Iran president says ready for nuclear talks

The Jakarta Post, The Associated Press, Isfahan, Iran | Fri, 04/10/2009 8:26 AM

Iran's president said Thursday his country is open to talks offered by the U.S. and other countries over its nuclear program. But he insisted the talks must be based on respect for Iran's rights, suggesting the West should not try to force Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

Hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comments during celebrations for Iran's Nuclear Day, in which a number of advances in Iran's nuclear program were announced.

Among them, officials said the number of centrifuges at Iran's uranium enrichment facility had increased to 7,000 - up from 6,000 announced in February - and that a new, more advanced type of centrifuge had been tested. Ahmadinejad also announced the opening of a new plant for developing uranium fuel for a planned hard-water reactor.

Ahmadinejad's comments came after the United States and other nations invited Iran to direct talks over resolving the standoff over its nuclear ambitions. The Obama administration's announcement that it would join the talks marked a shift from the policy of former President George W. Bush, whose administration generally shunned such meetings.

Ahmadinejad said past talks with European nations failed because "they were insisting on stopping our peaceful activities, they were trying to impose that. It was clear the Iranian people would not accept that."

"The Iranian nation has always been for talks," Ahmadinejad said. But, he said, "dialogue has to be based on justice and respecting rights ... Justice means both sides are treated equally and bilateral rights are respected."

The United Nations has demanded Iran halt uranium enrichment, a process that can produce nuclear fuel but also the material for a warhead. Iran denies any intention to build a bomb and has refused to halt enrichment, saying it has a right to develop peaceful nuclear technology.

In past talks, European nations offered a package of economic incentives for Tehran to suspend enrichment, but Iran refused.

In the enrichment process, uranium gas is pumped into a series of thousands of centrifuges, which spin it at super-sonic speeds to remove impurities. Uranium enriched to a low degree is used to fuel a light-water nuclear reactor, but when enriched to a high degree it produces the basis of a warhead.

Thursday's ceremony celebrated the National Day of Nuclear Technology, the day in 2006 when Iran first enriched uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. Since then, it is believed to have enriched enough uranium to build a bomb - though first the uranium would have to be more highly enriched, and it is not known if Iran has perfected such techniques. Iran says the enriched uranium is for its first domestically produced nuclear plant, due to open in several years.

Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, who is also the nuclear chief, announced to the gathering that Iran has increased the number of centrifuges in its enrichment plan to 7,000, up from 6,000 announced in February. He also announced that a new, more advanced centrifuge has been produced.

Ahmadinejad said the new centrifuge has been tested, and has several times more capacity more than the P-1 centrifuges currently used at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in central Iran. Neither gave details on the new centrifuge or said when it might be brought into use.

Ahmadinejad also said the country has inaugurated a ne facility producing uranium fuel for a heavy-water nuclear reactor that is under construction in the town of Arak and is expected to be completed in 2009 or 2010.

Heavy-water reactors use a different process than light-water ones, but has its own nuclear proliferation concerns. The West fears that Iran cold eventually reprocess spent fuel from the heavy-water reactor to produce plutonium for a warhead.

Iran has been building the 40-megawatt hard-water reactor in the central town of Arak for the past four years. Hard-water reactors do not need enriched uranium for fuel, and can instead use more easily produced uranium oxide ore, fashioned into pellets.

Tribal vote

The Jakarta Post | Thu, 04/09/2009 6:05 PM

Tribal vote: Papua tribal man casts his ballot into a traditional bag made of woven tree bark called "Noken" in Jayawijaya, Papua province, Thursday, April 9, 2009. Indonesians flooded polling stations across the sprawling island nation Thursday, celebrating a decade of democracy in a parliamentary election that will gauge the reform-minded president's chances of re-election. AP/ANTARA, Prasetyo Utomo

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Election Results:

Antara, Sat 10 April 2009

Some polling stations officers are carrying ballot boxes after counting of general election in Somba Opu Village, Gowa district, South Sulawesi province, Friday (Apr 10). Some voting officer was late to report election result due to transportation limitedness in cloistered region. (ANTARA photo/Yusran Uccang)

Delivering logistics

The Jakarta Post | Wed, 04/08/2009 4:32 PM

Workers in tourist island, Lombok, load boxes that will be used as vote containers in the upcoming general elections on Thursday in Gili Meno Village. (Antara/Budi Afandi)

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Four Floating Voting Stations at Seribu islands

Syria willing to talk peace with new Israel govt

The Jakarta Post, The Associated Press, Damascus | Wed, 04/08/2009 8:10 PM

Syria says it's willing to resume indirect peace talks with Israel's new government as long as the talks focus on an Israeli withdrawal from the entire Golan Heights to lines that preceded the June 1967 Mideast war.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem made the statements Wednesday during a news conference with Italy's foreign minister. Indirect talks through Turkish mediation broke off after Israel's Gaza offensive started in December.

The extent of withdrawal is a major issue. Israel has not confirmed it would pull back to the pre-war lines, which Syria insists on.

