U.N. Security Council passes more sanctions against Iran

With Indonesia abstaining. the 14-to-1 vote is the first such resolution on Iran that did not achieve unanimity.

posted March 3, 2008 at 5:30 p.m. EST

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. - The United Nations Security Council on Monday passed a third set of sanctions targeting Iran for its pursuit of uranium enrichment, a process the international community fears could lead to development of a nuclear weapon.

In response, Iran promised to press forward with its nuclear program, including uranium enrichment, saying it "cannot and will not accept a requirement which is legally defective and politically coercive." The unbowed commitment to perfecting the enrichment process practically guarantees that Iran's nuclear program will remain at the top of the international security agenda.

The Council's 14-to-1 vote, with rotating Council member Indonesia abstaining, marked the first of the resolutions on Iran that did not achieve unanimity. But the vote was still a better outcome for the Council's big powers than the numerous abstentions or even negative votes they were anticipating even a week ago.

The resolution includes new financial measures against specific Iranian individuals and institutions, provisions for inspecting certain Iranian vessels and aircraft, and restrictions on the sale of some dual-use materials to Iran. It is considered an "incremental" increase in pressure on Tehran to halt its enrichment program, according to US officials, and is not expected to force a quick change of heart by Iran.

In a statement following the vote on behalf of the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, China, and Russia, Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir John Sawers, said the resolution reflects the "ongoing serious concerns about the proliferation risks of the Iranian nuclear program." The statement also reiterated the six powers' offer to provide Iran with incentives in exchange for halting its nuclear enrichment program.

But in a long speech to the Council as it prepared to vote, Mohammad Khazaee, Iranian ambassador to the UN, insisted that Iran would never bow to "unlawful action against a proud and resolute nation."

That statement only confirmed the view held by many Western officials that Iran has not altered its activities as a result of international diplomatic action. "We have the impression nothing has really changed on the goals being pursued [in Iran]" since the first set of sanctions was approved in December 2006, says a senior European diplomat who requested anonymity to comment on a delicate international issue.

That is not the view of Indonesia, however, whose ambassador to the UN, R.M. Marty Natalegawa, said it abstained to express how the resolution did not reflect the "mixed picture" of Iran's cooperation with international agencies. The resolution risks rendering Iran even less cooperative with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he said.

Still, the vote comes amid indications that the UN sanctions, along with separate measures taken by the US, are being felt by Iranian elites. Even Ambassador Khazaee acknowledged an impact in comments to the UN press last week.

"The sanctions are biting somewhat," adds the senior European official, "and they are biting in ways we want them to."

US and European officials, especially, want the sanctions to hit the financial and business interests of Iran's political, military, and financial leadership, without having an adverse impact on the living standards of ordinary Iranians. From the Western officials' standpoint, one desired effect of the new sanctions is that they have a public-relations impact. The officials say they hope renewed attention to the international community's disagreement with Tehran will encourage Iranian voters in mid-March local elections to send a message by supporting the country's moderates.

But Monday's Council vote comes amid contradictory directions in the nearly two-year effort to forestall any effort by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

On the one hand, fresh evidence publicly unveiled last week by the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, adds new weight to mounting evidence that Iran at least in the past actively pursued a nuclear weaponization program. That evidence, revealed in a meeting of the IAEA in Vienna last week, appears to have played a role in securing the 14 votes against Iran.

On the other hand, the longer-than-anticipated debate over the merits of a third resolution, and the way in which the resolution was watered down to achieve passage, suggest the degree to which developing countries fear that the UN process could lead to military strikes against Iran. Developing countries are not dismissive of Iran's argument that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes of energy generation – but that the world's economic powers want to maintain control of nuclear energy technology.

"South Africa does not want to see [either] a nuclear Iran or a country denied peaceful technology," said Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa's ambassador to the UN, in a postvote statement that reflected some countries' disagreement with the tactics of the resolution's sponsors and with the campaign for a third resolution now. Ambassador Kumalo said South Africa, which once threatened to vote "no" or abstain, voted "yes" based on Iran's failure to comply with earlier resolutions.

