Sunday’s federal election threw Germany’s Greens into a state of disarray — should they celebrate their best result ever or mourn the fact they failed to prevent a centre-right coalition and languished in fifth place?

“A Victory that is a Defeat”, “Triumph and Bitterness”, “Celebrations despite missing goal,” read newspaper headlines on Monday.

(Photo: Kuenast and Trittin, top candidates of the Greens party, arrive on stage after the general election, Sept 27, Reuters/Ralph Orlowski)

The Greens, one of the world’s most successful environmental parties, won more than a tenth of the vote — not bad for a party whose members entered parliament as revolutionary rebels in the 1980s flourishing potted plants and sporting woolly jumpers.

“We feel strengthened in our fight for ecological modernisation, social justice and civil rights by the best result we have ever had,” co-leader Juergen Trittin told hundreds of party faithful on Sunday evening at the Greens headquarters in Berlin.

But a German colleague who attended the event, Hans-Edzard Busemann, told me the ambiance was confused rather than euphoric, and faces fell when they saw the results for the first time.

No wonder. The Greens were hoping to be the third strongest party at the elections and kingmakers in governemnt coalition talks — a goal they missed by a long stretch, trailing behind their nemesis the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) on 14.6 percent and the far-left Linke on 11.9 percent.

They campaigned hard to prevent a centre-right coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives with the pro-business Free Democrats — and failed.

Such a coalition is likely to undo much of the work that the Greens, who emerged from the anti-nuclear and peace movememnts of the 1970s, carried out while ruling with the Social Democrats from 1998 to 2005.

For a start, it will probably rewrite a national nuclear phaseout deal by allowing reactors to run longer than the previously agreed 2020 deadline. (Click here to see a story that a colleague in Frankfurt, Vera Eckert, wrote about this earlier today)

It will also likely change or drop the generous feed-in law for renewable energies introduced by the Greens and SPD, a prospect which sent shares in highly subsidised solar firms such as Q-Cells and Solarworld sliding on Monday.

(Photo: Supporters of the Green party react after the first exit polls, Sept 27, Reuters/Ralph Orlowski)

And as if all that that weren’t enough, Greens co-leader Cem Oezdemir — the only member of an ethnic minority to have ever headed a German party — failed to win a seat a parliament despite securing 30 percent of the vote in his constituency in Stuttgart.

So despite their best election result ever, the Greens may not be able to avoid some soul-searching over the coming weeks and months.

Some political analysts argue very little has changed in their manifesto over the past four years and the party executive, with the exception of Oezdemir, is still the same. Will Sunday’s result prompt a Greens renewal?

A single paragraph in General Stanley McChrystal's leaked assessment of the war in Afghanistan has generated much interest, particularly in Pakistan.

"Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including significant development efforts and financial investment," it says. "In addition the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter-measures in Afghanistan or India."

He did not say anything that anybody did not already know. Pakistan has long been wary of India's growing influence in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and is seen as reluctant to turn against the Afghan Taliban and other insurgent groups as long as it believes it might need them to counter India. The fact that he said it all suggested a renewed focus on the relationship between India and Pakistan, whose confrontation to the east spilled long ago into rivalry over Afghanistan to the west.

Pakistan's Daily Times said in an editorial the rivalry between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan highlighted the need for peace talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three full-scale wars since independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

"One must be clear in one’s mind that in many ways the mess in Afghanistan is actually a spillover of the Indo-Pak conflict in the region of South Asia," it said. "Pakistan’s policy of “strategic depth”, which reached a climax with the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Kandahar in 1999, was in reaction to the unresolved dispute over Kashmir which created the “threat of India” that Pakistan felt “from the east”. Even today, as Pakistan struggles against the Taliban, 80 percent of its army is stationed on the Indian border.

Dawn newspaper said McChrystal's words on India were "perhaps as significant as any other in the report".  The Americans appeared to have finally understood, it said, that the war in Afghanistan could not be won without help from Pakistan. "But that means gaining Pakistan’s full cooperation, which in turn means alleviating the national security establishment’s concerns vis-à-vis India."

