Melting ice in the Arctic, but the lure of resources is just too strong. Europe’s Arctic adventure - The new cold rush for resources.
LEIGH PHILLIPS, the EUobserver, November 7, 2008. THIS ARTICLE FROM TROMSO, NORWAY.

EUOBSERVER / TROMSO - PART ONE - There’s this grizzled old guy in the hospital with worsening lung cancer. The doctors can’t tell him whether it’s fatal yet, but each new test shows a rapidly deteriorating condition.

He’s been a heavy smoker all his life, although he’s trying to quit, but one day, while he’s wandering the corridors, he comes across a long-abandoned storeroom and it’s rammed to the gills with cigarettes, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco of every brand and region. There are Cuban cigars, Moroccan apple-flavoured nargileh tobacco, Swedish snus and jars of aromatic pipe shag. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of tobacco left over from the days when hospital cafeterias still sold cigarettes, and the nurses and security staff are nowhere to be seen.

The man briefly thinks that he should just forget he ever opened the storeroom door and get back to the business of quitting, but he’s dazzled by the hoard and instead stuffs as much of it into his pyjamas as he can to take back to his bed and puffs his nicotine-addled brains out.

There’s no tobacco hoard in a cupboard somewhere in the Arctic, but there is however a quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas now within reach as a result of the far north rapidly melting.

Like the old man in the hospital, the European Union and countries on the shores of the Arctic sea have said to themselves: “There may be a chance that we can slow down and reverse global warming, so we really should give up our addiction to fossil fuels. But how can we turn our backs - and our wallets - on such a bonanza, even if it’s full of the very stuff that caused the problem in the first place?”

Or is such an environmentalist caricature unfair to the people of the northern regions, for the most part long shut out from the industrial development and the wealth of the more southerly parts of Europe, Canada, Russia and the United States?

Many of those living in the Arctic are aboriginal people, who have historically borne the double burden of underdevelopment in their regions and racial prejudice. And until recently very little has been available to anyone up north apart from far-from-bountiful farming and the occasional mine that inevitably closes down.

Can we really say “No” to improving the standard of living in the north through development, especially if it can be done sustainably?

With recent months in particular seeing both a cascade of truly alarming news on how fast the Arctic is changing and pronouncements from the European Union and other circumpolar powers on plans for exploitation of newly accessible resources, the EUobserver decided to visit Europe’s patch of the Arctic, the northernmost tip of mainland Norway - still outside the EU, but very much Brussels’ advance guard up in the high north - to find out the reality behind the headlines about the coming “scramble for the Arctic”, and look at all sides in the debate over the Arctic’s future.

***

Methane burps:

The situation at the top of the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse just in the last few weeks.

On 6 September, leading European and American ice specialists at the US National Ice Center reported that for the first time, a ring of navigable waters around the Arctic ice cap opened up the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic archipelago - the maritime Holy Grail of a faster trade route from Europe to Asia sought for centuries by explorers - and the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, over Eurasia, at the same time.

Then, in late September, Swedish and Russian scientists found the first evidence that millions of tonnes of methane - a gas that is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - is bubbling up from beneath the Siberian Arctic seabed.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is greater than the world’s remaining global stores of coal and it is now rising up from the bottom of the ocean through “methane chimney” discovered by scientists aboard the research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Days later, British scientists aboard the James Clark Ross found hundreds of plumes of methane burping up from the Arctic seabed to the west of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, says that the release of methane clathrates from permafrost regions and beneath the seabed will unleash powerful feedback forces that could produce runaway climate change that cannot be controlled - the so-called methane time bomb - a prediction of radical environmental transformation far worse than the worst-case scenarios theorised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Then on Tuesday (28 October), the European Space Agency reported that Arctic sea ice was thinning at a record rate, with the thickness of sea ice in large parts of the Arctic having declined by as much as 19 percent last winter compared to the previous five winters.

