'Iran can produce nuclear fuel'

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali-Akbar Salehi says Iran is one of the few countries which can produce nuclear fuel rods and plates.

Salehi said Tehran is capable of making its own nuclear fuel plates and rods, reported Fars News Agency on Saturday. 

The official went on to say that Iran has built a facility in the central city of Isfahan to develop the technology required to power nuclear reactors. 

"We have built an advanced manufacturing unit in the Isfahan site for the fuel plates,” said Salehi in an exclusive interview with Fars. 

"A grand transformation has taken place in the production of (nuclear) plates and rods. With the completion of the unit in Isfahan, we are one of the few countries which can produce fuel rods and fuel plates." 

He added that Western policies towards Iran had actually expedited the country's nuclear achievements, including the production of nuclear plates and rods. 

"This is in fact because of [the] West's actions that we came to this point," he said. 

"What we say is based on reality and truth. There is no exaggeration or deception in our work. It is them who do not want to believe that Iran has no intention, but to obtain nuclear technology for peaceful purposes." 

Salehi said that Iran's inviting foreign envoys to visit the country's nuclear sites is a good-will gesture to further prove the peaceful nature of its nuclear activities. 

Representatives from Russia, China, the European Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement have been invited to tour Iran's nuclear facilities in mid-January. 

Musharraf justifies relationship with Israel

RAWALPINDI: Former president and head of the All Pakistan Muslim League General (retd) Pervez Musharraf has justified having relationship with Israel saying “why we should buy enmity when the Arab countries themselves had been developing friendship with that country.”

In an interview with Geo News anchor Salim Safi, he said he had introduced changes with regard to policies towards Israel. Asked how he became near and dear to Mossad, he said: “We had decided to improve ties with Israel with the speed the Palestinian peace plan moved ahead. In accordance with that policy, I had addressed the American Jewish Congress and requested the Turkish PM to arrange a meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel.” To a question about Indo-Pak ties, he said his government approached towards a solution of the Kashmir conflict through back channel diplomacy. “A lot of progress was made but it went into doldrums with the defeat of Vajpayee in the elections,” he said.

“We had discussed withdrawal of troops from Siachen and the issue of Kashmir was also taken up. It included talks on three stages. The first being withdrawal of troops and the next was granting internal autonomy followed by making the Line of Control irrelevant.” He said through back channel diplomacy he held talks with Manmohan Singh also and it is wrong to infer that the Pakistani establishment was unaware about it.

Musharraf defended his adventure over Kargil saying that had positive effects because after that episode India had agreed to talks over an issue that it had avoided for the last 50 years. When asked about the war against terrorism, he said no body had created the Taliban. The onus had fallen on Pakistan because the then interior minister used to call them his children. Recalling the accusations that he was playing double game with Washington, he explained that he was serving Pakistan’s cause, neither for America nor for the Taliban. “Just to salvage the country, I launched jirgas to alienate Pakhtuns from the Taliban and that had created misunderstandings in America.”

“This is wrong that after 9/11, Gen Mehmood had gone to Kandahar and advised the Taliban to keep standing firmly. Instead, the General, Ulema and members of the Council of Islamic Ideology were sent to convince them. Gen Mehmood was transferred from ISI because of nearing retirement, not due to playing double game,” Musharraf insisted. He set aside the notion that the army had organised the Jihadi outfits. “On the contrary they had come into existence under government policy. It was because of Kashmir that Jihadi organisations had been coming into existence,” Musharraf said. He said the lower strata of the American leadership were against him, not the top leadership. “They were of the impression that I was playing double game with them.”

He said he was unaware that the US or the army had accorded no objection for his removal by President Zardari. To a question about Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, he said he speaks lies over TV. “Documentary proofs and pictures are available with regard to his deals with Iran and Libya. They were also shown to Dr Khan.” Likewise, he said, Dr Khan’s photographs, along with his front men in Libya and Malaysia, are also available.

“Dr Khan is telling lies although I have saved him,” Musharraf said, adding: “Because of him I had confronted pressure from world over which demanded his handing over or permission to investigate him by intelligence agencies from different countries. I foiled all those attempts.” Musharraf said not a single agency was allowed to probe Dr Khan and we conducted the entire investigation process.

