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Mohamed ElBaradei warns of new nuclear age Julian Borger, diplomatic editor guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 May 2009 23.40 BST Article history The number of potential nuclear weapons states could more than double in a few years unless the major powers take radical steps towards disarmament, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog has warned.In a Guardian interview, Mohamed ElBaradei said the threat of proliferation was particularly grave in the Middle East, a region he described as a "ticking bomb".

The number of potential nuclear weapons states could more than double in a few years unless the major powers take radical steps towards disarmament, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog has warned.In a Guardian interview, Mohamed ElBaradei said the threat of proliferation was particularly grave in the Middle East, a region he described as a "ticking bomb".

ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the current international regime limiting the spread of nuclear weapons was in danger of falling apart under its own inequity. "Any regime … has to have a sense of fairness and equity and it is not there," he said in an interview at his offices in Vienna.

We can offer several arguments for and against the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The reasons in favor seem clear: On the tactical and strategic level, the demand puts to the test the willingness of the Palestinians, the Syrians and the countries of the Middle East in general, to make a quantum leap when it comes to accepting our existence. They would do so by recognizing the unique character of Israel and accepting it as a fact that should no longer be questioned. This is psychologically significant, with diplomatic-security implications whose importance should not be downplayed. There is also the hope that formal recognition of Israel's Jewish character will check the demand to implement the refugees' "right of return"; clarify to the minorities in Israel their status as citizens, while drawing a red line that will emphasize the pointlessness of aspirations to undermine the Jewish character of the state, and reinforce global legitimization of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

it is impossible to ignore the suspicion that Israel's demand for recognition also stems from an unconscious, collective factor that is very problematic. We may still be suffering from the exile-induced fear that a Jewish state will not last a fear accompanied by expressions of a lack of confidence in our strength or a surfeit of such confidence. This is speculation, but it can explain patently irrational diplomatic-security viewpoints, on both the left and the right, which are hard to understand otherwise. If this assessment is correct then we are talking about a dangerous phenomenon that distorts our judgment.

It is not accepted in those parts of international law that deal with the recognition of states: A country is recognized de facto or fully without any determination regarding its essence as a secular, Catholic, or Muslim country et al. Moreover, the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state implies that our character depends on such recognition, which our opponents can also withdraw.

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

"Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW]," Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

A camp of pragmatic clerics and politicians led by Rafsanjani, while loyal to the revolution's principles, wants to build better ties with the West and a more friendly image of Iran."What is clear is that the leadership is far more polarized and splintered than has been clear in the past," said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Now that the leader has made clear he was supportive of Ahmadinejad and sharing the same vision of the future of the Islamic Republic, it can be taken as a major defeat for Rafsanjani and for the political options he promotes," said Frederic Tellier, an Iran expert in the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

Rafsanjani was president between 1989 and 1997, but failed to win a third term when in 2005, losing to Ahmadinejad in a runoff. He was a close follower of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of Iran's Islamic Revolution. He now heads the Expediency Council, a body that arbitrates disputes between parliament and the unelected Guardian Council, which can block legislation.He also is the head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, which comprises senior clerics who can elect and dismiss the country's supreme leader.

We argue that engagement with Hamas is essential, and possible. To understand how, it is necessary to take into account that many of Hamas's statements and actions are governed and limited by its understanding of Islamic religious law (sharia), a comprehensive code relevant to all aspects of life for believing Muslims, very much including politics. We maintain that Hamas cannot be understood without understanding the sharia background of many of its policies.

Hamas maintains that accepting Israel's legitimacy necessarily renounces the Palestinian narrative, which defines Palestine as Arab and Muslim, in contrast to the Jewish narrative, which defines the Land of Israel as Jewish by God's promise, by legal right, and by history. Can these two worldviews be reconciled? Absolutely not. Can Hamas and Israel co­exist peacefully? We believe they can. Reconciliation is much harder than coexistence.

Hamas has repeatedly offered to end its violent resistance against Israel by means of various sharia-based mechanisms, such as a hudna (time-limited truce) or a tahadiyya (cease-fire). It has also advocated the principle of "Palestinian legitimacy," whereby it would accept as binding the decision of the Palestinian people to accept peace with Israel -- even if Hamas, as a Muslim religious organization, could not reconcile that outcome with sharia and preserve its Muslim beliefs.

The deal to reduce nuclear warheads and work together to limit nuclear proliferation signed in Moscow this week by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev carried all the pomp of a milestone. But the official communiqués ignored an elephant lingering at the summit: Russia has a deal, signed in 2007, with Tehran to supply a state-of-the-art S300 antimissile defense system that could make a possible strike (by the U.S. or Israel) on Iran's nuclear facilities much harder. Even more than a lucrative deal for Moscow, though, this is Russia's diplomatic ace in the hole: the $1 billion system is really a bargaining chip between the powers.

Though the Iranians insist that the deal is on track, Russia has held back on delivering key elements of the S300 system. One key reason for the delay is a full-court diplomatic press by Jerusalem and Washington. In the week before Obama's visit to Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to ask that the deal be stopped. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak also buttonholed Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, at the Paris Air Show late last month with the same request.