***

Last days of the ‘ice bear:’

“The Arctic is warming at two times the rate of the rest of the world,” says Nalan Koc, a senior scientist with the polar climate programme at the Norwegian Polar Institute, in Tromso, explaining why all of this is happening.

Tromso, in the far north of Norway and home to the world’s northernmost university, at the same time is preparing itself for the economic bonanza that the melting will bring.

Nalan Koc, however, is not as excited as other Tromso inhabitants. In a Power Point presentation of this Arctic apocalypse, she starkly lists the myriad ways in which the environment is fundamentally altering. “Amplified by positive feedback, the Arctic is seeing increased precipitation, declining snow cover, rising river flows, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, retreating summer sea ice, rising sea levels, and ocean salinity changes making the water less saline.”

The talk, despite its subject, is deceptively banal. Where are the four horsemen? A moon turned blood-red? Instead, the end of days is being announced not by skeletonous biblical heralds but in bullet points and embedded videos that take three minutes to load.

The permafrost is melting under tundra that previously was stable, she explains, buckling roads and highways as the ground beneath them gives way.

In the marine environment, sea temperatures are rising and the ice cover is melting. Ice-dependent species such as the polar bear, which the Norwegians more accurately call “isbjorn” or “ice bear,” as well as the walrus and the ringed seal all face an uncertain future. Some scientists believe the polar bear will be extinct by mid-century.

“When you’ve been around up here for as long as I have, you begin to see it with your own eyes from year to year,” she says. “You can feel it in your bones.”

Last year saw a record low extent of Arctic sea ice cover - 4.3 million square kilometres - more than 40 percent below averages in the 1980s and more than 20 percent below the previous record low in 2005. “But more important than the extent is the volume of the ice. Most of the older thicker ice is not surviving from one summer to the next. As of 2007, most of the ice was three or four-year-old ice. As of 2008, most ice is just one year old.”

The massive ice loss and thinning is forcing scientists to quickly ratchet lower even their worst expectations - the 2007 melting came some 30 years ahead of model predictions.

In 2004, it was predicted that the ice would have melted sufficiently to allow commercial traffic in the Arctic Ocean by 2090. In 2007, it was predicted that commercial traffic would be able to cross by 2040. As of 2008, the predictions are for some time in the next five years, with the first start-up possibly in 2009. Models now predict an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer some time between 2013 and 2040.

The last time the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in the summer was over a million years ago.

Her colleague, Kit Kovacs, the Biodiversity Research Programme leader at the institute says: “The changes are happening so rapidly that scientists are having trouble processing it all. From initial tests to publishing papers takes at a minimum months or a couple of years, but change is happening much faster than that.

“The biodiversity loss is just as profound as if there were a loss of the Amazon rainforest within the space of five years.”

***

Oil and gas bonanza:

What looks like the end for the polar bear, however, looks like Christmas for resource companies and European energy security concerns.

Johan Petter Barlindhaug, the chair of North Energy, a northern-Norway-based oil-and-gas start-up currently exploring energy sources on the Norwegian continental shelf, says the melting Arctic could offer northern peoples, who have historically lived in a very much underdeveloped region, a chance to have similar standards of living as those who live in the cities and towns further south.

“Climate change poses lots of threats, but it also opens up a range of possibilities,” he says.

Oil companies like North Energy and Norwegian energy giant Statoil Hydro believe the Arctic holds as much as 25 percent of the worlds undiscovered oil and gas deposits - as much as the combined reserves of Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Russia’s Gazprom already has approximately 34 trillion cubic metres (113 trillion cubic feet) of gas under development in the Barents Sea and Moscow is claiming territory in the Arctic that contains an estimated 586 billion barrels of oil.

Mineral resources may also abound, particularly coal, iron, lead, copper, nickel, zinc and sulphides, as well as precious minerals such as gold and diamonds. Recent diamond discoveries in the Canadian Arctic have made the country, which previously didn’t produce any of the stones, the third biggest exporter of diamonds in the world.