When asked how Dr AQ Khan could have carried out the alleged activities without cooperation from the generals, he said none of the generals were involved. He said Dr AQ Khan had his own security and he also handled financial matters. “His cargo was never checked. Everything is possible when he was in charge of every thing and had all the powers.” He said he never handed over a single Pakistani to America, nor he knew about Dr Aafia Siddiqui. “On the contrary her mother used to pray for me,” he said. “Those mentioned in my book as being transferred to US, were foreigners and their own countries were not ready to receive them,” he added.

“With the grace of God I have no problem to run the party,” he said when asked did he have sufficient funds to run party affairs. When asked where from he acquired that much of money, he explained “my lectures are not a charity, they earn handsome amount and take me world over”. He said the agency that plans lectures for him also does for Bill Clinton. He avoided answering when asked how much he gets from lectures but said the amount is handsome. “My friends are also a source for funding,” he said.

About the National Security Council created during his tenure, he said, that could block the imposition of martial law in the country. “In the absence of a forum where the army could express itself, it would come out through its action.”

About claims made by General (retd) Ziauddin Butt, Musharraf said they are baseless. In fact, he said, General Butt himself had destroyed the whole game.

U.S. efforts fail to convince Pakistan's top general to target Taliban

U.S. efforts fail to convince Pakistan's top general to target Taliban

Washington Post Staff Writers

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Countless U.S. officials in recent years have lectured and listened to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the man many view as the most powerful in Pakistan. They have drunk tea and played golf with him, feted him and flown with him in helicopters.

But they have yet to persuade him to undertake what the Obama administration's recent strategy review concluded is a key to success in the Afghan war - the elimination of havens inside Pakistan where the Taliban plots and stages attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Kayani, who as Pakistan's army chief has more direct say over the country's security strategy than its president or prime minister, has resisted personal appeals from President Obama, U.S. military commanders and senior diplomats. Recent U.S. intelligence estimates have concluded that he is unlikely to change his mind anytime soon. Despite the entreaties, officials say, Kayani doesn't trust U.S. motivations and is hedging his bets in case the American strategy for Afghanistan fails.

In many ways, Kayani is the personification of the vexing problem posed by Pakistan. Like the influential military establishment he represents, he views Afghanistan on a timeline stretching far beyond the U.S. withdrawal, which is slated to begin this summer. While the Obama administration sees the insurgents as an enemy force to be defeated as quickly and directly as possible, Pakistan has long regarded them as useful proxies in protecting its western flank from inroads by India, its historical adversary.


"Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia," said one of several Obama administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive relationship. U.S. generals, the official said, "want to talk about the next drone attacks."

The administration has praised Kayani for operations in 2009 and 2010 against domestic militants in the Swat Valley and in South Waziristan, and has dramatically increased its military and economic assistance to Pakistan. But it has grown frustrated that the general has not launched a ground assault against Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in North Waziristan.

Kayani has promised action when he has enough troops available, although he has given no indication of when that might be. Most of Pakistan's half-million-man army remains facing east, toward India.

In recent months, Kayani has sometimes become defiant. When U.S.-Pakistani tensions spiked in September, after two Pakistani soldiers were killed by an Afghanistan-based American helicopter gunship pursuing insurgents on the wrong side of the border, he personally ordered the closure of the main frontier crossing for U.S. military supplies into Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

In October, administration officials choreographed a White House meeting for Kayani at which Obama could directly deliver his message of urgency. The army chief heard him out, then provided a 13-page document updating Pakistan's strategic perspective and noting the gap between short-term U.S. concerns and Pakistan's long-term interests, according to U.S. officials.

Kayani reportedly was infuriated by the recent WikiLeaks release of U.S. diplomatic cables, some of which depicted him as far chummier with the Americans and more deeply involved in Pakistani politics than his carefully crafted domestic persona would suggest. In one cable, sent to Washington by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad last year, he was quoted as discussing with U.S. officials a possible removal of Pakistan's president and his preferred replacement.

On the eve of the cable's publication in November, the normally aloof and soft-spoken general ranted for hours on the subject of irreconcilable U.S.-Pakistan differences in a session with a group of Pakistani journalists.

The two countries' "frames of reference" regarding regional security "can never be the same," he said, according to news accounts. Calling Pakistan America's "most bullied ally," Kayani said that the "real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearize Pakistan."