However, as discussed in this analysis, India is in little mood to move rapidly towards peace talks with Pakistan until it takes greater action against militants it blames for last year's attack on Mumbai, although the two countries have been taking incremental steps towards repairing relations. Many argue that the powerful Pakistan Army would be unlikely to turn against militant groups it once cultivated to fight India in Kashmir, without a comprehensive peace settlement with India. (For an understanding of how complicated all this is, read this book reviewby Pakistani strategic analyst Ayesha Siddiqa.)

So, to win the war in Afghanistan, the United States needs help from Pakistan, which Pakistan in turn is reluctant to provide so long as it believes it is threatened by India to both the west and east.  From Washington's point of view, it needs to nudge Islamabad and New Delhi towards the negotiating table, by leaning on Pakistan to act against militant groups and putting pressure on India to resume peace talks. 

Here is another catch. Although the relationship between the United States and India blossomed under former President George W. Bush, there is far less warmth in New Delhi towards the Obama administration. The relationship started on the wrong foot with India concerned about increasing U.S. economic dependence on its rival China.

Now India and the United States are at loggerheads over President Barack Obama's nuclear non-proliferation drive.  India has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That row, in turn, complicates efforts by Washington to persuade India to talk to Pakistan.

(Reuters file photos: Obama with Karzai and Biden; a British soldier in Afghanistan; hijacked Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar)

President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain have deliberately raised the stakes in the confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme by dramatising the disclosure that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant. Their shoulder-to-shoulder statements of resolve, less than a week before Iran opens talks with six major powers in Geneva, raised more questions than they answer.

It turns out that the United States has known for a long time (how long?) that Iran had been building the still incomplete plant near Qom. Did it share that intelligence with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and if not, why not? Why did it wait until now, in the middle of a G20 summit in Pittsburgh, to make the announcement -- after Iran had notified the International Atomic Energy Authority of the plant's existence on Monday, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had delivered a defiant speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday and after the Security Council had adopted a unanimous resolution calling for an end to the spread of nuclear weapons on Thursday?

Is this all part of Obama's choreography to  build international pressure on Iran by getting Russia, in return for the dropping of plans to put a U.S. missile shield in Poland the Czech Republic, to threaten more sanctions against Tehran? A U.S. official says Obama shared the intelligence with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev at the United Nations this week and China had only just been informed. Did Obama try and fail to get Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao -- both in Pittsburgh -- to join the three Western leaders on the podium? Or was his hand forced on timing by the fact that the New York Times had got wind of the Iranian nuclear plant and was set to publish the news on Friday?

The division of labour between Obama, Sarkozy and Brown was striking. The U.S. president sounded stern but his tone was measured. He stressed his commitment to dialogue and negotiation with Iran and to Tehran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. He did not mention sanctions, let alone the possibility of military action. It fell to the Europeans to inject a tone of menace.

Sarkozy accused Iran of defying the international community and taking the world on a dangerous path, and said that unless Tehran changed course by December, there would be tougher sanctions. Brown charged the Islamic Republic with deception and said the international community had no choice but "to draw a line in the sand", and that he did not rule out anything although sanctions were the preferred route. 

Will the latest disclosure on what Iran insists is a peaceful nuclear programme persuade Russia to renounce the sale of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran? Will it persuade China, which reaffirmed its scepticism about more sanctions this week and has begun supplying gasoline to Iran, to change its mind? The West sees Iran's dependency on imported fuel as a key vulnerability.

Friday's dramatic announcement was a clear effort to appeal to the world court of public opinion and maximise pressure on Tehran before the Oct. 1 talks, but there is no sign that the Islamic Republic's leaders are even considering yielding on their nuclear ambitions. On the contrary, they seem convinced that the nuclear standoff will enable them to patch over deep internal divisions over the disputed June presidential election by playing the patriotic card.

With two weeks to go before Germany holds an election, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have unveiled a new set of election posters, depicting Merkel, Merkel, and more Merkel.

Rather than campaigning on the issues highlighted in their election programmes, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) are keeping it simple and hoping to capitalise instead on the popularity of their leader, Germany’s first female chancellor.

(Photo: A new election campaign poster of German Chancellor Merkel is pictured in Berlin, Sept. 14, 2009, Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

“The key question is whether Angela Merkel, who has intelligently guided Germany throughout the crisis, should continue to govern,” said Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of the CDU, at a press conference in Berlin.

