The Great Debate UK

Now is the time to not only maintain pressure on Iran, but increase it

By Charles Guthrie, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, Kristen Silverberg and Dr August Hanning. The opinions expressed are their own.

On May 23, 2012, the chief negotiators of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany will meet their Iranian counterparts in Baghdad to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme. This follows last April’s meeting in Istanbul, when negotiations were resumed after more than a year’s inaction. This summit will test whether Iran is serious and whether concrete results can be achieved.

The strengthening of the sanctions regime over the last six years has unquestionably triggered Iran’s return to the negotiating table. Although the main measures of the new packages are not coming into force until July, their economic consequences have already made themselves felt within the country. The devaluation of the Iranian currency, the Rial, caused by years of economic mismanagement, has accelerated dramatically. The new measures against the Iranian financial system and the oil and gas industry has led to a significant drop in state revenue.

To that end the sanctions regime must be reinforced by the international community. It would be totally counterproductive to give way to political pressures to soften or end any of the sanctions that are already in place unless Iran takes steps to prove conclusively that it is not developing nuclear weapons. It is of course essential that Iran limit its nuclear enrichment program to the needs of civilian reactors.

On the sanctions front, we propose decisive action by governments in four key areas not yet covered by the existing sanctions regime.  First, Iran must be comprehensively denied access to the international banking system. An airtight international banking blockade must be imposed against all Iranian banks, so that Iran is completely cut off from the international financial system.

Second, companies worldwide should be required to disclose all investments and business transactions in Iran. They will then realise that their international reputation will suffer if they are publically known to be conducting business with the country.

Third, Iran must be denied all access to international shipping. Such a move would greatly damage the regime given its dependence on global trade and seaborne crude oil exports. The ports of the EU, U.S. and elsewhere must be closed to cargo shippers that service Iranian ports or do business with the Tidewater Middle East Co — the company, owned by the Revolutionary Guard, that handles 90 percent of Iran’s container traffic.

from The Great Debate:

Let’s kick Syria out of the United Nations

The United Nations estimates that since Syria’s uprising began over a year ago, more than 9,000 Syrians have been killed. A recent assessment from Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elliot Abrams puts the total number of Syrian refugees at almost half a million. Worse, it appears that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are continuing to torture, imprison and kill Syrian civilians. It also seems that the recent peace plan promulgated by U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan, which Assad’s government agreed to, is dead. According to Turkey’s prime minister, Assad “is not withdrawing troops, but he is duping the international community.”

The conventional wisdom holds that the international community is out of alternatives, short of another potentially dangerous military intervention or the risky prospect of arming Syria’s rebels. Syria’s government has already thumbed its nose at sanctions and condemnations from the Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council, European Union and various U.N. organs and individual countries. The Security Council, thanks to the vetoes of Russia and China, is also constrained to issuing awkward joint statements rather than passing binding resolutions.

But there is another option that has received surprisingly little attention.

Specifically, the United States as well as like-minded delegations in the West and Middle East should consider calling for Syria’s suspension from the U.N.’s most democratic and representative organ, the General Assembly (UNGA), where all 193 U.N. member states normally get one vote. Such an act would entail zero material costs, avoid veto authority and be a critical step toward alleviating the humanitarian nightmare unfolding in Syria.

In particular, Syria’s suspension would act to further isolate Syria’s leadership, increase the probability of high-level Syrian defections both at the U.N. and elsewhere and likely bolster the confidence of the country’s beleaguered internal opposition forces. Most important, Syria’s suspension would unambiguously express the international community’s collective disgust with the actions of Syria’s ruling government while providing a new form of leverage to compel Syria’s government to change course.

There is U.N. precedent for such drastic action, and it happened more than 30 years ago. Citing apartheid, a majority of the nine-member U.N. Credentials Committee – which confirms the credentials of U.N. delegations – and a supermajority of the General Assembly voted to suspend South Africa’s participation in the UNGA in 1974. It also just so happens that a majority of the current Credentials Committee, along with a two-thirds majority of other U.N. member states, already voted to condemn “widespread and systematic” human rights abuses in Syria during a UNGA vote in February 2012. As a result, a unique window of opportunity for suspending Syria may have opened, given that neither the Credentials Committee nor the General Assembly provides any state with veto authority. In addition, when the UNGA voted to condemn Syria in February, Russia and China – regardless of their great-power status in the U.N. – were joined only by an ultra-minority of 10 other delegations in opposing the resolution.

