Eeyores news and view

Iranian nuclear smugglers working in teams
April 30, 2009 - 6:52am J.J. Green, WTOP.com
Two weeks ago, a 35-year-old Toronto man was arrested in Canada allegedly trying to smuggle nuclear components to Iran. Mahmoud Yadegari was arrested alone, but an international security source close to the case says he's part of a larger group that has succeeded in smuggling parts to Iran for use in building a weapon.
The source is convinced that "there are teams of operatives working on behalf of the Iranian government that receive orders to procure parts and then scramble to get as much as they can. Some are successful and others are caught."
Yadegari was charged by the Royal Canadian Police on April 17 with attempting to procure and export items known as pressure transducers. Pressure transducers have a dual purpose - they can be used in the production of enriched uranium as well as other military applications.
The Royal Canadian Police investigation indicates Yadegari was trying to hide the specifications of the transducers in order to export them without the required permits.
U.S. agents involved in the case indicate there was a U.S. connection.
"The target here in Toronto attempted to source pressure transducers from the United States and ship them to Iran," said Timothy Gildea, special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Toronto.
Gildea says ICE's Counter Proliferation Investigations Unit is aggressively combing the world for nuclear proliferation red flags and teaching U.S. companies how to recognize the signs.
This time the outreach paid off.
"That's essentially how this case was initiated," says Gildea.
A tip led authorities to Yadegari.
Canadian customs officials have seized more than two dozen nuclear-related components in the past year from smugglers.
The international security source says he and other counter-proliferation authorities are "confident the smugglers are working together, but we have been unsuccessful in figuring out the relationship between them."
Even though a number of high-level seizures have been made in the last 12 months, staying hot on the smuggler's trail is no easy task.
"It takes a lot of tedious hard work," says Gildea. "There is no magic wand. You have to stay current on nukes, reading things about nukes and trusting your gut."
Another mistake to be avoided is accidentally tipping their hand.
"A lot of time we come across high level intelligence, and we have to use it in a way so as not to expose sensitive intelligence or the sources," says Gildea.
The source says we shouldn't be surprised to learn that "many of the smugglers may be active inside the U.S."
Regardless of where they are, the source says law enforcement and security personnel that may stumble across clues in their everyday lives need to know how to connect the dots and think analytically about what they see.
"If a police officer opens a big box of ball bearings during fraud investigations, that officer needs to trace that box back to it's origin and then advance the investigation by answering where are they headed," said the source.
http://wtop.com/?nid=778&sid=1664530

Obama says Pakistan nukes in safe hands
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and James Lamont in New Delhi
April 30 2009 06:08
US president Barack Obama on Wednesday has backed assurances from Pakistan’s military, saying he believed the country’s nuclear arsenal of as many as 100 warheads was in safe hands.
Speaking at a White House news conference late Wednesday night, Mr Obama said while he was “gravely concerned” about the overall situation in Pakistan, he added that Pakistan’s military recognised the hazard of the country’s nuclear weapons “falling in to the wrong hands”.
Pakistan is currently locked in a struggle with Taliban militants who last week advanced to within 100km of the capital Islamabad. Pakistan is secretive about its nuclear programme, developed outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in an arms race with India.
A senior western envoy in Islamabad said diplomats had been given assurances about the security in place for the weapons systems and also their distance from Taliban-held territory.
Pakistan’s senior civil and military officials are sharing tightly held information about the country’s nuclear weapons programme with western countries in a bid to allay fears about the security of warheads in the face of a Taliban advance.
Pakistani officials presented this as a move to satisfy the west that its weapons would not fall into Taliban hands. “We have renewed our pledge to keep our nuclear weapons safe,” said a senior Pakistani official. The briefings were aimed, he said, at “reassuring” the international community that there were adequate safety measures “to keep a complete lid on our weapons”.
On Wednesday night, the Pakistani army claimed it had halted the latest Taliban incursion in the Buner district, 100km north-west of Islamabad, after two days of fighting. At dawn on Wednesday, the army, which has been accused in the west of failing to challenge the militants, airlifted troops behind Taliban lines and, it claimed, forced them to retreat.
“We have successfully blocked the Taliban advances and confined them just to a pocket,” Rehman Malik, the interior minister, said.
The Taliban’s territorial gains beyond Pakistan’s border regions in recent months and the lack of resistance put up by the country’s army have raised fears – particularly in India - that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of religious extremists.
Although the whereabouts of Pakistan’s weapons are secret, analysts say that some are placed far from the Indian border to allow Islamabad adequate response time in the event of an attack from its old enemy, and fellow nuclear power, India.
Western diplomats said yesterday a Taliban advance on Islamabad threatened to bring militants perilously close to some of Pakistan’s main nuclear installations. But they doubted militants were capable of overwhelming heavily protected installations.
At the weekend, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, described the toppling of the Pakistani government and capture of nuclear weapons as “unthinkable”.
US officials in Islamabad have assured that the threat of “loose nukes” is small.
Western diplomats say the nuclear programme resides in a “ringfenced” part of the military under the command of a well-respected general and protected from rogue elements within the army that might seek to capture a weapon. Although improvements in the locks and decoupling of weapons systems have been made, Pakistan has not complied with the high level of security recommended to it.
Worries over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons date back to 2004 when the proliferation network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, founder of the nuclear programme, came to light.
One of the dangers identified by the international community was that one of AQ Khan’s scientists might helpextremists gain a “dirty bomb”. Since then, the Pakistani military has tightened monitoring of individual scientists and introduced new inventory systems to track individual components of the bombs.
Some analysts say the greatest threat to nuclear security is from within the army itself.
“An army, which eventually looks exhausted and [has lost] territory could then be in danger of becoming divided,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani security and defence expert. “It is crucial that the Pakistan army does not lose control over parts of the country. That is essential for the safety of the nuclear weapons”.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a92fbbc2-34e4-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

