Iran hasn’t a nuclear weapons programme
says
US
intelligence
On 3 December 2007, the US
administration published declassified Key Judgments from a National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities
[1]. Its principal conclusion is that Iran halted its
nuclear weapons programme in the autumn of 2003, and hasn’t restarted its
programme since.
The US
administration’s reaction to this has been to say that nothing has changed,
that Iran
may not have an active nuclear weapons programme any more, but it has the
knowledge to make nuclear weapons, in particular, it knows how to enrich
uranium. However, try as he might,
President Bush will have difficulty convincing the world that an Iran that halted a nuclear weapons programme four
years ago is as threatening as an Iran
with an active nuclear weapons programme – which was the previous story from US intelligence.
What
the NIE said
NIEs are formal assessments on
specific national security issues, expressing the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence agencies. Nowadays, they are signed off by the Director of National
Intelligence (currently Mike McConnell), a post created in 2005 at the suggestion
of the 9/11 Commission. NIEs are
typically requested by senior civilian and military policymakers or by Congressional
leaders. This one, on Iran’s nuclear
capabilities, was requested by Congress.
Its principal conclusion is that the
US
intelligence community
“Judge with
high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran
halted its nuclear weapons program. Judge with high confidence that the halt
lasted at least several years. …. Assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted
its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it
currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”
Compare that with the conclusion of
a May 2005 assessment, which stated that the intelligence community
“Assess with high
confidence that Iran
currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international
obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is
immovable.”
(See table setting out significant
differences between the Key Judgments of this NIE and the May 2005 assessment.)
What the
IAEA has found
It must be emphasised that the IAEA
has found no evidence that Iran
ever had a nuclear weapons programme.
The IAEA’s Director General, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, was interviewed by
Wolf Blitzer on CNN on 28 October 2007.
Blitzer asked:
“Do you believe there is
a clandestine, secret nuclear weapons program right now under way in Iran?” [2]
ElBaradei
replied:
“We
haven’t seen any concrete evidence to that effect, Wolf. We haven’t received
any information there is a parallel ongoing, active nuclear weapon program.”
Later in
the interview he said:
“But
have we seen Iran
having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we
seen an active weaponization program? No.”
An IAEA statement
on 4 December 2007 in response to the NIE said:
“IAEA
Director General Mohamed ElBaradei received with great interest the new U.S.
National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s
nuclear program which concludes that there has been no on-going nuclear weapons
program in Iran
since the fall of 2003. He notes in particular that the Estimate tallies with
the Agency´s consistent statements over the last few years that, although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects
of its past and present nuclear activities, the Agency has no concrete evidence
of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran.” [3]
It should
be emphasised that the IAEA has found no evidence of an earlier programme
either.
Of course,
Iran has uranium conversion
and enrichment facilities (at Isfahan
and Natanz). This is Iran’s right as
a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) so long as these
facilities are for peaceful purposes and are under IAEA supervision. Remember, Article IV(1) of the Treaty states:
“Nothing
in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all
the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with
Articles I and II of this Treaty.”
These
facilities could, in principle, be used to produce highly enriched uranium
suitable for nuclear weapons. But these,
and other, nuclear facilities in Iran are subject to IAEA
monitoring. Central to this monitoring
is the tracking of nuclear material through Iran’s nuclear facilities to make
sure that none is diverted, possibly for military purposes. Dr ElBaradei’s latest report [4]
concluded:
“The
Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material
in Iran.
Iran
has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has
provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with
declared nuclear material and activities.” (paragraph 39)
In other
words, no nuclear material has gone missing in the course of processing through
the nuclear facilities declared by Iran to the IAEA.
What is
more, the highest enrichment level detected by the IAEA in the Fuel Enrichment
Plant at Natanz is about 4% (see paragraph 21 of Dr ElBaradei’s latest report),
which is consistent with the relatively low level of enrichment required for
reactor fuel. An enrichment level of 90%
or more is needed for weapons grade uranium.
Why was the NIE published?
So, the
IAEA has yet to find any evidence that Iran has, or has ever had, a
nuclear weapons programme. However, it
is now the considered opinion of the US
intelligence community that, whereas Iran had an active nuclear weapons
programme, it halted the programme in the autumn of 2003 and it hasn’t restarted
the programme since.
For those
in the US administration,
including the President himself, who have been ratcheting up the threat due to Iran’s imminent
possession of nuclear weapons, this must not have been entirely welcome news.
