North Korea opened a prolonged campaign for a long list of concessions after shutting down its 5-megawatt experimental reactor at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, about 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang.
Senior North Korean diplomats signaled their strategy at the outset of what is likely to be an unsuccessful drive to get the country to abandon its entire nuclear program in accordance with the six-nation agreement reached in Beijing in February.
Well before inspectors from the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) arrived in Pyongyang to monitor and verify the shutdown of the reactor, Han Song-ryol, head of the North Korean Disarmament-Peace Institute, said “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is possible“ only if the US suspends its “hostile policy“ and withdraws its troops from South Korea.
Han, who previously served as North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, issued this warning in a talk at Chatham House in London after Pyongyang had called for military talks with the United States. Washington, however, refused to accept Pyongyang’s suggestion, which diplomats viewed as an attempt to bypass South Korea.
North Korea’s call for withdrawal of the 29,000 US troops still in South Korea leads a long list of demands that Pyongyang plans to make at every stage of the bargaining process. North Korea’s rationale is that it can only meet conditions of the February agreement “in tandem“ with reciprocal responses and gestures by the US.
Pyongyang followed this strategy in finally deciding to shut down the reactor after Washington had given up an attempt to isolate North Korea from the international financial community by blacklisting Banco Delta Asia in Macau as a conduit for North Korean counterfeit money.
Pyongyang was to have turned off the reactor within 60 days of the signing of the February agreement but waited another three months while the US got Banco Delta Asia to transmit US$25 million in North Korean accounts to the US Federal Reserve Bank in New York, which relayed the money to the Russian Central Bank, which in turn placed it in a North Korean account.
The transfer of the funds represented a reversal of a US Treasury Department effort to isolate North Korea financially by banning any institution dealing with Banco Delta Asia from doing business in the US or with any US institution. Treasury officials charged North Korea with using the bank as a conduit for counterfeit funds and also for dealing in arms and drugs.
Even after getting the $25 million, North Korea held off on shutting down the reactor until receiving 6,200 tons in heavy fuel oil from South Korea--the initial portion of 50,000 tons in heavy fuel that the North is getting as a reward for living up, finally, to the first stage of the February agreement.
While the shipment was on the way, however, Kim Myong-gil, North Korea’s current deputy ambassador to the UN, listed more demands, including the lifting of all economic sanctions and removal of the nation from the US State Department’s list of “terrorist countries“.
North Korea is sure, however, to demand far more, including talks on a “peace treaty“ for the Korean Peninsula and an enormous infusion of energy aid.
Both those topics are certain to worry South Korean leaders even though the South has promoted reconciliation with North Korea. South Korean officials will oppose peace talks that exclude the South and also want US troops to remain in the country despite leftist pressure for all of them to leave.
While promoting these demands, North Korea will try to pressure the US and South Korea into providing vast quantities of energy aid in addition to the 50,000 tons the South is now sending.
The February agreement calls for North Korea to receive another 950,000 tons after acknowledging all its nuclear activities and then abandoning the entire program. North Korea, however, wants continual shipments of heavy fuel oil-- and also is expected to call for resumption of construction of twin light-water nuclear reactors on its northeast coast.
The 1994 Geneva Framework Agreement called for North Korea to get the light-water energy reactors at a cost of more than $5 billion, most of it provided by South Korea, while the US was to send heavy fuel to North Korea until the reactors were completed. North Korea, under terms of the 1994 agreement, shut down its 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon while inspectors from the IAEA were on permanent duty there making sure the reactor was sealed and locked.
ATIMES.COM

Union workers carry signs reading "satrap and assassin", as they shout slogans outside the Chilean Embassy in Lima, July 17.

