ahmadinejad toning down his nuclear rhetoric and refraining from escalating the standoff by making new announcements, Iranian analysts are not optimistic about the prospect of dialogue.

"So strong is the U.S. insistence on the suspension of enrichment that even the prospect of secret talks with the Europeans [where some of these conditions can be pre-negotiated] looks remote," said Mohammad Soltanifar of the Expediency Council's Centre for Strategic Research.

Iran rejects nuclear pressure

But IAEA rules will be respected, says Ahmadinejad

12 February 2007
The Hindu

Iran rejects nuclear pressure

Siddharth Varadarajan

Tehran: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that his country would not suspend its nuclear fuel operations or compromise its right to peaceful nuclear energy.

But in an attempt to underline the peaceful nature of the programme, he also insisted that Iran had no intention of conducting any nuclear activities outside the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

In a speech delivered before an immense, swirling crowd at Tehran's Azadi Square, Mr. Ahmadinejad noted that the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, had authorised his Government to downgrade relations with the IAEA following the imposition of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council.

No intention

"But we have not used this authority because we want to defend the rights of the nation according to the rules of the Agency," he said.

Under the terms of the UNSC resolution 1737, adopted last December, Iran must suspend all nuclear fuel cycle activities by February 21 or face the prospect of tough sanctions.

``We need nuclear fuel''

Mr. Ahmadinejad said Iran had to be prepared for the day its oil and gas would run out. "So like other countries, we need the nuclear fuel cycle. [The U.S. and its allies] want it in their hands so that they can oppress others, which is why they are threatening us." Sanctions "do nothing" to Iran, so "now they are threatening a war they don't have the ability to wage."

Though the President dwelt at length on the nuclear issue, his address provided no hint of the "good news" he had promised to deliver on this day.

He said Iran's nuclear scientists would continue their work in Isfahan and Natanz, the facilities where enrichment-related work is going on, but refrained from announcing any ramping up of Iran's fuel cycle operations, such as the installation of more centrifuges.

"In a way, I think Ahmadinejad decided to tone down his rhetoric and say less than what he would like to have said because of domestic developments as well as external pressure," Mohammad Soltanifar, a professor at Tehran University, said.

In recent weeks, ranking conservative clerics such as Hassan Rowhani and Hashemi Rafsanjani have urged the President to be more restrained, said Mr. Soltanifar, who is also attached to the Expediency Council's Centre for Strategic Research.

Iranian Government gears up for political show of strength

People support nuclear right, but also favour dialogue, compromise

11 February 2007
The Hindu

Iranian Government gears up for political show of strength

Siddharth Varadarajan

Tehran: With the 60-day compliance deadline imposed by the United Nations Security Council set to expire on February 21, the Iranian Government is appealing to citizens to come on to the streets in large numbers to demonstrate their support for the country's right to nuclear energy, including the very process of uranium enrichment that the United States and its allies want Iran to abandon.

Every February 11 — the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution — Iran's leaders address a massive public gathering at Azadi square in the western part of the capital. Simultaneous celebrations are held in all cities and provinces across the country. This year, however, the preparations are even more elaborate than before, with local TV channels showing inspiring montages of earlier demonstrations and historic footage of Ayatollah Khomeini's dramatic return to Tehran from exile in Paris 28 years ago. The purpose behind the mobilisation, presumably, is to underline the continuity between the azadi, or freedom, which was won then, and Iran's resistance to international pressure on the nuclear front today.

Though there is widespread apprehension about the prospects of conflict and a fear that the sanctions imposed last December will soon be tightened, the sovereign right to civilian nuclear power is something most Iranians are prepared to support.

"If the Americans had picked any other issue to confront the mullahs, such as human rights or democracy, people wouldn't have rallied around the government," a former editor who preferred not to be identified said. "But the nuclear issue is different. Rightly or wrongly, most Iranians agree that the country should not be denied access to knowledge, which is the way the issue is posed here in the media."

President's speech

The highlight of Sunday's festivities will be the major speech President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to deliver. Some analysts here believe he will make an important announcement about the progress that has been made by Iranian atomic scientists in the installation and running of 328 centrifuges, the complex machines used to enrich natural uranium and make it suitable for nuclear fuel.

