Iran's nuclear imbroglio

With the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopting a resolution criticizing Iran for withholding sensitive information and Tehran, in response, threatening to revise the level of its co-operation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions has taken a serious turn.

The resolution adopted by the 35-nation board of governors of the IAEA at its Vienna headquarters on March 13, not only sent a strong warning to Iran for concealing vital information about its nuclear programme but also left open the option of eventual UN sanctions.

Reacting to the criticism of its co-operation in the nuclear field, Tehran put off the visit of an inspection mission that was due to arrive in Iran last week. It has, however, now reversed this decision and agreed to allow the IAEA's inspectors into the country by the end of this month.

Confirming this, Iran's top nuclear policy maker, Hassan Rowhani, who is widely considered Iran's leading presidential candidate in the next elections, said Iran would accept IAEA inspection unconditionally. The UN watchdog's team will arrive in Tehran on March 27, in time for the IAEA to prepare its report for its findings on Iran to the next board meeting in Vienna in June.

Many in Pakistan hoped that after Dr A. Q. Khan had come clean on his peddling of nuclear technology and equipment, Pakistan's nuclear sins would become a thing of the past and would cease to attract headlines in world press. This, however, has not happened. Whenever and wherever a case of nuclear transgression comes to light, the name of Pakistan somehow gets dragged into it.

The influential Economist has described Pakistan as "the headquarters of a global mail-order business in nuclear bomb technology with Libya, Iran and North Korea as its known customers."

The New York Times has reported that IAEA is seeking Islamabad's permission to acquire environmental samples from Pakistani uranium enrichment facilities to see if they match the weapon-grade traces its inspectors found in Iran.

In a related development, US ambassador to the IAEA Kenneth Brill recently stated that members of the UN watchdog were interested in knowing whether Iran had received "nuclear weapons design materials" from a Pakistani-led nuclear smuggling network as did Libya.

Mr. Brill also said that the IAEA should also tell whether a temporary halt, declared by Iran, in allowing the inspectors into the country was actually meant to sanitize its suspect nuclear sites.

Iran vehemently denies that it wants to put its fingers on a nuclear button. It claims that its nuclear programme is strictly for peaceful purposes. The IAEA, on the other hand, says that its nuclear weapons inspectors in Iran have found blueprints for an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge, the G2, that Tehran failed to declare even as it claimed to have provided full disclosure on its atomic energy programme. Enriched uranium is used for nuclear reactors but can also be used for making atomic bombs.

Iranian efforts in Vienna last week to lobby the IAEA board members to block criticism of its failure to tell about G2 centrifuge did not succeed. The IAEA head, El Baradei, had previously patted Iran on the back for its co-operation since last October when it came forward with, what it claimed to be, a complete account of its nuclear programme.

It may be recalled that in October German, French and British foreign ministers persuaded Tehran to fully co-operate with the IAEA and suspend its uranium enrichment programme in return for trade relations that Iranian economy sorely needed.

The IAEA's foremost concern is about traces of militarily useful highly enriched uranium found in Iran. Tehran's explanation is that it is due to contamination from imported machinery.

It is here that Pakistan's name has been dragged in the controversy as the suspected place of origin because Iran's nuclear programme seems to resemble that of Libya and North Korea, the two known-customers of Pakistan-centred supply net-work.

Iranian leaders insist that they do not want nuclear weapons and that their nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Its detractors, however, point out that over the past year there have been several occasions when Tehran failed to give full account of its nuclear activities.

The Americans have accused Iran of constantly changing its story with each new leak. "The continuing pattern of Iranian deception," says Kenneth Brill, US envoy to the IAEA, "and delayed admissions about its nuclear activities, as well as specific information in the IAEA report, strengthens our assessment that Iran's nuclear programme is clearly geared towards the development of nuclear weapons."

The head of the UN atomic watchdog, Mohammed El Baradei has also criticized Iran's failure to disclose that it had designs for advanced centrifuges capable of producing highly enriched uranium for use in a nuclear reactor or, potentially, an atomic weapon.

The IAEA chief has urged Tehran to ensure full transparency and help restore international confidence by taking the initiative "to provide all relevant information in full detail and in a prompt manner."

Rebutting the accusation of concealing any vital information, Iran says it is the victim of "a war of propaganda" over its nuclear programme which is purely for generating electricity.

According to some western diplomats, the IAEA has found parallells between Libya's nuclear weapons programme and Iran's atomic programme. Since December, when Libya owned up to nuclear ambitions, sensitive nuclear documents, including a design for the bomb, have flown to America for safe keeping.

The centre of controversy is the discovery of blueprints based on the so-called "G2" centrifuge developed by the British-German-Dutch enrichment consortium, Urenco. There are no indications that Urenco, which has denied selling technology to Iran, has provided the design.