Chilean Supreme Court Justice Orlando Alvarez has rejected Peru’s request that former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori--currently under house arrest in Chile--be sent home to face charges of corruption and human rights violations. The much-anticipated ruling marked a dramatic and, in many ways, unexpected shift in the now year-and-a-half-old extradition case.
Alvarez dismissed all 12 charges against Fujimori, who is accused of numerous crimes ranging from illegal telephone tapping, to inappropriate use of state funds, to state-sponsored massacres.
The long-awaited ruling is particularly surprising considering that just last month Supreme Court prosecutor Monica Maldonado--in making her official recommendation on the case--came to the complete opposition conclusion. Maldonado found there to be enough evidence in 11 of the 12 cases originally presented against Fujimori to warrant the ex-president’s extradition.
Of those 11 cases, nine involve allegations of corruption. The other two relate to the so-called La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres, both committed by an infamous government-backed death squad known as the Colina Group. Prosecutors suggest that Fujimori had direct knowledge of and may have even ordered the Colina Group’s anti-subversion operations.
In total, 25 people, including a small child and a professor, were murdered in the La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres, which took place in 1991 and 1992 respectively.
Reaction to the Supreme Court ruling varied. Chilean Interior Minister Belisario Velasco told members of the press that the government would respect the Court’s “sovereign“ ruling. “The government doesn’t interfere in decisions made by the judiciary. This is a sovereign decision,“ he said. Belisario insisted also that the ruling would not affect relations between Chile and Peru.
Peruvian Foreign Affairs Minister JosŽ Antonio Garcia Belaunde took a similar stance, stating that the current Peruvian administration has always respected the rulings of Chile’s justice system. “We have not changed our opinion in that regard,“ the Peruvian official told El Mercurio.
Peruvian Justice Minister Maria Zavala, on the other hand, was more critical of the ruling, telling members of the press that Peru has lost “the battle, but not the war.“ “The ruling goes against the interests of the Peruvian state,“ she said. Zavala said also that Peru would continue to push for Fujimori’s extradition.
Indeed, the extradition case is not expected to end with Judge Alvarez’s announcement. Peruvian prosecutors are likely to appeal the ruling, sending the matter to the Chilean Supreme Court’s Second Chamber. In the meantime, Fujimori is to remain under house arrest.
Also paying close attention to the ruling was Raul Paiba, president of a Santiago-based group called the Committee of Peruvian Refugees in Chile. Paiba, a former university teacher, who came to Chile in 1992 after being arrested on what he claims were trumped-up terrorism charges, has been a vocal and consistent critic of the ex-Peruvian president.
Last November, in the case of “La Cantuta v. Peru,“ the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against the Peruvian government, ordering it to apologize for the 1991 massacre and pay reparations to families of victims.
Like Paiba, the human rights group Amnesty International also described the ruling as “disappointing,“ noting in a press release that Fujimori is accused of numerous human rights violations including murder, forced disappearances, and torture.
“Chilean authorities are obliged under international law to either extradite Fujimori to Peru or investigate the accusations of human rights violations,“ said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty International’s vice director of the Americas Program.
Fujimori governed Peru from 1990 to 2000 before internal pressures forced his flight to Japan, where he famously tendered his resignation via fax. He remained in Japan for five years, taking advantage of his Japanese citizenship--something he inherited from his parents, both Japanese immigrants to Peru--to protect himself not only from requests that he be extradited to Peru, but also from two separate international arrest warrants.
Peruvian authorities originally asked that Fujimori be surrendered to them. Chile, however, opted to place the decision in the hands of its Supreme Court, following protocol set by a 1932 extradition treaty between the two countries.
WORLDPRESS.ORG

Russia continues to up the ante in its relations with the West. Last week, Moscow announced that it will suspend its obligations under a key arms control treaty in Europe. The move underscores rising tensions with the United States and is another attempt to drive a wedge into the Atlantic Alliance.
The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) was signed by Russia and NATO in 1990; it puts limits on the number of weapons systems--aircraft, heavy artillery and tanks--countries can deploy in Eastern Europe.
The treaty was amended after the Soviet Union broke up; the changes obliged Russia to remove military forces from Georgia and Moldova, two former Soviet republics.
Russia ratified the treaty. NATO did not, claiming that it cannot until Moscow removes troops from those states. Moscow counters that the U.S. has established bases in Eastern European countries in violation of the treaty-- NATO claims they are training facilities --among other things. Curiously, Moscow’s expressed displeasure over U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in Eastern and Central Europe is not among its grievances in this case.
It is unlikely that Moscow will redeploy forces near the border with Europe. There is little threat of attack from the West and such a move would be costly. But Russia can suspend inspections and verification procedures, which will add to insecurity in Europe.
That seems to be the real point of the exercise. Russia knows that there is little to fear on its western borders. But Moscow is troubled by NATO’s lack of respect for its concerns--a list that includes the fate of Kosovo and criticism of Moscow’s increasingly muscular energy policy, in addition to the missile defense deployment and the CFE.
Europe must not be cowed. That does not mean that it, along with the U.S. (or Japan for that matter), should be indifferent to Russian interests. Moscow deserves respect. Failure to provide it will ensure its enmity; that is unnecessary and dangerous.
JAPANTIMES.CO.UK

