Clinton: "Offer Stands" for Missile Defense Cooperation with Russia

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Tuesday, July 6, 2010:

Clinton: "Steel Vise" Crushing Global Activists - The Associated Press 

• Earlier Saturday, Clinton expressed hope that Russia would drop its opposition to a U.S. missile defense system in Europe and accept an offer to cooperate in developing technologies for shooting down hostile weapons.
• "The offer stands," Clinton told a news conference after witnessing the signing of an amendment to a U.S.-Polish agreement on the basing of U.S. missile interceptors in Poland.
• Repeating a theme the Russians consistently have rejected, Clinton said Moscow has nothing to fear from a NATO-endorsed missile defense system based in Europe because it will be aimed at Iran's missile arsenal.
• Sikorski said his country fully supports the project, which the Obama administration radically altered last year in a move that some critics interpreted as a conciliatory gesture to Russia and a slap at Poland.

Iran Hinting at Nuclear Talks Soon - EU Official - Reuters [link]

• There are signs Iran could reply in the next two months to a formal request for negotiations over its nuclear programme, a senior EU official said on Friday.
• "We've had these indications from the Iranians talking about late August or early September," the official told reporters.
• The official was speaking after senior diplomats from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China met in Brussels to discuss progress on a fourth round of sanctions imposed by the United Nations against Iran last month.
• Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, who joined the talks in Brussels on Friday, wrote to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili last month inviting him to resume negotiations over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Fine Print: State Department Reports Play Role in START Ratification - The Washington Post [link]

• Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the panel's chairman, has been pushing to have his committee vote on the pact before the August recess.
• But last week seven of the eight GOP committee members sent him a letter raising issues they wanted settled before any vote.
• One was the need to see updated State compliance reports for the years since 2005 because, as the Republicans said, that report "highlighted a number of direct violations of START I by the Russians."
• Last week, the committee received one document the GOP senators had sought: the long-awaited, highly classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).
• In responding to the GOP letter last week, Kerry said there had already been 10 hearings on the treaty with administration witnesses and then experts representing both political parties who criticized or supported the pact.

Myanmar Using Gas Revenues For Nuke Program: Report - Agence France Presse [link]

• Myanmar's military rulers are using gas revenue from energy giants Chevron and Total to fund an illegal bid to build nuclear weapons, human rights monitors said in a report released July 5.
• A report by Paris-based group EarthRights International said Chevron, Total and PTTEP have generated $9 billion from Myanmar's Yadana gas pipeline since 1998, more than half of which has gone straight to the ruling junta.
• The United States has voiced concerns about Myanmar's cooperation with North Korea after the Norwegian-based news group Democratic Voice of Burma said Myanmar was trying to build an atomic bomb.