The general's suspicions

Kayani was a star student at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 1988, writing his master's thesis on "Strengths and Weaknesses of the Afghan Resistance Movement." He was among the last Pakistanis to graduate from the college before the United States cut off military assistance to Islamabad in 1990 in response to Pakistan's suspected nuclear weapons program. Eight years later, both Pakistan and India conducted tests of nuclear devices. The estrangement lasted until President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions in 2001, less than two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Kayani is far from alone in the Pakistani military in suspecting that the United States will abandon Pakistan once it has achieved its goals in Afghanistan, and that its goal remains to leave Pakistan defenseless against nuclear-armed India.

Kayani "is one of the most anti-India chiefs Pakistan has ever had," one U.S. official said.

The son of a noncommissioned army officer, Kayani was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1971. He was chief of military operations during the 2001-2002 Pakistan-India crisis. As head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency from 2004 to 2007, he served as a point man for back-channel talks with India initiated by then-President Pervez Musharraf. When Musharraf resigned in 2008, the talks abruptly ended.

The Pakistani military has long been involved in politics, but few believe that the general seeks to lead the nation. "He has stated from the beginning that he has no desire to involve the military in running the country," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. But that does not mean Kayani would stand by "if there was a failure of civilian institutions," Nawaz said. "The army would step in."

Kayani remains an enigmatic figure, chiefly known in Pakistan for his passion for golf and chain-smoking. According to Jehangir Karamat, a retired general who once held Kayani's job, he is an avid reader and a fan of Lebanese American poet Khalil Gibran.

'Mind-boggling'

Even some Pakistanis see Kayani's India-centric view as dated, self-serving and potentially disastrous as the insurgents the country has harbored increasingly turn on Pakistan itself.

"Nine years into the Afghanistan war, we're fighting various strands of militancy, and we still have an army chief who considers India the major threat," said Cyril Almeida, an editor and columnist at the English-language newspaper Dawn. "That's mind-boggling."

Kayani has cultivated the approval of a strongly anti-American public that opinion polls indicate now holds the military in far higher esteem than it does the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Pakistani officials say the need for public support is a key reason for rebuffing U.S. pleas for an offensive in North Waziristan. In addition to necessitating the transfer of troops from the Indian border, Pakistani military and intelligence officials say such a campaign would incite domestic terrorism and uproot local communities. Residents who left their homes during the South Waziristan offensive more than a year ago have only recently been allowed to begin returning to their villages.

Several U.S. officials described Kayani as straightforward in his explanations of why the time is not right for an offensive in North Waziristan: a combination of too few available troops and too little public support.

The real power broker

Pakistani democracy activists fault the United States for professing to support Pakistan's civilian government while at the same time bolstering Kayani with frequent high-level visits and giving him a prominent role in strategic talks with Islamabad.

Obama administration officials said in response that while they voice support for Pakistan's weak civilian government at every opportunity, the reality is that the army chief is the one who can produce results.

"We have this policy objective, so who do we talk to?" one official said. "It's increasingly clear that we have to talk to Kayani."

Most of the talking is done by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In more than 30 face-to-face meetings with Kayani, including 21 visits to Pakistan since late 2007, Mullen has sought to reverse what both sides call a "trust deficit" between the two militaries.

But the patience of other U.S. officials has worn thin. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, has adopted a much tougher attitude toward Kayani than his predecessor, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, had, according to several U.S. officials.

For his part, Kayani complains that he is "always asking Petraeus what is the strategic objective" in Afghanistan, according to a friend, retired air marshal Shahzad Chaudhry.

As the Obama administration struggles to assess the fruits of its investment in Pakistan, some officials said the United States now accepts that pleas and military assistance will not change Kayani's thinking. Mullen and Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as the administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan until his death last month, thought that "getting Kayani to trust us enough" to be honest constituted progress, one official said.

But what Kayani has honestly told them, the official said, is: "I don't trust you."

US, Pakistan stumble in private talks over drones

US, Pakistan stumble in private talks over drones

WASHINGTON: A US offer to supply Pakistan with its own fleet of surveillance drone aircraft delighted Islamabad a year ago but now threatens to turn into another source of friction between the two nations.

The offer was made by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates during a trip to Islamabad in January 2010 but talks have failed to gain traction, with Pakistan privately voicing concern about what it says are exorbitant prices and a snail-pace delivery timeline.

A US military official in Islamabad said Washington was still working with Pakistan to decide what pilotless drone system its army needed. A Pakistani official familiar with the matter denied that was the hold-up.