In a related development, Moscow's plan to complete an atomic reactor in Iran in defiance of Washington has run into obstacles. Sources at the IAEA have said that for the time-being it is unlikely that Russia will resume work at Bushehr nuclear plant until Iran convinces the UN nuclear watchdog that its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Gas centrifuges spin at supersonic speeds to separate fissile uranium 235 from the non-fissile uranium isotopes. The steel G2 centrifuge is better than the earlier aluminium G1, a version of which has been mass producing.

Though White House has played down suggestion for US-Iran talks, there are indications that serious thought is being given to the idea of direct talks on the nuclear issue. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has already made it clear that, if elected, he will hold direct bilateral talks with Iran and North Korea.

IAEA chief EL Baradei has suggested in his recent meetings in Washington that dialogue could lead to a deal on the nuclear issue in exchange for US move towards normalized ties with Tehran.

Having already invested so much political capital in the invasion of Iraq, Mr Bush will hardly be interested in another foreign conflict. He may well agree to a dialogue with Iran since he knows he cannot win re-election in November by making himself look like a compulsive warmonger.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Ball in India's court

In whatever light the posterity may take the birth of Bangladesh - it celebrates its independence on March 26 - the fact is that the Pakistan resolution demanding the grouping of the Muslims in the eastern and north-western India was a precursor.

That the two went apart within a span of 24 years is rather ironical. Another irony is that the person who sponsored the resolution at Lahore on March 23, 1940, was a Bengali Muslim, Fazlul Haq, undivided Bengal's premier.

The resolution said: "The areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the north-western and eastern zones of India, they should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." The phrase, 'independent states', indicated more than one.

This phrase came in handy to the people in East Pakistan during their freedom struggle. They argued that the creation of two 'independent states' was conceived in the very resolution which was put forward to demand for the creation of Pakistan.

It is, however, significant that the word "states" continued to appear for many years in the Muslim League's constitution, printed under the supervision of Liaquat Ali Khan, Jinnah's lieutenant.

When I asked Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's president soon after the birth of Bangladesh in 1972, to comment on the "misprint" story (whether the word "states" was a misprint) - he laughingly said: "Quite a costly misprint; I must be careful about my stenographer." However, he clarified that before the creation of Bangladesh, the Bengali leaders raised this point. "But the creation of Pakistan was the result of a total settlement with the British; what the resolution said was not very material," he added.

Jinnah's political secretary Khurshid also pooh-poohed the idea of two "independent states." He told me that the point of 'independent states' was raised by only "one or two unimportant persons" at a meeting of the Muslim legislators and others just before the creation of Pakistan. "None took it seriously," Khurshid added.

I believe there is more to it than meets the eye. It looks as if the idea of creating two Muslim states was there when the Pakistan proposal was taking shape. I found at London a report on the findings of a Muslim League committee constituted to implement the principle of the Lahore Resolution.

This committee recommended the formation of two Muslim states: one, in the north-west (Sindh, Balochistan, NWFP and Punjab); the other in north-east (Assam and Bengal excluding the districts of Bankura and Midnapur together with the district of Purnea from Bihar).

It was estimated at that time that the Muslims in the north-western state would be 20 out of 32 million, that is, 63 per cent of the population and in the north-eastern state 31 out of 57 million, that is, 56 per cent.

Surprisingly, the committee did not say a word on Kashmir which subsequently became an issue between India and Pakistan and resulted in three wars plus hostilities at Kargil.

However, the committee suggested a central machinery "concerned with external relations, defence, communications, customs and safeguards for minorities." Nothing like that happened after partition. India and Pakistan became two independent countries without any common subject or link. However, in 1971, East Pakistan broke away from West Pakistan.

The struggle for an autonomous state began from the day Jinnah said at Dhaka that 'Urdu, and Urdu alone, would be the official language of Pakistan'. Only a couple of years ago did Sheikh Hasina tell me that the foundation of Bangladesh was laid when there was official insistence on learning Urdu.

The resentment as well as the feeling of neglect continued to grow in East Pakistan as the days went by. Still before March 26, all that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman wanted was autonomy within Pakistan.

Bhutto threw the first brick when he announced that his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) would not attend the National Assembly's session fixed for March 3, 1971.

He explained to me later that it was neither a boycott nor a threat; it was only meant to get more time to reach "a broad settlement" with Mujib. Yahya Khan, then Martial Law Administrator, reportedly said that he was forced by Bhutto to postpone the session.

The postponement of the session triggered off a chain of events which could not be controlled. There were riots in East Pakistan, particularly Dhaka. Mujib said once again at a public meeting (March 7) "we can live like brothers if we solve our problems peacefully and amicably."

But before attending the session, fixed for March 26, Mujib wanted the military personnel to retreat to their barracks and lifting of martial law. He also demanded immediate transfer of power to the elected representatives of East Pakistan. Mujib was arrested on March 26. But the liberation war continued till Bangladesh freed itself.