Though centrifuges may be used to enrich uranium into bomb-grade fissile material, the facility at Natanz, where Iran's enrichment plant is located, will operate under international safeguards prohibiting the diversion of nuclear equipment and material for military purposes.

But whether the announcement will serve as the springboard for a new round of diplomacy and compromise, as many here hope, or merely to an escalation of the confrontation, remains to be seen. Claiming a technological victory, for example, would allow the President to offer a compromise of some sort, such as a temporary suspension. But Seyid Rasool Moosavi, director-general of the Foreign Ministry-run Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), is sceptical. "I think it is impossible to suddenly stop the centrifuges. They spin at such a high speed that they would be damaged," he said.

Asked about the possibility of placing Natanz on `warm standby' — where the centrifuges keep spinning but no uranium gas is run through them — Dr. Moosavi insisted the key was whether the West was prepared to accept Iran's rights or not. "If they accept Iran's rights to the fuel cycle, I don't think the Iranian leadership would be so rigid as to say we must accomplish our goals today or tomorrow."

Optimal strategy

Though the arguments on what Iran's optimal strategy should be are familiar, what has added a new element into the already volatile debate is the sudden ratcheting up of military pressure by the U.S.

"Iranian people are concerned that the new American military deployment is not just for pressure but actual military use. The Bush administration is gradually trying to create evidence against Iran ... the objective is that little by little they can mobilise Congress and public opinion for possible military action," says Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a professor of international law at Tehran University.

"When Congress says any use of the military should only be with Congressional authorisation, this means they are admitting the use of force as a possibility," he adds.

Noting the views of some in the U.S. establishment who favour a "limited military strike" against Iranian civilian nuclear installations, Dr. Moosavi said this would be a "strategic mistake because Iran will surely have its response."

A critic of Mr. Ahmadinejad's abrasive handling of the nuclear issue, Prof. Bavand said the President's rhetoric as well as his poor handling of the economy "led to the loss of his credibility as a leader." The people of Iran, he said, wanted relations with the U.S. to improve but neither Tehran nor Washington seems keen to take the initiative.

'Iran not to blame'

Asked whether Iran's past rhetoric against Israel had not narrowed the circle of its friends at a time when the U.S. was trying to isolate Tehran, Dr. Moosavi said Iran was not to blame for the war of words.

Iran, he said, supported the Palestinians but "it is impossible to liberate them or al-Quds with a nuclear bomb!" "When in [President] Khatami's time Iran had suspended its nuclear activities, the Israeli Prime Minister threatened to bomb us. Why was there no condemnation of Israel at the time?"

India sees speedy IAEA verification as the way forward on Iran

New Delhi anxious for the nuclear file to be resolved quickly.

8 February 2007
The Hindu

Iran issue: India sees speedy IAEA verification as the way forward

Siddharth Varadarajan

Tehran: India's repeated emphasis on the importance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) taking charge of the Iranian nuclear file represents an attempt to reclaim a once surrendered middle position in the looming confrontation between Tehran and Washington.

During his two-day visit here, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee repeatedly emphasised the need for dialogue as a solution to the nuclear issue. Though his opposition to the use of military force was intended to send a message to Washington, Indian officials say he had a line of advice for all the Iranian leaders he met as well: only Iran's active cooperation with IAEA verification efforts could help to defuse the growing tension. The two qualities he commended most often — in public and private — were flexibility and restraint.

The nuclear issue was the primary topic of discussion in the meeting between Mr. Mukherjee and Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

According to Indian sources, Mr. Larijani, who serves as pointperson for Iran's nuclear negotiations with the European Union, made three categorical points. First, that Iran had no intention of developing nuclear weapons and that its nuclear programme was entirely peaceful.

Second, that Iran was prepared to clear all outstanding questions the IAEA had on its nuclear programme. Third, that Iran would never accept a dialogue that was based on pre-conditions.

Senior Indian officials speaking on background said it was difficult to disagree with the Iranian stand on pre-conditions and that a diplomatic way had to be found to restart the dialogue process.

India voted against Iran at a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna in September 2005, thereby helping to send the Iranian nuclear file out of the hands of the IAEA and into the court of the United Nations Security Council.

Despite the caustic remarks Iranian officials had made in the past about the Indian vote and about how the United States was bending the international non-proliferation rules to favour India, Mr. Mukherjee's interlocutors sought a briefing on the status of the India-U.S. nuclear deal. They also encouraged New Delhi to play a bigger role in helping to resolve Tehran's face-off with Washington.