N Korea threatens fresh nuclear tests
By Christian Oliver in Seoul, Harvey Morris in New York and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing April 29 2009 17:30
North Korea vowed on Wednesday to test a nuclear device unless the United Nations Security Council apologised for imposing sanctions, its strongest threat yet in an increasingly tense game of diplomatic brinkmanship.
The provocative statement elicited a muted response from the US and its allies in the region and diplomatic sources suggested they had decided to adopt a strategy of “malign neglect” in the face of North Korean brinkmanship.
Pyongyang was responding to sanctions imposed after it launched a long-range rocket over Japan on April 5. Were it to test a nuclear device it would be the second such test; an atomic device was detonated underground with uncertain success in 2006.
That explosion sparked international outrage from countries convinced that North Korea was trying to develop a warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile, of which it has a steadily increasing arsenal.
“If the UN Security Council does not apologise, we are going to conduct an intercontinental ballistic missile test and a nuclear test, as a self-defence measure,” the foreign ministry said in a statement released by the official KCNA news agency.
A western diplomat on the security council brushed aside the demand for an apology and noted that the council had produced a united response to the rocket launch.
Pyongyang’s latest statement did not require any action by the council, the diplomat said. “But if it steps up its activities with a nuclear test, the council is bound to become engaged.”
North Korea’s resumption of its nuclear programme had already put it in violation of undertakings it made as part of the six-party process aimed at establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Korean peninsula, the diplomat said.
Pyongyang defended its rocket launch this month by saying it was intending to put a satellite into orbit. The international community largely viewed this as an excuse for testing a missile.
Even China and Russia, traditionally sympathetic to Pyongyang, did not oppose the security council action.
North Korea’s foreign ministry also said the reclusive communist state planned to develop its own uranium-enrichment technologies.
The US has accused Pyongyang of running a clandestine uranium-enrichment programme, using centrifuges from the black-market network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.
South Korean security sources do not believe the centrifuge cascades have reached the industrial level needed to be effective.
Tensions are running at a 10-year high on the peninsula, and the North insists a second Korean war is imminent. Pyongyang has torn up its non-aggression pacts with the affluent South and is threatening not to recognise a tense maritime border.
North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-il, is furious that Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s conservative president, has insisted that Pyongyang apply to Seoul for vital food aid. This is anathema to the North, which regards itself as the only legitimate government on the peninsula. Some political analysts speculate Mr Kim could be trying to win direct talks with Barack Obama, the US president, through his latest round of brinkmanship.
However, the US has said it would not be bullied into negotiations by Pyongyang’s sabre-rattling.
Aidan Foster-Carter, honorary senior research fellow at Leeds University in England, said it was more likely the unusually rapid escalation in tensions was related to internal politics, which remained a mystery. “For someone whose normal tone of voice is a shout, this is a particularly hoarse shout.”
Military advances particularly in the field of ballistics play well as propaganda in North Korea, where US attack is always perceived as imminent. North Korea gave no indication of when it might be ready to carry out its tests, but Daniel Pinkston, north-east Asia deputy project director at the International Crisis Group in Seoul, said its scientists might be able to mobilise quickly.
“This is wholly speculation, but I would think there is something there to test if there is a political need.” North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2043629c-3498-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html