More than three decades have passed since. All the three nations in the subcontinent are sovereign. But the equation they should have developed among them by now is lacking.

This may well be the reason why fundamentalism and terrorism have spread in all the three countries. If they do not fight them collectively and concertedly, they may become victims of fanatics and gunmen.

Following a joint statement by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf, a new opportunity has arisen for normalizing relations between India and Pakistan. Bangladesh should be part of the exercise. Why can't we free trade and travel from the shackles of age-old practices and rules?

"The problem is New Delhi," as editor of a leading English daily from Dhaka puts it. "India cannot tolerate a competitor from within the subcontinent, much less giving any substantial concession. Bangladesh knows it to its cost." This was more or less the impression of the Pakistan trade delegations which visited New Delhi recently.

Probably, the governments suffer from a particular mindset. But what I have seen after people-to-people contact in India and Pakistan gives me hope. There is a new awakening about the common heritage. People are seeking their beradari and going to places of their birth as if they are trying to reach their roots. The relationship between the two Bengals could deepen in the same way: people-to-people contact.

This is the time to establish a common market in the subcontinent as Europe has done. New Delhi has to allay the fears of Islamabad and Dhaka and create such a climate in the region that no neighbouring country should feel that it is being exploited. All want a share in the development. It can't be at the expense of one country or another.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.

Preserving the evidence

"We should be learning from skeletons, not reburying them," said Dr. Robert Foley, director of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge, England. "They are the remains of people still contributing to humanity and its knowledge of itself."

Foley's remarks were triggered by a recommendation to the British parliament to create a national advisory panel to decide on the return of bones from British museums to various aboriginal groups, especially in Australia and North America.

But the case that really mattered was the one before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Oregon, where the eight-year struggle over the fate of Kennewick Man was settled (more or less) in mid-February by a ruling that science is more important than people's feelings.

There were strong feelings on both sides. "If I could do handstands, I would do handstands," said Paula Barran, one of eight anthropologists who went to court in 2000 to dispute a US government decision to hand over the archaeological find of the century - an almost complete set of human bones found in the Columbia River in 1996 that were 9,300 years old - to the local Indian tribes for 'reburial' without any proper scientific examination.

Many Native Americans, however, feel raped by the judgement. "(The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act)...gives tribes the right to prevent the study of remains," said Rob Roy Smith, lawyer for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. "What the 9th Circuit seems to have done is to require the tribes to prove the remains are Native Americans before the statute applies."

Fair enough, you might reasonably reply. If the bones aren't really their ancestors, why should they have any right to demand anything? But this is to ignore how mythology has mutated into ideology in the minds of many Native Americans. As far as they are concerned, any ancient human remains in North America are their ancestors, because they have always been there.

The trend for museums to return human remains to the people who care about them has grown fast in recent years, and for the most part it is entirely positive.

When Manchester Museum handed over a collection of Aboriginal skulls to the representatives of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action two months ago, it was overdue apology for the cruelty of 19th-century British grave-robbers who dug up the bones of only recently dead Australian Aborigines in an outbreak of amateur anthropology.

The same goes for the recent decision of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History to return the bones of Haida Indians that had been dug up by an American expedition to Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands in the early 1900s. So far, so good. But Kennewick Man?

There is no human being on earth who can say with any confidence who his or her ancestors were 9,300 years ago, or where they lived, or even what language they spoke.

The claim that the four tribes who live in the Columbia River basin today are in any meaningful sense the descendants of the middle-aged man who died with a spear in his guts 9,300 years ago on the banks of the Columbia is simply incredible.

There has been far too much coming and going in human history, too many invasions and migrations and victories and defeats. So why is the claim made at all?

Many, perhaps most aboriginal peoples have creation myths that explain how they have always had an intimate relationship with the land they now occupy. Yet it is most unlikely that their ancestors always lived where they do now, and in the case of Native Americans it is literally impossible: there were no human beings in the Americas until the first of the migrations across the Bering Straits, probably no more than 14,000 years ago.

In a radical younger generation of Native Americans, however, myth often becomes ideology and dogma. There were no migrations; we really were always here; we are not just the descendants of an early wave of immigrants who eventually got overwhelmed by later waves.

It is a position based on pride and desperation, not on history, and as such it is completely understandable. But when it is used as a basis for laying claim to 9,000-year-old-bones and denying scientists access to them, it is not defensible. The court got it right.

We live in an extraordinary period when scientists are finally piecing together the true history of the human species: where we come from, how we spread across the planet, even what kind of animal we really are.

It is an important project, and we need all the evidence we can get. It does not rely on the remains of those who have died in the past few hundred years, and those remains should be returned to their people if they can be identified. Normal human respect for the dead demands it.

But handing over truly ancient bones to the people who were the local inhabitants just a couple of centuries ago, as the US Department of the Interior tried to do in 2000, is political cowardice.- Copyright