For now, however, India is wary of getting involved. "Quite frankly, there are too many players with their finger in this already and we are not really into mediation," a senior Indian official speaking on background said. "This is something the two principals really have to sort out for themselves." But the official said India was anxious for the nuclear file to be resolved quickly. "When we say Iran is a factor of stability in the region, we really mean it," he said. "There is Afghanistan, other areas. There is energy. But the longer this nuclear problem drags on, the more difficult it will be for us or anybody to do business with Iran. So it is important to close the file quickly."

Even though the Security Council was seized of the situation, its continuing involvement would depend on the reports provided to it by the IAEA Director-General. "If Iran can resolve the questions the IAEA still has, then the report would be favourable," the official said.

The official said the Iranian side welcomed the emphasis India was placing on the central role of the IAEA and assured Mr. Mukherjee that they were working to provide all the information the agency's inspectors wanted. "We said that India believed this is the way to go forward," the official said. Once the outstanding issues were resolved, the pressure to sanction Iran would end.
On their part, Iranian officials are not so sure the U.S. is concerned about those outstanding issues any more, since the principal demand made by Washington and the UNSC is that Iran unconditionally suspend all its nuclear fuel cycle activities.

Time out

Asked at a joint press conference with Mr. Mukherjee about IAEA Director-General Mohammed el-Baradei's recent suggestion of a "time out" in the stand-off between Iran and the UNSC, Iran's Foreign Minister said there were "differing interpretations" about what the phrase meant. "Usually the term `time-out' is used in sports for the players to take a breather. So we are not sure what it means in this case," said Manouchehr Mottaki. Iran, he noted, had declared before that it was in favour of negotiations without preconditions. "Of course we are open to all suggestions and ideas which are raised in the course of negotiations," he added. "What is important is the non-proliferation regime. If we all support the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, then this could provide us the basis of a solution. And suspension of a legal right like enrichment is not all that important."

Peace pipeline: Iran for tripartite summit

However, the need for talks on gas pricing, project structure underscored.







8 February 2007
The Hindu

'Peace pipeline': Iran for tripartite summit

Siddharth Varadarajan

TEHRAN: As technical negotiations on the proposed 2,700-km-long trilateral gas pipeline project inch ahead, Iran on Wednesday sought to give the process a political boost by offering to host a summit where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could jointly sign the final agreement.

The summit proposal — which took External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his delegation somewhat by surprise — was made by Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at a joint press conference here.

However, both Mr. Mottaki and Mr. Mukherjee were quick to underscore the importance of first completing the trilateral negotiations on gas pricing and project structure as quickly as possible so that the pipeline project could take concrete shape. The Indian Minister noted that Pakistan and Iran had already agreed on a price formula and that a Pakistani delegation would soon visit India to take the process forward.

Both Ministers also agreed that any trilateral meeting would likely be preceded by a separate bilateral visit to Tehran by Dr. Singh at a time to be decided by the two countries.

Indian officials told The Hindu that the Prime Minister could visit Iran this year if ongoing negotiations on a Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement and a double Tax Avoidance agreement were concluded quickly and if there was further movement on the energy and economic fronts.

Though Mr. Mottaki repeatedly referred to the project as the "peace pipeline," Mr. Mukherjee stuck to the formal nomenclature of `Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.'

Asked about the U.S. opposition to India's ties with Iran, he said: "Our relationship with Iran... is independent of our relationship with any third country." India had "excellent political and economic relations with Iran" and intended to continue that relationship.

Mr. Mukherjee also met Mr. Ahmadinejad, the former President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator.

Nuclear issue

In his opening remarks at the press conference, Mr. Mukherjee reiterated India's stand that the Iranian nuclear issue should be resolved peacefully through dialogue and negotiation.

Military means not a solution to Iran crisis, says India

On a short visit to Tehran, India's foreign minister stresses the need for diaologue and diplomacy.

7 February 2007
The Hindu

Military means not a solution to Iran crisis, says India
Pranab for dialogue to defuse tense situation

Siddharth Varadarajan

TEHRAN: Amidst rising tensions in the Persian Gulf following the deployment of a second American aircraft carrier group in the region, India on Tuesday declared its opposition to the use of force as a means of resolving the Iranian nuclear issue.

