NightWatch

For the Night of 30 August 2009

Australia-UAE-North Korea: Update. The Canberra government plans to investigate a shipment of North Korean weapons bound for Iran that was seized by United Arab Emirates authorities from an Australian-owned cargo ship 14 August, Reuters reported today, citing a statement by Transportation Minister Anthony Albanese. The ship, the Bahamian-flagged ANL-Australia, held a cache of North Korean rocket launchers, detonators, ammunition and grenades.

UN Security Council Resolution 1874 bans all North Korean exports and imports of weapons in response to the 25 May 2009 nuclear test.

The three paragraphs relative to the arms ban are reproduced below:

“10.  Decides that the measures in paragraph 8(a) of resolution 1718 (2006) shall also apply to all arms and related materiel, as well as to financial transactions, technical training, advice, services or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of such arms, except for small arms and light weapons and their related materiel, and calls upon States to exercise vigilance over the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK of small arms or light weapons, and further decides that States shall notify the Committee at least five days prior to selling, supplying or transferring small arms or light weapons to the DPRK;

“11.  Calls upon all States to inspect, in accordance with their national authorities and legislation, and consistent with international law, all cargo to and from the DPRK, in their territory, including seaports and airports, if the State concerned has information that provides reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains items the supply, sale, transfer, or export of which is prohibited by paragraph 8 (a), 8 (b), or 8 (c) of resolution 1718 or by paragraph 9 or 10 of this resolution, for the purpose of ensuring strict implementation of those provisions;

“12.  Calls upon all Member States to inspect vessels, with the consent of the flag State, on the high seas, if they have information that provides reasonable grounds to believe that the cargo of such vessels contains items the supply, sale, transfer, or export of which is prohibited by paragraph 8 (a), 8 (b), or 8 (c) of resolution 1718 (2006) or by paragraph 9 or 10 of this resolution, for the purpose of ensuring strict implementation of those provisions;”

This is the second ship seized this month. India has not completed its investigation of the North Korean ship M/V Mu San seized for inspection in the Andaman Islands in early August.

Japan: The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a landslide victory in today’s parliamentary elections, Japanese news agency NHK reported the DPJ has won 284 seats, and exit polls conducted by private television station TV Asahi indicated the DPJ will win 315 of 480 seats in the lower house of parliament, ousting Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from power.

The victory by the DPJ would mark only the second time the LDP has been voted out of power since the end of World War II. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso announced that he took responsibility for the LDP defeat and resigned as the LDP leader.

DPJ leader Hatoyama promised better relations with China, resolution of the Kuril Islands dispute with Russia and greater independence from the US. Expect a more mature relationship, meaning more ups and downs as the Japanese and Americans adjust to change.

North Korea – South Korea: Update. North Korea promised Friday to release a four-person South Korean fishing crew and agreed to restart reunions between its citizens and their relatives in South Korea, the South's Unification Ministry said.

In late July, North Korea detained the crew of a fishing boat that strayed across the maritime border in the East Sea, or Sea of Japan. South Korean officials immediately sought their release, but had heard no word from the North.

After the three-day Red Cross meetings last week, North Korea agreed to a series of reunions from 26 September to 1 October. The reunions, involving 100 people from each country, will occur at a resort near Mount Kumgang, a scenic park area just north of the inter-Korean border on the countries' east coast.

At the Red Cross meeting, South Korean officials also tried to discuss prisoners of war from the Korean War in the 1950s who haven't been allowed to return to the South, as well as missing South Korean citizens believed to have been abducted by the North. North Korean officials declined to talk about those issues.

The charm offensive continues.

India: For the record. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said 29 August that relations with Pakistan are currently not conducive for the two countries to have talks at any level, Asian News International reported. Singh made his remarks at the inauguration of a crude oil terminal at Cairn India's Mangala oilfield in Barmer, Rajasthan state.

Indian space authorities reported on Saturday they lost all communications with India’s Moon satellite, Chandrayaan-1, which was launched last October,

Pakistan: Security. In Swat District, a militant blew himself at a police station on 30 August, killing 12 cadets in the second such attack in the area in recent weeks, a senior government official said. "Training was going on when a suicide bomber disguised as a recruit walked into the building and blew himself up," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the North West Frontier Province where Swat is located, told Reuters.

"We have reports that 12 were killed" in the attack in the main town of Mingora, he said.

Swat may be considered secure by the Pakistan Army, but it is not safe.

A.Q. Khan: The Daily Times reported the government on Saturday withdrew the security protocol and removed all restrictions on the movement of nuclear scientist Dr. AQ Khan, as ordered by the Lahore High Court on Friday. “Visitors on Saturday faced no restrictions in reaching the residence of Dr. Khan,” Barrister Syed Ali Zafar, Dr. Khan’s counsel, told the Daily Times.