Yet reflecting the view of other rotating Council members, including Vietnam and Indonesia, Kumalo said South Africa would have preferred to put off the vote and leave further deliberations on the Iranian nuclear program to the IAEA.

Another notable report on Iran was publicly released late last year: The US National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran halted a nuclear-weapons program in 2003 but has still worked on uranium-enrichment technology, which could be used for weapons development.

In its statement to the Council, Iran played to concerns of developing countries that the world's developed powers seek to prolong their control of top lucrative technologies. "No country ... can solely rely on others to provide it with the technology and materials that are becoming so vital for its development and for the welfare of its people," Khazaee said. "Peoples across the globe have lost their trust in the Security Council" and see it as the work of "a few powers to advance their own agenda," he added.

Monday's resolution could be the last time the Security Council takes up Iran in a while, but it does not necessarily mean the effort to increase sanctions will fall dormant. For one thing, passage of the resolution is expected to pave the way to passage of sanctions by the European Union.

European officials say that new measures have been prepared but that several countries preferred to proceed only after a renewed expression of disagreement with Iran by the international community. And the basis of that dispute remains the same, Britain's Ambassador Sawers said: "Iran continues to pursue a program that makes no sense for a civilian nuclear-power program."

Brazil condemns Colombia's Ecuador raid

China's Military Develops Space Defenses

By ROBERT BURNS – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — China is developing the ability to limit or prevent the use of satellites by potential adversaries during times of crisis, the Pentagon said Monday in a report to Congress.

The report, the latest in a series of annual assessments of China's military power, says Beijing views its efforts in space warfare as not only a practical advance of military power but also a boost to national prestige.

In space and other aspects of China's military modernization, the Pentagon stuck to its oft-repeated view that China's first priority is to build a broad-based capability to prevent Taiwanese independence. It said China's focus on space warfare is an important part of that Taiwan strategy.

"China further views the development of space and counter-space capabilities as bolstering national prestige and, like nuclear weapons, demonstrating the attributes of a world power," the report said.

China typically objects to the Pentagon's depiction of its military programs and policies. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Monday's report.

At a Pentagon news conference, David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, predicted the Chinese would protest this year that the report is "anti-China" and misleading. Sedney said that for the first time, U.S. and Chinese officials will meet to discuss the report; he said it was being briefed Monday to China's senior military representative in Washington.

The Chinese military, known as the People's Liberation Army, is acquiring technologies to improve its ability to operate in space and is "developing the ability to attack an adversary's space assets," the report said.

"PLA writings emphasize the necessity of `destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy's reconnaissance/observation and communications satellites,' suggesting that such systems, as well as navigation and early warning satellites, could be among initial targets of attack to `blind and deafen the enemy," the report said.

The Bush administration was highly critical of China's shootdown in January 2007 of one of its weather satellites, asserting that the orbiting debris created by the attack poses a danger to other assets in space.

Last month, when the Pentagon shot down a dead U.S. spy satellite, China expressed concern, although U.S. officials said the shootdown did not mean the United States had dropped its objections to possessing a permanent anti-satellite capability.

More broadly, the Pentagon report released Monday asserted that Beijing's reluctance to share details about its military buildup poses a risk to stability in Asia. It said the international community has limited knowledge of the motivations, decision-making and capabilities of China's military modernization. This includes a lack of clarity about China's defense spending. Washington contends that Beijing understates that spending program by the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars.

"The lack of transparency in China's military and security affairs poses risks to stability by increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation," the report said. "This situation will naturally and understandably lead to hedging against the unknown."

This year's report place increased emphasis on concern about China's space programs and potential for space warfare. It also said China is improving its own satellite capability, including construction of a new satellite launch complex on Hainan Island.

And it said China expects to replace all foreign-produced satellites in its inventory with home-produced models by 2010.

In a similar vein, the report said China appears to be developing a cyberwarfare capability.

"In the past year, numerous computer networks around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, were subject to intrusions that appear to have originated within the PRC," the report said, using the initials for the People's Republic of China. "These intrusions require many of the skills and capabilities that would also be required for computer network attack."

The overall military buildup in China has increased in recent years, the Pentagon said.