Speaking to reporters here at the start of a two-day visit to Iran, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the escalating tension over Iran's nuclear programme had to be defused "through dialogue and discussion."

India, he said, "has all along stated that [the use of] military means is not a solution. The solution has to be found only through dialogue, howsoever strenuous it may be."

Mr. Mukherjee said it was important for the Iranian leadership to keep international opinion in view, [particularly that of] the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Our advice is that there should not be any further escalation of tension."

"Like any other country, Iran too has the right to carry on a peaceful civilian nuclear energy programme," the Minister said. "They are also a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, so they have certain obligations under that treaty. Therefore, our position is that the issue should be resolved through dialogue. It cannot be resolved through coercive methods."

Though India has always emphasised the need for a peaceful solution to the Iran issue, Mr. Mukherjee's opposition to the use of force is significant given growing concerns that the Bush administration might be considering an aerial attack on Iranian nuclear installations.

While in Tehran, Mr. Mukherjee will meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, National Security Council (NSC) head Ali Larijani, Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki and Hassan Rowhani, the special representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei to the NSC.

In an arrival statement, the Minister said India attached great importance to Iran and wanted to impart "greater substance and strategic content" to the relationship.

On energy-related issues, apart from the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, Mr. Mukherjee said he was hoping to help bridge the differences that had emerged over the 5 million tonnes of LNG that Iran had agreed in 2005 to export annually to India. Since the contract was signed, the world price of oil has risen well beyond the ceiling envisaged by the gas pricing formula contained in the 2005 agreement.

Though India insists that the agreed price is binding, Iran argues that the agreement was never ratified by the competent higher body as required by Iranian domestic law and that the sale price has to be revised upwards and submitted to Parliament, or majlis, for approval.

Asked about U.N. sanctions against Iran, the Minister said that the U.N. Security Council resolution 1737 passed last December "does not cover any of our proposed areas of cooperation."

In general, India was keen to exchange views with Iran on the political and security situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider West Asian region.

"We would like to hear their assessment, and also what role they would like to play," said Mr. Mukherjee.

From mega surge to dual rollback

The U.S. will not leave Iraq without first militarily weakening Iran.

6 February 2007
The Hindu

From mega surge to dual rollback

Siddharth Varadarajan

EVER SINCE the Islamic Revolution of 1979 took Tehran out of Washington's orbit, the United States has run its Iraq policy with one eye firmly planted on Iran.

In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran and protected him in the United Nations Security Council even after it became clear the Iraqi regime had used chemical weapons. Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait made Washington much more hostile towards Baghdad but its preferred policy became that of "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran rather than of rapprochement with Tehran. After evicting the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991, George Bush Sr. had the option of pressing ahead till Baghdad. He chose not to because he did not wish to create a situation that might favour Iran, a country the U.S. considered a more challenging adversary than Iraq.

Regime change was still a goal but the thought that the downfall of the Ba'athist regime would lead to the rise of Iraqi political forces sympathetic to Iran acted as a deterrent against full-scale aggression, even for the "liberal internationalist" Bill Clinton. Throughout the 1990s, then, the White House used sanctions and air power to keep Saddam Hussein "in his box." More than half-a-million Iraqis died during this period as a direct result of the U.N.-enforced embargo or because the air strikes launched by U.S. pilots often missed their intended targets.

As for Iran, the White House worked closely with Congress to pass legislation that threatened penalties on companies from third countries investing more than $40 million in the oil and gas sector of the Islamic Republic. The idea was to weaken the Iranian economy by starving its principal income source of foreign technology and capital. Iran's civilian nuclear industry, which the U.S. had actively encouraged during the Shah's time, was also deemed verboten: Open attempts at fuel cycle collaboration with China, Argentina, and the International Atomic Energy Agency reached a dead-end thanks to U.S. pressure, forcing the Iranian authorities to resort to concealment.

Though premised on conventional balance of power calculations, dual containment was never intended to be an open-ended policy of eschewing force. Indeed, by the end of the 1990s, Neocon lobbyists had begun pressing for a shift from dual containment to "dual rollback," an ambitious strategy that envisaged the use of both military and non-military pressure to bring about regime change in Iraq and Iran and thereby strengthen U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.

