Bharat Rakshak

The Secretariat has received a communication dated 8 June 2009 from the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea, transmitting the text of a non-paper entitled "The Republic of Korea´s Suggestion on Possible Criteria for Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle"

Representative John Murtha (D-Pa.), who chairs the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, voiced serious concern about recent instability in the South Asian nation. The issue "is absolutely what I look at and worry about the most," he said.

""Mr. Ban Ki-moon has damaged his credibility in the eyes of independent countries by ignorantly following some domineering powers which have a long record of uncalled-for interference in other countries' internal affairs,"" Qashqavi explained

A new reactor pressure vessel head was shipped from Kobe, Japan bound for Texas today. Meanwhile another is inching its way across California.
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Nuclear-related cooperation agreements have been reached in Egypt and Nigeria during a tour of four African countries by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. His tour, between 23 and 26 June, also takes in Namibia and Angola.

Whilst in Egypt, Russia signed a cooperation agreement in the exploration and mining of uranium. Rosatom director general Sergei Kiriyenko, who accompanied Medvedev, said: "Egypt has very promising uranium deposits and is ready to cooperate with us in uranium prospecting and, in future, uranium mining."
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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said that its member countries have agreed to boost official backing for exports of renewable energy and nuclear power equipment.

In a move to respond to growing demand for low-carbon energy, the organisation said that "countries that participate in the OECD's
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The executive European Commission says nuclear power plants in the EU will now be legally obliged to comply with safety rules set out by the UN' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Germany's largest political party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) headed by Merkel, and its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), which together are the larger partner in the coalition government with the SPD, have welcomed Obama's new efforts for nuclear abolition - but they are not willing to give up the policy of nuclear sharing in a unilateral move.

"We should exercise care in not mixing up the goals with the ways leading to them," Merkel had said earlier Mar. 26. "I stick to the complete abolition of all weapons of mass destruction. But the federal government has fixed the nuclear sharing policy in its White Paper to secure our influence within NATO in this highly sensitive area."

The report from the National Security Commission, convened by the thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research, argues Britain still needs a nuclear deterrent but should seek cheaper alternative or patch up the Vanguards.

Not in twenty years, fifty years, a thousand years.

The French state will sell a chunk of nuclear giant Areva to Asian and Middle Eastern investors to help finance the future of a group considered a jewel in the country's industrial crown, a report said Friday.

observers say the two sides are hoping to cut their respective arsenals by up to 50 per cent, to between 1,000 and 1,500 deployed warheads

"Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats," writes Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who served as a CIA officer for 23 years, in the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, published by the Arms Control Association.

Thus "The greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan.

"With the passage of time, the odds steadily increase that Pakistan will face a serious test of its nuclear security," he says suggesting, "for its part, the United States must be fully prepared to respond to this eventuality."

Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan on Thursday said the Korea-U.S. Atomic Energy Agreement should be revised "as soon as possible." Yu said Seoul will seek "concrete consultations in the direction of maximizing commercial gains from the supply of atomic raw materials and the handling of spent fuel."

Under the 1974 accord, South Korea is prohibited from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. South Korean politicians have recently called for revising the agreement following North Korea's second nuclear test.

Fri Jul 3, 2009 2:23pm EDT

By Sylvia Westall

VIENNA (Reuters) - The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Current International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said last month it was his "gut feeling" Iran was seeking the ability to produce nuclear arms, if it desired, as an "insurance policy" against perceived threats.

"I'm not going to be a "soft" Director-General or a "tough" Director-General," Amano told Reuters, when asked how he would approach Iran and Syria, both subject to stalled IAEA probes.

Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, won over the agency's member states on Friday, including developing countries which had tried to thwart his bid for the politically-sensitive post.

Amano is regarded as a reserved technocrat who would de-politicize the IAEA helm after 12 years of direction by ElBaradei, an outspoken Nobel Peace laureate. He retires in November. ... . .. . . .