London, United Kingdom (AHN) – International protest is building about the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange this week. Assange is being held in a British jail awaiting extradition to Sweden on rape charges.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to extradite him to the United States to face espionage charges after his Web site released more than 250,000 documents that exposed secret State Department communications. However, political leaders in Australia, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere say Assange is a political prisoner who is being punished for exercising rights of the free press.

Some of the harshest criticism is coming from Australia, where hundreds of people rallied Thursday in three cities to protest Assange’s arrest. Assange is an Australian citizen.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said Assange was merely doing the job of any journalist by publishing the documents. “The blame for any violations of the law should fall on the persons who gave the documents to Wikileaks,” Rudd said. “The Americans are responsible for that.”

The State Department communications, called “cables,” described Rudd as a “control freak” and said that he made mistakes as Australia’s foreign minister.

Rudd said he was unconcerned about the criticisms.

He also said Australia would offer consular help to Assange.

Consular help refers to sending diplomats to meet with a citizen of their own country who is arrested abroad to determine whether legal assistance can be arranged.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva described the arrest of Assange as a crime.

“I want to express my protest against this offense against free expression,” Lula said. “I will use the presidential blog to express my protest.”

He also encouraged the international news media to be more vigorous in defending Assange.

“The young man who is giving so much trouble to the diplomacy of the United States was arrested and so far I have not seen any protest defending free expression,” Lula said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described the U.S. government’s efforts to prosecute Assange as hypocritical.

“If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr. Assange in prison,” Putin said during a press conference Thursday. “That’s what, democracy?”

Putin’s remarks appear to be a response to a February 2010 cable from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that said, “Russian democracy has disappeared and the government is an oligarchy run by the security services.”

In Mexico, the Journalists Club put up a plaque in their Mexico City headquarters honoring Assange for his “contribution to the conscience of mankind.”

The State Department documents published by Wikileaks described Mexico’s difficulties in managing its war with drug cartels. The cables described the government’s efforts as ineffective, often corrupt and divided among competing administrators.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Research Service is saying any U.S. prosecution of Assange would face unprecedented legal and diplomatic challenges.

A 24-page report from the government agency examines how the Justice Department could apply U.S. criminal laws to a foreign news operation.

“We are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it,” the report said.

The prosecution of Assange creates First Amendment and diplomatic hurdles “based on concerns about government censorship,” the report said.

Some members of Congress, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I.-Conn) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), say Assange should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917.

However, the Congressional Research Service report said no single law forbids the news media from publishing diplomatic cables only a “patchwork” of statutes that leave unclear answers.

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Mumbai, India (AHN) – India is set to gate-crash into the exclusive three-member club of nuclear triads by 2012 with its first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, which is to be commissioned in either late 2011 or early 2012. Arihant means “destroyer of enemies” in the Hindi language.

Only three countries in the world currently have a complete nuclear weapon triad, which means the capability to fire nuclear-tipped missiles from land, air and sea. These countries are the US, Russia and China.

Indian Navy chief Adm. Nirmal Verma announced Thursday that the country’s crucial underwater leg of nuclear capability would be the third arm of the country’s nuclear defense, which is presently made up of road and rail-mobile ballistic missiles as well as fighter jets such as Mirage 2000s and Sukhoi-30 MKIs, all of which are able to deliver nuclear weapons.

Speaking ahead of the forthcoming Navy Day on Saturday, Verma said, “When INS Arihant goes to sea, it will be on a deterrent patrol. The triad will then be in place… the aim is to make it as effective as possible.”

The INS Arihant was launched in Vizag in July 2009. After it is commissioned, it will possess potent SLBM capabilities, which would complete India’s nuclear triad and bolster its position among the nuclear power club.

Speaking on this development, sources within the Navy said that Arihant remained a top secret project until its launch last year. It is first of three nuclear-powered submarines that India is currently building with help from Russia.

Clarifying India’s stand on nuclear deterrence, Verma also said, “We have a declared policy of no-first-use, but we have Arihant. We have a triad in place now, but we have to use it as effectively as possible. We have Arihant going within two years and there is progress in the project, despite some hiccups. We will be within time and commission the vessel by 2012.”

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Moscow, Russian Federation (AHN) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Europe could end up in a new arms race in the following decade if Moscow fails to reach an accord on missile defense cooperation with the West.

