Iran's first nuclear reactor caps decades of living dangerously

What in the world is the West going to do about Iran? News that Iran had started loading fuel into its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr is a reminder of the limits of muscular foreign policy. Decades of confrontation with Tehran, including economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, have served only to get us where we are now: less control over events combined with deepening mistrust and growing animosity. "Despite all the pressures, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the start-up of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi told a news conference on Iranian television as technicians prepared a fuel rod assembly at the plant, according to the Reuters international news service. Iran completed the plant with the help of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, over the objections of the United States. But a U.S. State Department spokesman said Washington did not consider the Bushehr reactor to be a proliferation threat because Russia would be providing fuel and taking back spent fuel rods for reprocessing. "Russia's support for Bushehr underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful," spokesman Darby Holladay told Reuters. Russia backed a U.N. Security Council resolution in June that imposed a fourth round of economic sanctions on Iran to discourage Tehran from trying to develop nuclear weaponry. Construction of the reactor at Bushehr was started in the 1970s, before the Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and started what has now been more than 30 years of animosity between Tehran and Washington.

Use of military contractors continuing in Afghanistan

How quickly they forget! News from Washington that a subsidiary of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide had been awarded a contract worth as much as $120 million to protect U.S. diplomats in two cities in Afghanistan should be a cause of alarm to people of principle everywhere. A U.S. State Department official confirmed Saturday that U.S. Training Center had won the 18-month contract, according to Cable News Network (CNN). It could very well be that, on some level, U.S. Training Center was the most qualified bidder, like the official said. But it doesn't take a genius to realize that hiring the former Blackwater to do anything else in U.S. war zones overseas raises the specter of the horrific 2007 shooting of 17 civilians by company guards in Baghdad. Military prosecutors are still pursuing criminal charges against five guards in connection with the shooting, which forced the military to reconsider the use of private contractors in Iraq. But, apparently, not seriously enough, if the military is using them in Afghanistan, too. Why the guards are even necessary has not adequately been explained, not with tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers on the ground, and soldiers of many other nations, in both countries for years. Americans who had hoped for more accountability from their government after the dangerously secretive Bush administration are surely disappointed by the new Obama administration's lack of candor about the continuing troop deployments. Employing another subsidiary of Blackwater, even though it changed its name to Xe Services. It's time for the U.S. government to come clean with the American people about how many contractors are operating in both countries and how much more money it is costing to use them instead of U.S. soldiers.

Ethiopia politicians fear for health of imprisoned opposition leader

News from Addis Ababa that prison authorities had blocked opposition politicians from visiting their leader, Birtukan Mideksa, raises the possibility that Ethiopia's bumpy 19-year history as a republic could be over. Birtukan, leader of the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice party, has been in prison continuously since 2008, when she was rearrested after she renounced an apparently coerced confession to charges stemming from an outbreak of violence following the disputed elections of 2005. Birtukan and other leaders were sentenced to life in prison. On Saturday, eight fellow opposition politicians were turned away after they requested to visit Birtukan in Kaliti prison, in the wake of a U.S. State Department report that her mental health was deteriorating, according to the Reuters international news service. Kaliti prison is just outside Addis Ababa, the capital. "We are here today because we are worried about her health and we want to see for ourselves what her condition is," UDJ official Seye Abraha told Reuters outside the prison. "Only her mother and her daughter have been given access to her. They bar friends, they bar party colleagues, no lawyer, no independent doctors." U.S. officials called Birtukan a political prisoner in its human rights report for 2009, Reuters said. Ethiopian law only permits prison visits from friends and lawyers. Birtukan's party is considered the greatest threat to the continued rule of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front in parliamentary elections scheduled for next month, Reuters said.