On maps that place the North Pole at the centre of the world, instead of the equator, Mr Barlindhaug shows how a melting Arctic also opens up three different shortcuts for shipping goods between Europe and Asia - routes that will save shipping firms, exporters and importers, and the world’s navies and smugglers - billions of euros.

The shipping industry is hoping for a 20 percent saving, he enthuses, with still greater savings for the megaships that cannot fit through the Suez or Panama canals and have to sail round the tips of Africa or South America.

Although Mr Barlindhaug believes that the third shortcut - straight across the pole - offers the most potential.

“The Northwest and Northeast Passages aren’t as important as building ports on Iceland and in Norway and Russia,” he says. “This is because the Canadians view the Northwest Passage as domestic, and there’s something of the same with the Northeast Passage, which is within Russian borders.

“In any case, international waters closer to the North Pole provide routes that are much shorter. But it’s also a matter of speed and cost. Between the Canadian or Russian islands, you can’t pick up much speed while you’re navigating through them. It’s too narrow.

“But at 20-25 knots across the pole, then you’re really saving some money. It would take just five days to cross from the Bering Sea to the Barent Sea. It doesn’t need to be completely ice free.”

He then moves on to the expanded fishing opportunities and potential for discoveries of new medicines derived from invertebrates living in extreme polar environments that round out the economic bounty becoming available as the climate warms up.

Some 10 percent of global white fish stocks swim through the waters of the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and near Iceland, offering catches worth billions of euros.

Nonetheless, “bio-prospecting” for new medicines is by far the greater catch, believes Mr Barlindhaug: “These invertebrates are chemical factories that will produce the next generation of medicines. They’re far more important than the fish that is up there.”

In a visit to brand-spanking new labs at the University of Tromso, Jeanette Andersen, of Mabcent-SFI, a public-private bio-prospecting outfit launched last year with €20.5 million (180m NOK) in funding, explains the potential for new treatments and cures coming from molluscs that poison passing fish or colourless mini-starfish that love the cold.

“The marine environment in the high Arctic is unparalleled with respect to combination of temperature and light regimes,” she says. “This implies evolution of organisms with unique physiological and biochemical adaptations.”

She says that the potential is enormous, from antibiotics, chemotherapy, and painkillers to anti-bacterials, anti-oxidents, anti-inflammatory medicines, but Mabcent also hopes to discover creatures that have cosmetic and industrial applications, and even better food and drink preservation.

“But all high-profit,” she enthuses, describing how her biologist and chemist colleagues dive off into the depths of the Arctic Ocean like a team of submariner Indiana Joneses, before they race back to the university to freeze the hundreds of different specimens. They then grind them into a pulp that is investigated by viking boffins at stupidly expensive machines who identify the wild new molecules produced by the exotic biochemistry of these nigh-on alien creatures.

“Living in environments that range from 1.8 to 8 degrees celsius, these organisms are adapted to cold temperatures. As you warm up the metabolism, you speed up the effectiveness of enzymes, so the thinking is that enzymes existing at these temperatures will work faster in warm humans.”

However, some of the different industries opening up as Arctic waters open up pose a threat to others.

Pooh-poohing the idea that oil and gas exploration threatens the environment, North Energy’s Mr Barlindhaug reckons it’s a massive expansion of unsustainable fishing practices and illegal fishing that pose the greatest threat, particularly to bio-prospecting.

“Bottom trawling is much more damaging than oil and gas exploration, as the you find oil all over the rocks and sand on the sea bed. These creatures are used to it - there’s nothing to worry about from oil and gas exploration.

“Bioprospectors should be more scared about increased fishing activity. That’ll damage these organisms much more,” he insists.

Jeanette back at Mabcent is not so sure: “We need to be worried about oil and gas exploration. What Mr Barlindhaug said is too easy an answer to the question of oil spills. Some organisms will adapt, yes, but others are very vulnerable.”

