USAF Counterproliferation Center CPC Outreach Journal #525
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USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL Maxwell AFB, Alabama Issue No. 525, 14 September 2006 Articles & Other Documents: Nakasone Proposes Japan Consider Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Déjà Vu: Now It’s Iran That Does Or Doesn’t Intend To Make Nuclear Weapons U.S. Trying To Restart North Korea Nuclear Talks Pyongyang Not Keen On Nuke Talks, U.S. Says Khatami Defends Ahmadinejad, Iran's Nuke Plans Tehran's Two Worlds European Union In Last-Ditch Talks With Iran On North Korea 'Determined To Carry Out Underground Nuclear Plans Test' Plant Destroying Chemical Weapons Central Asia Pact Frees The Region Of Nuclear Arms Europe Union And Iran Report Progress In Nuclear Brief Nuclear Halt May Lead To Talks With Iran Talks Biosecurity A Comprehensive Action Plan NNSA Working To Prevent Nuclear Terrorism Iran Offers Talks On Nuclear Issue U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel Iranian President Willing To Negotiate Seoul Backs Censure Of North Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness. Established in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal to Jo Ann Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953-7538 or DSN 493-7538. To subscribe, change e-mail address, or unsubscribe to this journal or to request inclusion on the mailing list for CPC publications, please contact Mrs. Eddy. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved Japan Times September 6, 2006 Nakasone Proposes Japan Consider Nuclear Weapons Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said Tuesday that Japan needs to consider developing nuclear weapons, taking into account the presence of nearby nuclear states and the uncertain future of the alliance with the United States. "There is a need to also study the issue of nuclear weapons," Nakasone said during a news conference to release a report by the Institute for International Policy Studies, an independent research institute he chairs, that proposes considering the nuclear option. "There are countries with nuclear weapons in Japan's vicinity," he said. "We are currently dependent on U.S. nuclear weapons (as a deterrent), but it is not necessarily known whether the U.S. attitude will continue." Nakasone conceded that the nuclear option should come after the country makes efforts to reinforce the global nonproliferation regime, saying, "The first priority is to keep being a nuclear-free state, and the second is to reinforce the system under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty." Prime minister from 1982 to 1987, Nakasone retired from the Diet in 2003. He has continued making political proposals from the institute, including one in January on revising the Constitution, which stirred up debate in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The institute's report, titled "An Image of Japan in the 21st Century," says the country should consider the nuclear option while at the same time maintaining its nonnuclear status and endeavoring to strengthen the nonproliferation regime. The paper says if Japan decides to get nuclear weapons, the pacifist Constitution must be amended. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060906a4.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) New York Times September 6, 2006 Pg. 6 News Analysis Nuclear Déjà Vu: Now It’s Iran That Does Or Doesn’t Intend To Make Nuclear Weapons By David E. Sanger and William J. Broad WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — As the Bush administration presses the world’s other major powers to speed ahead with sanctions against Iran, a fascinating puzzle of conflicting evidence, contained in the latest findings by international inspectors, is fueling the debate on whether to confront Tehran over its nuclear activities. Ever since the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report last Thursday, American officials have insisted that it sealed their case. Iran, they argue, has refused the United Nations Security Council’s demand that it cease enriching uranium. “In the end, that’s all that matters,” R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said last week. “They have defied the Council.” The report surprised experts with its revelation of tantalizing new evidence. The inspectors said they had found traces of highly enriched uranium, which can fuel atomic bombs. So far, the Iranians have not explained how it got there, adding to suspicions in the United States and Europe that the inspectors are being shown only part of Iran’s program and that some covert facilities have been hidden. But the same report also noted that Tehran had made little progress in setting up new equipment at its main nuclear site, at Natanz, to enrich uranium. In the last few days diplomats from the European Union and Russia have cited that finding to bolster the case that there is no urgency and no crisis — and that the Bush administration should back off. Taken together, those two views put the Bush administration and the United Nations into a situation parallel to where they were on Iraq four years ago this month, in the period leading up to the war there. In September 2002, Mr. Bush addressed the United Nations, demanding that Saddam Hussein allow international inspectors into Iraq. European and Russian officials have cited that example repeatedly in recent weeks to make the case that imposing sanctions would inevitably lead to Iranian defiance, and from defiance to confrontation. Over the weekend, Secretary General Kofi Annan appeared to endorse that view. “I do not believe sanctions are the solution to everything,” Mr. Annan told the French newspaper Le Monde on his way to Iran. “There are times when a little patience is more effective. I think that is a quality we should exercise more often.” Iran, he said, could prove that its program was benign “by giving the U.N. inspectors access to all its facilities.” Mr. Bush himself once acknowledged, at a news conference last December, that intelligence failures surrounding the issue of whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons made it difficult for him to press a credible public case against Iran. Now, outside experts say, he is beginning to pay the price. Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has argued that the seemingly contradictory evidence reported by the atomic energy agency may simply indicate that Iran’s overt nuclear program is less advanced than its covert efforts to master the fundamentals of nuclear weaponry. “That’s not only plausible, but likely,” he said in an interview on Monday. “A prudent American approach should include the possibility that the negotiations about the overt track are essentially a conjurer’s distraction to keep us focused on the hand that’s moving while the other one is putting the rabbit into the hat.” Uranium enriched to low levels can fuel nuclear reactors, which Iran claims as its goal. But skilled engineers can fashion highly enriched uranium into nuclear weapons, which the United States asserts is Tehran’s real objective. The race to understand Iran’s true intentions intensified in January, when Iran cut the locks and seals that had been placed on its uranium enrichment plants after inspections and restarted its effort to make atomic fuel. By April it announced that it had used a string of 164 centrifuges at its sprawling Natanz plant to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, boasting that the achievement meant that it had joined “the nuclear club.” At the time, Western atomic experts predicted that Tehran would soon succeed in setting up and operating two more cascades, or strings of centrifuges, each consisting of 164 machines. They expected Iran to do so in May and June, respectively, bringing it much closer to mastering the fundamental technologies of making bomb fuel. Instead, progress slowed significantly this summer. According to atomic inspectors, Iran completed neither of the two additional cascades and simply did more enrichment tests with the first one. David Albright and Jacqueline Shire of the Institute for Science and International Security, a research group in Washington that tracks the Iranian program, concluded in a recent report that “Iran may be either delaying deliberately the pace of its work while diplomatic efforts are under way, or is experiencing technical problems.” While some European diplomats hail the delays as a reason for a lack of urgency, others say Tehran is intentionally stalling to lessen the odds of international condemnation and to further divide allies seeking atomic curbs and sanctions. In contrast to the image of Iran’s nuclear backwardness, the atomic energy agency’s report presented stark evidence of strides toward enrichment. It said the inspectors had found new traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian facility — the third such episode in three years.