Disaster averted in India

Iran nuclear talks: an upper hand?

Both iran and u.s. come to the table with a new sense of power.

By SCOTT PETERSON
STAFF WRITER

ISTANBUL, TURKEY – Expectations of change and progress have rarely been higher for long-stalled nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers, which are set to resume today in Geneva.

Iran steps to the table with a new sense of power, promising “transparency” and a readiness to engage, buoyed by the June election of centrist President Hassan Rouhani and the belief that it is winning a regional tug of war in Syria, ensuring the survival of its embattled ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

The United States also steps to the table emboldened, convinced that ever-expanding global sanctions it has orchestrated to cripple Iran’s economy have forced Iran to the table, ready to compromise. Each perception may hold kernels of truth, but analysts say such self-assessments will need to be carefully managed if hard-liners on each side bent on undermining any deal are to be neutralized.

“The single biggest threat to this unique window for dialogue is misguided perceptions of each sides’ respective strengths and weaknesses,” says Mohammad Ali Shabani, a political analyst doing research at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“When two rivals walk into a room, each convinced that he has the upper hand, it can end only in disaster,” says Mr. Shabani. Mr. Rouhani “is stuck in a precarious position where he has to very carefully send parallel messages of both strength and weakness. He needs the sense of strength to bring people on board, but he also needs the sense of weakness to prevent the kind of overconfidence that might hinder his ability to sell major concessions at home.”

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Syria: kidnapping adds to complexity

holding aid workers threatens distribution of critical supplies.

By JAMES NORTON
CORRESPONDENT

The kidnapping of six international Red Cross employees and one employee of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Syria has added more fuel to worries about the growing hazards of providing aids to hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the country’s ongoing civil war.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesman Robert Mardini wrote Monday morning that the Syrian national and three of the other kidnapped aid workers had been released, but also drew attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country.

According to the BBC, unidentified armed gunmen intercepted six ICRC staff members and one Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer near the town of Saraqeb in Idlib Province.

The dangerous atmosphere in Syria seems unlikely to fade anytime soon, despite international diplomatic pressure. Proposed talks in Geneva hit a major speed bump when a large rebel group refused to participate in them.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has also been pushing an end to the violence, albeit on a temporary basis.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, working with Syria and the international community to identify and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, has been challenged by the violent conditions of the civil war and told the BBC that it is calling for local, short-term cease-fires to allow its experts to work.

The chaos of the civil war has made untangling the origins and motivations of specific violent acts difficult if not impossible. A car bomb Monday killed at least 12 people in the rebel-held town of Darkoush in Idlib Province, The Associated Press reported.

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No more ‘Allah’ for Christians

MALAYSIAN COURT RULES Arabic-derived word for ‘God’ OFF LIMITS.

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN
CORRESPONDENT

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – In the latest round of a divisive political and religious saga, a Malaysian court ruled Monday that the word “Allah” can only be used by the country’s Muslim majority, overturning a previous decision that allowed other faiths using the term to denote “God” in their local-language services and scriptures.

Malaysia’s Court of Appeals issued an expansive ruling that sparked surprise and anger throughout the country. At the court in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, Justice Mohamed Apandi read a brief summary of the 100-plus-pages judgment. “Our common finding is that the usage of Allah is not an integral part of the Christian faith. We cannot find why the parties are so adamant on the usage of the word,” he said.

“Allah” has been used in Christian worship among Malay speakers for centuries, much as it’s used by Arab-speaking Christians and Christians in Indonesia, where the national language is a close cousin of Malaysian, without any controversy. The word passed into local languages over six centuries ago, as Arab traders plied Southeast Asia’s seas.

The decision, which came at the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage, was officially based on the government’s argument that allowing non-Muslims to continue to use the word could rile up Muslim hard-liners and help Christians to proselytize.

But Malaysia experts say the ruling, which follows a May election in which the ruling National Front coalition lost the popular vote for the first time (though it retained power), was sought to firm up political support among the country’s ethnic Malay and mostly Muslim majority.

The election turned on the fight for the rural Malay Muslim vote, with the National Front’s faith-and-fatherland pitch a key factor in swaying that segment of the electorate. Rural votes returned the government to power even as it lost the election in urban areas.

Monday’s ruling will likely be seen as another example of official favoritism towards ethnic Malays.

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China takes over as No. 1 oil importer

shale-drilling boom helps u.s. to fall from unenviable top spot.

By DAVID J. UNGER
STAFF WRITER

China has edged out the United States as the world’s biggest oil importer.

The shift reaffirms China’s ballooning economic growth and middle-class demand for cars and other amenities. Meanwhile, the US has slogged through five years of postrecession economic malaise. Americans are driving and buying less than before.

That’s only half the story. The other half is one of American innovation in domestic energy conservation and resource extraction. A shale oil and gas boom has driven production to levels not seen in decades, and efficiency standards have slashed household and vehicular consumption. The deployment of renewables and alternative fuels have contributed to a 
supply-demand balance that works very much to the advantage of consumers.

Suddenly, the US won’t have to rely on foreign oil as much as it used to, and China will. That gives the US an economic and perhaps geopolitical advantage while China deepens its dependence on volatile, oil-rich countries in the Middle East.

China’s reign as No. 1 importer began in September, according to data released last week by the US Energy Information Administration. China used 6.30 million barrels per day more than it produced. Consumption in the US, meanwhile, outstripped production by 6.24 million barrels per day.

That trend will continue through 2014, the EIA projects, and is likely to last even longer than that. China’s economy – the world’s second largest – has cooled in recent years, but it’s showing signs of heating up again. The country’s gross domestic product is slated to rise 7.5 percent this year, according to China’s deputy central bank governor.

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EDITORIAL / THE MONITOR’S VIEW

Nobel Peace selection only half right

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize puts a worthy spotlight on the job of ridding the world of one type of weapon of mass destruction. The award went to an international body that is now trying to clear Syria of chemical weapons and has been tasked under a 1997 treaty to eliminate these weapons everywhere.

This great honor, however, could have gone further. The prize recipient, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, is mainly focused on removing or detecting material weapons. It is not yet equipped to accomplish a far more difficult and critical task: making sure scientists who know how to make chemical weapons, especially in rogue nations such as Syria, are diverted into other work and don’t spread their know-how, especially to terrorist groups.

There is a successful model for preventing the dissemination of weapons knowledge, one that the Norwegian Nobel Committee might want to honor someday.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, two US senators, Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, saw the need to find alternative employment for tens of thousands of scientists, technicians, and engineers who had worked in Soviet programs making nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The United States and a few other countries spent hundreds of millions of dollars to engage these experts in peaceful research. The aim was to change their daily focus from making war products and tap their expertise for useful pursuits in fields such as energy and biotechnology.

Often the scientists ended up working in research labs or private technology companies. The high pay prevented them from being tempted to sell their knowledge to other nations, such as North Korea, or militant groups.

The Nunn-Lugar program, called Cooperative Threat Reduction, also destroyed 7,619 nuclear warheads, 902 missiles, and 2,855 metric tons of chemical weapons across four states of the former Soviet Union. This effort will go down in history as a noble – if not yet Nobel – disarmament success.

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