In the second part of the EUobserver’s look at the politics and business of the melting Arctic, appearing on Monday, we look at Kirkenes, a small harbour town sometimes called ‘Little Murmansk’ for its 10 percent Russian population, and how it is set to be transformed by the oil and gas bonanza opening up as the ice disappears.

Friday, Nov. 7, 2008

Japan asked to join new Arctic shipping regime.

By KEISUKE OKADA, Staff writer, The Japan Times online.
Japan should join hands with the United States and other Arctic states in ongoing multilateral efforts to create a new shipping regime in the Arctic Ocean, a U.S. official said Thursday in Tokyo.

International cooperation is vital to ensure that shipping in the Arctic is “safe, secure and reliable,” according to Mead Treadwell, chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, an advisory body to the president and Congress.

As a result of receding sea ice, caused by global warming, the Arctic is expected to open up for global shipping in the future. This will present strategic options for Japan’s industry in light of shorter shipping routes from Japan to Europe via the Arctic Ocean, Treadwell said at a media conference in Tokyo.

The eight-nation Arctic Council, established in 1996 as a high-level intergovernmental forum to promote cooperation among Arctic states, is currently working on an Arctic marine shipping assessment, due to be completed in 2009, according to Treadwell.

Aware of the strategic importance, China and South Korea have already joined the Arctic Council as observers and Treadwell recommended that Japan do likewise.

Aside from its potential for shipping, the Arctic is surfacing as a new battleground for energy resources. In August 2007, Russia stunned the world by planting its national flag in a titanium capsule on the seabed beneath the North Pole, causing other Arctic states — the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway — to scramble for a share of a potential new oil bonanza.

Asia-EU Summit to Address ‘Financial Tsunami.’
Analysis by Antoaneta Bezlova, IPS, October 23, 2008

BEIJING, Oct 22 (IPS) - Cast in the role of global saviour in the unfolding financial turmoil, China is playing host to a meeting of Asian and European leaders in Beijing this week that is expected to castigate the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism and press for a reshaped global economic order.

“Can Asia be global economy’s best hope,” asked an editorial in the Economic Observer last week. Noting that Asia hardly played any role during the global economic recovery after the Great Depression of 1929, the paper suggested that the continent’s established and emerging economies constituted the world’s best chance for recovery after the “financial tsunami”.

“And even if the Wall Street demise does not instantly signify the triumph of Mahathir’s Asian model, it is the beginning of a much-needed readjustment of economic power in the world,” it concluded.

More than 40 leaders will converge in the Chinese capital for the 7th Asian European Meeting (ASEM) summit from Oct. 24 to 25 to discuss the global financial crisis and a plan for joint action.

Aside from the 27 EU countries, 10 ASEAN countries, the European Commission, China, Japan and South Korea, the summit will be attended by three other Asian countries — India, Pakistan and Mongolia. The talks will be co-chaired by France, which holds the European Union’s presidency, and China.

***

“China maintains that the international community should strengthen cooperation and jointly handle the current financial crisis on the basis of equal consultation,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing on Tuesday. But he warned that “developing countries’ interests and concerns should be fully respected and safeguarded.”

China — a major emerging economy which sits on 1.8 trillion US dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves — has been looked upon as an important player to lead the way out of the global financial meltdown.

U.S. Treasury Department officials and politicians have all called on Beijing to show a pro-active attitude and join efforts with the Western world to fight the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Qin Gang said Beijing had adopted a “responsible and constructive attitude” in dealing with the crisis. But few details have emerged over the role China is expected to play. Latest economic figures show that the country’s economy is also vulnerable to the effects of the global economic slowdown.

The National Statistics Bureau said on Monday the economy expanded by just nine percent in the third quarter, the slowest rate in five years. By comparison, the economy grew 10.6 percent in the first quarter and 10.1 in the second quarter of 2008. The slowdown was blamed on plummeting demand for Chinese goods as consumers in the U.S. and Europe cut back on spending.