Still, detractors could argue that there are lots of rights violators sitting pretty in the UNGA and that suspending Syria will open the floodgates for more suspension proposals, ultimately creating chaos at Turtle Bay. While it is true there are human rights violators that can speak and vote within the UNGA on a daily basis (i.e., North Korea), none have faced the torrent of warnings, sanctions, olive branches, second chances, third chances, and regional and global condemnation that Syria has. All of this would ensure that suspending Syria is perceived as a one-off emergency measure rather than a precedent to transform the UNGA into a Survivor episode.

from The Great Debate:

We are letting Assad win

A year into the crisis in Syria, it's time to admit that the world is prepared to allow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to slaughter his people. Unless force is used to back diplomacy, the international community will let Assad kill tens of thousands more than the 7,500 already lost.

We’ve seen this playbook too many times before -- in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. It is time to face three brutal truths about the crisis. First, no country sees it as sufficiently in its interests to use airstrikes and eventually send forces into Syria to stop the attacks by the Syrian regime -- the only way to end the current slaughter. While well intentioned and perhaps saving some lives, all the surrounding activity -- summits, special envoys, humanitarian corridors, safe zones, arming the opposition, and efforts to reach a ceasefire -- serves as a smokescreen for the Syrian regime to finish the job of wiping out the rebel “terrorists.” These negotiations will not work unless backed by force.

Second, the international community must not be fooled by the regime’s trick of negotiating small sideshows to end the killing. Diplomats will spend days and weeks negotiating tiny windows of breaks in the killing to evacuate the wounded. More weeks will be lost arguing about the details of humanitarian safe zones and corridors. While those steps would help save some lives and are important, they will not stop the crisis -- and in fact could well prolong it by diverting attention from the need for force.

For instance, during the genocide in Darfur, the Sudanese played a very sophisticated game of talking about negotiating peace -- just enough to forestall serious U.N. Security Council action -- while “solving” the Darfur problem militarily. Four hundred thousand people have been killed and 2 million more pushed from their homes. Similarly, in Bosnia in the 1990s, U.S., EU, and U.N. diplomats all wasted time negotiating safe zones and ceasefires, debating arming the opposition, and securing minor concessions from the Serbs while Slobodan Milosevic cleansed the region. Watch the game of cat and mouse about access by the Red Crescent to Homs and Baba Amr -- it will only come after the killing.

Third, humanitarian zones do not work well in the midst of a civil war unless backed up by a strong international force. In 1995, the United Nations sought to use its mandate to “deter attacks” on six safe areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the U.N. presence no doubt saved some lives through its delivery of humanitarian assistance and by deterring some Serb attacks, ultimately an estimated 20,000 people, primarily Muslims, were killed in and around the safe areas, with the worst atrocities in Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 men were executed. Safe zones also take time to arrange. In 1994 in Rwanda, it was only after the genocide that safe zones were set up.

The regime in Syria is playing the same games -- delay, resist, negotiate small steps -- and finish the killing. It is time to stop kidding ourselves and face up to the fact that only the use of force will stop Assad’s assault. We can make ourselves feel better by arming the opposition and negotiating humanitarian aid workers’ access and even safe zones. But those steps will not stop the killing in the short term. It is time to marry force to diplomacy.

Now for the tough question: Who should intervene and how? Syria is vastly more complex and difficult than Libya, not only because of the strength of its regime and army but also given its alliances with Iran and Lebanon and support for Hezbollah and Hamas. That is a reason for caution and good planning, but it is no excuse for standing by and watching the slaughter. Half measures will not work.

from The Great Debate:

Hope for ending hunger in our lifetimes

By Josette Sheeran The opinions expressed are her own.