“With the new posters, we want to make clear to people that they will only get Merkel again as a chancellor if they vote for the CDU.”

The posters show only Merkel, smiling benevolently against a minimalist black background, and feature slogans like: “We vote for the Chancellor” or “We vote for confidence”.

The latest posters are emblematic of the conservatives’ general campaign, which has focused less on hard-hitting issues such as tax cuts and atomic energy than on popular personalities like Merkel and the Economy Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg.

On previous posters, Guttenberg and other well-known conservative politicians were shown against a blurry background, alongside vague slogans such as “economy with reason”, “strong families” and “good education”.

The posters contrast with those of other parties, which make strong statements on specific policies. A poster for the Social Democrats (SPD), the conservatives’ main challenger, shows an anonymous young woman and reads “atomic energy was yesterday, clean energy is the future, and that is why I am voting SPD”.

 With the election looming, the question is whether voters will let the conservatives get away with their refusal to engage on the issues and failure to offer a new vision for the future of Europe’s largest economy.

Analysts said Merkel did worse than her SPD challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a television debate on Sunday — partly because she preferred to echo the vague slogans of her campaign rather than spell out what she plans to do if she is re-elected.

Is she smart to steer clear of controversy and rely on her popularity to win a second term, or could the strategy backfire on Sept. 27 as it did in the TV debate?

(Additional Reporting by Wolfgang Kerler)

Having traded in their woolly sweaters, jeans and sandals for dapper suits and shiny shoes, Germany’s Greens are ready for business, claiming that to be the “party that truly knows its economics”.

The world’s most successful environmental party is eager to get back into power at the federal election on Sept. 27 after a first stint in coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) from 1998 to 2005.

(Photo: Leaders of Germany’s Greens party address a news conference in Berlin, April 20, 2009, Reuters/Tobias Schwarz)

The Greens hope that by developing a plan for economic growth, rather than just focussing on the ecology, they will broaden their appeal for voters.

“We are the party that truly knows its economics,” said Renate Kuenast, one of the party’s leading politicians, at a campaign rally in Stuttgart. “We are the party which brings together economics and the environment, as the environment has so much to offer to the economy.”

The concept is a enticing one, but I spoke with a couple of political analysts who were sceptical about the Greens’ new tack. “The Greens have attempted to add new competences beyond ecology to their electoral program, notably social and economic policy,” said Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University.

“But this is only theoretical because they haven’t been able to prove them anywhere.”

Still, recent flagship projects — such as a 400 billion euro plan by a consortium of finance and industrial firms mostly from Germany to power Europe with sunlight — have reduced the perception that Green ideas are at odds with business interests, or pie in the sky.

Moreover, the perception that the global economic crisis is the result of the pursuit of short-term profit could work in the Greens’ favour, as they campaign for more sustainable economic growth.

(Photo: Workers build a thermo-solar power plant in Beni Mathar, August 20, 2009, Reuters/Rafael Marchante)

“Green policies are the only way out of the crisis,” read campaign posters plastered on billboards throughout Germany, which is slowly emerging from its deepest post-war recession.

I had the chance to speak with Cem Oezdemir, the new face of the Greens, having a break by the bar before taking to the stage and holding a speech before hundreds of supporters.

“Environmental policies create jobs, they don’t threaten them,” said Oezdemir, looking trendy and business-like, with his trademark sideburns and dark, tailored suit.

In their election manifesto, the Greens have promised the creation of one million jobs including 400,000 in renewable energy and other areas of environmental protection such as ecological agriculture.

They say there is a need to foster economic sustainability and innovation rather than plough money into the auto sector, for example, which is churning out gas-guzzling cars that nobody wants.

 Ultimately though, developing environmentally friendly alternative technologies takes time. So, the question remains whether voters are willing to look beyond their short-term interests towards a more sustainable, Green future? And are Green policies truly compatible with business interests?

Some nations who once criticised Mohamed ElBaradei over his approach to Iran’s disputed nuclear programme joined a roomful of effusive tributes to the outgoing chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Thursday.

But Israel, ElBaradei’s most public and caustic critic, left its seat empty to sidestep the succession of delegations hailing the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, participants in the closed-door meeting said.