In 1994, Rwandans decided to commit collective suicide. Neighbours killed neighbours, priests their congregants, and parents their own children until one out of every 10 men, women and children was dead.
Just 13 years later, Rwanda has become one of the safest, best-governed and most optimistic countries on a continent where corruption, insecurity and abysmal leadership are often the norm.
How? Sheer force of will plus a whole lot of positive thinking.
The genocide was a story of highly organized mass hysteria, Rwanda’s “follower culture“ taken to its most evil extreme. Today, President Paul Kagame, a former military commander, has mobilized that culture to serve a very different vision. The government wants to position Rwanda as a hi-tech service hub for East Africa and a center for luxury tourism. And an industrious people are all contributing. It’s as though all 9 million Rwandans watched “The Secret“ and decided to make it the bedrock of their development policy. Group think, with a productive twist.
First there’s “Vision 2020,“ an audacious development policy that aims to see every Rwandan literate, educated and well nourished in 13 years. The headlines in a typical issue of New Times, the daily English-language newspaper, convey the optimism: “No more power shortage“, “Promote women“, “Population growth controllable“, “Malaria no more“.
The differences between Rwanda and other countries are striking.
Elsewhere in Africa, roads are edged by gutters clogged with waste and will wash away with an uncharitably harsh rain. In Rwanda, plastic bags have been outlawed, and you have to squint to see a piece of rubbish. Every third Saturday of the month, all Rwandans are expected to spend the morning cleaning streets as a service to the community.
Elsewhere, being stopped by the police means paying a bribe, getting beaten or worse. In Rwanda, when the police--who all wear prominently numbered neon vests--stop a motorist, it’s to make sure their driver’s license is valid or to issue a warning about a broken taillight. Crime has decreased alongside corruption.
The government has also cracked down on public corruption, instituting strict auditing mechanisms of public funds, zero-tolerance for corruption and aggressive pro-investment policies. According to governance measures published by the World Bank, Rwanda ranked among traditionally high performers like South Africa, Botswana and Mauritius on controlling corruption.
The government is also aggressively chasing foreign investment as far afield as Oman. In May, a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer opened its first African assembly business--in Kigali, the capital.
In the end, talk to almost any Rwandan, and he or she will tell you the biggest difference between 1994 and 2007 is leadership and attitude.
Kagame, who regularly calls his own people lazy, has raised the bar high. So high that for every Rwandan from the octogenarian cabinet minister who had to learn PowerPoint (Kagame has declared cabinet meetings paperless) to the peasant farmer nurturing his own personal aspirations for 2020, the only choice is to succeed.
“Ten years ago, walk into a bar at 5pm and it would be packed full,“ a Rwandan employee of the World Bank said. Now they are empty: CEOs, secretaries and even janitors are busy taking night classes.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

A woman’s work is never done. It is often worse paid as well. A report this week found that across the European Union there is a pay gap of 15 percentage points between men’s and women’s gross hourly earnings. What makes it particularly striking is that these are societies where girls regularly outperform boys at school and often go to university in larger numbers. Results over several years show the gap is deeply entrenched: narrowing it will not be straightforward.
Behind the EU-wide average lies a broad range. Four member states have a gap of less than 10 percentage points, while in five others it is 20 percentage points or more. But this number cannot sensibly be seen in isolation.
Another relevant factor is the difference between male and female employment rates. A low pay gap may be a sign of a society where the genders are evenly matched--or it may be one where more women decide not to work outside the home after having children unless they have highly paid careers. In Greece and Italy, for example, a low gender pay gap comes with a large employment gap of more than 20 percentage points.
Elsewhere, more women may go back to work in a part-time or junior position that fits in with family responsibilities, leading-- as in Sweden? or? Denmark?--to? a ?relatively ? low gender employment rate gap but a pay gap larger than the EU average.
The gender pay gap is not predominantly about women being paid less for doing the same jobs as men. Within the EU that battle is largely won. But there is a trickier issue when it comes to defining work of equal value. According to the European Commission report, jobs such as nursing and cleaning that are mainly done by women are valued less highly than jobs requiring similar qualifications that are mainly filled by men. It is hard to see imminent changes in attitudes and pay scales here. There are useful ways for the EU and its member states to address the pay gap. Enforcing anti-discrimination legislation consistently and strictly is one. Education and career advice is another. Advising girls that if they choose lower-paid jobs as they set off in the workplace they stand less chance of matching those who start on a higher salary sounds self-evident, but may not occur to those who have not seen the pay gap widen over the years.
FT.com