Nation & World
For Now, the Answer Isn't No
Arresting--at least for now--a slide toward crisis, Iran is greeting as "positive" a proposal by leading world powers that would give the Islamic republic incentives to stop enriching uranium. Last week in Tehran, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana presented the package to Iranian officials. They warned of "ambiguities" but also vowed to study it carefully. Even Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he backed talks, though without any freeze on Iran's enrichment.
The package was developed by the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and China and contains American policy concessions aimed at enticing Iran back to the negotiating table, diplomats say. Among them: a softening of the U.S. line against any uranium enrichment in Iran--the key process in producing nuclear fuel either for power plants or for bombs. The Bush administration is now said to be willing to contemplate Iran at some point doing enrichment if it is determined to have revealed all of its nuclear activities and to be free of weapons-related work. Even in theory, though, that may be many years away, in a future that many hope will see the ayatollahs replaced by democrats. Washington has given ground as well by dangling possible Iranian purchase of aircraft parts and membership in the World Trade Organization. It is also reportedly willing to provide help with building a proliferation-resistant light-water reactor, with the fuel supplied by and returned to Russia.
Diplomats are relieved that their deal wasn't rejected out of hand. Yet, the prospect for hard bargaining now looms as Iran aims for an even bigger concession: to conduct small-scale, experimental enrichment while it negotiates.
The Chavez Factor Plays Out in Peru
In his first go-round as Peru's president in the 1980s, Alan Garcia made a mess of things with economic mismanagement, rampant corruption, and a growing dirty war with Maoist Shining Path insurgents. Remarkably, 16 years after he left office, Peruvians voted last week to give Garcia another chance. With a now healthier economy buoyed by market-friendly policies, Garcia is promising more attention to the needs of the poor, particularly the rural poor, in a country where more than half of the people live on less than $2 a day. By most accounts, Garcia's win reflected a backlash against the growing regional influence of Venezuela's voluble leftist leader, Hugo Chavez, who had backed Garcia's nationalist rival, Ollanta Humala.
A Scary Plot North of the Border
For a nation that takes pride in its multiethnic civility, Canada was stunned by the arrest of 12 men and five teenagers in an alleged terrorism plot said to include planning the detonation of truck bombs in Toronto and storming Parliament in Ottawa to demanding the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the Muslim suspects, in a sting operation, had obtained what they thought was 3 tons of ammonium nitrate--three times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Defense lawyers complained that they have been given little information on the evidence that led to the filing of the criminal charges.
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