His comments came during a state-of-the-nation speech in Kremlin on Tuesday.

The president received an okay response from NATO member nations when he presented a blueprint of joint NATO-Russia missile defense shield during the NATO summit earlier this month.

Analysts translated Medvedev’s message as a blunt warning the West to either become a fully-fledged Russian partner or a potential foe.

Addressing the gathering of top decision-makers in presence of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Medvedev said that Russia is facing this alternative in the coming decade.

“Either we agree on anti-missile defence and opt for fully-fledged joint co-operation, or – if we fail to get constructive co-operation – (we will face) a new round of the arms race,” the president added.

Medvedev also warned that if NATO would refuse to sign an agreement with Russia, Moscow would have to reconsider about deploying new offensive weapons and could also end up pumping billions into a new nuclear arms program.

NATO has expressed its willingness to closely cooperate with Russia. However, it has not given Moscow any hint about its readiness to integrate its defense architecture as Russia wants to see.

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New Delhi, India (AHN) – India and Russia, who have been friends since the days of India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, are now ready to go beyond the traditional bilateral issues of military, space and strategy. This was the unanimous feeling emerging out of a recent meeting between India’s External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Both the ministers met on Thursday to prepare grounds for the scheduled meeting between Manmohan Singh and Dmitry Medvedev, prime ministers of India and Russia, respectively, to be held in December this year.

The new areas for cooperation, as zeroed in during the Krishna-Ivanov meeting, are civilian aircraft project, pharmaceutical, diamonds, IT and petroleum.

The Thursday meeting was between representatives of India and Russia to a joint body, called the Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical, Economic and Cultural Cooperation. Both the sides also signed a protocol on the occasion with an idea to reach the target of USD 20 billion in terms of bilateral trade by the year 2015. The current year’s figure in this regard stands at USD 10 billion.

In addition to this, the two countries also talked about atomic energy and space sectors and tied the loose ends in this regard as well as discussing the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft project between Russian and Indian armies. The Union Cabinet of India is currently considering the proposal.

India also finds pharmaceuticals to be a “promising area” where it could look for increasing exports and address the trade balance in wake of increased Russian oil imports. In this regard, India has expressed complete agreement with the Russian vision document for the year 2020, under which it plans to decrease its dependence on imports by concentrating on joint ventures in key areas.

According to the sources, both India and Russia are keen to encourage pharmaceutical trade because of their high value-low volume currently and also due to the fact that Russia has to airlift most of the pharmaceutical consignments to fulfill its needs within Russia and Kazakhstan.

Therefore, the countries are seeking joint ventures in pharmaceuticals as well as in gas exploration.

Meanwhile, sources claim that both the countries are likely to sign on the dotted line for a fifth-generation fighter design contract during Medvedev’s visit to India in December. Russian company Sukhoi and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have already agreed this year to work jointly to develop the fifth-generation fighter jet, which will be based on Russia’s T-50 prototype fifth-generation fighter.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – With a new majority taking control of the House next year, lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill on Monday to tackle a backlog of bills during a “lame-duck” session. Their agenda includes whether to extend Bush administration tax cuts for all or only for the middle class and elections to new leadership posts for the coming 112th Congress.

Lawmakers this week will return to work on a dozen annual appropriations bills for the 2011 fiscal year. They passed a stopgap measure on their last day of session in September before the mid-term elections, temporarily funding government operations.

Debate will also focus on tax cuts implemented in 2001 and 2003 that are due to expire in January.

Democrats want a permanent extension of tax breaks for middle class families earning less than $250,000 a year. Republicans, however, want to extend tax cuts for all, including high-income earners.

The GOP proposal would cost the government $3.7 trillion over 10 years, while the Democratic plan would cost $3 trillion.

Together with the 9.6 percent unemployment rate, the issue has been a source of vitriol between Democrats and Republicans during the months before the mid-term elections. But leaders from both parties issued overtures in the past week.

“I’m going to meet with both the Republican and Democratic leaders… and we’re going to sit down and discuss how we move forward,” President Barack Obama said in South Korea on Friday, two days before he returned to the White House.