Syria's President Bashar Assad said recently the talks failed because Israel would not make an unambiguous commitment to return all the territory.

Zimbabwe 'to re-engage with West'

BBC World

Zimbabwe's new coalition government has adopted a 100-day renewal plan aimed at mending ties with the West after years of isolation under Robert Mugabe.

Ministers on a three-day retreat hammered out the plan which is meant to yield a new constitution by next year.

Restrictions on foreign media are due to be lifted and human rights restored.

Correspondents at the talks say there is some scepticism that such ambitious targets can be met in such a short space of time.

After Zimbabwe quit the Commonwealth in 2003, the EU and US imposed travel bans on Mr Mugabe and his circle.

Obama promotes nuclear-free world

BBC World

Barack Obama has outlined his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons in a major speech in Europe.

The US president called for a global summit on nuclear security and the forging of new partnerships to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

He said he hoped to negotiate a new treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

North Korea's "provocative" rocket launch earlier in the day underscored the need for action, he said.

Although his nuclear goals might not be realised in his lifetime, he said he would strive to achieve them.

Mr Obama said that as long as Iran continued to pose a potential nuclear threat, the US would continue to work on a controversial missile defence shield, parts of which would be stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

He was speaking ahead of a meeting with EU leaders in the Czech capital, Prague, hours after North Korea launched a rocket despite international warnings.

Mr Obama condemned the launch: "Now is the time for a strong international response," he said.

"North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons."

Extermination of cities

Speaking to a 20,000-strong crowd in front of Prague's historic castle, Mr Obama said the US had a moral responsibility to act in ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

"The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," he said.

"Today the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not."

He pledged to reduce the US nuclear stockpile, and urged others to do the same.

But as long as a nuclear threat existed, the US would retain its nuclear capability, although it would work to reduce its arsenal.

He said his administration would work to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force in order to achieve a global ban on nuclear testing.

The agreement would ban all nuclear explosions for any purpose, but cannot currently come into effect as nuclear powers such as the US and China have not ratified it, and India and Pakistan have not signed it.

Massive destruction

The most immediate and extreme threat to global security, the president said, was the possibility of terrorists possessing nuclear weapons.

"One terrorist with a nuclear weapon could unleash massive destruction," he said.

"Al-Qaeda has said it seeks a bomb. And that it would have no problem in using it. And we know that there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe."

Mr Obama announced a new effort to secure sensitive nuclear material within four years and break down the black market in the trade in illicit weapons.

He also said he would negotiate a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia by the end of this year.

The speech came days after he and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev - meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in London - agreed to reopen negotiations about reducing nuclear warheads.

They aim to produce a new arms control treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) that expires at the end of the year.

Under Mr Obama's predecessor, George W Bush, tensions arose between the two sides over the US plan for a missile defence shield, parts of which would be stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The new US administration is currently reviewing the plans, which are meant to counter nuclear attacks from countries like Iran and North Korea, but which Moscow sees as a threat.

Mr Obama said his administration would also seek to engage with Iran, presenting Tehran with a choice between getting access to peaceful nuclear energy, or risking isolation with its current nuclear strategy, which he said posed a clear threat.

"As long as the threat from Iran exists, we will go forward with a missile defence system," he said.

European pledges

His wide-ranging speech - which also touched on the need for a united approach to combat the global financial crisis and climate change - was rapturously received by the crowd.

Mr Obama is to meet EU leaders to discuss issues such as climate change and energy security.

He will then fly to Turkey for the final stop of his European tour.

The US president arrived in Prague late on Saturday from the Nato summit in Strasbourg, where he secured pledges from European nations to send more troops to Afghanistan to provide security for elections in August.

Ahead of his arrival several hundred people gathered in Prague to protest against the missile shield.

Mr Obama's first trip to Eastern Europe, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, was supposed to be the highlight of the Czech presidency of the EU.

But his official engagements there have been scaled down in the wake of Prime M

inister Mirek Topolanek's resignation late last month, after losing a no-confidence motion.

Mr Topolanek - who has also described Mr Obama's stimulus plan as "the road to hell" - will remain in office until a new cabinet is appointed or fresh elections are held.

• All numbers are estimates because exact numbers are top secret.
• Strategic nuclear warheads are designed to target cities, missile locations and military headquarters as part of a strategic plan.

Israel

Israeli authorities have never confirmed or denied the country has nuclear weapons.

North Korea

The highly secretive state claims it has nuclear weapons, but there is no information in the public domain that proves this.

Iran

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in 2003 there had been covert nuclear activity to make fissile material and continues to monitor Tehran's nuclear program.

Syria

US officials have claimed it is covertly seeking nuclear weapons.

An Antarctic ice shelf has disappeared: scientists

Reuters, Sat Apr 4, 2009 7:06pm EDT

A view of the leading edge of the remaining part of the Larsen B ice shelf that extends into the northwest part of the Weddell Sea is seen in this handout photo taken on March 4, 2008.(REUTERS/Mariano Caravaca/Handout)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.

They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.

Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.

