A BAD INDIA DEAL

The New York Times, September 30, 2008

The House of Representatives approved President Bush’s ill-conceived nuclear agreement with India last week, shrugging off concerns that the deal could make it even harder to rein in Iran’s (and others’) nuclear ambitions. We hope the Senate shows better judgment.

For 30 years, ever since India used its civilian nuclear program to produce a bomb, the world has been barred from selling any nuclear technology to India. The deal — pressed hard by American business and India’s lobbyists — would allow the United States to break that ban and open the way for the rest of the world to sell reactors and fuel to India as well.

President Bush and his aides were so eager for a foreign-policy success that they didn’t even try to get India to limit its weapons program in return. They got no promise from India to stop producing bombing-making material, no promise not to expand its arsenal and no promise not to resume nuclear testing.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee abdicated its oversight responsibilities. It held no public hearings and sent the deal straight to the floor without even a committee vote. We are befuddled as to how the committee’s chairman, Representative Howard Berman, could say he has “concerns about ambiguities in the agreement” and still vote for it.

(...) [artículo aquí]

U.S. NUCLEAR ENVOY HILL PLANS NORTH KOREA VISIT TO END DEADLOCK

Viola Gienger

Bloomberg, September 30, 2008

U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill visits North Korea this week as he seeks to break a deadlock in international disarmament talks and persuade the communist nation not to restart its Yongbyon reactor.

Hill arrives in South Korea late today before traveling to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, the State Department said. He will also go to Beijing and Tokyo during the Asian tour.

Kim Jong Il’s regime last month began reassembling parts of the Yongbyon reactor, the source of the country's weapons-grade plutonium, to protest delays in being removed from a U.S. terrorism blacklist. The Bush administration says it won't remove North Korea from the list without a credible way to verify the extent of the atomic program.

“The North Koreans invited Chris Hill to come, so we hope that there is some effort to address the verification protocol, because that's what we need,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in New York yesterday.

North Korea signed an agreement with South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia in February 2007 to disable its nuclear programs in return for normalized diplomatic ties with the governments in Washington and Tokyo and fuel aid. It agreed to disable the five-megawatt reactor last October and blew up a cooling tower at the site in June.

(...) [artículo aquí]

THE TROUBLED NORTH KOREA DEAL

The New York Times, September 29, 2008

The hard-won nuclear deal with North Korea seems to be unraveling after a hopeful period in which the North shuttered its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and dramatically blew up the cooling tower.

Workers stopped dismantling the complex last month, after the United States failed to take North Korea off the terrorism list — a step toward diplomatic rehabilitation. Now technicians at Yongbyon are preparing to restart a plant that makes weapons-grade plutonium.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, is notoriously erratic, and there are reports that he may be seriously ill, raising doubts about who is calling the shots. It has never been clear whether Pyongyang really meant to give up all of its weapons.
In this case, the Bush administration bears much of the blame.

Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hard-liners have never wanted to negotiate with North Korea. For six years they managed to block any serious talks. During that time North Korea produced enough plutonium for at least four additional weapons and tested a nuclear weapon.

Over the past two years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a competent team of diplomats have been running the show. But now it looks as if Mr. Cheney and Co. are back in charge. The administration is insisting that before it will remove North Korea from the terrorism list, Pyongyang must first accept a plan for verifying its nuclear programs that only a state vanquished in war might accept.

(...) [artículo aquí]

SLOWDOWN IN THE MAKING

Shubha Ganesh

The Economic Times, September 28, 2008

After months of denial a consensus opinion is now emerging that we are in an economic slowdown. Periodically, leaders from all walks of financial markets have assured investors in the past that the economic problems were short-lived and linked to the crude oil prices. The sharp fall in the stock markets was supposed to be a temporary phenomenon and it was expected that we would see a resumption of the bull market soon as India would maintain a 9 per cent GDP growth.

However, eight months after the initial fall macroeconomic fundamental do not indicate a 'V-shaped' recovery in the stock markets. The global sub-prime problems just grew bigger, crude prices are choppy, inflation though steady is still over 12 per cent, and a new dimension in the form of weakening rupee was added to our worry basket. Finally, everybody is coming around to a consensus opinion that it will take some time for the stock markets to capture old highs, and probably there is some more pain left before we tread the road of slow recovery.