The
question arises: why did the President allow the Key Judgments from this NIE to
be made public? NIEs are classified
documents, which are seen by the senior figures in the administration and
military and by a select few on the relevant committees in Congress. It isn’t the usual practice to make even the
Key Judgments public.
It seems
that the “intelligence community” wanted the principal conclusions of this NIE
published. A statement issued by
McConnell’s deputy, Donald Kerr, published along with the Key Judgments,
stated:
“The
Intelligence Community [IC] is on the record publicly with numerous statements
based on our 2005 assessment on Iran.
Since our understanding of Iran’s
capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information
to ensure that an accurate presentation is available. While the decision to
release the declassified Key Judgments was coordinated in discussion with
senior policy makers, the IC took responsibility for what portions of the NIE
Key Judgments were to be declassified.” [5]
That
implies that the intelligence community took the initiative in seeking
publication. It certainly makes sense
that they wanted their new, less threatening, view of Iran’s nuclear weapons
capabilities in the public domain. Having
been blamed for supplying flawed intelligence about Iraq’s
“weapons of mass destruction” that was used by the Bush administration as an
excuse to invade Iraq in
2003, one can understand that they didn’t want to be blamed for military action
being taken against Iran,
justified by an outdated assessment that exaggerated their current view of Iran’s nuclear weapons
capabilities.
But who
took the decision to release the Key Judgments?
You might have thought that this was the President’s call, but strangely
Kerr’s statement says that the decision to release “was coordinated in
discussion with senior policy makers”.
In reality, the President had very little option but to sanction
publication, because it was all but certain that the principal conclusion of
the NIE – that Iran
had halted its nuclear weapons programme – would have become public knowledge.
Not only
had the intelligence community an interest in getting this conclusion into the
public domain, but so had senior figures in the US administration and military
who are less than happy with taking military action against Iran in present
circumstances. All the more likely,
therefore, that the principal conclusion would have leaked out, to the acute
embarrassment of the administration, who would have been accused of suppressing
information vital to policy making with regard to Iran.
Better,
therefore, to publish the Key Judgments in full, and to play down the degree to
which the intelligence judgment had actually changed – and the degree to which
the US policy towards Iran needed to
be changed as a consequence. That is
what has happened.
Bush prepared the ground
In fact, the
President has been preparing the ground for the release of this new
intelligence since August 2007, when he was told about it. Since then, he has been careful not to say
that Iran
has an active nuclear weapons programme.
Instead, he has been saying that Iran
is dangerous because it possesses the technical knowledge to make nuclear
weapons – and he has cranked up the rhetoric about the threat from Iran to
compensate for the lack of a programme.
For
example, at a press conference on 12 July 2007, the President stated bluntly that
Iran is “pursuing nuclear weapons” [6] (and
is “threatening to wipe Israel off the map” and “providing sophisticated IEDs
to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers”).
But, in a
speech to the 89th Annual National Convention of the American Legion on 28
August 2007, after he had learnt of the new intelligence, his message had
changed to the following:
“Iran’s active
pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a
region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear
holocaust.” [7]
Iran’s
crime was reduced from “pursuing nuclear weapons” to the “pursuit of technology
that could lead to nuclear weapons”.
And, the
President’s World War III remark, at a press conference on 17 October 2007 [8],
was ironically a product of the new intelligence.
He was
given a very hard time about Iran
by journalists at that press conference.
Vladimir Putin had visited Tehran
with a vast retinue the previous day, the first time a Russian head of state
had been there since Joseph Stalin invited himself in 1943. The occasion was a summit of the five states
bordering the Caspian Sea (Russia
and Iran plus Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan
and Kazakhstan). Putin took the opportunity to warn the US not to use force against Iran [9]. It was put to the President that this summit
in Tehran proved that Iran
was not being isolated for its nuclear activities, on the contrary, “Russia and Iran are going to do business”. Understandably, the President had difficulty
with that.
Another journalist quoted Putin’s
words at a press conference with French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Moscow a few days earlier
on 10 October 2007. Putin had said:
“We have no evidence that
Iran
is seeking to build nuclear weapons. We have no objective information to that
effect. … Our assumption, therefore, is
that Iran
does not have such plans. However, we share the desire of our partners that Iran should
make all of its [nuclear] programs absolutely transparent.” (Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty report [10])
This
prompted the journalist to deliver a sucker punch by asking:
“But
you definitively believe Iran
wants to build a nuclear weapon?”
