Obama approves Vietnam nuclear deal
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama Monday approved a civilian nuclear pact with Vietnam which could lead to the sale of US reactors to Washington's energy-hungry former war foe.
The move by the president formally opened a 90-day review process in Congress. If no legislation is passed contravening the accord, it will then come into force.
Under the accord, US officials said, Vietnam committed not to produce radioactive ingredients for nuclear weapons and signed up to US nonproliferation standards, which the White House bills as the strongest in the world.
"I have determined that the performance of the agreement will promote, and will not constitute an unreasonable risk to, the common defense and security," Obama said in a memorandum to the Energy Department.
Vietnam agreed not to enrich or reprocess uranium, key steps in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, in the deal signed on the sidelines of an East Asia summit in Brunei in October.
It also pledged to seek components for its fuel cycle on the open, international market.
Vietnam's market for nuclear power -- already the second largest in East Asia after China -- is expected to grow to $50 billion by 2030.
Vietnam faces energy shortages and is pursuing nuclear energy, officials have said, with a plan that calls for the first nuclear power plant to be in commercial operation by 2020.
It wants nuclear energy to provide more than 10 percent of its total power generation needs by 2030.
The communist-ruled nation already has a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia. Despite Hanoi's determination to pursue nuclear power, there has been domestic opposition with many voicing fears that the locations selected for the plants make them vulnerable to earthquakes or tsunamis.
==============================
Kerry ups ante in struggle to crack South China Sea rules
http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-
By Greg Torode and Manuel Mogato
HONG KONG/MANILA (Reuters) - Pressure is mounting on China and Southeast Asia to agree a code of conduct to keep the peace in the disputed South China Sea, but Beijing is warning of a long road ahead.
Only last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to work out rules to ease tensions after a fresh Chinese campaign of assertiveness in the region.
"The longer the process takes, the longer tensions will simmer and the greater the chance of a miscalculation by somebody that could trigger a conflict," Kerry said in Indonesia during a visit to Asia.
ASEAN officials told Reuters that a working group of officials from China and the 10-member association would resume negotiations in Singapore on March 18 after agreeing to accelerate talks last year that have made little headway so far.
The code of conduct is intended to bind China and ASEAN to detailed rules of behavior at sea - all geared to managing tensions long-term while broader territorial disputes are resolved. It stems from a landmark 2002 declaration between ASEAN and China, then hailed as the first significant agreement between the grouping and an outside power.
Much is at stake.
China claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea, displaying its reach on official maps with a so-called nine-dash line that stretches deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims to the sea, which sits above potentially rich but largely unexplored oil and gas deposits.
The South China Sea carries an estimated $5 trillion in ship-borne trade annually - including oil imports by China, Japan and South Korea.
Kerry also raised the issue in Beijing, where Chinese officials generally bristle at Washington's growing involvement in China's territorial disputes. China wanted to try to reach a deal, Kerry said.
In the meantime, Kerry said it was vital for countries to refrain from "coercive or unilateral measures" to assert their claims - an apparent reference to a string of recent moves by China, from expanded naval patrols to new fishing restrictions, that continue to rattle a nervous region.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing was sincere about pushing for a code of conduct.
"The burden is heavy and the road is long for talks on the code of conduct," it said in a statement sent to Reuters.
Philippines Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario last week said ASEAN was seeking "an expeditious conclusion" to talks.
PLAYING FOR TIME
Many regional officials and military officers have long feared Beijing wanted to "play for time" - wary of being tied down and preferring instead to buttress its controversial claims while pressuring weaker neighbors into separate talks over specific disputes.
An earlier unofficial draft code of conduct drawn up by Indonesia outlines an agreement that ties the region to refraining from even routine military exercises in disputed waters and settling disputes according to the U.N. Law of the Sea or little-used ASEAN procedures.
China has objected to efforts by Manila to challenge its claims under the Law of the Sea at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
The Indonesian draft, seen by Reuters, also provides for full freedom of navigation and overflight while setting detailed rules for preventing accidents at sea. The occupation of previously unoccupied features at sea is outlawed.
The document has yet to be formally tabled but has circulated within ASEAN for more than a year as a possible basis for discussions, ASEAN diplomats said.
China was reluctant to be presented with a "pre-cooked" draft, said Termsak Chalermpalanupap, a political analyst at Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies and a former staffer at the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta.
Many ambiguities remained about China's position, Termsak added.
"We still have to find out if they really want a legally binding code," he said.
ASEAN leaders want a code with teeth given the inadequacies of the 2002 declaration in preventing rising tensions, he said.
Beijing is expected to seek to thwart any push to include the Paracel islands - a strategic archipelago south of Hainan Island that is occupied by China but also claimed by Vietnam, in any final deal.
Any Chinese attempt to create an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea - something Washington has warned against - is widely expected by regional analysts and diplomats to include the Paracels.
