NightWatch

For the Night of 18 September 2008

North Korea-South Korea: Yonhap reported on 19 September that a North Korean foreign ministry official on Friday dismissed as complete nonsense rampant reports of Kim Jong Il’s (Kim Cho'ng-il) latest health setbacks. "Those are the mere sophistry of those who do not want our country to fare well," said Hyon Hak-bong, deputy chief of the U.S. affairs bureau at the North's Foreign Ministry.

He was briefly talking to a group of South Korean reporters shortly after walking across the inter-Korean border to attend talks in South Korea on energy aid under the framework of the Six Party Talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program. He added that such rumors won't be able to surprise North Korean people and break their unity.

This is the strongest diplomatic indication of normality. At the opening of the Inter-Korean talks, Hyon assured the South that the North was restarting its nuclear program at Yongbyon and the world would “get to know soon.”

Pakistan: President Asif Ali Zardari met the prime minister of “Azad (Free) Kashmir” today. He said Pakistan has always been committed to extending political, moral and diplomatic support to the people of Kashmir in their struggle for self-determination. This is an accurate statement of Pakistan’s public declaratory policy. Pakistan maintains the fiction that the portion of Kashmir that it oversees as Azad Kashmir is an independent nation, with a protectorate arrangement with Pakistan.

Pakistan will never allow Azad Kashmiris to hold a self-determination referendum, any more than India will do so in Jammu and Kashmir State. This is mythology from 60 years past that Pakistani leaders cannot afford to abandon because the issue of self-determination for Kashmiris exerts a strong pull on the Pakistani electorate. Pakistani leaders have declined to tutor the voters on the real policy because, without Kashmir, Pakistan would have no outstanding bilateral disputes with India that required military force.

The significance of Zardari’s restatement of the boiler plate position is that he did not mention the need for avoiding violence. Zardari was playing to the gallery with his politically correct statement, but Kashmiri militants and their sponsors and the Indians will interpret it as giving a green light to step up subversion of Indian Kashmir.

For the record. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a non-profit institute devoted to stopping nuclear proliferation, published a ten-page report today assessing that status of nuclear reactor construction in Pakistan. The report used commercial satellite imagery to support its finding that “Pakistan is close to completing a second plutonium-producing reactor, and is well into building a third…The wider implication ... is the real risk this will exacerbate an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race and increase tensions more broadly between the two.”

The report included commercial satellite images taken two weeks ago and in February and May showing construction of the second and third Khushab complexes. The report estimated the reactors would run on power of “about 100-megawatts or more”, which could enable the two combined to yield plutonium for 8 to 10 nuclear bombs a year.

The Wikipedia article on Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure notes that Pakistan's nuclear weapons development program is based, primarily, on highly-enriched uranium (HEU), which is produced at the Kahuta Research Laboratories at Kahuta, a Zippe centrifuge-based uranium-enrichment facility. The Kahuta facility has been in use since the early 1980s. By the early 1990s, Kahuta had an estimated 3,000 centrifuges in operation, and Pakistan has continued its pursuit of expanded uranium-enrichment capabilities.

In the mid 1980s, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission began to pursue plutonium production capabilities. Consequently, Pakistan built the 40-50 MW (Mega Watt, Thermal) Khushab Research Reactor at Joharabad. In April 1998, Pakistan announced that the nuclear reactor was operational.

The two new plutonium production reactors are under construction at the Khushab complex. Nuclear armed states tend to have both uranium enrichment and plutonium paths for making fissile material for purposes of redundancy and flexibility.

NightWatch comment: Pakistani military and civilian leaders have disagreed on a wide range of issues in the last 30 years. They have hated each other and even killed each other. However, on the issue of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, they have been united in support of the nuclear weapons program. Prime Minister Zulfikar al Bhutto began the program in 1972 and leaders as different as General Zia ul Haq, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and General Pervez Musharraf have all been avid supporters. The current leadership will as well.

Afghanistan-Russia-NATO: The Russian ambassador to Afghanistan joined the chorus of NATO bashers today. Ambassador Zamir Kabulov told the BBC in an interview aired today that Russia might close its air space to NATO flights in support of Afghanistan. “Russian air space is still open, but if the NATO countries continue their hostile policies with regard to Russia, definitely this issue will happen,”

Kabulov also offered gratuitous and unsolicited advice to the United States. He said the United States had made far too many mistakes since toppling the Taliban government in 1991. “During the past six-and-a-half years, they have strengthened their military presence instead of strengthening the Afghan government, the Afghan armed forces and the Afghan economy, and this is a main and fundamental mistake.”

The Russians should know about making mistakes in Afghanistan; they have made them regularly since the 1920s.

Zimbabwe: The power sharing arrangement that seemed a done deal last week is under stress this week, according to the BBC. The latest issue is the allocation of the number of cabinet positions and actual portfolios between Mugabe’s members of parliament and those of the opposition. This will be solved, but there are other hurdles including amending the constitution to create the position of prime minister, which opposition leader Tsvangirai is to hold.

Mugabe and his followers have not ceded control of Zimbabwe despite the election and intend to take back any power that is shared. So Mugabe told his followers today.

Concerning the economy, Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane told the BBC that some two million people needed food aid, and the number could rise to five million - half the population - by the end of the year.

"The situation is critical," he said. Annual inflation is running at an official rate of 11,000,000% and one adult in five has a regular job.

Algeria: Update. Security forces in Algiers prevented a suicide attack by al Qaida in the Maghreb that would have targeted the presidential headquarters in El Mouradia, El Khabar reported. Authorities arrested 14 people in a joint operation between capital city police and the army, which targeted militants in the Lakhdaria Mountains in Bouira province. The chief of the Lakhdaria cell, known as Abdeldjebbar Abu Huthayfa, was killed in the operation.

Prior to this operation, terrorist attacks with increased frequency had gone unanswered by the government. The Algerians seem to be competent but they get lax too fast after a few successes. Expect al Qaida in the Maghreb to respond. The timing and power of that response will enable observers to update their assessment of the gravity of the al Qaida threat.

Venezuela: Update. The two TU-160s have returned to Russia.

Bolivia: Update. President Morales and opposition leaders began meetings today to negotiate terms for a peaceful process to end the violent political unrest. Terms discussed reportedly included an agreement by anti-Morales protesters to return control of government buildings and gas pipelines in the inland departments and the creation of an impartial inquiry into the killings in Pando Department, according to Agence France-Presse.

End of NightWatch for 18 September.