Barrister Zafar said the authorities followed the court’s order “and now he needs no prior approval from the authorities for his movement”. He said, “Dr Khan is now an absolutely free man. There is no security protocol in place for him and he can freely move and go anywhere he wants to.”

Khan was arrested by Musharraf under US pressure in January 2004, when Khan confessed to proliferating nuclear weapons technology. Musharraf pardoned him in February 2004 under domestic pressure, because Khan is the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and some missile programs.

Last May Khan recanted his confession and accused Musharraf and the Pakistan Army of proliferating nuclear weapons. In February 2009, the Islamabad High Court freed Khan to travel anywhere in Pakistan. Now the Lahore High Court has freed to travel anywhere.

Comment: This is tonight’s bad news because nothing indicates Khan will have any trouble reconstituting his nuclear technology proliferation network, whose clients reportedly included Libya, Iran and North Korea. It is not clear in the public record that his network was ever broken up, awaiting his release which was always inevitable.

There is irony in Khan’s full release. Under Musharraf, Khan was held under house arrest for five years. Under an elected government that professes to be dedicated to rule of law, Khan is released. This is a study in democracy. Decisions of foreign democratic governments committed to the rule of law can have consequences that damage US national security interests.

A comment by a TV analyst this weekend noted that while the US was spending international capital to reinstate a leftist ex president in Honduras, it did nothing to prevent the lifting of all restrictions on the worst proliferators of nuclear weapons in the post war world. Khan was not just a businessman. His clients were exclusively states that considered the US an enemy. If a North Korean nuclear weapon ever detonates against US troops in South Korea, it will have had the assistance of the Pakistani, A.Q. Khan. Plus, if Khan’s claims are accurate, Khan’s actions had the full and knowing support of successive Pakistani governments, starting with Benazir Bhutto.

Saudi Arabia-Russia: For the record. Saudi Arabia is close to signing a $2 billion deal to buy Russian arms, Agence France-Presse reported 29 August, citing a Russian defense industry official. Saudi Arabia may buy up to 30 Mi-35 attack helicopters, 120 Mi-17 helicopters, 150 T-90S tanks, 250 BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles and "several dozen" air defense systems. The arms contracts may be signed by the end of 2009.

The Saudis evidently are diversifying their primary arms supplier, which used to be the US.

Iran: The Islamic Republic is staging Soviet-style show trials against political reformers, and the Persians are tolerating it.

The BBC reported, “Iranian state television showed the defendants - sitting in rows in a courtroom in Tehran, dressed in pyjama-like prison uniforms - as they confessed to taking part in a plot to undermine the Islamic Republic.”

“The defendants included some of the country's most prominent reformist intellectuals. Many looked tired and nervous in front of the cameras. It was the latest of Iran's mass trials. In all, more than 100 people stand accused of provoking unrest after the disputed presidential elections in June”.

“One of the best known of those in the dock, Saeed Hajjarian, is so severely disabled his "confession" had to be read by another defendant.

‘I committed big errors through my inaccurate analyses of the recent elections," the statement read, "and I apologize to the Iranian nation.’ A former intelligence official, Mr Hajjarian survived an assassination attempt in 2000, when a gunman shot him in the head at point-blank range. Since then, he has become an outspoken critic of the regime and one of the main ideologues of the reform movement.

According to the official Iranian news agency, he is charged with ‘acting against national security… spreading suspicion of vote-rigging… and provoking illegal protests.’ One of the prosecutors has demanded that he receive the maximum punishment, which in such cases could mean a death sentence.

Burma and North Korea are about the only countries left that indulge is this kind of macabre spectacle. North Korea has not done so in decades. Iran has introduced an atheistic communist practice into its version of Islamic democracy, which proves once again that despotic regimes are of a type, regardless of religion or its absence.

Show trials. One might have thought the world had outgrown such cruel farce. Evidently not some Muslim Persians. The good news, if it may be so called, is they have finally shown who they are in public and with what fellow despots they would identify. What would be the point of negotiating with such people?

Ethiopia-Somalia: According to the BBC, hundreds of Ethiopian troops crossed the border and seized control of a Somali town from Islamist insurgents, witnesses said Saturday. The overnight incursion into the town of Belet Weyne is the first time Ethiopian troops have seized control of a town in war-ravaged Somalia since leaving the country in January 2009 as part of a peace deal. The BBC reported. Ethiopian troops took control of the town without a fight but the Ethiopian government denied the reports.

The Somali government military commander in the region, General Muqtar Hassan Afrah, denied the Ethiopians were in town and said only Somali troops were in Belet Weyne. Ethiopian officials could not be reached Saturday morning for comment.

A Somali analyst assessed the Ethiopians intend to create a buffer zone between themselves and southern Somalia, which the Ethiopians expect to fall to the Islamists at any time. If that assessment is accurate, expect the Ethiopians to seize and hold more border towns in the south.

End of NightWatch for 30 August.