U.S. officials step up pressure on Honduras coup leaders

Will leaders of the June coup that ousted Honduras' democratically elected leftist leader finally give in to international pressure and reinstate President Manuel Zelaya? That question took on increased significance this week after word that U.S. Secretary of State had telephoned the head of the interim government, former conservative legislator Roberto Micheletti, and Zelaya, prior to dispatching top officials to try to resolve the crisis. Clinton told Micheletti about "increasing frustration" in the United States and Latin America about the failure of months of negotiations to make any progress in returning Zelaya to power, according to the New York Times. Zelaya was removed from office June 30 by the Honduras military and forced into exile. Coup leaders accused Zelaya of plotting to change the country's constitution to extend his term in office beyond its January expiration, as his outspoken supporter in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, had already accomplished. National elections are scheduled in November. Zelaya secretly returned to Honduras on Sept. 21 and has been living in Brazil's embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, under threat of arrest by coup leaders. The Obama administration condemned the coup in June but has since been accused across Latin America of failing to do enough to return Zelaya to power, the Times said. The interim government has been blamed for refusing to compromise and for repression of the press, human rights activists and supporters Zelaya, who hold daily demonstrations outside the Brazilian embassy, the Times said. But Micheletti has so far adamantly refused to agree to any deal that would return Zelaya to power. A U.S. State Department official told the Times that Clinton pressured Micheletti to resolve the crisis by the November election. “The purpose [of the call] was to remind him there were two pathways to the elections -- one where Honduras goes by itself and the other where it goes with broad support from the international community,” the official said. But the crisis also has led to friction in the U.S. Congress, where Democratic Party leaders have called for more U.S. pressure on the interim government to give up power and Republican Party leaders have demanded U.S. President Barack Obama reverse his condemnation of the coup.

North Korea's high-stakes nuclear gamesmanship

What, exactly, does North Korea have to gain by continuing to violate UN Security Council resolutions and baiting the United States into a confrontation on nuclear development? That's the question today after Pyongyang announced it would begin enriching uranium as an addition to its known plutonium-enrichment program unless UN sanctions were lifted, according to the New York Times. North Korea said it also would conduct additional nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests if the UN did not apologize for the Security Council's April 13 condemnation of its most recent missile test and threat to tighten economic sanctions, which it said it considered "a declaration of war." Pyongyang has managed to exact some concessions from Washington, including high-level dialogue and shipments of food for its impoverished people, with earlier threats, but it is hard to see what Pyongyang wants now. North Korea was impoverished by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which cut its international trade lifeline, and has been depending on shipments of food from the West to feed its people. Of course, the billions of dollars it is pouring into its weapons research would feed a lot of people if redirected into domestic programs. Instead, the North denounced the Security Council as “a tool for the U.S. highhanded and arbitrary practices” and refused to acknowledge its continuing activities, which the United States believes includes helping Syria with its nuclear research. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Fred Lash, said Wednesday that the Security Council resolution was “balanced and appropriate.” “We certainly call on North Korea, as we have in the past, to uphold its commitments” under a Sept. 19, 2005, joint statement of six-party talks and a 2006 Security Council imposing sanctions, the Times said. “We remain committed to achieving the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, hopefully through the six-party talks,” Lash said. “We urge them, as we always do, to return to the table.”

"Racism" conference is no place for democratic nations

Word from the U.S. State Department today that Washington will not participate in next week's U.N. conference on racism is a step forward, not backward, for settling international conflicts. On the surface, it would appear that more engagement would be the best thing. But Democratic nations that value honesty and integrity should have nothing to do with this meeting, which the United Nations is convening to try to repair the damage from the last racism conference in 2005 in Durban, South Africa, according to the Reuters international news service. "With regret, the United States will not join the review conference," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said today, putting an end to deliberations inside the new Obama administration about whether or not to attend the conference, known as Durban II. The United States and Israel walked out of the 2005 conference after Arab states proposed a declaration defining Zionism, the Jewish statehood movement that led to the creation of Israel, as racism. Months of negotiations over the wording of the first Durban II statement failed to get offending language removed, Reuters said, after Arab nations added language barring "defamation of religion," a reference to the 2006 controversy over cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper. Wood indicated that the United States saw the addition of that language as an effort to restrict free speech. But a draft statement that removed all references to Israel and to the cartoon controversy also was found wanting, Wood said, possibly because Iran's virulantly anti-Israel leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, was scheduled as the conference's keynote speaker. Canada has also said it will boycott the conference to avoid a repeat of the "Israel-bashing" from the last conference, Reuters said. The European Union is still deliberating whether to attend, Reuters said.