In recent weeks Beijing has grown more critical over the lack of financial surveillance in developed economies, which it blames for the spiralling crisis. The deputy governor of China’s central bank, Yi Gang, who took part in the emergency G20 meeting in Washington earlier this month, chastised the International Monetary Fund for allowing too much leverage in the system and failing to exert control of big Western financial institutions.

He told the media that “weak financial-policy discipline resulted in excess global liquidity and disorderly capital flows”. The line has been echoed in a numerous articles and columns in the Chinese media attempting to dissect the reasons for the downfall of Wall Street powerhouses. Some have sung an “eulogy to U.S. capitalism” while others have proclaimed the end of the “era of Washington consensus”.

But there has been less certainty about what would replace the current order of international capitalism. “The demise of Wall Street Anglo-Saxon model doesn’t signify the victory of China’s financial modus operandi,” said a commentary in the 21st Century Economic Herald.

“Even as we criticise Wall Street’s excesses, we should be aware that China’s model of financial operation is not necessarily the answer,” it said. “True, Chinese banks are stable and they don’t pursue excessive profits blindly. But they are far from free from red tape and administrative interference.”

According to Qin Gang the ASEM summit offers the “perfect platform” for leaders to discuss ways of dealing with the crisis.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a global system of financial supervision that would empower international bodies including the International Monetary fund to monitor global markets and act as early warning systems. French President Nicolas Sarkozy — one of the summit’s coordinators — has pledged to use the meeting as a platform to persuade Asian nations to take part in a plan for the rebuilding of international capitalism.

“What has happened is an act of treason against the values of capitalism; it is not a result of the market economy,” said Sarkozy during a speech Tuesday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“The most simple solution” for the global summits would be to bring the G8 (group of eight) largest industrialised nations together with the five biggest emerging economies, led by China and India, he told European politicians.

Chinese analysts anticipate that the summit may produce an agreement for the establishment of a joint trust fund between Asia and Europe, similar to the one launched during the second ASEM summit in London in 1998, to combat the Asian financial crisis.

—————

The update comes October 31, 2008 to the original posting of October 25, 2008 and it deals specifically with the place of Mongolia in all of the above. This because of a breakfast meeting at the Asia Society in New York today, October 31, 2008 - the traditional Halloween day, and I will mention after a few further lines why I say this.

The meeting today had the title - Mongolia Rising: The Incredible and Continuing Story of Mongolia’s Emergence as a Free Market Democracy.

At the breakfast meeting spoke the US Ambassador to Mongolia, Mr. Mark C. Minton, and in the audience sat also Ambassador Ms. Enkhtsetseg Ochir, the Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the UN. Jamie F. Metzl, the Exec. VP of Asia Society chaired.

Strangely, when I looked up the website of the Asia Society, I found that on October 31, 2005  The Asia Society  Washington DC Center had a meeting on Mongolia. Here the strange coincidence of the Halloween date repeating itself exactly three years later and my possibility to compare the progress of relations between the US and Mongolia in the last three years - to the date.

The information from 2005 - http://www.asiasociety.org/speeches/us-m…

Strangely, already at that first meeting there was a reference to Halloween, but that was a very serious meeting - “US-Mongolia Relations: History and Future Prospects.” That meeting, according to the pdf had a large cast of Ambassadors participating, including Tony Lake, and it was arranged before President Bush trip to Mongolia - the first Summit of a US President with a Mongolian President. Since then there was a return visit - a Summit of the presidents in the Washington DC White House in 2007.

Mr. Mark Minton, a career member of the US Foreign Service got to UlaanBataar in December 2006 after having served in Korea and Japan, so he was in Mongolia for the last two years of the US- Mongolia rapprochement.

So why Mongolia? It is a country, the size of Alaska, of 3 million people, and 45% live now in the capital area urban environment. Culturally they are close to Tibet and are of the same religious belief as the Tibetan Buddhism, thus I would assume also close culturally to Bhutan, but they were a nomadic people.