“My number one priority is making sure that we make the middle class tax cuts permanent, that we give certainty to the 98 percent of Americans who are affected by those tax breaks,” the president added. “I continue to believe that extending permanently the upper-income tax cuts would be a mistake and that we can’t afford it.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who earlier this month backtracked on his comment that the GOP’s overarching goal is to make Obama a one-term president, said in a statement on Thursday, “I’m willing to listen to what the president has in mind for protecting Americans from tax increases.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the fourth highest-ranking lawmaker in his chamber, wants a compromise that would extend tax cuts for families earning $1 million instead of $250,000.

“I hear Sen. McConnell talking about small business but under his plan, people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates… would get a tax break,” Schumer said on “Face the Nation” on CBS on Sunday. “It would much, much better to raise the limit to $1 million rather than give it to people who are multibillionaires… the only group in America who’s had a gain in income.”

Lawmakers will also take up the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Moscow. The agreement was signed by President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart in April but still requires ratification by the U.S. Congress.

The United States and Russia hold more than 90 percent of nuclear weapons worldwide. The new START replaces a treaty that was signed in 1991 just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and that expired last year.

The old treaty limited warheads to 2,200 and launch vehicles to 1,600. The new START limits deployed warheads to 1,550 and launchers to 800.

Top Republicans who do not support the current treaty have raised concerns about modernization and missile defense.

“We need to modernize our nuclear force, the weapons that are left, to make sure they continue to be a deterrent,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We need to make sure that we can employ — deploy missile defense systems that are apart from START.”

“[Sen.] Jon Kyl is working with the administration to get better modernization to make sure that missile defense is not connected to START,” added Graham.

The lame-duck session is scheduled until Friday. No votes were on the calendar on Monday and it is unclear if lawmakers will accomplish the items on their agenda, which could also include a bill in the Senate repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law against openly gay members of the military.

Side-by-side their work on the floor, they will be electing new leaders for the coming Congress in January, when House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) takes the speakership and current Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) becomes the minority leader. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will remain at the helm of a caucus made weaker by losses in the elections.

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Dead Sea, Jordan (TML) – Nuclear experts from around the world were climbing into craters and clamouring up landslides as they gathered in a desolate corner of Jordan beside the Dead Sea to test their ability to uncover evidence of an unauthorized test explosion.

Some 35 experts from 20 countries poured over the 1,000 square-kilometer (390-square-mile) area during the first two weeks of November, dressed in protective suits and hauling monitors and three-dimensional maps across the desert landscape in the simulation. Later they assembled in campsites to collect and analyze their data.

Jordan itself has no nuclear weapons, nor is it known to aspire to develop them. But, the kingdom does want to become a respected member of the global nuclear community as it embarks on plans to produce energy from atomic power. Fortunately for Jordan, the terrain near the Dead Sea looks like it just experienced a nuclear explosion.

“The sinkholes, landslides, depressions and craters near the Dead Sea provided a perfect venue to conduct the tests,” Matjaz Prah, of the Croatian State Office for Nuclear Safety and director of the 10-day exercise, told The Media Line.

Near Ghour Al-Haditha, a poor farming town, nearly 800 sinkholes big enough to swallow factories and homes punctuate the landscape, the result of Dead Sea’s declining sea level. The sporadic nature of the giant holes is very similar to aftermath of nuclear explosions, explained Prah. Indeed, the massive cavities make the landscape nestling the southern shores of the Dead Sea largely inaccessible to all but the small community of poor farmers who live there.

The exercise was sponsored by the Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), whose task is to develop mechanisms for monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Vienna-based organization includes 153 countries that ratified nuclear ban treaty, in addition to a further 35 states that have agreed to endorse the agreement.

Tibor Toth, the CTBTO’s executive secretary, said the goal of the experiments was to establish worldwide detection system that relies on reports from 337 facilities.

Nearly half of detection facilities are located in the Middle East, said Toth.

While the CTBT has yet to go into force, the five countries allowed to have nuclear weapons have all adopted unilateral moratoriums on nuclear testing. India and Pakistan followed suit after they conducted tests in 1998.

But the risks of unauthorized tests remain. North Korea tested devices in 2006 and 2009 while other countries, including three in the Middle East — Israel, Egypt and Iran — have signed but not ratified the treaty. Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons, but it is believed by foreign experts to have an arsenal of 100 or more. Iran has been accused by the West of secretly developing nuclear technology for military purposes, a claim Tehran denies.

Meanwhile, to Jordan’s north, Syria is suspected of having undertaken a nuclear-development program that was cut short by a September 2007 air raid Damascus accuses Israel of staging. Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said November 9th that the nuclear watchdog has been pressing Syria to admit inspectors to at least two suspect sites.