Russia has already been rewarded for its cooperation. In April, Russia's deputy defense minister, Vladimir Popovkin, confirmed that Russia had signed a deal to buy $50 million worth of Israeli-made pilotless drones to replace the Russian-made version that performed disastrously during last summer's war with Georgia. Until recently, Israel had supplied pilotless drones, night-vision and antiaircraft equipment, rockets, and various electronic systems to Tbilisi, and the Georgian military received advanced tactical training from retired Israeli generals (including one who commanded Israeli ground forces during the 2006 offensive against Hizbullah). Now, says independent Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, there is "a clear understanding" between Moscow and Jerusalem that the Israeli government will discourage private Israeli contractors from helping Georgia modernize its military.

Kissinger: The belief in democracy as a universal remedy regularly reappears in American foreign policy. Its most recent appearance came with the so-called neocons in the Bush administration. Actually, Obama is much closer to a realistic policy on this issue than Bush was.

Kissinger: Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions. It is always easy to divide the world into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the noble people, and the power-oriented people are the ones that cause all the world's trouble. But I believe more suffering has been caused by prophets than by statesmen. For me, a sensible definition of realpolitik is to say there are objective circumstances without which foreign policy cannot be conducted. To try to deal with the fate of nations without looking at the circumstances with which they have to deal is escapism. The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

Kissinger: I see two possibilities. We will either come to an understanding with Iran, or we will clash. As a democratic society we cannot justify the clash to our own people unless we can show that we have made a serious effort to avoid it. By that, I don't mean that we have to make every concession they demand, but we are obligated to put forward ideas the American people can support.The upheaval in Teheran must run its course before these possibilities can be explored.

Selig Harrison, the director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, said the North Korean announcement about restarting its nuclear facilities should come as "no surprise" to the United States. "The North Koreans had said that they were going to do this. The United States leadership made a mistake by going to the U.N. because the North Koreans said on March 26 that if we went to the U.N., they would resume their nuclear program," he said, referring to North Korea's recent decision to launch a rocket despite international opposition.

Harrison visited Pyongyang in January and doesn't expect North Korea to reprocess plutonium for at least a year. Nuclearization may not even be their primary goal with this latest announcement, he said. "You have to put it all into context of the North Korean situation, they want to negotiate to get economic help. All of this is a re-bargaining chip," he said. "The North Koreans are not hell-bent on nuclear weapons, this is just their opportunity, and they want to negotiate in bilateral talks with the US."

"The North Koreans have shut down the six-party talks, but they haven't ruled out bilateral negotiations," he said, referring to talks aimed at persuading North Korea to scrap its nuclear program. The talks involved China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

A videotape of a heinous torture session is delaying the ratification of a civil nuclear deal between the United Arab Emirates and the United States, senior U.S. officials familiar with the case said.

In the tape, an Afghan grain dealer is seen being tortured by a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE's seven emirates.

The senior U.S. officials said the administration has held off on the ratification process because it believes sensitivities over the story can hurt its passage. The tape emerged in a federal civil lawsuit filed in Houston, Texas, by Bassam Nabulsi, a U.S. citizen, against Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan. Former business partners, the men had a falling out, in part over the tape. In a statement to CNN, the sheikh's U.S. attorney said Nabulsi is using the videotape to influence the court over a business dispute.

The Bush administration spent years trying to isolate people the Turkish government thought should be engaged—Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, to name a few. The Obama administration broadly endorses engagement. Turkish-American relations are therefore about to change from being good despite fundamental disagreement to being a genuine meeting of minds.

From Turkey's perspective, the most important item on the agenda is what it does not want: official U.S. recognition that what happened to the Armenians was genocide. I doubt Obama would have accepted an invitation to visit Turkey now if he was not planning to oppose a congressional resolution on the subject, or if he intended to use the G word on April 24, when he will make a statement commemorating the Armenian massacres of 1915

Like Tony Blair and Tayyip Erdogan, Obama is thought to recognize that Hamas can no longer be ignored, though he cannot possibly say so publicly. Turkey's leaders (and their advisers) can provide Obama with valuable insights, and help start the ball rolling. This would allow Obama to avoid political exposure in Washington for "talking to terrorists" until he has a sense of the other side's position.

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.

as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.

Stiglitz: It's going to be bad, very bad. We're experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and we haven't reached the bottom yet. I'm very pessimistic. Governments are indeed reacting better today than during the global economic crisis. They're lowering interest rates and boosting the economy with economic stimulus plans. This is the right direction, but it's not enough.

SPIEGEL: … and let them go bankrupt? Stiglitz: No, they have to be saved, because the consequences to the monetary system would be incalculable. But as a countermeasure, these institutions have to be nationalized, which even Alan Greenspan is now demanding. Then the government can close those business segments that have nothing to do with lending and make sure that the banks no longer organize esoteric stock deals that they themselves do not understand.

The state of our financial system, for example, is worse than it was 80 years ago.