Pres. Obama Reacts To His Nobel Peace Prize..."Deeply Humbled", Call To Action

(Pres. Obama was humbled by his Nobel Peace Prize award. Says he doesn't deserve to be in the company of past winners and views his win as a call to action for the United States.)

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Sources: MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov

Pres. Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize...Just Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Humbled" Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize


(Reporters gasp at Obama’s Nobel surprise. President Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize less than two weeks after taking office earlier this year.)

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(Pres. Obama was nominated for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.)

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President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Pres. Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman's rights activist.

The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

NBC News reported that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called Obama with the news just before 6 a.m. Aides said the president felt "humbled" by the committee's decision.

Captured the world's attention

Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. "In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations."

He added that the committee endorsed "Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"

President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.

The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given too someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.



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Sources: MSNBC, Nobel Prize.org, Whitehouse.gov, Google Maps

Iranian Gov't Agrees To Cooperate & Open Its Nuke Plants For Inspections...Beware Of Possible Tricks

(The White House said Thursday that landmark talks between the U.S. and Iran in Geneva Thursday could lead to a breakthrough in nuclear negotiations. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.)

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(Pres. Obama says that a "Constructive Beginning" took place during the US-Iran talks.)

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Iran agrees to send enriched uranium to Russia


Iran agreed on Thursday in talks with the United States and other major powers to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspection in the next two weeks and to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium to Russia to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes, senior American and other Western officials said.

Iran’s agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing — if it happens — would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit.

If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow, a senior American official conceded.

The officials described the long day of talks here with Iran, the first such discussions in which the United States has participated fully, as a modest success on a long and complicated road. Iran had at least finally engaged with the big powers on its nuclear program after more than a year, and had agreed to some tangible, confidence-building steps before another meeting with the same participants before the end of this month.

Iran's history of duplicity

But despite the relatively promising outcome, the Obama administration was at pains to strike a cautious tone, given Iran’s history of duplicity, its crackdown on its own people after the tainted June presidential elections and President Obama’s concern about being perceived as naïve or susceptible to a policy of Iranian delays.

Mr. Obama, speaking in Washington, called the talks “constructive,” but warned Tehran that he was prepared to move quickly to more stringent sanctions if negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions dragged on.

“We’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking,” Mr. Obama said in remarks to reporters in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. “If Iran does not take concrete steps, we are not prepared to talk indefinitely.”

France and Britain have spoken of December as an informal deadline for Iran to negotiate seriously about stopping enrichment and cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency. American officials say that timeline is “about right,” but Iran continues to insist that it has the right to enrich uranium for what it calls a purely civilian program.

Mr. Obama said Tehran must allow international inspectors into the site near Qum within the next two weeks, a timeline Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, agreed to here.

The atomic energy agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, will travel to Tehran this weekend to discuss the details and timing of the inspections, officials said. But the Americans also want Iran to cooperate with the inspectors and make personnel and documents about the site near Qum available.

Most of declared stockpile to be shipped

Besides the scheduling of another meeting, the main practical accomplishment on Thursday was Iran’s agreement in principle — to be worked out by experts later this month in Vienna — to ship what American officials called “most” of its declared stockpile of lightly enriched uranium to Russia and France to be turned into nuclear fuel.

While American officials refused to specify the amount, other Western officials said it could be 1,200 kilograms, or more than 2,600 pounds, of enriched uranium, which could be as much as 75 percent of Iran’s declared stockpile. While there may be hidden stocks of enriched uranium, such a transfer, if it occurs, “buys some time” for further negotiations, a senior American official said.

Given the assessment that Iran now has made enough low-enriched uranium to produce at least one nuclear weapon at some time in the future, a sharp reduction in its stockpile would be “a confidence-building measure to alleviate tensions and buy us some diplomatic space,” the official said.

Israel, the nation most concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran, has been informed of the discussions, another American official said.

Iran’s uranium is enriched to about 3.5 to 5 percent, the officials said; the Tehran reactor for making medical isotopes, last powered by Argentine-made fuel in 1993, needs uranium enriched to 19.75 percent, still far below weapons grade. And that uranium must then be fabricated into metal rods for the reactor.

Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it needed fuel for the Tehran reactor before December 2010. But Washington, with its allies, pushed the agency to offer Iran the fuel, but made from Iran’s own enriched uranium as a feedstock. That is what Mr. Jalili agreed to in principle on Thursday.

The talks were between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — as well as Germany, and led by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.

More positive tone

The tone of the discussions, held just outside Geneva, was considerably more positive than just a week ago, after the United States revealed the existence of the uranium enrichment site near Qum and, with its European allies, threatened Iran with tough new sanctions if it refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, which they suspect is meant for creating atomic weapons.

“This was a day very much for the engagement track of the two-track strategy,” a senior American official said, with the second track — increased sanctions — to be discussed only if this new round of negotiations should founder.

After a plenary session in the morning, the participants adjourned to a buffet lunch where informal discussions continued, followed by three more hours of informal bilateral meetings. Those included a 45-minute session between the chief American diplomat here, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, and Mr. Jalili, in the highest level United States-Iranian talks in three decades.

Mr. Burns raised a range of topics, including the nuclear dispute and the facility near Qum and human-rights issues, American officials said, while the Iranians raised their own concerns, including the need for a world free of nuclear bombs and access to peaceful nuclear energy for all.

Mr. Jalili, in a news conference, called the discussions “good talks that will be a framework for better talks,” and expressed satisfaction that the world had engaged with Iran’s global agenda, which includes nuclear disarmament. He denied that there were any other Iranian nuclear facilities hidden from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Many diplomats and analysts believe that the facility near Qum is only one of a series of hidden installations that Iran has constructed in addition to its publicly acknowledged ones for what is considered to be a military program. Iran insists both that its program is purely peaceful and that it has a right under the non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But it has regularly lied to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency about its facilities.

Despite the uncertainties, nuclear experts hailed the tentative agreements.

“It’s significant,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in an interview. “The principle is important.”

Mr. Albright added that the amount of low-enriched uranium to be shipped out of Iran is also significant. Iran’s stockpile has worried some arms controllers, who fear that Tehran may drop out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and further enrich the material into fuel for a bomb, a situation known as breakout.

The new accord would end that prospect — at least for the exported uranium.

Mr. Albright cautioned that the deal would become a real solution to the Iranian crisis only if Tehran expanded the accord to cover all the uranium that it wanted enriched.

“Iran’s made a concession,” he said. “But it has little meaning for the long term unless Iran continues to send out” its uranium for enrichment.



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Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, Politico, Google Maps

Pres. Obama At The "Constructive" Iran Nuclear Talks In Geneva: "We Want Action"

(President says the Iranian government must follow with constructive action.)

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(The Geneva Swiss Talks. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.)

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(Showdown with Iran.)

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Pres. Obama: Iran nuclear talks "Constructive"

President Barack Obama on Thursday described talks among global powers and Iran over Iran’s disputed nuclear program as “constructive.” But he said Tehran must follow up with concrete steps, including giving international inspectors full access to its newly disclosed nuclear site.

In brief remarks to reporters in Washington, Obama must “demonstrate through concrete steps” that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

He said the talks in Switzerland were a “constructive beginning” but added it must be followed by “constructive action” by Iran.

In particular, Obama said, Tehran must grant International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors “unfettered access” within two weeks to its recently disclosed uranium-enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom.

Earlier, a senior EU envoy said Iran has pledged to open the plant to U.N. inspectors, perhaps in the next few weeks.

“Talk is no substitute for action,” the president said. “Our patience is not limited.”

The U.S. and five other world powers agreed to a second round of talks with Iran by the end of October, a U.S. official said.

Six countries

Undersecretary of State William Burns represented the Obama administration in the talks. The other countries involved were Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

"It was a productive day but the proof of that has not yet come to fruition, so we'll wait and continue to press our point of view and see what Iran decides to do," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier.