In theory, Jordan could find itself in the middle of a nuclear confrontation between Israel and Iran. But, the exercise on the Dead Sea last week was purely scientific and technical, said Darweesh Jasem, assistant general manager of Jordan’s natural resources department. The exercise also boosted the ability of Jordanians to handle nuclear inspections, which officials see as a facet of the kingdom’s ambition to build its own nuclear reactors.

“We had been proposing holding such an exercise in Jordan since 2004. We are very excited about what we can learn from sharing this type of experience with established experts from the world,” he told The Media Line, noting that at least 13 Jordanian experts were among inspectors.

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The kingdom plans to build a nuclear facility near the port city of Aqaba to provide energy and potable water for the energy-poor, drought-stricken nation. The two 1,000-megawatt reactors it envisions developing over the next 15 years will cost billions of dollars, and even more, if it embarks on the second stage of expanding capacity to four reactors with the potential to produce over half of the kingdom’s electricity needs.

With limited financial resources, Jordan will have to raise capital abroad and convince the world nuclear community that it has the technical ability to undertake such an expensive and sophisticated project, officials in Amman say. Jordan has inked deals on nuclear cooperation with France, South Korea, China, Canada, Russia, Britain and Argentina and is preparing for similar deals with other countries.

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Tehran, Iran (AHN) – Responding to European Union chief diplomat Catherine Ashton’s call to revive nuclear talks from November 15-18, Iran on Wednesday proposed fresh dates to resume talks with major world powers.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili sent a letter to Ashton saying Tehran could restart negotiations on November 23 or December 5 in Istanbul. The P5+1 includes, China, Russia, U.S., France, Britain and Germany, as well as Iran last met for talks in Geneva in October last year.

Ashton’s office confirmed that they received Jalili’s letter but remained silent on confirming dates and other details of it. It only said that the world powers would soon respond to Iranian proposal.

“We will now discuss the details and proposals with our… partners and respond to Doctor Jalili in the coming days,” a spokeswoman said.

U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley hoped that the nuclear talks would start as early as the end of this month. “I would expect there would be consultations within the P5+1 in the next day or two,” Crowley said.

The Department spokesman further speculated multiple meetings and venues on the cards.

Crowley added that if the talks, which are stalled since past one year, revive, he hopes a series of meetings and different locations might be held in future.

The U.S.-led world powers fear that Iran is creating a nuclear bomb under civilian cover and wants the Islamic nation to suspend its uranium enrichment activity – a charge Tehran vehemently denies.

Despite the denial and insistence that its nuclear enrichment is solely for peaceful purposes, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the country’s atomic body in February to start enriching uranium to 20 percent after they failed to sign a nuclear fuel swap deal with the U.N.

Experts say that 20 percent of enriched uranium is sufficient to make a crude weapon.

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New Delhi, India (AHN) – United States President Barack Obama, on the second day of his three-day visit to India, has appreciated New Delhi for its developments and vowed his nation’s support in the world’s largest democracy’s quest for a permanent United Nations Security Council seat.

In a landmark address at the Indian Parliament on Monday, Obama said that India had been an “indispensable” U.S. partner and the relationship between them would one of this century’s defining partnerships.

Obama told dignitaries, “As two global leaders, the United States and India can partner for global security – especially as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years. Indeed the just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a U.N. that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate.”

Despite Obama’s timeline, analysts do not expect India to get permanent seat so soon.

Pakistan quickly responded to Obama’s comments and said that Washington should not be swayed by “power politics”. Abdul Basit, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Obama’s comments added complexity in the process of council reforms. “Pakistan hopes that the US will take a moral view and not base itself on any temporary expediency or exigencies of power politics,” he added.

The United States, China, Russia, France and Britain are the permanent five members of the Security Council presently. India, Japan, Brazil and Germany are keen on joining the group.

However, Obama said big authorities mean big responsibilities too and highlighted Myanmar’s human right abuse cases on which India had failed to do enough to condemn it.

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Tehran, Iran (AHN) – Iran began injecting fuel into its first nuclear power plant on Tuesday, a week after a small leak delayed the process.

According to state-run Press TV, fuel assemblies were loaded into the Bushehr plant under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The plant is expected to generate electricity once all 163 fuel assemblies are injected by the end of the year.