I will never forget holding my newborn baby in my arms watching a television report on the 1987 famine in Ethiopia – hearing the haunting cries of babies whose hunger could not be met by their anguished mothers. Tragically, today we are seeing the same images as the worst drought in 60 years again devastates the Horn of Africa, throwing as many as 12 million into desperate hunger.

But there are hopeful signs that today’s drought need not result in the tens of thousands of deaths that we saw in earlier decades. Other than the tragic situation in South Somalia, where those in control have blocked humanitarian assistance, the drought’s impact has been blunted by advance preparation and resiliency programs. WFP, with the support of many, has been scaling up for more than six months.

Through a community adaptation program called MERET, WFP has been supporting the Ethiopian government in sustainable land management and rain catchment which has vastly increased food production and mitigated the impact of the drought. In the dry Karamoja region of northern Uganda, local communities are showing more resilience than in the 2007-2009 droughts, thanks to a new system of communal food stocks that are replenished at harvest time.

We also know more today about how proper nutrition saves lives. Maternal and child undernutrition is the underlying cause of 3.5 million deaths in children under five each year, on average, one every ten seconds. The 2008 landmark Lancet series outlined that inadequate nutrition during the first 1000 days – from conception to two years old – leads to irreversible impairments in physical and cognitive development, permanently damaging the brains and bodies of a generation.

Nutrition must begin in the womb. That is why the world has correctly emphasized the first 1000 days as the way to break the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. As Nicholas Kristof noted in a recent column, 1.4 million child deaths could be averted each year if babies were breast-fed properly. WFP encourages exclusive breast feeding for a minimum of six months and actively supports the work of WHO and UNICEF in this critical area. After complementary feeding starts, WFP provides young children and nursing mothers with supplemental nutritional foods.

Working with food technologists WFP is deploying products like WawaMum, which is a highly fortified chickpea paste that requires no water or cooking. In a supplementary feeding programme, using WFP’s new specialized products in Pakistan, 99 percent of moderately malnourished children recovered within 12 weeks.

from Global News Journal:

UNsensational? Five more years of Ban Ki-moon

U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and John Kerry look on as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon addresses reporters in Washington. REUTERS/Molley Riley

It's hard to find a delegate to the United Nations who despises U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But it's even harder to find someone who thinks he has the gravitas and charisma of his Nobel Peace Prize-winning predecessor Kofi Annan, who invoked the wrath of the previous U.S. administration when he called the 2003 invasion of Iraq "illegal." As one senior Western official, who declined to be identified, said about Ban: "It's not as if he's lightning in a bottle, but we can live with him."

The former South Korean foreign minister is in the final year of his first five-year term and is widely expected to run for another stint as the supreme U.N. official. The formal re-election process is likely to commence in the coming months. In the meantime, Ban is visiting the capitals of key U.N. member states to gauge his chances of keeping his job. Those chances, U.N. diplomats say, are excellent. So far, no country has nominated any candidate to oppose him. "I'd put my money on Ban Ki-moon getting a second term," said a Security Council diplomat.

The 15-nation Security Council nominates the secretary-general, though the choice has to be confirmed by the 192-nation General Assembly. Despite the veneer of democracy, it is the five veto-wielding permanent council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- who choose the top U.N. bureaucrat in New York. And none of the five has any serious objections to a second and final term for Ban, diplomats say.

Some people say that running the United Nations is the toughest job on earth. With little real power, he spends his time mediating and negotiating behind closed doors, getting blamed for member states' failures and receiving no credit for his off-camera successes. National lobbyists push and pull him in all directions. The five permanent Security Council members, known as the "P5", regularly insist that he acquiesce to their demands, often pressuring him to reserve a healthy portion of top U.N. jobs for their nationals or preferential treatment for themselves or their allies. Journalists harangue the secretary-general to disclose the details of sensitive negotiations, which he usually tries to keep secret under the label of "quiet diplomacy." Human rights groups routinely skewer him for not being tough enough on the rulers of despotic countries, which are, after all, member states like all the others and don't take kindly to criticism.