The IAEA’s multinational board of governors presented ElBaradei, 67, with a silver platter, approved a resolution declaring him “Director-General Emeritus” for after he retires on November 30, and gave him a standing ovation.
 
He was moved to tears of appreciation.

The tall, slightly stooped IAEA chief said he felt “humbled and grateful” and picked up on his cherished theme of international cooperation to solve conflicts, poverty, disease and other iniquities of the world.

“We are all partners on a human journey and we are on the right track,” he said. “The human family is not a zero-sum game — we will either win or lose together. No problems can be solved alone,” ElBaradei said, gently alluding to past differences with a unilateralist United States under George W. Bush.

He repeatedly praised Bush’s successor as U.S. president, Barack Obama, for his commitment to nuclear disarmament and multilateral consultations to defuse conflict.

ElBaradei also said his successor as director-general, Yukiya Amano, a dry Japanese diplomat without the incumbent’s charisma who was only narrowly elected in July, would lead the IAEA with “competence, courage and vision”.

ElBaradei, a veteran Egyptian diplomat, and the IAEA jointly won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to prevent the stealthy spread of nuclear weapons and foster peaceful and safe uses of atomic energy in the developing world.

The latter half of his 12-year tenure was also buffeted by spats with Israel, the United States and some European powers, especially France, over perceptions he was softpedalling the risks posed by Iran’s shadowy nuclear activity.

They bridled at ElBaradei’s outspoken warnings that only negotiations, not isolating sanctions or last-resort war

(”bonkers”, as he undiplomatically put it), can bring a lasting solution on Iran. Some Western officials, including

former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, accused him of “speaking outside his box” as head of a technical U.N. agency.

The Bush administration’s relations with ElBaradei had curdled in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, when he publicly challenged what later proved to be fabricated intelligence about an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programme used to justify the U.S.-led invasion.

U.S. officials in the Bush administration circulated transcripts of wiretaps of ElBaradei’s telephone in an ultimately futile attempt to undermine his election by the IAEA’s board of governors to a third term in 2005.

U.S. relations with, and public respect for, the IAEA have improved dramatically since Obama took office in January.

But old tensions resurfaced last month when France and Israel suggested ElBaradei was sitting on IAEA findings pointing more concretely to a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme than information the agency has released to date.

He angrily denied any such cover-up. The Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities under investigation, he said in remarks to governors on Wednesday, were highly suspicious but investigations so far had unearthed no hard proof of “weaponisation” work.

Twenty-four hours later, all the political tugs-of-war  between ElBaradei and Western powers seemed forgotten as 39 national delegations including the United States and big European allies sang his praises in the send-off ceremony.

But not Israel, which accused ElBaradei of glossing over  what it considers an undeniable Iranian lunge for nuclear weapons capability under the noses of IAEA inspectors that will pose a mortal threat to the Jewish state in the near future.

Israel’s chief envoy sat quietly at the back of the conference chamber during the tribute rites, then returned to his seat for a bit of routine board business that concluded the meeting.

At his penultimate meeting with governors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog before he steps down in November, Mohamed ElBaradei gave diplomats a reminder of the colourful prose and no-nonsense authority they may soon miss.

   A veteran of the long-running dispute between the West and Iran over its contentious nuclear programme,  the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency  urged the 35-nation governing body to “put (your) heads together to break the logjam,” on the same day that Tehran submitted a package of proposals to foreign powers.

   He criticised countries – he did not name them but was clearly referring to Israel and France — who have suggested he hid evidence from his latest written report on Iran, pointing undeniably to illicit Iranian research into the making of atomic bombs.

   “Talking about formalities, whether the work plan has been implemented or not,  whether people telling us how to suck eggs, how to write our reports, whether there is a (secret) annex  (on Iran)  — these are not the issues,” he said in a swipe at both sides of the debate.

   “If anybody…has any information we have not shared, that has passed muster, been assessed critically in accordance with our practices, please step forward today. Otherwise, as a preacher would say, you should forever hold your peace,” ElBaradei told delegates.

   “We have, in our reports, always tried not to understate the facts or overstate the facts. We have serious concerns, but we are not in a state of panic. Because we have not seen diversion of nuclear material, we have not seen components of nuclear weapons. We do not have any information to that effect.”

   ElBaradei’s Aug. 28 report lent credence to a Western the intelligence dossier implying military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear activity.  But ElBaradei said caveats were still in order.