Crude versus dollar

A few months ago analysts felt that once crude prices fell, the markets will recover. With the benefit of hindsight we can now say that the direct correlation and perfect hedge set up between oil and the domestic stock markets seems very simplistic as no one foresaw the weakening of the rupee and its impact on the landed cost of oil in rupee terms. The fall in the price of crude was offset by the sharp depreciation in the rupee. Hence, exchange rate fluctuations kept crude prices high in rupee terms despite its fall in dollar terms.

(...) [artículo aquí]

PAKISTAN FACES TWIN THREATS

Jane Perlez

International Herald Tribune, September 27, 2008

Islamabad: A week after the bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel here, Pakistan is struggling to deal with a financial meltdown and a terrorism threat that has moved to the nation's heart and badly shaken confidence in the new government among Pakistanis, diplomats and investors alike. President Asif Ali Zardari met Friday in New York with representatives of a group of donor countries, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, who were trying to come up with $5 billion to prevent Pakistan from defaulting on its debt.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said afterward that the United States would work toward Pakistan's economic stability. But no decisions were made, according to participants, except that the donors would meet again in Abu Dhabi next month.

As the financial situation has deteriorated, diplomats here have become increasingly uneasy about the government's capacity to prevent further attacks on the scale of the hotel bombing, which killed at least 53 people and wounded more than 250 others.

"The cabinet in Islamabad is confronted with a general breakdown of the state," said an editorial in the Friday issue of The Daily Times, a newspaper that generally supports the government of Zardari.

(...) [artículo aquí]

IRAN KEEPS CHINA IN A CHOKEHOLD

Yitzhak Shichor

Asia Times, September 26, 2008

Over the past few weeks, Iran has amplified its threats that, if attacked, it would immediately close the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic chokepoint nestled between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad Ali Jafari has warned, in no uncertain terms, that if attacked "one of [Iran's] reactions will be to take control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz". He added, "[our] capabilities in these crucial naval passages are so extensive that, in the case of an attack, not only the enemy but also all those who assist him will no doubt sustain [considerable] harm."

If Iran takes control of the Strait of Hormuz, the price of oil will spike considerably, said Jafari.

(...) [artículo aquí]

WHAT'S BEHIND NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR POWER PLAY

Bill Powell

Time, September 25, 2008

Negotiating styles can tell you a lot about the party you're sitting across from. Some people bang the table. Some get up and walk out. Some are passive-aggressive, staying at the table but never letting things move forward.

Not the North Koreans. When they're angry, they let you know about it in a very big way — as they did this week by reneging on a deal struck with five other nations to rid themselves of their nuclear weapons and their ability to make them.

Make no mistake: Pyongyang is pissed. In return for North Korea dismantling its nuclear program, the U.S. and its negotiating partners (South Korea, Japan, China and Russia) agreed to provide an array of diplomatic and economic benefits, including a proviso that North Korea be removed from Washington's list of state sponsors of terror. In late June, after the North finally forked over a long-delayed inventory of its nuclear materiel and bomb-making equipment, the U.S. indicated that it would reciprocate after a 45-day review. Those 45 days have come and gone, and still the North remains on the list.

The North is saying, in effect, what gives? And the fact is, they have a point, as even some U.S. State Department officials concede privately. U.S. President George W. Bush publicly held out the prospect of terror delisting as part of an "action for action" principle, the clear implication being that when Pyongyang turned over its declaration, delisting would follow. It hasn't, so yesterday, the North told inspectors for the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to remove its seals from the regime's reactor at Yongbyon — which provided the nuclear fuel with which the North has built its small arsenal of nukes. Inspectors have been barred from Yongbyon, and the regime told the IAEA that within a week it would restart the reactor, rendering all the diplomatic progress made by the six-party talks moot. "What they've done is trouble," Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. representative to the IAEA, told reporters.

(...) [artículo aquí]