In the 20th century that brushed with Soviets, Chinese and Japanese occupation and are fiercely intent on preserving their freedom. Being geographically wedged in between China and Russia, they want that “third neighbor” that geography did not give them. So thy go the long distance and want the US as their third neighbor. To reach the US they developed their democracy so they can interact with countries beyond their two immediate neighbors. They reorganized their army as a peace making army and they participate in UN peace missions like Sierra Leone, and with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. in exchange the US established an AID program involved in preventive health care and in construction workers education as the transformation from the nomadic lifestyle created needs for new skills in the housing sector; further the US Peace Corps are active in Mongolia - it is actually the largest per capita Peace Corps location. But obviously the US does not have Mongolia to itself, the Japanese foreign aid is the largest in Mongolia and the EU, Australia, and Canada are also active.

Democratization made large progress - there is transparency, a judiciary, there are elections and they have a market economy and the leaders are involved in diplomacy. They are visited often by the Dalai Lama and the university is in exchange with the University of Alaska.

Obviously, the US is interested in Mongolia’s mineral resources - so is China. Peabody Coal and Rio Tinto International are active in Mongolia. Hilton International opened this year. Mongolia is becoming a middle income country. It is landlocked but is starting to take advantage from its location by becoming a country of transit between China and Russia.

In the democracy department there was a blemish recently when after the summer elections there were riots. The Ambassador explained those as inexperience because they have an army but not good police service. The fact was that the army, that was trained for peace work, did not know how to act when called in after the opposition protests about the elections. The authorities panicked and the army was inefficient.

An adviser to Nature Conservancy criticised the ambassador as he said nothing about the environmental problems and the mining industry. Further there are issues resulting from foreigners buying up grazing land for meet production and farming.

The nuclear issue came up as Mongolia wants to be part of the six Party talks on North Korea programs. Further, what was not mentioned is that Mongolia declared its nuclear-weapon-free status. In effect I have in front of me UN General Assembly document A/c.1/63/L.28 where Kazakhstan, Morocco, and Mongolia brought up together Mongolia’s rejection of nuclear weapons. Also, in recognition of their specific situation, Japan let Mongolia host one of the six-Party talks commissions.

Japan is also looking into the problem with desert dust from Mongolia reaching Japan.

From all this material, what is China doing when insisting in bringing in Mongolia to the meeting they hosted between the 27 EU countries and the four major Asian economies, when besides Japan, India and Korea, they also invited Pakistan and Mongolia? We understood Pakistan as sort of balance to India, but now we also figure that bringing in Mongolia has more to do with trying to redirect this country towards Europe and weakening a runaway relationship with the US directly, or via Japan.

The bottom line is that because of size and economic potential, Mongolia is a country with much higher importance then it might be assumed from the mere 3 million people. China night then want to keep it in its own orbit and to guard it from  “third neighbors’” exaggerated footholds.

[EUobserver Comment] No easy answers to the status of Ossetia, Abkhazia and others - 24.10.2008.

The collapse last week (on the first day!) of EU backed peace talks between
Georgia and Russia to resolve the crisis in the breakaway regions of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, with the sides unable to enter the same room, serves
merely to illustrate that there are no easy answers to the question of the
status of Ossetia, Abkhazia, and indeed many other territories in the
world, writes MEP Richard Corbett.

 http://euobserver.com/9/26983/?rk=1
===============

Strained relations between Russians, EU monitors in Georgia - 24.10.2008.

Russia is not informing the EU mission of their deployment of troops, nor
is it allowing observers to enter Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Hansjorg
Haber, the head of EU’s civilian monitoring mission to Georgia (EUMM) has
said.

 http://euobserver.com/9/26993/?rk=1

==============
 Romania opens door to Gazprom pipeline - 24.10.2008.

