BELIEVE ME, YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH MY PARTNER:

UK in secret talks with pariahs (BRIAN BRADY, 12/21/03, Soctland on Sunday)

BRITAIN is in secret negotiations with at least two more ‘pariah states’ believed to harbour weapons of mass destruction, in a bid to encourage them to give up their arsenals peacefully or face the wrath of the international community.

Amid the fallout from the dramatic announcement that Libya is to abandon its illicit weapons programme, it has emerged that British officials are already in ‘back-channel’ negotiations with Syria and Iran, as part of a wider campaign to defuse the tinderbox situation in the Middle East.

Scotland on Sunday has learned that officials have met counterparts in both countries - labelled part of the "Axis of Evil" by President George Bush - for preliminary discussions.

The softly-softly strategy, which produced the developments in Libya after nine months of secret negotiations, was last night backed up by a veiled threat from Bush, who said he hoped other leaders would follow the example of Colonel Gaddafi. [...]

It emerged last night that Gaddafi was capable of firing a missile into the heart of Europe or Israel, according to defence analysts.

British officials confirmed privately that the arsenal included the feared Nodong missiles, capable of firing a devastating warhead up to 1,700 km. Their potential target range is almost 10 times the limit Gaddafi has now agreed to observe under the deal.

Libyan officials last night arrived in Vienna to come clean about Tripoli’s nuclear programme in a meeting with United Nations atomic watchdog the IAEA.

But in the aftermath of the agreement, Straw said the former pariah state had confirmed long-term fears that they had collaborated with the North Koreans in developing a deadly weapons programme that threatened enemies far beyond its borders.

Several points stand out here: first, looks like a standard good cop/bad cop act, with Britain as good cop; second, that Libya has such missiles is a far more catastrophic failure of intelligence than the lack of some predicted WMD in Iraq; third, even Howard Dean seems not to be claiming that getting rid of this nuclear missile program won't make the world a safer place.

MORE:
-Libya’s fatal blow to axis of evil: Gaddafi deal signals end to secret nuclear weapon programme with Iran and North Korea (David Pratt and Trevor Royle, 12/21/03, Sunday Herald)

THE end of the threat posed to world peace and secure oil supplies by the “axis of evil” is emerging this weekend as the real prize that Tony Blair and George Bush have secured for Christmas.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took the decision to renounce all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on Friday night, but while at first it was thought this only had implications for Libya it is now clear that his decision has scuppered a secret partnership between Libya, Iran and North Korea formed with the intention of developing an independent nuclear weapon.

New documents revealed yesterday show that the three were working on the nuclear weapons programme at a top-secret underground site near the Kufra Oasis of the Sahara in southeastern Libya. The team was made up of North Korean scientists, engineers and technicians, as well as some Iranian and Libyan nuclear scientists.

North Korea and Iran, originally dubbed by Bush as the axis of evil along with Iraq, avoided detection by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) inspectors by each member farming out vital sections of its projects to its fellow members.

Iran, which is now in the final stages of uranium enrichment for its program, is badly hit, having counted on fitting into place key parts of its WMD project made in Libya. North Korea may also be forced to scale back the production of nuclear devices as well as counting the loss of a lucrative source of income for its Scuds and nuclear technology.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 21, 2003 10:23 AM