Ban has been no exception. He has been publicly clobbered for not congratulating jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize or raising his detention with President Hu Jintao during a recent visit to China. He was hung out to dry for not being tough enough on Sri Lanka's government and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide in Sudan's western Darfur region. Arab and other delegations from the developing world accuse Ban of being a U.S. lackey, noting how often his statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues echo those of the U.S. State Department or White House.

from Global News Journal:

WikiLeaks Scandal: Is the United Nations a Den of Spies?

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has dismissed suggestions that her diplomats are part-time spies, as suggested by the latest batch of documents released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.   "Let me be very clear -- our diplomats are just that, they're diplomats," Rice told reporters at the United Nations where she was peppered with questions about the latest chapter in the WikiLeaks scandal. "Our diplomats are doing what diplomats do around the world every day, which is build relationships, negotiate, advance our interests and work to find common solutions to complex problems."   She didn't exactly deny the charges of espionage. But the top U.S. diplomat in New York did reject the idea that there would be any diplomatic fallout from the release of thousands of documents obtained by WikiLeaks, some of which have been published by The Guardian and other newspapers.   One U.S. diplomatic cable published by The Guardian shows how the State Department instructed diplomats at the United Nations and elsewhere around the world to collect credit card and frequent flyer numbers, work schedules and biometric data for U.N. officials and diplomats. Among the personalities of interest was U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as were the ambassadors of the other 14 Security Council member states.    There is nothing new about espionage at the United Nations, but it's always embarrassing when classified documents proving it happens surface in the media.   Most Security Council envoys declined to comment on the WikiLeaks documents as they headed into the council chambers on Monday for a meeting on North Korea. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, however, told reporters, "Surprise, surprise."   Churkin should know. One of the diplomats in his charge was implicated earlier this year in a high-profile Russian espionage case in the United States in which nearly a dozen people were accused of being part of a Russian spy ring that carried out deep-cover work in the United States to recruit political sources and gather information for Moscow. The U.S. Justice Department said that an unnamed diplomat at the Russian mission to the United Nations had delivered payments to the spy ring.      And then there was the man known as "Comrade J", a Russian spy based in New York from 1995 to 2000. Working out of Russia's U.N. mission, Comrade J directed Russian espionage activity in New York City and personally oversaw all covert operations against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. According to a book about his exploits, Comrade J eventually became a double agent for the FBI.   Nor does the history of U.N. espionage end there. In 2004, a former British cabinet minister revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on Ban Ki-moon's predecessor Kofi Annan, who fell afoul of Washington and London by opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.       Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was also the victim of a phone-bugging operation, according to media reports from 2004. He had also opposed the invasion of Iraq and angered the United States by saying that their intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged revival of his nuclear arms program was not only incorrect but partly based on falsified evidence. U.S. officials pored over transcripts of ElBaradei's telephone intercepts in an attempt to secure evidence of mistakes that could be used to oust him from his post, the reports said. Not only did they fail to unseat him, he went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Britain counts cost of Benedict’s visit

- Terry Sanderson is  President of the National Secular Society. The opinions expressed are his own.-

When the Government is about to announce a 25 percent cut in public spending, the tens of millions of pounds showered on Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain seem like real papal indulgence.

The government contribution to this religious jamboree is currently £12 million (up from £8 million), but what we haven’t been told is how much the over-the-top security operation wil cost.

We have tried through Freedom of Information requests to get some idea, but so far we’ve been stonewalled.

Now the chief constable of South Yorkshire, who is co-ordinating the four police forces who are looking after the visit, says his best guess is around £1.5 million.

Who does he think he’s kidding?

Women: the “Secret Weapon” against Hunger and Poverty

- Jennifer Parmalee is senior public affairs officer and spokesperson on global issues with the United Nations World Food Programme. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters is hosting a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.–-

A few years ago, I traveled to northern Bangladesh – a hardscrabble region forever whipsawed between drought and flood – to interview teenage girls and mothers at a maternal and child health center supported with nutritional food by the UN World Food Programme.

But 13-year-old Nazma, standing tall like a proud butterfly in her colorful salwar kameez, had a question for me first: “Please sing a song from your country.”