   “It’s alleged (studies), the whole question is about accuracy, whether this is real — that is the $64,000 question. That is where we are stuck, we have a limited ability to authenticate,” ElBaradei said. “People talk about assessments. I’m not a rocket scientist,” the 67-year-old lawyer and diplomat said.

   But the agency is losing patience with Iran, he said, for stonewalling IAEA efforts to verify that its nuclear programme is peaceful.

   “I know you have been reacting to others,” ElBaradei told Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, referring to Tehran’s 2006 decision to stop wider-ranging agency inspections because of U.N. sanctions. “But you are not penalizing others, you are penalizing yourself.”

   Further, ElBaradei prodded Iran to stop evading a U.S.-led big power offer of negotiations that would provide it major trade benefits if it reined in its nuclear activity and made it transparent to non-proliferation inspectors.

   “I’ve told (Iran) I don’t see where the problem is. The U.S. is making an offer without preconditions on that base of mutual respect. Soltanieh has said they are ready to have a comprehensive dialogue. I say the offer by the US can not be refused because it has no conditions attached to it and is based on mutual respect.”

   He also warned  Iran’s strongest Western critics against hyping the Iranian threat by talking about supposed IAEA cover-ups.  “(You are) trying to undermine the agency, (but) in the end (you are) undermining your own credibility. We went through this during the time of Iraq.”

   An outspoken ElBaradei clashed with the former U.S. administration over what he saw as its confrontational policy towards Iraq and Iran. He has said that anyone considering military force against the Islamic Republic would be “bonkers”.

   ElBaradei’s more soft-spoken, reserved successor, Yukiya Amano of Japan, takes over in December.

A technical fault at a German nuclear power station has thrown a spotlight on one of the few issues that divide the two main parties before September’s election — atomic energy.

But the anti-nuclear Social Democrats (SPD), who have shared power with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives since 2005, may be disappointed if they had hoped to win votes from it.

Merkel, forced to accept a phaseout of Germany’s atomic plants under its coalition deal with the SPD, is campaigning on extending the lifespan of nuclear plants which are deemed safe.

By contrast, the SPD is committed to the phaseout which it introduced in a previous alliance with the Greens, and Saturday’s failed restart at the ageing Kruemmel plant in northern Germany has galvanised some of its members into action.

The SPD, trailing Merkel’s conservative camp by more than 16 percentage points and at risk of losing its role in government, is trying to do all it can to mobilise its traditional supporters before the Sept. 27 vote.

SPD Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel pounced on the incident, swiftly taking to the airwaves to push his case that the phaseout should be accelerated. And on Wednesday a Berlin newspaper was strategically leaked a government statement, albeit from 2006-07, which said safety standards at older plants like Kruemmel were not as high as at more modern reactors.

Germans have for decades nurtured an aversion to atomic energy, which supplies just under 30 percent of their power needs.

But as other European countries have started to revive nuclear, opinion has started to shift due mainly to higher energy prices and fears about supply. Pollsters say Germans are now pretty evenly split on whether to support a later decommissioning of plants.

In their campaign manifesto, conservatives argue nuclear is an important part of the energy mix, at least until renewable sources are fully commercially viable.

“If the SPD tries to make this a big election topic, it will not have much success. Public opinion is moving towards an acceptance of atomic energy,” said Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, head of Emnid pollsters.

The U.N. nuclear non-proliferation watchdog assiduously guards its impartiality as it monitors and investigates disputed activity in Iran and Syria, with suspicious Western powers impatient for the inspectors to draw conclusions.

So the International Atomic Energy Agency typically puts what have become keenly anticipated, quarterly reports on Iran and Syria through many painstaking drafts before they see the light of day, to help ensure that not a single word can be misunderstood, misinterpreted or turned to political advantage.

But the IAEA had to scramble this month to stay the course amid growing Western edginess over Iran’s defiant advances towards nuclear capacity with possible bomb applications, as well as a perceived Syrian nuclear cover-up.

The U.N. watchdog had to do battle with politically charged headlines and alarmist commentary both because of unexplained references in its latest reports and things that were left out.