The beauty of dual rollback was that it accepted the logic of dual containment but turned its prescriptions inside out: If attacking Iraq meant strengthening Iran, the Neocon answer was not "dual appeasement" but dual war.

In principle at least, the Pentagon's post-Cold War plans for the U.S. armed forces allowed for this extreme scenario. These envisaged America simultaneously fighting and winning two wars against a major regional adversary in two geographical theatres as far apart as West Asia and East Asia, not to speak of two enemies in the same region. The triumph of air power in Nato's Yugoslavia war of 1999 further broadened the menu of "rollback" or "regime change" options available to military planners.

Despite the ascendancy of the Neocons in the first months of the George W. Bush presidency, however, it did seem as if dual rollback and the two-war doctrine would take a back seat. Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Defence Secretary till the end of 2006, initially took the line that the hardware acquisitions required to sustain the two-war doctrine might come in the way of military modernisation. But in the wake of 9/11, he not only embraced the doctrine but expanded it to the new formula of 1-4-2-1: that the U.S. military should be prepared to defend the homeland, deter aggression in four distinct parts of the world, wage and win wars against two major regional powers, and be in a position to occupy the capital of at least one adversary.

Today, the U.S. has gone beyond the exacting requirements of 1-4-2-1. It brought about regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq and remains in occupation of not one but two countries. And despite having no doctrine or force-planning to cope with sustained insurgency in both theatres, the Bush administration has begun preparations for a military campaign against Iran.

Dangerous consensus

By abandoning dual containment in March 2003 and going for the kill in Iraq, President Bush produced the very outcome his father's advisers had warned against in 1991. Iran today has close ties with both the U.S.-installed regime of Nouri al-Maliki as well as with the Shia militia of Moqtada al-Sadr. It has gained unprecedented influence in Iraq. Mad as it seems, then, the U.S. is coming around to the view that the only way to get out of the mess is to push for dual rollback, to light a big fire in order to extinguish the smaller one.

Notwithstanding the Iraq Study Group's `Realist' call for dialogue with Iran — a call that was rejected for sound Realist reasons of not wanting to further strengthen Tehran's hand — it is only the targeting of Iran that has the capacity to bring together all of Washington's warring tribes onto one platform. The Republicans and Democrats can spar endlessly on how the Iraq fiasco should end but no presidential candidate worth his or her salt will oppose the use of the `military option' against Iran as and when President Bush takes the call. It is worth noting that in the past 10 days at least two Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, have addressed gatherings of Israeli lobbyists and used bellicose language against Tehran.

The Bush administration's case for military action against Iran is being made in three distinct ways.

On the nuclear question, Washington's aim is to provoke Iran to quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) or throw out IAEA inspectors and monitoring equipment. Since the IAEA has yet to find any evidence that Iran has diverted nuclear material for a prohibited purpose, Tehran has been pushed into the impossible situation of being asked to demonstrate it has no clandestine activities and to hold its nuclear fuel cycle activities in abeyance till then. Using the threat of unilateral military force as a lever, the U.S. has persuaded the UNSC to impose limited sanctions on Iran. But since it is impossible for Tehran to prove a negative, Washington will soon start pressing for tougher sanctions. At some point, the Bush administration hopes, Iranian hawks will say enough is enough and walk out of the NPT, thereby providing the U.S. a rationale for the use of force.

It is not accidental that the U.S. has scuttled every initiative that could have provided a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis. Last year, it killed the Russian proposal for Iran to combine limited enrichment activity onshore with more elaborate facilities inside Russia. Another was the suggestion made last autumn that Iran suspend enrichment after talks with the European Union resumed, and not as a precondition. Most recently, IAEA director general Mohammad el-Baradei's proposal for a "time out" in which the U.N. suspends its sanctions as Iran's suspends enrichment has been dismissed by the U.S.

And yet, nuclear scare-mongering may not serve as a sufficient excuse at a time when the U.S. public has grown increasingly wary of wars related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). So a second justification is being trotted out — that Iran is directly helping Iraqi insurgents mount deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers. Last week, for example, the `Realist' Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, claimed 70 per cent of IED attacks on American soldiers were linked to Iran. The arrest of Iranian officials in Erbil by U.S. soldiers and the presidential shoot-to-kill order against "Iranian operatives" in Iraq barely days after Mr. Bush's aggressive State of the Union speech last month suggest the White House is serious about upping the ante.