“It’s not because of product choice, that we’re unable to make a decision,” the Pakistani official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The negotiations were delayed because of two issues. One is the delivery timeframe, the other is the price.”

The Pakistani official said the United States quoted a price well above market value for the surveillance drones and is stipulating that it may take up to three years for delivery.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the details of the talks but a spokeswoman said both sides were working hard to provide “the capability they need in order to be successful in this counterinsurgency effort.”

The aircraft would be delivered as quickly as possible, once a final decision is made, she said.

The disagreement comes at a delicate moment in US relations with Pakistan. Washington wants Islamabad to do more to drive Taliban militants from sanctuaries used as launchpads for attacks on US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

The White House last year accused Pakistan of being unwilling to aggressively pursue Afghan Taliban militants. US officials said elements of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) were maintaining contact or even supporting the Taliban and its allies.

The CIA withdrew its top officer from Pakistan after his name was deliberately leaked, allegedly by elements of the ISI, US officials said in December.

The Pakistani official did not link the snag in negotiations over the drones to any tensions between Islamabad and Washington, however. US officials said both sides were still working to complete the project.

Overpriced?

Gates offered Pakistan 12 Shadow drones, manufactured by AAI Corporation, a unit of Textron Systems. They are not the weaponized versions being used by the CIA to track and kill al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Pakistan but are used strictly for surveillance and intelligence gathering.

The Pakistani official questioned why the drones could not be supplied more quickly, given that the aim was to bolster Pakistan’s ability to battle insurgents.

“We need it immediately because we’re in the middle of this war on terrorism,” the official said.

Pakistani officials make no secret about their desire to have attack drones as well as the unarmed models.

source

China ramps up pressure over Kashmir

China ramps up pressure over Kashmir

By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A recent report in the Chinese media describing the Sino-Indian border as being 2,000 kilometers long, roughly 1,500 km shorter than that defined by India, has evoked an alarmed response among sections of the Indian strategic community.

The "missing 1,500 km" from the definition of the Sino-Indian border is seen to be a clear pointer to Beijing's hardening position, not only on its long-standing boundary dispute with India but also on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). While India holds about 45% of J&K territory and Pakistan controls 35%, China occupies about 20% (including Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam Valley, ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963).

A Beijing-datelined Xinhua news agency report of an official briefing by China's Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue on the eve of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's recent visit to India triggered the flap. "China and India share a 2,000-km-long border that has never been formally demarcated," the report said. India describes the border as being 3,488 km. 

The different positions were made even more explicit by the Global Times, an English-language newspaper published by the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. In an interview with Global Times, India's ambassador to China, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, spoke of the "long common border of 3,488 kilometers" between the two countries. But a comment by the editors of Global Times in parentheses said: "There is no settled length of the common border. The Chinese government often refers to the border length as being 'about 2,000 kilometers'."

Reports in state-owned media have been describing the border as being 2,000 km for at least a year now.

The roughly 1,500 km-long shortfall in the Chinese perception is believed to refer to the Sino-Indian boundary in J&K. "China apparently no longer treats the line of nearly 1,600 km separating Jammu and Kashmir on the one hand and Xinjiang and Tibet on the other as a border with India," strategic affairs expert C Raja Mohan wrote in the Indian Express. That is, it does not recognize Kashmir to be part of India. 
Beijing is questioning India's locus standi to discuss J&K’s border with China, observes B Raman, a retired director in India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). In essence, it is seeking to exclude discussion of the western sector of the disputed Sino-Indian boundary with India. The western sector includes the large chunk of Indian territory, Aksai Chin, in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir that China occupied in 1962.

Besides, China "wants to change the format of the border talks in order to keep it confined bilaterally to the eastern and middle sectors and expand it to a trilateral issue involving India, China and Pakistan in the western sector," Raman wrote recently.

China has become increasingly assertive in its questioning of India's sovereignty over J&K. Since 2008, it has been issuing visas on a separate sheet of paper to residents of Jammu and Kashmir rather than stamping the visa in their passports, as is the norm with other Indian citizens. In August last year, China also denied a visa to Lieutenant General B S Jaswal - commander of the Indian army's Northern Command, which includes Kashmir - for an official visit to China, on the grounds that he "controlled" a "disputed area".

Besides, over the past year, Beijing has been reaching out to the Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella organization of Kashmiri separatist outfits. In March 2010, for instance, Chinese Foreign Affairs director Ying Gang met with Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Geneva on the sidelines of the 13th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Besides questioning India's sovereignty over Kashmir, China has been endorsing Islamabad's control over the part of Kashmir it has administered since 1947. 