Romania is open to investing in the Gazprom pipeline South Stream, not just
the EU Nabucco project, designed to reduce energy dependency on Russia,
Romanian minister of economy Varujan Vosganian said on Thursday as general
elections loom.

 http://euobserver.com/9/26988/?rk=1

 The following is in some sense a continuation of the US-India nuclear deal, and we ask if it is not the prelude to a US-Iran deal? This, because of what seems, according to the Japanese, an approach that takes the other side on its word - good for nuclear industry interests, but totally devote answers to the enrichment/proliferation issues - as these are left outside the scope of the agreement. Above would thus seem ideal for the Iranians, who could thus send feelers now to ask for similar agreements. Can these agreements avoid the dreaded Asian nuclear arms race? Is this a legacy the Bush Administration wants  to be remembered for?

****

North Korea cuts deal to exit blacklist: Enrichment now not factor; Japan to snub food aid.
Kyodo News, Friday, Oct. 10, 2008.

The United States has told Japan it will remove North Korea from its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations by the end of the month because Washington has reached a certain degree of understanding with Pyongyang about verifying the North’s nuclear programs, Tokyo sources said Thursday.

Japan has demanded that the U.S. keep North Korea on the list until the hermit state makes progress on reinvestigating the fate of the Japanese nationals it abducted in the 1970s and ’80s.

According to the sources, the top nuclear negotiators from the U.S. and North Korea have broadly agreed on verification of the plutonium program declared by North Korea while setting aside scrutiny of its uranium enrichment program and nuclear proliferation activities as conditions for removing Pyongyang from the list.

The deal was struck during a meeting Oct. 1 in Pyongyang between Christopher Hill, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Kim Kye Gwan, his North Korean counterpart.

The U.S. also told Japan it plans to continue providing food aid to North Korea, a humanitarian assistance program it started in June, and asked Japan to consider joining the program, the sources said, adding Japan plans to reject the U.S. request for food assistance because it hasn’t seen any progress on the abduction issue.

The U.S. plans have already been reported to Prime Minister Taro Aso, the sources said.

It is also believed that Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for the six-party talks on denuclearizing North Korea, presented the plans during a meeting Wednesday in Tokyo with Akitaka Saiki, director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, the sources said.

The Japanese government will accept the U.S. plan to take North Korea off the terror-sponsor list on condition that Pyongyang carry out the deal with Washington.

—————–
Kyodo News, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008

North Korea sanctions extended again: Ban on imports, port calls to last six more months due to inaction on nuclear, abduction issues.

Japan on Friday extended its ban on port calls by North Korean-registered vessels and all imports of goods from the country for another six months, citing the lack of progress in denuclearization and its failure to come clean on its past abductions of Japanese nationals.

In addition to these two sanctions, which were to expire next Monday, Japan also continues to maintain other measures, including barring entry to all North Korean nationals, except for those who are residents of Japan, and prohibiting the export of luxury goods to North Korea.

Approved by the Cabinet on Friday morning, it is the fourth six-month extension since the sanctions were imposed on Oct. 14, 2006, following North Korea’s nuclear test and earlier ballistic missile tests over the Sea of Japan the same year.

“After considering comprehensively the current circumstances concerning North Korea, including the six-party talks, U.N. Security Council resolutions and the moves of the international community, and given that the abduction issue has yet to be resolved, we decided to extend these measures,” Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone told a news conference.

Nakasone said the extension was made because North Korea has yet to agree to the specifics of a verification regime under the six-party denuclearization framework, yet to begin the agreed-on reinvestigations of its abductions and is moving toward reactivating a nuclear facility after suspending the disablement process.

But he added that Japan has no immediate plans to further expand the sanctions’ scope.

North Korea had agreed to launch a committee by autumn to reinvestigate the abductions and Japan had promised to lift its sanctions on chartered flights and entry of North Korean nationals in return once the probes began.

However, following the abrupt Sept. 1 resignation announcement by then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, North Korea told Japan the panel will not be set up until Pyongyang confirms the policy of the new Japanese administration.