There is also a third card, aimed perhaps primarily at reluctant Realists. This is the absurd suggestion that if the U.S. does not itself act quickly against Iran, the Israeli regime might somehow jump the gun and launch a bombing run or two against Iranian nuclear facilities with consequences far more disastrous than if the U.S. were to do the job.

Against this backdrop, the proposed "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq — which is really a mega-surge involving at least another 50,000 soldiers — is clearly intended to serve an objective additional to the stated one. Yes, the U.S. would like to stop bleeding in Iraq, but it is not going to withdraw without first weakening Iran to the point of rollback.

Indeed, the deployment of a second U.S. aircraft carrier task force to the Persian Gulf gives the Pentagon's planners an additional "sea base" from which to attack Iranian military and nuclear facilities. To be sure, any military action against Iran would likely follow the Yugoslav rather than the Iraqi war model, with the prolonged and extensive use of airpower in place of a ground invasion. But a beefed up ground force is needed to deal with the fallout inside Iraq of any U.S. aggression against Iran.

If Russia, India, China, and Europe have any sense, they should find a collective way of averting this impending disaster. The world today is paying dearly for not having stopped the invasion of Iraq. Appeasing Washington again is simply not an option.

India must have a proactive agenda in Iran

Energy, trade, and transit issues are important but the key task for India is to assert itself as a factor for peace in Washington's looming confrontation with Tehran.

5 February 2007
The Hindu

India must have a proactive agenda in Iran

Siddharth Varadarajan

PRANAB MUKHERJEE'S first official visit to Tehran as External Affairs Minister on Tuesday comes at a time when tension between Iran and the United States is slowly edging towards breaking point. Frustrated by its inability to staunch the steady homeward flow of bodybags, the Bush administration has begun blaming Iran for the surge in Iraqi insurgent attacks on U.S. soldiers there. The latest accusations cap Washington's attempts to put the squeeze on Iran over the nuclear issue. Last December, the U.S. succeeded in getting the United Nations Security Council to impose limited sanctions on Iran for not agreeing to suspend its programme of enriching uranium. Predictably, those sanctions have had no effect on Iranian government policy. So the Bush administration is also threatening European and Asian banks that do business in Iran. The State Bank of India, which is the only Indian bank to operate in both the U.S. and Iran, is coming under pressure to wind up its office in Tehran or face the prospect of being frozen out of the American banking system.

Against the backdrop of all these developments, the U.S. military build-up in Iraq and the Persian Gulf is beginning to look increasingly ominous.

As a neighbour and economic partner of Iran, India has an enormous stake in the way in which the crisis that is shaping up eventually plays out. But despite our proximity, size and interests, India has allowed itself to become a marginal player. By allowing itself to be pushed into voting against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors in 2005, India effectively voted itself off the slate of countries with clout enough to remain engaged with the issue. Iran felt it had lost a valuable friend and potential interlocutor, while the U.S. — which saw how easily India buckled — began to take New Delhi's support for granted.

Mr. Mukherjee should use his visit to Tehran to put India back into the equation. And he can do so by asserting India's fundamental interest in averting war and helping Iran convince the international community that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

Over the past two years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often declared that it is not in India's interest to have another nuclear weapon state in the region. He is right. But what Mr. Mukherjee needs to assert explicitly is that it is also not in India's interest to have another country in the region invaded or attacked. While in Tehran, therefore, the Minister should state that India opposes the very suggestion that there could be a "military option" as far as resolving the Iranian nuclear issue is concerned. Such a statement coming from a "strategic partner" of the U.S. will help calm the region and send an important message to Washington.

Secondly, Mr. Mukherjee needs to counsel his Iranian interlocutors not to make the mistake of ending their cooperation with the IAEA inspectors. Nor should Iran consider renouncing its adherence to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), since such a step would be treated as a casus belli by the war party in Washington.

Thirdly, in order to help resolve the nuclear issue, Mr. Mukherjee should sound out Iran's willingness to cooperate with a new five-power initiative involving India, Russia, China, Brazil, and South Africa. The initiative should seek to accelerate the process of inspections and scrutiny of documentation related to the P-2 centrifuge programme so that the IAEA can verify — in an efficient and time-bound manner — the fact that there are no undeclared nuclear activities inside Iran. The five powers would also seek to come up with a multinational fuel cycle proposal that would both satisfy the international community's apprehensions about a potential weapons programme as well as Iran's energy needs. Clearly, Iran would have to be willing to resume its adherence to the Additional Protocol. It is possible that the launching of such a new initiative might also induce Tehran to agree to temporarily suspend its fuel cycle activities, in line with UNSC resolutions.