Asked whether the administration's strategy of offering to engage more directly in dialogue with Iran was now paying off, she said more than gestures and discussions are required in order to meet the administration's goals.

"I will count it as a positive sign when it moves from gestures and engagements to actions and results," she said. "That's a necessary pathway and I think we're on it. We've always said we would engage. But we're not talking for the sake of talking," she said, adding, "Today's meeting opened the door, but let's see what happens."

Deputy State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Burns used the meeting with chief Iranian delegate Saeed Jalili "to reiterate the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

"He addressed the need for Iran to take concrete and practical steps that are consistent with its international obligations and that will build international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its program.

"While the focus of the discussion was on Iran's nuclear program, both sides had a frank exchange on other issues, including human rights," said Wood.

Direct engagement with Iran

The encounter appeared to be concrete proof of Obama's commitment to engage Iran directly on nuclear and other issues — a sharp break from the policy under the Bush administration.

More broadly, the meeting suggested that Obama was putting his concept of U.S. foreign policy into action, with its emphasis on negotiating even with the nations that are most hostile to the United States.

Confirming that the seven nations planned to meet again, senior EU envoy Javier Solana said Iran had pledged to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection soon.

Iran's disclosure of the new plant had threatened to poison the atmosphere of the talks, with the West saying Tehran only revealed it because it feared it would found out. Uranium enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

Solana said Iran had pledged to "cooperate fully and immediately with the IAEA" and said he expected Tehran to invite agency inspectors looking for signs of covert nuclear weapons activity to visit "in the next couple of weeks."

At the United Nations, the Iranian Foreign Minister suggested his country's talks with the U.S. and five other world powers could be expanded to the "summit" level.

Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran was willing to discuss a variety of security, economic and political issues, although he did not specifically refer to nuclear issues, which the six powers consider the most critical topic.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — plus Germany hope to persuade Tehran to freeze the enrichment program.

Second round of talks

Going into Thursday's talks, one of the top U.S. goals was to get the Iranians to commit to a second round of talks within a couple of weeks in order to keep the dialogue in a compact timeframe. The U.S. assumption was that if Iran was willing to engage seriously on the nuclear issue, a positive sign would be its agreement to have a second meeting shortly.

A U.S. government official confirmed to The Associated Press that commercial satellite images taken of the purported nuclear site near Iran's holy city of Qom are generally accurate.

At least three private sector imagery analysts in the United States have focused on the site because it fits the description given by the U.S. government: It is 20 miles from Qom, it is built into a mountainside and it has features consistent with a secret nuclear facility, parts of which the U.S. government says are underground.

Neither the U.S. government nor Iran has officially confirmed the location or the accuracy of the commercial imagery analysis.

Passions over hidden plant

At best, Thursday's talks could start lowering passions over the hidden plant, Iran's three-year defiance of the U.N. Security Council's enrichment ban and Western assertions that Tehran is a supporter of terror — and lead to another meeting later this year.

That, in turn, could be the start of a process that could not only end the threat of an Israeli or U.S. strike against Iran's nuclear facilities as a last resort. It could ultimately lead to an agreement on a limited Iranian uranium enrichment program — but under tight international control meant to banish concerns that it could be turned toward making warhead material.

Such hopes are tenuous. Since the five nations first proposed a set of political and economic concessions to Tehran for a full stop to its enrichment activities three years ago, Iran has expanded the program. It now has more than 8,000 centrifuges set up in its cavernous underground facility at Natanz, with most of them working to churn out fuel-grade enriched uranium.

If the talks fail, the U.S. and its Western allies will renew their push for a fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions.

The initial set of sanctions in 2006 focused on banning trade with Iran in materials, equipment, goods and technology that could contribute to Iran's uranium enrichment program. Iran says its program is intended to provide fuel for civilian power reactors, but the U.S. suspects it could be used to make nuclear weapons.

U.N. sanctions against Iran were expanded in March 2007 by banning arms exports from Iran and imposing a freeze on the financial assets of 28 individuals and entities. More sanctions in March 2008 restricted the import by Iran of dual-use technologies — those that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.



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