"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

"This continued and often significant glacier retreat is a wakeup call that change is happening ... and we need to be prepared," USGS glaciologist Jane Ferrigno, who led the Antarctica study, said in a statement.

"Antarctica is of special interest because it holds an estimated 91 percent of the Earth's glacier volume, and change anywhere in the ice sheet poses significant hazards to society," she said.

In another report published in the journal Geophysical Letters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that ice is melting much more rapidly than expected in the Arctic as well, based on new computer analyses and recent ice measurements.

The U.N. Climate Panel projects that world atmospheric temperature will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius because of emissions of greenhouse gases that could bring floods, droughts, heat waves and more powerful storms.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they can raise overall ocean levels and swamp low-lying areas.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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G20 leaders seal $1.1tn global deal

BBC World

Gordon Brown said banking secrecy was now over

Leaders of the world's largest economies have reached an agreement to tackle the global financial crisis with measures worth $1 trillion (£681bn).

To help countries with troubled economies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will get extra resources worth up to $750bn.

There will also be sanctions against secretive tax havens and tougher global financial regulation.

And the G20 has committed about $250bn to boost global trade.

On behalf of the G20, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the following steps:

Bankers' pay and bonuses will be subject to stricter controls

A new Financial Stability Board will be set up to work with the IMF to ensure co-operation across borders and provide an early warning mechanism for the financial system

There will be greater regulation of hedge funds and credit ratings agencies

A common approach to cleaning up banks' toxic assets has been agreed

The world's poorest countries will receive extra aid.

IMF boost

The IMF has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the G20 summit.

The resources it has to help troubled economies will be increased to $500bn.

An overdraft facility will also be increased to $250bn (in the IMF's currency, so-called Special Drawing Rights) that the world's poorest countries can call on.

"This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words, but with a plan for global recovery and for reform and with a clear timetable for its delivery," Mr Brown said.

NEW FUNDING PLEDGES

• $500bn for the IMF to lend to struggling economies
  
  
• $250bn to boost world trade
  
  
• $250bn for a new IMF "overdraft facility" countries can draw on
  
  
• $100bn that international development banks can lend to poorest countries
  
  
• $6bn increase in lending for the poorest countries.

Source: BBC

He said there was "no quick fix" for the world economy but there was a commitment to do whatever was necessary.

Mr Brown said the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development would publish a list of tax havens later on Thursday and actions would be taken against those that did not comply with international rules.

"We have agreed tough standards and sanctions for use against those who don't come into line in the future," he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the conclusions of the G20 summit were "more than we could have hoped for".

Earlier, there had been suggestions of rifts between France and Germany and the US and the UK.

Mr Sarkozy had threatened to walk out of the meeting if it did not yield concrete results.

World leaders: We can unite to defeat economic crisis

CNN World

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Leaders attending the G-20 summit in London Thursday said they were confident they could bridge their differences to unite on a plan to help address the economic crisis.

Barack Obama, Silvio Berlusconi and Dmitry Medvedev share a laugh at the G-20 summit.

There had been concerns that a rift was opening up between the approach being championed by the U.S. and Britain and that favored by France and Germany.

The U.S. and Britain want countries to agree to more economic stimulus ahead of new rules for the banking system.

France and Germany want the rules first -- and tougher ones than initially suggested -- and remain resistant to pumping more money into their economies.

However, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he was confident about the result of the summit.

"There is a great degree of convergence," he told CNN Thursday morning.

British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson was less upbeat, telling CNN there were some "strains" among the delegates.

"I hope very much that they will be ironed out and we'll come out with agreement at the end of the day."

The leaders say they want to find ways to stabilize financial markets throughout the world and pull the world out of a deepening recession.

They sat at the table Thursday for their first session with several targets in their sights, including tax havens and protectionism.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde called for a firm stand on tax havens.

Barroso backed her up.

"We have to be clear that those that want to keep shadow banking systems that are kind of underground (with) clandestine finances have to suffer sanctions, because it's once again a problem of confidence," Barroso said.

"We are for open economies and open markets, but open economies and open markets have to respect some rules."

Britain will push for the same regulation of banks and financial institutions that operate in a "shadow banking world," Mandelson said. He said an international body should oversee the regulation.

Leaders will also be pushing for more fiscal stimulus.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is arguing for world leaders to maintain their investments and fiscal stimuli while also giving more money to institutions like the International Monetary Fund, Mandelson said.

The IMF can then deliver those resources to poorer countries and emerging economies, he said.

"They are becoming major drivers of growth in the global economy," Mandelson said of those countries. "So we want a strong commitment, a hefty infusion of resources."

Barroso and Mandelson called for concrete commitments on the economy.

Earlier this week French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that if the summit's final communique failed to contain strong language and clear steps, he may even walk out of the meeting.

He and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday they could accept debate and negotiation as long as firm steps were taken.

There were only a few protesters outside the summit when it started Thursday -- a marked difference from the thousands who gathered in central London 24 hours earlier.

Police said they arrested nearly 90 people on Wednesday and were expecting more problems.