Nuclear security measure to take effect in 'near future': IAEA head

 

By Andrea Shalal29 minutes ago

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By Andrea Shalal

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only six more nations need to ratify an amendment to a nuclear security convention that would make it legally binding for countries to tighten protection of nuclear facilities and materials, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Wednesday.

IAEA Director Yukiya Amano told reporters that the measure should take effect "in the near future" after Serbia and the Marshall Islands formally ratified it on Wednesday and more countries were expected to submit paperwork on Thursday or Friday. It was not immediately clear which countries they were.

Amano, in Washington for President Barack Obama's fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit this week, said the ratification would be "a very important step up ... in nuclear security."

Pakistan ratified the amendment last week.

"Entry into force would reduce the likelihood of terrorists being able to detonate a radioactive dispersal device, otherwise known as a 'dirty bomb,'" Amano said in a speech in Washington earlier Wednesday.

Amano has pressed hard to advance the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which was adopted by 152 member countries a decade ago. Two thirds of the members, or 102 countries, must ratify the long-delayed measure for it to take effect.

The amendment makes it legally binding for countries to protect nuclear facilities, as well as the domestic use, storage and transportation of nuclear material. It provides for expanded cooperation among countries on finding and recovering stolen or smuggled nuclear material. States would be required to minimize any radiological consequences of sabotage, and to prevent and combat any such offenses.

Amano said that more work was needed in making the amendment universal, which would help ensure that all countries with nuclear capabilities - including North Korea - adhered to the measure, not just those countries that had ratified the measure.

The IAEA director said he favored organizing a separate conference to review the amendment once it took effect.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Grant McCool)

orth Korea, again, demands halt to US-South Korea war games

 

By ERIC TALMADGE8 hours ago

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PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — It's a demand North Korea has been making for decades: The United States and South Korea must immediately suspend their annual military exercises if there is to be peace on the Korean Peninsula. And, once again, it's a demand that is falling on deaf ears. Following the North's recent nuclear test and rocket launch, this year's exercises are bigger than ever.

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In the Koreas, the cycle of tensions is as predictable as the changing of the seasons — they surge every spring, when Washington and Seoul hold their annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises. This year's drills, which are to continue through April, are not only bigger but also reportedly include for the first time training for precision strikes directed at the North's leadership and Kim Jong Un himself.

In the eyes of North Korea's ruling regime, that is a bridge too far.

Even before the exercises began, North Korea's formidable propaganda machine had been churning out articles every day condemning the United States and South Korea in the strongest terms, displaying nuclear bomb and missile mock-ups and warning it is ready at any time to launch a pre-emptive strike against the presidential residence in South Korea or even a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland.

Nightly news programs have been dominated by videos of leader Kim watching North Korea's own drills, replete with large-scale artillery arrays firing barrages from beachfront positions into the ocean and repeated claims that the North now has an H-bomb — which it says it tested in January — and a means of taking the war to the U.S. mainland.

"This isn't just military training," Kim Il Sun, a teacher at the Pyongyang Tourism University, said of the U.S.-South Korea military activities going on just south of the Demilitarized Zone as she headed home after work on Wednesday.

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FILE - In this March 18, 2016 file photo, people watch a TV screen showing a file footage of a missi …

"These are war exercises aimed at a nuclear war against our country," she said. "They are preparing to attack us."

Gauging the true level of concern among North Koreans as their government whips up anti-U.S. and anti-Seoul feelings is always difficult.

North Korea has been in a state of virtual martial law since its founding and North Koreans are accustomed to the rise and fall of tensions and the threat — real or perceived — that their country is on the verge of being invaded. Apart from the war-like talk on the news and the more-than-usual number of missile and rocket tests, life in the capital continues to be business as usual, although the whole nation has been mobilized for a 70-day loyalty drive aimed at boosting production ahead of a major political meeting to be headed by Kim in May.

There are also strong signals that North Korea doesn't see the situation as serious enough to go to war over.

Yet.

Despite threats it is fully prepared to carry out a pre-emptive strike and conduct a "sacred war of reunification," the government has repeatedly insisted it will only attack if provoked. Ultimately, it says, what it really wants is to sit down with the United States to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Such talk has always been a non-starter in Washington.

The longstanding U.S. demand has been that North Korea must either give up its nuclear program or verifiably demonstrate it is willing to do so before any serious discussions can begin. North Korea wants talks first since it says the threat of a U.S. invasion is what forced it to develop a nuclear deterrent to begin with.

Washington did suspend an earlier version of the joint military exercises in an attempt to make progress with North Korea.

But that was back in 1992 and there is no sign of that happening again soon, with tensions on the Korean Peninsula worse than usual and the U.S. and South Korea leading efforts to impose new sanctions on the North.

In the meantime, officials here say, the ball is in Washington's court.

Jon Min Dok, director of the Institute for Disarmament and Peace, part of North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told an AP Television News crew in a rare interview this week that "as long as the U.S. persists in its moves to stifle our socialist system" North Korea has no intention of backing down.

"We consider that keeping the balance of force by bolstering our nuclear forces is the only way effectively to deter the persistent nuclear threat and war provocations from the U.S.," he said.