Russia is providing the fuel for the plant and taking spent fuel back out of Iran, which has received a fourth set of United Nations sanctions for violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Bushehr plant was opened in August after more than three decades of construction marred by delays, the withdrawal of the original German contractor, and the eventual agreement with Russia’s Atomstroyexport for the completion of the 1,000 megawatt reactor.

Under the agreement with Moscow, uranium enriched up to 3.6 percent will be used to generate electricity in the southern city of Bushehr and then returned to Russia for reprocessing and storage.

The insertion of fuel rods was postponed for a week because of a minor leak in a pool near the reactor, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told the Islamic Republic News Agency, the official news agency of Iran.

‘We hope that nuclear electricity would enter the national grid within the next three months,’ IRNA quoted Salehi telling the power plant’s workers on Tuesday.

Washington has led calls for sanctions against Iran’s proliferation activities but has been supportive of the Bushehr reactor.

“Bushehr is a civilian nuclear project… it actually proves that they don’t need to build indigenous enrichment facilities,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in August.

“This is a concept that closes that fuel loop and… demonstrates and proves to the world that if the Iranians are sincere in a peaceful program, their needs can be met without undertaking its own enrichment program, which call into question its motives,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also said about the same time.

Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has maintained that its nuclear program is for the peaceful production of civilian, nuclear energy. The Islamic nation has two uranium-enrichment plants: a covert facility in Natanz that was discovered in 2002 and another in Qom that was also discovered by Western nations before Iran’s disclosure last year.

Early this year, Iran began producing 20 percent-enriched uranium at its Natanz facility, prompting heightened international concerns that it could develop a nuclear weapon despite assurances that the fuel is for production of medical isotopes for cancer patients.

Iran received a fourth set of sanctions from the U.N. Security Council in June. The sanctions prohibit Tehran from undertaking activities involving ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons, and other nations from selling tanks and military aircraft or providing technical assistance about such weaponry to Iran.

The new sanctions came less than a month after Iran agreed to send some of its low-enriched uranium to Western nations in a nuclear exchange agreement that had been in negotiations since last year.

Iran agreed to send 1,200 kilograms of 3.5 percent-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for 120 kilograms of 20 percent-enriched uranium for its Tehran Research Reactor.

The exchange agreement requires Russia and France to send fuel for the Tehran reactor within a year after Iran ships out its own fuel. It was negotiated with Brazil and Turkey, the two nations in the 15-member Security Council that voted against new sanctions.

The United States is part of a group of nations called the P5+1 negotiating with Tehran on disarmament. Talks are so far at an impasse, and Salehi told IRNA on Tuesday that an official request from the P5+1 would be needed to resume negotiations about the fuel swap.

Washington classifies Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and believes the Islamic nation provides assistance to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and members of the Taliban. According to the U.S. Treasury and State departments, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards train, fund and provide weapons to terror groups and Iraq-based militants.

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Deauville, France (AHN) – In an attempt to build a pan-European security partnership, the leaders of France and Germany are meeting with their Russian counterpart in the Normandy seaside resort of Deauville for a two-day summit.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that they jointly launched the drive to ‘anchor Russia to the West’ with the hope to convince the Russian leader to support NATO’s new security concept, which it is due to unveil next month at Lisbon summit.

The French and German leaders are also keen on persuading Russian President Dmitry Medvedev over NATO’s European missile defense plan, which the alliance and the U.S. said was aimed at securing Europe from Iranian and North Korean missile threats.

Despite repeated assurances, Moscow vehemently opposes the plan, claiming it can pose potential security threat to Russia and demands assurances that it will never be used to neutralize Russia’s long-range nuclear arsenal.

Sarkozy and Merkel told the European Union and Britain, which were not invited, that the summit would only be a “brainstorming session” but hinted that they might discuss security and economic partnership before the upcoming G20 summit of leading economies.

All three nations – Russia, France and Germany – strongly opposed U.S.’ invasion on Iraq. However, the relations between Russia and France deteriorated after the French government decided to return to NATO’s military wing. With Germany, the ties strained due to Russia’s decision to stop gas supplies to Europe because of its pricing dispute with Ukraine and its brief was with Georgia in 2008.

Tensions apparently eased between Russia and the West following an effort by U.S. President Barack Obama to reset relations with Moscow.

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