Because of
the new intelligence judgment, the President could no longer give an unequivocal
YES to that, nor could he agree with President Putin and say NO. Instead, he had to avoid answering the
question while continuing to portray Iran as the greatest threat to
peace in the world. Given the
President’s verbal ability, it was no surprise that initially he gibbered,
saying:
“I
think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that
their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the
knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it’s in the world’s
interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a
nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace. But this --”
At that
point, it occurred to him to conjure up the spectre of World War III in order
to spice up the threat from Iran. He continued:
“We
got a leader in Iran who has
announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if
you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be
interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a
nuclear weapon.”
(Vice-President
Cheney has also given up saying that Iran has an active nuclear weapons
programme. In a speech on 21 October
2007 [11],
he warned of “serious consequences” for Iran, but he merely accused it of
“pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons”).
Bush’s
public reaction to the new intelligence followed the line he established in
August 2007: Iran
is a threat because it possesses the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon, even
though the current intelligence is that it hasn’t got an active programme to do
so. At a press conference on 4 December
2007, he said:
“I
think it is very important for the international community to recognize the
fact that, if Iran
were to develop the knowledge that they could transfer to a clandestine
program, it would create a danger for the world. And so I view this report [the
NIE] as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program.
And the reason why it’s a warning signal is that they could restart it. And the
thing that would make a restarted program effective and dangerous is the
ability to enrich uranium, the knowledge of which could be passed on to a
hidden program.” [12]
That is
the line he had been taking since August 2007.
However, he will have difficulty convincing the world that an Iran that halted its nuclear weapons programme four
years ago (allegedly) is as threatening as an Iran with an active nuclear weapons
programme.
Covert
weapons programme
The new NIE
is very confident that Iran
had an active nuclear weapons programme up to 2003. It says:
“We
judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; … We
assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities
were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.” (Key
Judgment A)
The
compilers of the NIE make it clear that the “nuclear weapons programme” referred
to here does not involve Iran’s
declared uranium conversion and enrichment facilities at Istfahan and
Natanz. In a footnote, they say:
“For
the purposes of this Estimate, by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization
work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work;
we do not mean Iran’s
declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.”
In Key Judgment F, the NIE
states:
“A
growing amount of intelligence indicates Iran was engaged in covert uranium
conversion and uranium enrichment activity, but we judge that these efforts
probably were halted in response to the fall 2003 halt, and that these efforts
probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007.”
So, according
to the NIE, up to the autumn of 2003, Iran was engaged in covert uranium
conversion and enrichment activities that it didn’t declare to the IAEA – in
addition to the declared uranium conversion and uranium enrichment facilities at
Istfahan and Natanz. In other words, the
facilities at Istfahan and Natanz were not believed by US intelligence to be the means whereby Iran was going
to manufacture highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Conversion and enrichment activity for this purpose
was going on covertly elsewhere in Iran, as was other work relevant to
a nuclear weapons programme. The US intelligence
community allegedly believed this until a few months ago.
If Iran had a
nuclear weapons programme aiming to use highly enriched uranium as fissile
material, it was always unlikely that its declared uranium conversion and
enrichment facilities at Istfahan and Natanz were integral to the programme. These declared facilities are under IAEA
supervision and it is therefore next to impossible for Iran to enrich
uranium to weapons grade at Natanz, or to divert uranium from Natanz to be enriched
to weapons grade elsewhere, without detection by the IAEA. If Iran
had a weapons programme, the likelihood was that it had covert uranium
conversion and enrichment facilities elsewhere – and apparently that’s what US intelligence
believed.
It follows
from this that halting Iran’s
declared uranium conversion and enrichment activities would not have halted Iran’s nuclear
weapons programme. Yet, the US has led
the way in demanding that Iran halt its declared uranium conversion and
enrichment activity and has persuaded the Security Council to support this
demand and to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to persuade Iran to
comply. This makes no sense.
If the primary
objective of Iran’s nuclear
activity was weapons development, as the US has claimed, then the sensible
thing for it to do was halt its declared conversion and enrichment activities –
thereby lulling the outside world into a false sense of security – and continue
with its covert activities geared to weapons development.
Halting background?
What was
the background to Iran
halting its nuclear weapons programme?