Unguarded remarks coaxed from senior U.N. officials by aggressive nuclear beat reporters also stirred the pot. First, we pounced on a figure of 1,010 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) accumulated by Iran for future nuclear fuel. Our antennae were twitching since this echoed U.S. estimates of the minimum LEU Iran would need to reprocess into high-enriched uranium (HEU) for a bomb, if it so chose.

Yet, the science is inexact. Other estimates range up to 1,700 kg, depending on factors like quality of uranium, natural loss or wastage of material from further enrichment and so on.

Such nuances got lost in U.S. and European headlines:

“IRAN HAS ENRICHED ENOUGH URANIUM FOR BOMB, IAEA SAYS”.

In fact, the IAEA had not said that. It was just an unnamed U.N. official who, pressed by reporters to draw conclusions, said: “Do they have enough LEU to produce a significant quantity of HEU? Yes. But it is theoretical. They’re not there yet.”

Still, that looked to some as if the IAEA was passing judgment on a nation’s nuclear capability. Iran protested because that is outside the IAEA’s technical mandate, which to safeguard nuclear items from diversion into bombmaking.

His “yes” whipped up fear in a West convinced Iran is bent on building The Bomb, despite a dearth of hard evidence. In fact, for the security hedge Iran desires to turn the tables on U.S.-Israeli predominance in the Middle East, all it needs is a perceived ABILITY to build a nuclear weapon.

That is entirely legal since uranium enrichment technology also generates electricity, the stated goal of Iran’s programme.

Since enrichment is the toughest of a good dozen technical steps entailed in creating a bomb, Western concerns now fixate on the size of Iran’s LEU stockpile. And that figured in a second ruckus arising from the IAEA’s report.

Eagle-eyed U.S. nuclear reporters, comparing figures with those in the IAEA’s prior report, found that Iran’s estimate of its LEU stockpile was 209 kg less than the IAEA’s own inventory check. Answering a question, a U.N. official said this “physical inventory verification” (PIV) was done just once a year.

Headlines blared: “IRAN UNDERSTATES URANIUM STOCKS”. Alarm bells rang: could Iran be misleading the IAEA about its LEU stocks and squirrelling some away for secret conversion into HEU?

The IAEA was taken aback, wrongfooted by its failure to acknowledge and explain the unusually large discrepancy in the report, and it took three days to issue a clarifying statement. No, it said, this was only an honest mistake by Iran down to technical inexperience and Iran is cooperating well to improve its future estimates. The IAEA assured that all LEU was under constant agency surveillance. Not everyone was convinced.

“(Since a PIV) is conducted once a year…, given the time taken to process the results, it means a diversion occurring just after a PIV might not be detected for 13 or 14 months,” wrote James Acton in the influential Arms Control Wonk web blog.

Fellow ACW blogger Jeffrey Lewis saw no reason for fuss. “Another IAEA report on Iran. Cue the panic…This is going to frighten you, but large industrial processes are not measured in bomb units, even though this would be awesome,” he wrote. Alluding to the LEU, Lewis added: “If you aren’t sure how much he weighs, Elvis is still in the building.”

As for Syria, a rare impromptu disclosure of investigative findings omitted from the IAEA’s formal report created a media splash and a protest from Damascus, which denies allegations it tried to build a plutonium-producing reactor in secret.

Answering a reporter’s query, a U.N. official said graphite traces were found in soil samples taken at a site where Washington says Syria almost built a graphite-core reactor with North Korean help before Israel bombed it to ruin in 2007.

Some reporters including me led their stories with the graphite, understandably because this was news. We also quoted the U.N. official saying it was to early to tell if there was a nuclear link with the graphite, an element with many other uses.

But that qualifier escaped many punters. The IAEA was forced to send a memo to its 35-nation governing board a day later spelling out that no graphite-nuclear link had been established
“at present”.

For its part, Syria’s state news agency said no suspicious graphite had been or would be found. Syrian officials denied any graphite was found, suggesting the IAEA was lying.

But as the last week made clear, politics, paranoia and conspiracy theories can sometimes make it hard to get the whole truth across when it comes to the IAEA’s complex Iran and Syria investigations.

(Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (C) visits the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, 350 km (217 miles) south of Tehran, April 8, 2008. Iran has begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant, Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday, defying the West which fears Tehran is trying to build nuclear bombs. Picture taken on April 8, 2008. REUTERS/Presidential official website/Handout (IRAN). FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.)