U.S. says it will not recognize South China Sea exclusion zone

 

By Andrea Shalal6 hours ago

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Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly …

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has told China it will not recognize an exclusion zone in the South China Sea and would view such a move as "destabilizing," U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said on Wednesday.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in the coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could prompt Beijing to declare an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, in the region, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013.

Work told an event hosted by the Washington Post that the United States would not recognize such an exclusion zone in the South China Sea, just as it did not recognize the one China established in the East China Sea.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year.

"We don't believe they have a basis in international law, and we've said over and over (that) we will fly, sail and go wherever international law allows," Work said.

"We have spoken quite plainly to our Chinese counterparts and said that we think an ADIZ would be destabilizing. We would prefer that all of the claims in the South China Sea be handled through mediation and not force or coercion," he said.

Work spoke as Chinese President Xi Jinping prepared to visit Washington for a nuclear security summit this week.

The United States has accused China of raising tensions in the South China Sea by its apparent deployment of surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island, a move China has neither confirmed nor denied.

China, for its part, has repeatedly accused the United States of militarizing the South China Sea through its freedom of navigation patrols in the region and the expansion of military alliances with countries such as the Philippines.

In February, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said his country's South China Sea military deployments were no different from U.S. deployments on Hawaii.

Tensions between China and its neighbors Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan over sovereignty in the South China Sea have risen after Beijing embarked on significant reclamations on disputed islands and reefs in the area.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alan Crosby)

Revealed: The US Army Is Developing the Ultimate 'Big Gun'

The National Interest 14 hours ago 

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On March 19, U.S. Marine Corps staff sergeant Louis Cardin, a field artilleryman assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, died during an attack on Fire Base Bell outside of Makhmur, Iraq. Coincidentally, the U.S. Army is hard at work developing a farther-firing howitzer that could help keep artillery troops out of range of enemy forces. The Army is cooking up a suite of improvements could double the range of the existing M-777 howitzer. Right now the 155-millimeter gun, in service with the Army and Marines, can lob shells at targets up to 18 miles away. The M-777ER version the Army is working on “will be able to reach out and hit targets … before the targets can reach them,” David Bound, ...

Somali pirates in French court over fatal hijacking

 

By Aurélia End1 hour ago

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A pirate skiff carrying a French hostage Evelyne Colombo before being borded by the Spanish warship "Galicia" in the Gulf of Aden on September 10, 2011 (AFP Photo/STR)

Paris (AFP) - Seven suspected Somali pirates accused of hijacking a French yacht, killing its owner and putting his wife through a hellish kidnapping ordeal, appeared in a Paris court on Tuesday.

Evelyne Colombo, 58, stared straight ahead as the seven men accused of killing her husband Christian in 2011 walked into the Paris courtroom.

The suspects, aged between 25 and 32, addressed the court through an interpreter.

"I was a fisherman when there were still fish in the sea," said Fahran Abdisalam Hassan.

Others have given their professions as policeman, taxi driver and even "coolie" -- a old colonial-era term meaning "porter".

They face possible life imprisonment if convicted in a trial which is due to last a fortnight.

The Colombos had sold everything to make their dream voyage around the world.

They left the Yemen port of Aden in early September 2011 and were heading for Oman -- a journey that took them through notoriously pirate-infested waters -- when naval authorities received a distress signal from their "Tribal Kat" catamaran.

A German frigate found the boat several hours later. There were bullet holes in the deck and a pair of glasses lying in a pool of blood. No one was onboard.

Two days later, a Spanish warship located the skiff believed to belong to the pirates. They tried to approach but turned away when the attackers dragged Evelyne Colombo into view, a gun to her head.

The Spanish military prepared a raid and attacked a few hours later, leaving two pirates dead and the remaining seven under arrest.

Evelyne Colombo told her rescuers that her husband's body had been dumped into the sea. It was never found.

She had spent a nightmarish 48 hours with the pirates, kept under a tarpaulin, drenched by waves and in constant fear of death.

- 'War, hunger, hell' -

"War... hunger... for these men to be properly judged, the court must understand the hell from which they have come," one of their lawyers, Martin Reynaud previously told AFP, saying this could only explain rather than excuse their actions.

The accused have claimed the two men killed during the military assault -- identified as "Shine" and "Abdullahi Yare" -- were the leaders of the operation, according to a police source.

The investigators believe Yare was most likely the killer, but that all members of the gang were motivated by the desire to attack boats and claim ransoms through kidnapping.

The dramatic decline in piracy off the Somali coast means the trial could be the last in Europe for some time.

The European Union's military counter-piracy mission "Atalante" saw zero vessels pirated over the past three years, compared with a peak of 47 in 2010.

International naval patrols, increased security on boats and the jailing of over a thousand pirates around the world have greatly reduced the threat, although experts warn that illegal fishing off Somalia's coast is again threatening local livelihoods and could push communities back to piracy.

The desire for ransoms means murders have been relatively rare in Somali piracy cases. This would be the first such case to feature a murder out of four that have come to trial in France.

In 2009, the French skipper of the "Tanit" was killed by friendly fire during a raid to rescue his ship from pirates.