According to the NIE, it happened at the same time as Iran’s
“announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment
program” (Key Judgment A). This was made
in a joint statement [13]
with the Foreign Ministers of the UK,
France and Germany (the
so-called E3) on 21 October 2003. This statement
signalled the beginning of negotiations between Iran
and the E3 about Iran’s
nuclear programme, which ended with Iran’s rejection of the E3
proposals of 5 August 2005 for a long-term agreement [14].
The joint
statement, which set out the basis of the negotiations, accepted that “Iran has a
right within the nuclear non-proliferation regime to develop nuclear energy for
peaceful purposes” and that its suspension of uranium conversion and enrichment
activities was a voluntary act that wasn’t required by the NPT.
But the E3
proposals for a long-term agreement required Iran
to abandon uranium conversion and enrichment for ever, which would have denied Iran its rights
under the NPT. So, any nuclear power generation
in Iran would be dependent on
a supply of fuel from abroad, which could be cut off at any time, even though Iran has a
plentiful domestic supply of uranium ore.
It was hardly surprising that Iran rejected these proposals out
of hand and subsequently resumed uranium enrichment in January 2006.
This was
the trigger for the IAEA Board passing a resolution on 4 February 2006,
reporting Iran
to the Security Council [15]. It was reported to the Security Council, not
because it refused to take measures required by the NPT, but because it refused
to suspend uranium enrichment, which is its “inalienable right” under the
NPT.
On 6 June
2006, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council (the so-called P5) and Germany made new proposals to Iran, and undertook to enter into negotiations
with Iran on the basis of
these proposals, providing Iran
met certain pre-conditions, chief amongst which is the familiar demand that Iran suspend uranium
enrichment. The new proposals, like the
E3 proposals of a year earlier, seek to ban Iran
from enriching uranium, but permit Iran to engage in other uranium
processing activity [16]. Iran has not accepted these proposals as the
basis for negotiations, but it hasn’t rejected them either – at the time of
writing (14 December 2007), Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative on
Foreign and Security Policy, is still talking to Iran about them.
Meanwhile,
the Security Council has passed three resolutions – the last two imposing
economic sanctions – demanding that Iran suspend uranium enrichment,
which it has refused to do.
Clean bill of health?
The
publication of the new NIE has reduced the US
administration’s ability to portray Iran
as an imminent danger to the Middle East and the
world as a possessor of nuclear weapons.
The President has been reduced to saying that Iran had a weapons programme in the
past at undeclared sites, and could restart the programme if it wished.
It is
difficult for Iran to prove that it hasn’t got a weapons programme today, and
even more difficult to prove that it hadn’t one in the past (assuming it hadn’t
one). However, the IAEA is currently
engaged in a programme of work with Iran,
which aims to answer the IAEA’s outstanding questions about Iran’s past nuclear
activities. Assuming that, when this
work is complete, the IAEA is satisfied that none of Iran’s past nuclear
activities was for military purposes, then any objective observer – if not the
US President – would begin to question the new NIE’s confident assertion that
Iran had a nuclear weapons programme up to 2003.
It is
clear from Dr ElBaradei’s latest report on 15 November 2007 [4]
that good progress has been made in answering the IAEA’s outstanding
questions. So, it is possible that the
IAEA will soon be in a position to give Iran a clean bill of health – to say
that
(a) all
outstanding questions about Iran’s
past nuclear activites have been answered and there is no evidence that any of
these activities were for military purposes, and
(b) Iran
is facilitating IAEA supervision of its current nuclear activities and the IAEA
has found no diversion of nuclear material from them (for military or any other
purpose).
Of course,
we are talking here about nuclear activities that Iran has declared to the IAEA. And, as Dr ElBaradei wrote in his latest
report:
“Confidence
in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s
nuclear programme requires that the Agency be able to provide assurances not
only regarding declared nuclear material, but, equally importantly, regarding
the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran. Although
the Agency has no concrete information, other than that addressed through the
work plan, about possible current undeclared nuclear material and activities in
Iran, the Agency is not in a
position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear
material and activities in Iran
without full implementation of the Additional Protocol.” (paragraph 43)
The Additional
Protocol, which isn’t mandatory for a signatory to the NPT, is designed to
allow the IAEA to get a full picture of a state’s nuclear activities by
providing the agency with authority to visit any facility, declared or not, and
to visit unannounced.
Iran
signed an Additional Protocol in December 2003 and operated it until February
2006, even though it wasn’t ratified by the Iranian parliament. Iran ceased operating it in
February 2006, when it was referred to the Security Council. It remains to be seen if Iran will
resume operating it now.