In the space of a decade, the United States and India have travelled far in a relationship clouded by the  Cold War when they were on opposite sides.

From U.S sanctions on India for its nuclear tests in 1998 to a civilian nuclear energy deal that opens access to international nuclear technology and finance, while allowing New Delhi to retain its nuclear weapons programme is a stunning reversal of policy and one that decisively transforms ties.

America has also 'soberly' after decades of differing over counter-terrorism priorities become a vocal 
supporter of India's concerns over the use of Pakistani territory for Islamist militant groups, says the Asia 
Society in a report laying out a blueprint for an expanded India-U.S. relationship ahead of 
President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday.

Indian and U.S. interests have converged and "never in history have they been so closely aligned," the  report by an Asia Society Task Force says, arguing for a still deeper security and economic engagement between the two large democracies.

Click here for a PDF of the report

The Obama administration must keep India as one of its top foreign policy priorities, Richard Holbrooke, chairman of the Asia Society and who has been talked about as a possible envoy to South Asia, and Vishakha N.Desai, president of the Asia Society, say in a joint foreword

Besides the players involved, the report is also interesting because it adopts a rather different tone on India's relations with Pakistan and especially Kashmir to some of the policy prescriptions offered by some other influential U.S. think tanks such as the Center for American Progress.

This is how the task force suggests the incoming administration  boost security engagement with India: 

• Establish the closest possible consultation on all security issues in the entire region
• Reiterate commitment to “dehyphenation” (meaning U.S. ties with India and Pakistan are not a zero-sum game and must be carried on over different tracks)
• Discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan strategies frankly and in deep detail
• Listen closely on Kashmir, encourage the India-Pakistan composite dialogue, but do not try to mediate.

Music to New Delhi's ears? Yes, but the Asia Society also cautions that the old "Great Game" suspicions over Afghanistan remain, and Pakistan sees India’s engagement there as a threat to its vital interests.

"The United States may well have to play a role in making certain India clarifies its objectives in Afghanistan and transmits those to Pakistan, while ensuring that our own dialogue with India addresses India’s role in Afghanistan and how it can be most constructive. By the same token, the U.S. will need to be forthright with Pakistan about its consultations with India and India’s importance in stabilizing Afghanistan," it says.

A book released by the United States Institute for Peace focused on Afghanistan also stresses the key role Kabul's neighbours play on the security situation in the country. "Regional competition continues to undermine Afghanistan's long-term prospects, whereas renewed regional cooperation could provide a significant security and economic boost in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region as a whole," the book titled The Future of Afghanistan argues, according to this note.

But there are no barriers to India and the United States sharing a close relationship on dealing with militancy, the Asia Society report says, arguing that the two countries vastly expand their ties in this area on the lines of cooperation with the UK, Germany, or Australia.

 In the mid to long term, America could think of expanding the “Five Eyes” (Canada, US , UK, Australia, and NZ) intelligence-sharing network to six,  bringing India on board, it says.

And on nuclear issues, it endorses the far-reaching deal signed by the Bush administration and calls for implementing the promise of nuclear trade between the two countries immediately. It also says New Delhi must be given membership in security and nonproliferation regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group and the Zangger Committee.

A bit of irony there actually, given that the Nuclear Suppliers Group came into being following India's first set of nuclear tests in 1974 with the idea to clamp down on nuclear exports.

The Asia Society report also calls for including India in the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty  (NPT) review conference in 2010, which is equally interesting given New Delhi's long-standing position that the NPT is discriminatory. So is this the end of nuclear apartheid as far as New Delhi is concerned now that it is being given a seat on the nuclear high table ?

Ultimately, the United States has to approach India as an equal partner if the relationship has to be taken further, the Asia Society report says. "India is an ancient, proud land and a great civilization; it is an emerging global power and it seeks respect. India is also intensely political—as are we," the report’s authors say. There will be disagreements just as the United States has with countries such as France, but there is a "strategic interest in seeing India evolve into a democratic, independent power center."

[Reuters pictures of an Obama sand sculpture in eastern India, U.S and Indian naval sailors on an Indian navala ship near Goa and test site in Pokharan where India conducted nuclear tests in 1998.]