Since the launch of Prime Minister Taro Aso’s new government last month, Japan has continued to urge North Korean authorities on multiple occasions through diplomatic channels in Beijing to move ahead swiftly with the reinvestigations, a Foreign Ministry official said.

Aso, who was foreign minister in 2006 when Japan began the sanctions, pledged last week to relatives of the missing abductees that he will make an all-out effort to resolve the abduction issue and noted it is “a fight against time.”

Japan imposed unilateral sanctions after North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan in July 2006, banning the entry of the North Korean cargo-passenger ferry Mangyongbong-92 into Japanese ports and barring North Korean officials, ship crews and chartered flights from entering Japan.

It also took measures in September that year to practically freeze remittances to the North in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the missile launches.

After North Korea conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, Japan expanded the scope of the sanctions to include banning entry for all North Korea-registered ships.

==========
Kyodo News, Monday, Oct. 13, 2008

Aso downplays removal of N. Korea from U.S. blacklist.

The U.S. move to strike North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism won’t prevent finding a resolution to Pyongyang’s abductions of Japanese nationals, Prime Minister Taro Aso said Sunday.

“We will be able to hold sufficient discussions on the abductions in the process of negotiations to come. It does not mean a loss of leverage,” Aso told reporters in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

He showed some acceptance of the U.S. move, saying, “I understand that they took the step considering it would be better to do something about (the nuclear issue) than not doing anything.” The decision is “one way” to move the nuclear disablement forward, he added.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, also the minister in charge of the abduction issue, said: “Japan has no reluctance to cooperate in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. At the same time, we have a strong feeling that the abduction issue should not be left out. We will take up the issue without fail in the six-party talks.”

Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone issued a statement saying Japan will continue to work closely with the U.S. and others to seek progress in resolving the abduction issue.

“Japan will do its utmost, in close cooperation with the United States and other countries concerned, to push forward Japan-North Korea relations, including the abduction issue, alongside the nuclear issue,” the statement said.

Nakasone noted in the statement that President George W. Bush expressed to Aso in a phone call prior to the announcement his understanding of the strong concerns among the Japanese public and his sympathy with the families of the missing abductees.

Nakasone also expressed hope of cooperating with other members of the six-party talks to adopt an agreement on the specifics of a protocol for verifying North Korea’s nuclear programs and facilities based on a deal reached between Washington and Pyongyang.

“Japan believes that in order to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, which is the goal of the six-party talks, it is extremely important to build a concrete framework for effective verification,” Nakasone said.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said in Washington on Saturday that the U.S. decision was “extremely regrettable.”

“I believe abductions amount to terrorist acts,” Nakagawa said. He was in Washington to take part in Group of Seven meetings on the global financial crisis.

Nakagawa, who headed a nonpartisan parliamentarians’ group to seek a resolution to the abductions, met with Bush prior to the delisting announcement. He said he referred to Shigeru and Sakie Yokota, the parents of abductee Megumi Yokota, who North Korea says is dead.

Sakie Yokota, 72, met Bush in 2006 at the White House in seeking U.S. help on the abduction issue.

“I talked with the Yokotas over the phone a while ago and they were very shocked” by the U.S. decision, Nakagawa told reporters.

TRADE WITH RUSSIA HAS BROUGHT PROSPERITY TO THE FORMERLY SLEEPING SHIMANE PREFECTURE OF JAPAN.

People Fight to Save World’s Deepest Lake.

By MIKE ECKEL, AP, August 10, 2008

filed at AP under: SCIENCE NEWS, WORLD NEWS

BOLSHIYE KOTY, Russia (Aug. 10) - The world’s oldest, deepest and biggest freshwater lake is growing warmer, dirtier and more crowded.
Lyubov Izmestieva is charting these insidious changes. Marina Rikhvanova is fighting them. And the fate of one of the world’s rarest ecosystems, a turquoise jewel set in the vast Siberian taiga, hangs in the balance.
‘A Kind of Red Line for Humanity’

Misha Japaridze,