NATO aims to start Afghan handover early next year

BRUSSELS: NATO allies are expected to endorse a plan next month to start transferring security responsibility in Afghanistan to Afghan forces at the start of next year or by July at the latest, the head of NATO said on Monday.

Alliance Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he expected the NATO summit in Lisbon would also endorse Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s aim for Afghan forces to take responsibility for security all over the country by 2014.

Rasmussen stressed, however, that the timing would depend on how the battle against Taliban insurgents was faring and the readiness of Afghan forces.

“I would expect an announcement at the summit in Lisbon that transition to lead Afghan responsibility is about to start at the beginning of 2011; at the latest by July 2011,” he told a news conference.

“We will work on the basis of that road map.

Iran Ready to Send Uranium Abroad

TEHRAN: Iran said that it was ready to send its uranium abroad for further enrichment as requested by the UN. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the decision in an interview with state Iranian television.
He said Iran will have “no problem” giving the West its low-enriched uranium and taking it back several months later when it is enriched by 20 percent. The decision could signal a major shift in the Iranian position on the issue. Still, it was unclear how much of a concession the Ahmadinejad comments represented, even though he appeared to be saying for the first time that Iran was willing to ship out its enriched uranium and wait for it to be returned in the form of fuel for its Tehran research reactor. But his time frame of four or five months appeared to fall short of the year that Western officials say it would take for Iran’s enriched fuel to be turned into fuel rods for the reactor.
If that difference cannot be bridged, it could allow Iranian officials to assert that the deal failed due to Western foot-dragging, despite their readiness to accept the proposed formula of shipping out the bulk of their enriched uranium and waiting for it to be converted and returned as fuel.
Ahmadinejad also did not address whether his country was ready to ship out most of its stockpile in one batch — another condition set by the six world powers endorsing the fuel swap. If Iran were to agree to export most of its enriched uranium in one shipment, it would delay its ability to make a nuclear weapon by stripping it of the material it needs to make the fissile core of a warhead.

---

Iran Ready to Send Uranium Abroad was first posted on February 3, 2010 at 1:38 pm.