I hesitated, then reached for the song I had sung to my daughters as a lullaby: “Amazing Grace.” Nazma listened quietly and then, with ethereal poise and clarity of voice, surprised me by responding with the anthem of the U.S. civil rights movement: “… Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome, some day!”

It turns out Nazma, on the cusp of womanhood, had more to overcome than “just” impoverished circumstances. She was the only female in the room to have stayed in school as long as sixth grade and facilitators expected that soon, she too, would be called off for early marriage.

It is International Women’s Day and Nazma’s lovely, determined face is still vivid in my mind. I wonder if her evident strength and intelligence will enable her to break free of the terrible bonds of poverty.

Worldwide, women and girls bear the brunt of poverty, hunger and discrimination, comprising more than 60 percent of the world’s chronically hungry – now charted at a record one billion people. Inherited hunger – when malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished children – is a huge obstacle to development, from Afghanistan to Haiti.

New algorithm holds promise for earthquake prediction

-Professor Kees Vuik is a professor, and Mehfooz ur Rehman is a PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology. The opinions expressed are their own.-

The Haiti earthquake was a truly appalling tragedy and it is little wonder that the United Nations has described it as the worst humanitarian disaster it has faced in its history.  The 2010 earthquake follows several earlier ones, including in 1751, 1770, 1842 and 1946, which have struck the island of Hispaniola (the tenth most populous island in the world) which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republican.

While world attention is rightly focusing now upon the aid effort in the country, much media coverage has so far obscured the fact that the science of earthquake prediction is improving and holds much promise in the next few years.  While this will be of no solace for the people of Haiti, what this means in practice is that scientists might be able in the not-too-distant future to provide warnings for at least some similar events, thus helping to minimise loss and life and wider devastation.

Predicting earthquakes was once thought to be impossible owing to the difficulty of calculating the motion of rocky mantle flows.  However, thanks to an algorithm created by the Delft University of Technology, we now know that it is possible to model these underground streams.

Much of the early experimentation with the new algorithm has been based around the North Anatolian Fault.  This is a major active geologic fault which runs along the tectonic boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian Plate.

The fault extends westward from a junction with the East Anatolian Fault at the Karliova Triple Junction in eastern Turkey, across northern Turkey and into the Aegean Sea.  The last time there was a major earthquake along this fault line, at Izmith in Turkey in 1999, around 17,000 people were killed.

Our colleagues in Utrecht are currently applying our algorithm to create a model (consisting of some 100 million underground grid points) of the North Analtolian Fault (essentially the underground in Greece and Turkey up to 1,000 kilometers deep).  What this information allows us to ascertain is where the underground stresses are strongest — an often tell-tale sign of the most dangerous potential earthquake trigger points.

Sudan: Preparing for a peaceful southern secession

- François Grignon is Director of the Africa Program at the International Crisis Group. the opinions expressed are his own. -

Four years ago, the Sudanese people were promised a brighter future. A peace deal had finally ended the two-decades-long civil war between north and south, which killed more than two million people and devastated the south. But today, that bright future is looking decidedly tarnished, and Sudan is sliding towards violent breakup.

At the core of the current political crisis are delays in implementing key benchmarks laid out in the 2005 deal, known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The referendum on independence for the South, a key pillar of the arrangement, is due in January 2011. Before that referendum takes place, Sudan must hold national elections. These are now set for April 2010.

But President Omar al Bashir’s government has failed to pass key democratic reforms promised by the Agreement, and without these reforms, there is no way the results of the elections will be accepted and offer a milestone for the peace process.

On the contrary, fraudulent elections engineered to strengthen Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), close the doors to political negotiations in Darfur and undermine the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) both in the South and in national institutions.

A sham poll would most likely lead to a new escalation of violence in Darfur and compromise the holding of the referendum. And if the referendum does not go ahead on schedule, the South will probably declare unilateral independence, plunging. Sudan back into civil war.

Tensions have been rising between the NCP in the north and the SPLM in the South. In October, the southern leader, Salva Kiir, for the first time openly called for the South to secede from Sudan. Both sides are rearming. Needless to say, another civil war would be devastating for the Sudanese people, as well as the entire horn of Africa.