It was with India that the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, signed an Instrument of Accession in October 1947. However, only 45% of the territory of the former princely state is in India's hands today,roughly 35% remaining under Pakistani administration and another 20% under Chinese control. The territory under Chinese occupation includes Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam Valley that Pakistan gifted to China in 1963.

In the Northern Areas of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, China is involved in the construction of several infrastructure projects, including roads, hydroelectric power projects, dams, expressways, bridges and telecommunication facilities. During Wen's recent visit to Pakistan, the two countries signed a US$275 million agreement for repair and expansion of the Karakoram Highway. Earlier in September, Beijing underlined its support to Islamabad's territorial claims over parts of Pakistan-administered Kashmir when it described the Northern Areas as "a northern part of Pakistan".

The India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir predates the People's Republic of China (PRC). India and Pakistan had already fought their first war over Kashmir when the PRC came into being. Initially, China took its cues from the Soviet Union on the issue. It described the conflict as a Western creation and maintained that the US and Britain were hoping to make Kashmir a Western base.
China took a "neutral position" in the 1950s. It opposed foreign arbitration on the Kashmir issue, which pleased India. At the same time, it did not endorse Delhi's claims over Kashmir. Fraying Sino-Soviet relations and Moscow's overt support to Jammu and Kashmir as "an inalienable part of the Republic of India", as well as concerns that its backing of India would push Pakistan into a closer embrace of the US, seem to have prompted it to adopt a more "neutral position" between India and Pakistan on Kashmir.

With Sino-Indian relations deteriorating from 1959 onwards, China began tilting towards Pakistan. It signed a border agreement with Pakistan. Since this dealt with areas that constituted Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the agreement amounted to a de facto Chinese recognition of Pakistan's control over this area. Although it subsequently denied such recognition, describing this as "provisional" and "pending settlement of the Kashmir dispute", a joint communique issued at the end of prime minister Zhou Enlai's visit to Pakistan in February 1964 was a strong endorsement of the Pakistani position. It urged a solution of the dispute "in accordance with the wishes of the people of Kashmir". India is opposed to a plebiscite in Kashmir.

By the mid/late 1970s, China began advocating a status quo on Kashmir. Support for the Kashmiris' right to self-determination was toned down. In 1976, in his speech before the UN General Assembly, Chinese foreign minister Chia Kuan-Hua omitted naming Kashmir in a list of territories where the right to self-determination had not been exercised. It is believed that China's own troubles with separatism and improving ties with India prompted its shrinking support on self-determination.

With Sino-Indian rapprochement gathering momentum in the 1990s, China began describing Kashmir as a bilateral matter to be resolved by India and Pakistan through peaceful means. On his visit to India in 1996, president Ziang Zemin called on India and Pakistan to set aside contentious issues and build a cooperative relationship. During the brief Kargil conflict in 1999, China called on India and Pakistan to respect the Line of Control that separates Pakistani- and Indian-administered Kashmir. These were seen as signs of Beijing taking a neutral position on Kashmir again.

China has never accepted India's sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir, even over the part that is under its control. After all, if it did it would mean giving up the roughly 43,180 square kilometers of territory that is currently under its control. However, it had avoided provoking India on the matter publicly. This has changed in recent years, with Beijing being "deliberately provocative" on Kashmir. 

India is not letting the repeated provocations go unchallenged. After all, the territorial integrity of the country is a core concern of the Indian state. A couple of months ago, in his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, India's External Affairs Minister S M Krishna did some tough talking. According to officials quoted by the Hindu, for the first time India drew a parallel between "the territorial red lines" of the two countries.

Krishna reportedly told Yang that just as India had been sensitive to its concerns over Tibet and Taiwan, Beijing too should be mindful of Indian sensitivities on Jammu and Kashmir. The message that India is sending is that if China questions India's sovereignty over Kashmir, India will question Beijing's sovereignty over Tibet and Taiwan. 
Delhi has indicated that Krishna's warning was to be taken seriously. The joint communique issued at the end of Wen's visit to India made no reference to India's commitment to a "one china policy". This is the first time since 1988 that a summit-level joint communique has made no mention of the policy. Instead, both sides agreed to show "mutual respect and sensitivity for each other's concerns and aspirations".

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan