Join First Thursday demo/President Obama Seeks Russia Deal to Slash Nuclear Weapons/US Threats Mean Evidence of British Resident's Guantánamo Torture Must Stay Secret, Judges Rule

 The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore hosts an End the War! End the Occupation! rally on Thurs., Feb. 5 from 5 to 6:30 PM in Mount Vernon at Centre & Charles Sts.  The Pledge gathers in Mount Vernon on the first Thursday of the month to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Call Max at 410-366-1637.

 

Published on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 by the Times Online/UK

President Obama Seeks Russia Deal to Slash Nuclear Weapons

by Tim Reid

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country's stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent.

The radical new treaty would reduce the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each. (Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)

The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration's plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow.

Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non-proliferation negotiator in the Clinton Administration. The talks will be driven by Hillary Clinton's State Department.

No final decision on the defence shield has been taken by Mr Obama. Yet merely delaying the placement of US missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic - which if deployed would cost the US $4 billion annually - removes what has been a major impediment to Russian co-operation on arms reduction.

Any agreement would put pressure on Britain, which has 160 nuclear warheads, and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpiles.

Mr Obama has pledged to put nuclear weapons reduction at the heart of his presidency and his first move will be to reopen talks with Moscow to replace the 1991 US-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which expires in December. Under that pact, the two countries have cut their respective stockpiles from roughly 10,000 to 5,000.

"We are going to re-engage Russia in a more traditional, legally binding arms reduction process," an official from the Administration said. "We are prepared to engage in a broader dialogue with the Russians over issues of concern to them. Nobody would be surprised if the number reduced to the 1,000 mark for the post-Start treaty."

Efforts to revive the Start talks were fitful under Mr Bush and complicated by his insistence on building a missile defence shield. "If Obama proceeds down this route, this will be a major departure," one Republican said. "But there will be trouble in Congress."

The plan is also complicated by the nuclear ambitions of Iran, which launched its first satellite into space yesterday, and North Korea, which is preparing to test a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking the US.

Mr Obama views the reduction of arms by the US and Russia as critical to efforts to persuade countries such as Iran not to develop the Bomb.

Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

 

Published on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

US Threats Mean Evidence of British Resident's Guantánamo Torture Must Stay Secret, Judges Rule

Tory MP David Davis demands urgent Commons statement on MI5 role in Binyam Mohamed case

by Richard Norton-Taylor

Evidence of how a British resident held in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp was tortured, and what MI5 knew about it, must remain secret because of serious threats the US has made against the UK, the high court ruled today.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton(R) and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband shake hands after speaking to the press at the State Department in Washington. Clinton said Tuesday the US-British special relationship "really stands the test of time."(AFP/Nicholas Kamm)

The judges made clear they were deeply unhappy with their decision, but said they had no alternative as a result of a statement by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, that if the evidence was disclosed the US would stop sharing intelligence with Britain. That would directly threaten the UK's national security, Miliband had told the court.

This afternoon David Davis, the Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary, said ministers must urgently respond to the allegations that Britain was complicit in torture. He demanded a Commons statement from the government on the ruling, calling it "a matter of utmost national importance".

Davis said: "The ruling implies that torture has taken place in the [Binyam] Mohamed case, that British agencies may have been complicit, and further, that the United States government has threatened our high court that if it releases this information the US government will withdraw its intelligence cooperation with the United Kingdom.

"The judge rules that there is a strong public interest that this information is put in the public domain even though it is politically embarrassing."

He told the BBC: "The government is going to have to do some pretty careful explaining about what's going on."

The ruling, by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, was the latest from a long-running and unprecedented series of court hearings into the abduction of Binyam Mohamed, who was seized and held incommunicado in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly rendered to Morocco, where he says he was tortured.

He was subsequently flown to Afghanistan before being rendered to Guantánamo Bay.

Today's ruling comes after the judges last year invited the Guardian and other media groups to question earlier claims by Miliband that the disclosure of evidence, originally contained in documents given to him by the US government, would threaten the UK's national security.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs