When will US & UK discuss Israel’s nukes?
George Monbiot

GEORGE Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a nuclear conflagration could be greater there than anywhere else. Any nation developing them should expect a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose sanctions on Israel? Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb. I also believe it should be discouraged, by a combination of economic pressure and bribery, from doing so (a military response would, of course, be disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown — who maintain their nuclear arsenals in defiance of the nonproliferation treaty — are in no position to lecture anyone else. But if, as Bush claims, the proliferation of such weapons “would be a dangerous threat to world peace”, why does neither man mention the fact that Israel, according to a secret briefing by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and 80 of them?
Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position of “nuclear ambiguity”: neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. But everyone who has studied the issue knows that this is a formula with a simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to keep breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant aid to a country with unauthorized weapons of mass destruction. The fiction of ambiguity is fiercely guarded. In 1986, when the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu handed photographs of Israel’s bomb factory to the Sunday Times, he was lured from Britain to Rome, drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents, tried in secret, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He served 12 of them in solitary confinement and was banged up again — for six months — soon after he was released.
However, in December last year, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, accidentally let slip that Israel, like “America, France and Russia”, had nuclear weapons. Opposition politicians were furious. They attacked Olmert for “a lack of caution bordering on irresponsibility”. But US aid continues to flow without impediment. As the fascinating papers released last year by the National Security Archive show, the US government was aware in 1968 that Israel was developing a nuclear device (what it didn’t know is that the first one had already been built by then). The contrast to the efforts now being made to prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb could scarcely be starker.
At first, US diplomats urged Washington to make its sale of 50 F4 Phantom jets conditional on Israel’s abandonment of its nuclear program. As a note sent from the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to the secretary of state in October 1968 reveals, the order would make the US “the principal supplier of Israel’s military needs” for the first time. In return, it should require “commitments that would make it more difficult for Israel to take the critical decision to go nuclear”. Such pressure, the memo suggested, was urgently required: France had just delivered the first of a consignment of medium-range missiles, and Israel intended to equip them with nuclear warheads.
Twenty days later, on Nov. 4 1968, when the assistant defense secretary met Yitzhak Rabin (then the Israeli ambassador to Washington), Rabin “did not dispute in any way our information on Israel’s nuclear or missile capability”. He simply refused to discuss it. Four days after that, Rabin announced that the proposal was “completely unacceptable to us”. On Nov. 27, Lyndon Johnson’s administration accepted Israel’s assurance that “it will not be the first power in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons”.
As the memos show, US officials knew that this assurance had been broken even before it was made. A record of a phone conversation between Henry Kissinger and another official in July 1969 reveals that Richard Nixon was “very leery of cutting off the Phantoms”, despite Israel’s blatant disregard of the agreement. The deal went ahead, and from then on the US administration sought to bamboozle its own officials in order to defend Israel’s lie. In August 1969, US officials were sent to “inspect” Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. But a memo from the State Department reveals that “the US government is not prepared to support a ‘real’ inspection effort in which the team members can feel authorized to ask directly pertinent questions and/or insist on being allowed to look at records, logs, materials and the like. The team has in many subtle ways been cautioned to avoid controversy, “be gentlemen” and not take issue with the obvious will of the hosts”.
Nixon refused to pass the minutes of the conversation he’d had with the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, to the US ambassador to Israel, Wally Barbour. Meir and Nixon appear to have agreed that the Israeli program could go ahead, as long as it was kept secret. The US government has continued to protect it. Every six months, the intelligence agencies provide Congress with a report on technology acquired by foreign states that’s “useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction”. These reports discuss the programs in India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and other nations, but not in Israel. Whenever other states have tried to press Israel to join the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the US and European governments have blocked them. Israel has also exempted itself from the biological and chemical weapons conventions.
By refusing to sign these treaties, Israel ensures it needs never be inspected. While the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors crawl round Iran’s factories, put seals on its uranium tanks and blow the whistle when it fails to cooperate, they have no legal authority to inspect facilities in Israel. So when the Israeli government complains, as it did last week, that the head of the IAEA is “sticking his head in the sand over Iran’s nuclear program”, you can only gape at its chutzpah. Israel is constantly racking up the pressure for action against Iran, aware that no powerful state will press for action against Israel.
Yes, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. The president is a Holocaust denier opposed to the existence of Israel. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran responded to Saddam Hussein’s toxic bombardments with chemical weapons of its own. But Israel under Olmert is also a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. Two months ago it bombed a site in Syria (whose function is fiercely disputed). Last year, it launched a war of aggression against Lebanon. It remains in occupation of Palestinian lands. In February 2001, according to the BBC, it used chemical weapons in Gaza: 180 people were admitted to hospital with severe convulsions. Nuclear weapons in Israel’s hands are surely just as dangerous as nuclear weapons in Iran’s.
So when will our governments speak up? When will they acknowledge that there is already a nuclear power in the Middle East, and that it presents an existential threat to its neighbors? When will they admit that Iran is not starting a nuclear arms race, but joining one? When will they demand that the rules they impose on Iran should also apply to Israel? —Arab News