"China's expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China's strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region," the report said.

The main short-term focus of China's military buildup is the Taiwan Strait, the report said.

As of November 2007, the Chinese military had deployed between 990 and 1,070 short-range ballistic missiles to garrisons opposite Taiwan, according to the Pentagon's latest estimate. That compares with 900 such missiles reported in last year's Pentagon report.

Every spring, the Pentagon is required by Congress to provide a comprehensive assessment of China's security and military strategy, an analysis of developments in its military doctrine and capabilities, and an update on the security situation in the Taiwan Strait.

U.S.-China military relations have been strained in recent years over numerous issues, not limited to American concerns about the scope of Beijing's military buildup. But there also have been some positive moves, including two agreements signed last week in Shanghai — one on installing a telephone hot line between the Chinese Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Defense Department, and the other on research in Chinese military archives related to U.S. MIAs from the Korean War.

One-Ounce Mississippian of 55.8 Million Years Ago

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: March 4, 2008

It is hard to picture a wee monkeylike adult creature weighing no more than an ounce. But fossils of the 55.8 million-year-old animal, the earliest known primate to inhabit North America, have emerged from coastal sediments in Mississippi.

Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Teilhardina magnoliana

 

It is even harder to imagine that tiny primates of this primitive kind were able to migrate to this continent all the way from their Asian homeland.

The world then was much warmer, however, basking in tropical or subtropical conditions nearly everywhere as continents drifted apart. Over countless generations the tree-dwelling primates slowly crossed to America from Siberia, presumably by the Bering land bridge when it was probably heavily forested.

Some primates apparently continued through Greenland and Scotland, connecting links to Europe at a time of lower sea levels.

This new reconstruction of the early dispersal of primates, the order of mammals that now includes humans and apes, stems from an analysis of a fossil primate discovered in 2001 near Meridian, Miss. The identification and significance of the new species are reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

K. Christopher Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, wrote that the species, Teilhardina magnoliana, is older and more primitive than other early North American and European primates. It is less than 100,000 years older than related specimens found in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming and in Belgium and France.

The genus bears the name of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit and paleontologist, who spent years studying fossils in China. Magnoliana is a tip of the hat to Mississippi, the Magnolia State. And the site of the fossil-bearing outcrop south of Meridian is called Red Hot, for the name of a diner that used to be nearby. “This primate’s a little teeny guy,” Dr. Beard said in a phone interview. The tiniest living primate, the pygmy mouse lemur of Madagascar, is about the same size.

In their beginning, all primates were small. The one from Mississippi, Dr. Beard said, probably looked like the big-eyed tarsiers of Southeast Asia or a small monkey. Scientists theorize that the Teilhardina genus is not far removed from the common ancestor of tarsiers and monkeys.

Like other diminutive primates, this one lived in trees, climbing, leaping and swinging from branches. One defining characteristic of the primate order is the adaptation of the fore limbs and hands to seizing and handling objects.

When the Mississippi primate lived, the gulf waters reached well inland, and warm and humid Meridian had tidal channels. Scientists said the animal probably ate insects, fruits, sap and gum and was about as small as an adult primate could be.

Peter Wilf, a paleobotanist at Penn State who has studied the site but did not contribute to the report, said the primate lived in a subtropical forest of shrubs and tall trees, flowering plants and ferns, sassafras and sumac.

Other scientists said the new research, though impressive, was not likely to resolve differing interpretations of primate dispersal until more detailed and extensive fossils were collected.

One hypothesis was that the animals migrated to Europe and then to North America as the world grew warmer, the oceans wider and sea levels lower. In this ice-free world, sea-level changes were caused by continental drift, altering the volume of ocean basins.

But Eurasia was not a solid landmass then, with shallow seas standing in the way of a westerly advance of the tiny primates, and Western Europe was more an archipelago of islands than a continent. So scientists looked for an alternative story to the fateful global primate expansion.

When the world cooled 35 million years ago, Dr. Beard said, the descendants of the Mississippi primate and others died out everywhere except in Southeast Asia and Africa, where survivors evolved into the great apes and humans.