Beijing has denied reports it has plans for a zone in the South China Sea. Its announcement in November of such a boundary in the East China Sea, where aircraft have to identify themselves to Chinese authorities, drew condemnation from Washington.
Carl Thayer, a South China Sea expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, said he had noticed a cautious optimism surrounding the prospect of fresh talks.
"The atmospherics have definitely improved but I do fear we are still talking about an effort that is going to be protracted if not interminable," he said.
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING. Editing by Dean Yates)
==============================
http://news.yahoo.com/japan-
Japan drafts revision of arms exports ban: source
By Nobuhiro Kubo
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has drafted new guidelines that would reverse a decades-old ban on weapons exports, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Sunday, a move that could further strain ties with neighbors China and South Korea.
Tokyo has been reviewing the self-imposed export ban under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's new security strategy, aimed at bolstering the self-reliance of the military.
Serving as prime minister for a rare second time and enjoying solid public approval, Abe says Japan needs a stronger military to cope with what he calls an increasingly threatening security environment, with a more militarily assertive China and unpredictable North Korea.
The proposed revision could draw criticism from China and South Korea, where resentment over Japan's wartime aggression still runs deep. Beijing and Seoul also have long-running territorial disputes with Tokyo over different sets of islets.
Japan drew up the "three principles" on arms exports in 1967, banning sales to countries with communist governments or those involved in international conflicts or subject to United Nations sanctions.
But the rules over time became tantamount to a blanket ban on exports - with some exceptions - and on the development and production of weapons with countries other than the United States.
Under the new guidelines, arms exports would be approved upon "rigorous review" if they were to serve peaceful missions or if joint development of a weapon was deemed to enhance national security, the source told Reuters.
The draft principles omit the ban of exports to governments that are involved in international conflicts, a move that Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun said on Sunday was aimed at paving the way for more sales to countries like Israel, which last year bought Lockheed Martin's F-35 jets with Japan-made components.
"It's not necessarily aimed at boosting exports so much as clarifying the types of cases in which exports were previously allowed under exceptional circumstances," the source said, declining to be identified because the draft is not public.
The Liberal Democratic Party-led government hopes to agree the revision with its more dovish coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, and approve the change as early as next month, the source said.
The current export ban has traditionally kept Japanese defense contractors, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd and IHI Corp, from taking part in international weapons development programs, making it difficult for them to stay abreast of technological development and drive down costs.
(Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Ron Popeski)
==============================
https://new.sipa.columbia.edu/
FEBRUARY 21, 2014
CONFLICT IN EAST ASIA: SHIFTING DYNAMICS
Andrew Nathan looked at China-Japan relations in the context of rising tensions over islands in the East China Sea.Japan and China may develop a friendship in the years ahead, but the process for the two “inherently different” countries will be just as difficult as the one experienced by France and Germany in the decades since World War II, said Andrew Nathan, the Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia in recent remarks at SIPA.
Professor Nathan spoke on the topic of “Conflict in East Asia: Shifting Dynamics,” at a February 12 event hosted by Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA). His talk came against the backdrop of rising tensions over a cluster of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The islands, which the Chinese call Diaoyu and the Japanese call Senkaku, are administered by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan.
Both sides have legitimate claims, Nathan said. The historical record of competing claims is ambiguous, and existing international law does not provide a definitive answer.
Though small and uninhabited, the islands are a strategic defense point for China because they are part of a chain that enclose Chinese naval territory. For this same reason they are important for the U.S.-Japan military alliance in the region.
Meanwhile, Nathan explained, the United States is in a difficult position because the situation recalls unresolved issues regarding territories under Japan before and after World War II. While the U.S. is currently obliged under treaty to defend Japan, it cannot take a position on the question of sovereignty — especially because taking Japan’s side may be detrimental to relations with “rising China.”
Nathan noted that the sustainability of the United States’ position in Asia may be called into question amid the region’s shifting dynamics. China’s strategic intentions are not exactly clear to the U.S. and Japan as it expands its military, while Japan’s strategies are leaning in a more nationalist, hard-line orientation, alienating the regional powers from one another.
Nathan said China might be interested in driving a wedge between the United States and Japan; as an American ally, Japan is disappointed by the United States’ current, passive stance.
On the other hand, this strategy could help the current Japanese prime minister to consolidate domestic support for increasing the defense budget while lending credibility to his nationalist line. This would therefore be adverse to Chinese security interests, according to Gerald Curtis, the Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia. (Curtis was scheduled to participate in the talk but could not be present.)
Nathan, however, said an escalation into a military clash was an unlikely outcome unwanted by any side. Ultimately, he said, it would not make sense for either China or Japan to carry the dispute far beyond the islands.
China may simply be flexing its muscles and sending stress waves as it takes its position as a more central power. Nathan said he did not foresee significant change regarding the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the near future, and that Japan would not yield control of the islands. But in the longer term, he said, Japan may acknowledge the dispute and may enter a long period of negotiations.
— Doyeun Kim MIA ’14
(NTB St)
