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Argos Media

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Brown in new Iran nuclear warning - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7947285.stm

Iran Nuclear Power Nuclear Proliferation Gordon Brown John Hutton

shared by Argos Media on 17 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Gordon Brown will tell a conference in London that Tehran, which continues to enrich uranium despite global pressure, is a "critical proliferation threat". But he will say a huge expansion of civil nuclear power is needed worldwide to meet carbon reduction targets. Iran says this is what it is doing and refuses to stop its development work.
  • The Iranian government continues to defy the international community, enriching enough uranium - according to a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Authority - to fill a warhead.
  • Defence Secretary John Hutton told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that, if Iran continued with its nuclear weapons programme, it "would be very destabilising for the region and the world. The consequences of that are too frightening to think about".
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  • Mr Hutton said: "They haven't actually got a civil nuclear power reactor. So people are right to raise eyebrows about their programme."
  • He added: "We have got to be clear with Iran about the consequences of them not complying. The clock is ticking on all of this... "The offer is still on the table for the Iranians to take up this extraordinarily generous and, I think, unprecedented offer to help them with their [civil] programme."
  • Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is facing elections this year, has shown little sign of wanting a "deal" to put the country's nuclear programme under international supervision in return for the lifting of sanctions and financial assistance.
  • According to International Atomic Energy Agency forecasts, more than 30 nuclear reactors will have to built every year if the world is to meet its target of halving carbon emissions by 2050.
Argos Media

Barack Obama's new offensive against nuclear weapons | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...barack-obama-nuclear-weapons

US Europe Obama Nuclear Weapons Arms Control Russia Afghanistan ISAF

shared by Argos Media on 04 Apr 09 - Cached
  • "In Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama said yesterday after arriving in continental Europe for the first time as president
  • "The spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," he warned, adding that suspected rogue nuclear states, such as North Korea or Iran, may only be persuaded to abandon their quests if the big nuclear powers set an example.
  • "We can't reduce the threat of a nuclear weapon going off unless those that possess the most nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia, take serious steps to reduce our stockpiles," Obama said. "So we want to pursue that vigorously in the years ahead."
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  • At Obama's first meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, in London on Wednesday, both agreed on fast-track negotiations to slash their nuclear stockpiles by about a third from the end of this year
  • Obama would use the speech to urge the US Senate to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty proscribing nuclear bomb trials, a treaty already endorsed by the other main nuclear powers, Russia, Britain, and France. The US has about 10,000 of the world's estimated 24,000 nuclear weapons, and Russia 13,000.
  • John Hutton, the defence secretary, told the Guardian Britain could despatch up to 1,000 more soldiers this summer, and Nato officials were confident that Europeans would supply up to a further 3,000.
  • Obama made it plain yesterday that the chances of a better transatlantic relationship hinged on European readiness to "step up to the plate" in Afghanistan and to "share the burden" for his surge.
  • "It is important for Europe to understand that even though I am president and George Bush is not president, al-Qaida is still a threat," Obama said. "I've come to Europe this week to renew our partnership ... America is changing but it cannot be America alone that changes." He warned that the risk of an al-Qaida attack was higher in Europe than in the US.
  • "I don't think the hard end of the security mission is being properly shared, and that is the view of many others including the president," said Hutton. "Europe has got to see al-Qaida is every bit a direct threat to Europe and the UK, as it is to the US." He said Nato could no longer use its dislike of Bush to avoid a commitment in Afghanistan.
Argos Media

NATO Leaders Debate Afghan Strains - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04nato.html

US NATO Europe Afghanistan ISAF

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • increasing American troops in Afghanistan to some 68,000 by the end of the year, from 38,000 today, is also likely to significantly Americanize an operation that in recent years had been divided equally between American troops and allied forces. By year’s end, American troops will outnumber allied forces by at least two to one.
  • NATO allies are giving the president considerable vocal support for the newly integrated strategy. But they are giving him very few new troops on the ground, underlining the fundamental strains in the alliance.
  • “As a candidate, Obama had expectations that Europe would make a serious increase in troop levels after he became president,” said Charles A. Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “But there is a realization now that Europe’s main contribution will be police trainers, economic assistance and development assistance.”
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  • The allies will offer more funds but no more than several thousand new personnel members, according to alliance military planners. Many of those will not be soldiers, but police trainers to meet a central pillar of the president’s new Afghan strategy, which focuses on an expansion of Afghan security forces. But even for the small numbers of European combat reinforcements, check the fine print: Nearly all will be sent to provide security for Afghanistan’s elections this summer, and will not be permanently deployed.
  • Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and his British counterpart, John Hutton, have publicly warned that the performance of some European troops demonstrates that NATO risks slipping toward a two-tiered alliance. In that event, it would be divided between those that can and will fight, like Britain, Canada, France and Poland, and those that cannot or will not because of public opinion at home.
  • In many cases, European capitals have placed severe restrictions on their forces assigned to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, or I.S.A.F. That has been such a hindrance to the war effort, in the view of some American commanders, that they ruefully say the alliance mission’s initials now stand for “I Saw America Fight.”
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