Apart from helping to catalyse a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue, Mr. Mukherjee's visit will provide India another opportunity to push its energy and trade ties with Iran. After bruising negotiations over gas prices, there does appear to be light at the end of trilateral pipeline project as well as the reopened LNG deal. As for the proposed Indian involvement in the development of Iranian oil and gas fields, it is important that the External Affairs Minister emphasise that India is opposed to the extra-territorial application of domestic U.S. laws on Indian entities.

As for transit-related issues, India needs to give a push to the trade corridor being constructed from Chabahar, on Iran's Makran coast, to Afghanistan via the new Zaranj-Dalaram highway. When opened, this route would enable Indian goods to flow to Afghanistan despite Pakistan's refusal to grant transit rights for Indian exports.

In the final anaysis, however, it is the preservation of peace that India has to pay first-rate attention to. And Mr. Mukherjee's visit must serve as the first step in a new and proactive Indian initiative to help find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis.

Dictatorship by cartography, geometry

Vast and empty, Burma’s new capital will not fall to an urban upheaval easily... A photofeature in Himal magazine










February 2007
Himal Southasian

Dictatorship by cartography

Siddharth Varadarajan

Vast and empty, Burma’s new capital will not fall to an urban upheaval easily. It has no city centre, no confined public space where even a crowd of several thousand people could make a visual – let alone political – impression.

Naypyitaw, then, is the ultimate insurance against regime change, a masterpiece of urban planning designed to defeat any putative ‘colour revolution’ – not by tanks and water cannons, but by geometry and cartography. 320 kilometres to the south, Rangoon, with five million people, is home to one-tenth the country’s population. But even if that city were brought to a standstill by public protests and demonstrations, Burma’s military government – situated happily in the middle of paddy fields in the middle of nowhere – would remain unaffected.

Of all the possible reasons why the junta chose to relocate their capital to this isolated, dusty place, this is perhaps the most plausible. And judging by the pace and scale of construction underway here, the transfer of capital is intended to be as final and irrevocable as the grip on political power of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military.

On 6 November 2005, at a time and date apparently chosen by an astrologer close to Senior General Than Shwe, the process of shifting Burma’s seat of government to a vast but barren tract of land near Pyinmana village in Mandalay Division officially began. A little more than a year later, every single ministry has moved here. Naypyitaw is still very much a work in progress, but the amount of road-building and construction that has been completed is nothing short of impressive.

In terms of spatial design, the emergent city is reminiscent of Islamabad or Brasilia. A ‘hotel zone’ with several luxury establishments has come up on the city’s ‘outskirts’, a district that the capital’s planners say will eventually become “downtown”. Further in, a number of brightly painted apartment buildings line the left side of the road, all of which are occupied by civil servants. And finally there is the government district, with ministries separated by a distance of what seems like several kilometres. In the military zone, the four-lane road makes way for one of eight lanes, purpose-built to allow small aircraft to land and take off. Later this year, Rangoon-based embassies will be offered plots in the new capital, and eventually all will be expected to make the move.

While it is likely that Naypyitaw will ultimately grow to fill in the empty spaces between the ministries and to develop the usual civic amenities one associates with a capital, it will always lack the urban cadences and unpredictable rhythms that characterise city life in Rangoon or Mandalay. And this is precisely what makes the new capital so attractive to the generals.

Scholars such as Michael Aung-Thwin and Sunait Chutintaranond have argued that the shift from Rangoon is not irrational but part of a historical tradition. Rulers of the region, they say, have long moved their capitals in order to regenerate their kingdoms. One example from within Burma is that of King Mindon, who moved his capital from Amarapura to Mandalay – a city built for the purpose – in 1859, only to have his son, Thibaw, defeated and exiled by the British. Some thousand years earlier, Burma’s most illustrious ruler, the great Anawrhata, had begun his dynasty from Bagan.

Judging by this history, Naypyitaw may not remain the country’s capital forever. But there is no doubt that it will endure longer as a city than the regime that ordered it built.