[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[stefania]

America Sets Sights on Disarming Remaining 'Rogue States'

December 21, 2003
Telegraph
David Harrison


Libya's decision to dismantle its secret weapons programme turns the spotlight on the remaining "rogue states" in Washington and London's sights.

North Korea is the biggest concern. Pyongyang's Communist regime responded to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by declaring that a nuclear weapon was the only way to keep the Americans at bay.

The country, led by the dictator Kim Jong-il, has a large conventional arsenal and has had a nuclear weapons programme since the late 1970s. The United States claims that North Korea also has advanced chemical and biological weapons and was trying to test-fire ballistic missiles in breach of its own moratorium announced last year.

The CIA says that Pyongyang has enough nuclear material to make a bomb but there is uncertainty as to whether it has the missiles required to deliver a nuclear warhead.

Washington is demanding inspections of North Korea's nuclear facilities and wants them to be dismantled. The administration wants to know the details of the nuclear programme, including where the uranium processing takes place and the location of any nuclear weapons.

The crisis erupted in October when officials in Washington said that North Korea had admitted running a secret nuclear weapons programme in breach of a 1994 agreement with President Bill Clinton's administration to freeze the programme in return for aid.

President George W Bush responded by suspending shipments of free oil, while North Korea expelled United Nations nuclear inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and restarted a mothballed nuclear reactor. Officials say that within months North Korea could have enough plutonium to make several nuclear bombs.

The US says that North Korea must agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme "completely, verifiably and irreversibly" before other matters can be discussed. North Korea says that without a serious change in US policy, it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from the threat of an American attack.

Washington has tried to adopt a "softly, softly" diplomatic approach and has held six-nation talks in an attempt to curtail Pyongyang's nuclear arms programme. China hosted an initial round of inconclusive talks with the US, North and South Korea, Japan and Russia in August.

The US and its negotiating partners acknowledged this week that they were unable to arrange a second round of talks for this month. However, the Americans said on Friday that diplomatic efforts were still alive.

That hope took a blow yesterday when North Korea condemned the US decision to increase nuclear weapons research as "a grave challenge" to world peace and said that such moves compelled it to strengthen deterrent forces to cope with any attack.

The other "rogue state" causing concern is Iran. The US has accused Iran of using a civilian nuclear programme as a smokescreen for building weapons.

It is widely accepted that the government in Teheran is well on the way to developing its own nuclear bomb, but again Washington's approach has been to use diplomatic channels to persuade Iran to scrap its nuclear programme.

The approach bore some fruit last week when Iran signed a non-proliferation protocol that could lead to the dismantling of its weapons. Iran agreed to let the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conduct "snap" inspections across its territory.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, said that the protocol showed that his country's atomic ambitions were entirely peaceful, but Washington said that it would wait and see if Teheran fulfilled its promises.

The agreement comes almost 18 months after an exiled Iranian opposition group precipitated an international crisis by saying that the Iranian government was hiding nuclear facilities.

The allegations proved to be true. Iran had constructed nuclear facilities covertly, bought equipment on the black market, refused to allow free international inspections, and produced components that could be used only for nuclear bombs.

IAEA inspectors who visited a site at Deh-Zire earlier this year said that it could contain "the makings of Armageddon". The main complex is hidden deep inside the mountain in bombproof caves. It contains 160 gas centrifuges, which take uranium in its gaseous form and separate it into its radioactive parts. This process eventually produces highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient of nuclear bombs.

The inspectors also found parts for 1,000 additional centrifuges, and traces of highly enriched uranaium - much greater evidence of weapons of mass destruction than has been found in Iraq.

The third country that faces Washington's wrath is Syria, which the US accuses of developing chemical and biological weapons and of seeking to build a nuclear programme, though the evidence for this is much less clear.

After Libya's announcement on Friday, the pressure is on Pyongyang, Teheran and Damascus to follow suit or face the threat of a Gulf war-style military invasion.
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Referendum AFTER Regime Change

"I'm ready to die for you to be able to say your own opinions, even if i strongly disagree with you" (Voltaire)

[stefania]

my humble opinion is that REGIME CHANGE is the only way to avert a nuclear nightmare..

The most dangerous WMD in Iran is the regime..


..disarm the regime by helping the iranian people to get rid of ALL those mullahs--
_________________
Referendum AFTER Regime Change

"I'm ready to die for you to be able to say your own opinions, even if i strongly disagree with you" (Voltaire)

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