Aviation transformation
Lan Xinzhen

ALTHOUGH China’s aviation regulator disagrees that the current top three state-owned airlines should merge, the possibility of mergers among China’s major airlines still exists. Cai Jianjiang, Chief Executive Officer of Air China, said on many occasions that the possibility of merging with other domestic airlines such as China Southern Airlines has not been ruled out.
Cai said that with the opening-up of the aviation industry the increasingly fierce competition have forced Air China to consider mergers with other domestic airlines. It has been reported that under the supervision of the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), Air China could merge with Shenzhen Airlines, Shanghai Airlines and Hainan Airlines. Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines are the three largest airlines in China.
However, Yang Yuanyuan, Director General of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), has dissented. He opposed the idea of merging the three top airlines because it would reduce competition.
Since the top three airlines are state-owned, CAAC only manages the aviation operation of these airline companies. Therefore, SASAC calls the shots in determining any merger or acquisition activities regarding these airlines. When SASAC was established in 2003, major restructuring of the industry was implemented, with less than 20 airlines surviving. Currently, there are 13 airlines mainly providing passenger services and the rest are mostly cargo airlines.
Last December, SASAC issued guidelines directing the restructuring of state-owned assets and enterprises, noting that by 2010, the number of Central Government-controlled enterprises should be restructured to about 80-100 from 158, with 30-50 of them transformed into larger companies through mergers and acquisitions. According to SASAC officials, the aviation industry is one of the focuses of this round of restructuring.
Competitive pressures
With the gradual opening of the domestic aviation market, airlines have been able to secure access to more mainland routes and expand their operations. An aviation agreement inked at the second-round China-U.S. Strategic Economic Dialogue will double the number of passenger flights between the two countries by 2012. China will abandon all restrictions on U.S. passenger and cargo flights in terms of routes and the number of flights by 2011.
Liu Shaoyong, Chairman of China Southern Airlines, said that with the deepening of economic globalization and the liberalization of aviation transportation, the global aviation industry will be greeted with a new round of mergers and acquisitions, which will greatly influence China’s aviation industry. Li Jiaxiang, Chairman of Air China, said that the introduction of foreign airlines poses serious problems for domestic airlines. He said the development trend of the aviation industry is fewer airlines through industrial restructuring.
Huang Bin, Secretary of Board of Directors of Air China, argued that the new round of restructuring would greatly differ from that in 2003. This time, market-oriented measures would be preferred.
Potential mergers
The SASAC has a plan that every industry should have one or two big multinational companies. Among the three biggest airlines, Air China has the possibility of remaining and merging other airlines into its operations. Either China Southern Airlines or China Eastern Airlines could possibly be merged. Yet, China Eastern Airlines has already introduced Singapore Airlines as one of its shareholders. Therefore, it is widely expected that China Southern Airlines will merge with Air China. Apart from the major three airlines, other aviation companies also face reorganization.
But these mergers will not be an easy job. Some aviation companies have opposed the idea of mergers and acquisitions. Chen Feng, Chairman of Hainan Airlines, said on October 19, “Although too many small airlines are not good, it is still impossible to have a super large airline company.” Chen said he had not received any orders to restructure and has no intention of acquiring other small airlines.
Hainan Airlines is privately owned and ranks fourth by assets. Together with the big three state-owned airlines, the four hold 90 percent of the domestic civil aviation market.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)





Turkey’s foreign policy: The new challenges
Gurcan Kocan

TURKEY has recently ratcheted up pressure on US and Iraqi authorities to end the presence of the violent separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in northern Iraq. The slow build-up to the present crisis has involved more than Turkey’s need for security on its southern border and for internal unity. The northern Iraq issue has begun to hijack Turkey’s foreign policy agenda. The Turkish military and the bureaucracy have traditionally dealt with security threats to Turkey’s territory. And Turkey’s typically unstable coalition governments of the past have usually deferred such decision-making to these longstanding policy generators.
These two main political actors — the military and the bureaucracy — with their own internal divisions on policy response, have sought to posit the domestic interests of Turkey as they see them within the framework of Ankara’s international obligations and treaty arrangements with the EU, the United States and NATO. Until relatively recently, Turkey’s Middle Eastern policies were the result of the interplay between these larger strategic factors and did not take into account the complications of the regional environment. The close relationship Turkey has developed with Israel is one indication of how outside actors have influenced its Middle East policy along strategic lines and away from more popular considerations, such as those emanating from a sense of Muslim affinity among the public.
Turkey’s ruling Justice Development Party (AKP) is re-evaluating these factors. In opposition to the wishes of the Bush administration, the Turkish government has built up increasingly close relationships with Syria and Iran, despite running the risk of disturbing the strategic web of Western alliances that have determined many of Turkey’s foreign policy interests since World War II. Yet what is interesting, and different from previous Turkish governments is the AKP’s attempt to legitimize its actions as it seeks to defend its interests. Unilateral action against the PKK in northern Iraq, in other words, is no longer possible.
The Bush administration has been caught flat-footed by this sudden push from Turkey, enmeshed as it is in a web of opportunistic alliances with northern Iraqi leaders. It now faces in Turkey a NATO ally intent on using the issue of PKK terrorism as the basis for armed response, much as the United States did when justifying its own interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, it is not merely the US administration that finds itself in a tight spot. The Turkish government too is finding itself drawn into the need for action at the popular level. As the desire for intervention in northern Iraq has gained strength in Turkish public opinion, the AKP government has looked for ways to mitigate this demand to employ force. The government has sought to balance the interests of using actual force with the virtual power of the media at both national and international levels. The use of force in northern Iraq is tempered by Turkey’s economic considerations and business leaders. The extensive trading links between northern Iraq and the larger Middle East, tied as they are into Turkey’s own economic resurgence, especially in the troubled southeast region, could be threatened by too bold a response.
An overreaction on the part of Turkish authorities could feed into EU suspicions regarding the country’s suitability as a member of the “European club”. The rise of nationalism as a force in Turkish politics sits uneasily, not only with its foreign partners, but with the ruling party as well. Requesting local media reduce the level of sensationalism when covering attacks in southeast Turkey, the government is acting to safeguard this vehicle of “virtual” force, and to maintain its long-standing strategic relationships, by resolving the situation without resorting to “actual” force that may threaten US interests in Iraq.
Turkish foreign policy formation has undergone a significant change over the past five years, though it is having a difficult time adjusting to regional realities. —Arab News