N Korea ‘resumes plutonium extraction’By Christian Oliver in Seoul and Harvey Morris at the United Nations
April 26 2009 16:35
North Korea says it has resumed reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods to extract plutonium, further raising the diplomatic stakes after it launched a long-range rocket over Japan earlier this month.
.... (the rest you can read here if you want)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e1ee7cec-3218-11de-8b45-00144feabdc0.html

Holder urges allies to take share of detainees
By DEVLIN BARRETT – 16 hours ago
BERLIN (AP) — The United States and its allies must make sacrifices to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday in a high-profile appeal for Europe's help.
Holder spoke to the American Academy in Berlin, not long after telling reporters that the United States had approved the release of about 30 Guantanamo detainees.
"We must all make sacrifices and we must all be willing to make unpopular choices," said Holder.
"The United States is ready to do its part, and we hope that Europe will join us — not out of a sense of responsibility, but from a commitment to work with one of its oldest allies to confront one of the world's most pressing challenges," he said.
There are currently 241 inmates at the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Holder spent the past several days privately asking European leaders in London, Prague and Berlin for help relocating detainees the United States wants to set free.
Holder spoke before a select group of policy experts, academics and journalists in a crowded room of about 100.
In answer to a question about Bush administration officials' decisions to authorize tough interrogation techniques, Holder said he believed that many of them would, privately, admit to having made some mistakes in the pressure and worry that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I don't suspect that would be true of Vice President Dick Cheney," Holder added.
At another point, a questioner earnestly asked of those Guantanamo detainees who are believed to be innocent could be put in a hotel somewhere.
"Hotels might be a possibility, it depends on where the hotel is," joked Holder.
Before the speech, Holder met with reporters, saying the United States has made decisions on a group of about 30 detainees, but has not yet decided where it wants to send them.
He said the United States is weeks away from asking certain countries to take detainees.
"We have about 30 or so where we've made the determination that they can be released. So we will, I think, relatively soon, be reaching out to specific countries with specific detainees and ask whether or not there might be a basis for the moving of those people from Guantanamo to those countries," Holder said.
Germany's former justice minister, Herta Daubler-Gmelin, a fierce critic of previous President George W. Bush, said Holder "made a very good impression. He's very honest about this society in transformation in America."
She said she expected Germany would eventually be one of the countries that accepts Guantanamo detainees.
The Bush administration had approved about 60 detainees for release, and Holder aides would not say if the 30 he was referring to were part of that group. Additionally, about 20 detainees have been ordered released by the courts, though those cases remain unresolved.
President Barack Obama has ordered the controversial detention site shuttered in the next nine months and assigned Holder to oversee that effort.
Holder said he has been telling European officials over the past week that "the problem that it created is best solved by a unified response."
Closing Guantanamo is good for all nations, he argued, because anger over the prison has become a powerful global recruiting tool for terrorists.
Yet when it comes to the prospect of having former international terror suspects living free, the Obama administration is trying to overcome the not-in-my-backyard sentiment that exists on both sides of the Atlantic.
Several European nations, including Portugal and Lithuania, have said they will consider taking such detainees. Others, like Germany, are divided on the issue.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy already has made what was billed as a symbolic gesture of agreeing to take one Guantanamo detainee.
In speaking to reporters Wednesday, Holder also said it is possible the United States could cooperate with a foreign court's investigation of Bush administration officials.
Holder spoke before the announcement that a Spanish magistrate had opened an investigation of Bush officials on harsh interrogation methods. Holder didn't rule out cooperating in such a probe.
"Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it," Holder said.
"This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law and to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it," he said.
Pressed on whether that meant the United States would cooperate with a foreign court prosecuting Bush administration officials, Holder said he was talking about evidentiary requests and would review any such request to see if the U.S. would comply.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gS_wCwVf04MPhiRv1lwDohnZy8gAD97SBFS80