Malloch-Brown makes a fool of himself
The British
Government has refused to say whether it agrees with its closest ally that Iran hasn’t an active
nuclear weapons programme.
Foreign
Secretary, David Miliband, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s World at One on 4 December 2007, the day after the NIE Key
Judgments were published. But he might
as well not have bothered. As the
transcript of the interview on the Foreign Office website shows [17],
he repeatedly refused to give a straight answer when asked if the British
Government agreed with the new US
intelligence judgment.
The
question also led to Miliband’s “eminence grise”, Foreign Office Minister, Lord
Malloch-Brown, making a fool of himself in the House of Lords on 11 December
2007 [18]. Asked
“Whether
[the British Government’s] assessment of recent developments in the Iranian
nuclear programme is similar to that set out in the new United States National
Intelligence Estimate.”
he
replied:
“My
Lords, I am told that it is not the practice of this Government or previous
Governments to comment on intelligence matters.”
He replied
in similar vein to three similar questions, before Lord Butler of Brockwell
(who gave his name to the Butler
report) rose to ask:
“My
Lords, how does the Minister square his statement that it is not the custom of
this Government or previous Governments to comment on intelligence with the
decision of the previous Government to publish a dossier of intelligence on
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq leading up to the war and the statement of
the previous Prime Minister that he now wishes he had published the whole JIC [Joint
Intelligence Committee] assessment?”
to which Malloch-Brown
replied:
“My
Lords, this novice Minister was very much hoping that that particular noble
Lord would not be in the House today. He will notice that I referred to the
fact that I had been told that this was the practice. As someone who was out of
the country at the time, I must say I scratch my head to reconcile this with
the practice when the noble Lord was involved in these issues.”
You would
have thought an “eminence grise” could do better than that.
US helps Iran’s
nuclear programme
Dr
ElBaradei’s latest report [4]
contains interesting information about how the US/UK and other states
helped Iran
with its nuclear programme in the 1970s:
“According
to Iran, in its early years, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI)
concluded a number of contracts with entities from France, Germany, the United
Kingdom and the United States of America to enable it to acquire nuclear power
and a wide range of related nuclear fuel cycle services, but after the 1979
revolution, these contracts with a total value of around $10 billion were not
fulfilled. Iran
noted that one of the contracts, signed in 1976, was for the development of a
pilot plant for laser enrichment.” (paragraph 4)
As a
footnote makes clear, this contract for a laser enrichment pilot plant was with
a US
company.
An article
by Dafna Linzer in The Washington Post
on 27 March 2005, entitled Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran
Policy [19],
describes US nuclear
policy towards Iran
in the 1970s, a policy that was very different to today’s. Ironically, it was pursued by some of the
individuals who held jobs in the present Bush administration. Here’s a flavour of the article:
“Lacking direct evidence,
Bush administration officials argue that Iran’s nuclear program must be a
cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, ‘They’re already
sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear
as well to generate energy’.
“Yet Cheney, Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held
key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite
argument 30 years ago.
“Ford’s team endorsed
Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard
to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of
plutonium and enriched uranium – the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.
“Iran, a US
ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. US companies, including
Westinghouse and General Electric, scrambled to do business there.
“‘I don’t think the issue
of proliferation came up’, Henry A. Kissinger, who was Ford’s Secretary of
State, said in an interview for this article.
…
“After balking initially,
President Gerald R. Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a
US-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor
fuel. The deal was for a complete ‘nuclear fuel cycle’ – reactors powered by
and regenerating fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis.”
But, as Dafna Linzer says, Iran was an ally of the US then.
David
Morrison
Labour
& Trade Union Review
14 December
2007
References
[1] www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf
[2] edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/28/le.01.html
[3] www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2007/prn200722.html
[4] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2007/gov2007-58.pdf
[5] www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_statement.pdf
[6] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070712-5.html
[7] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070828-2.html
[8] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071017.html
[9] www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2192195,00.html
[10] www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/10/58cfe54d-3b9c-42d9-9e33-f944b05e7d35.html
[11] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071021.html
[12] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/12/20071204-4.html
[13] www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/statement_iran21102003.shtml
[14] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2005/infcirc651.pdf
[15] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2006/gov2006-14.pdf
[16] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scoths/2006-0521.pdf
[17] See www.fco.gov.uk
[18] www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/71211-0002.htm
[19]
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html