IRAN
No deal in U.N.-Iran nuclear talks, new meeting scheduled
Fredrik Dahl, Reuters – Jan 18, 2013
U.N. nuclear inspectors returned from Iran on Friday without securing an agreement to investigate suspected atom bomb research, they said after two days of talks in Tehran. Herman Nackaerts, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said his inspectors had not been granted the access they have long sought to a military site and that further talks had been scheduled for February 12.
Mundy: War with Iran would be a colossal mistake
John Mundy, Calgery Herald – Jan 17, 2013
Iran has temporarily receded from the headlines, but its nuclear program hasn’t gone away. The challenge Iran poses for the international community, and the way in which it is resolved, will be one of the defining issues of this decade. Now is our chance to think through the Iranian issue before it lurches back again into crisis.
KOREAN PENINSULA
Japan’s Top Negotiator for 6-Party Talks Meets with S. Korean Counterpart on Thursday
Park Ji-won, Arirang News – Jan 18, 2013
The head of the Japanese delegation for the six-party talks, Shinsuke Sugiyama, met with South Korean nuclear envoy Lim Sung-nam in Seoul on Thursday afternoon.The discussions centered mainly on ways to coordinate policies to address North Korean issues.
S.Korea to deploy guided missiles at sea border
Channel News Asia – Jan 18, 2013
South Korea plans to deploy Israeli-made precision guided missiles near its tense sea border with North Korea next month, including an island shelled by the North in 2010, a report said on Friday. The South will deploy 50 to 60 Spike anti-tank missiles to two border islands on the Yellow Sea to guard against potential attacks from the North, the Chosun Ilbo daily cited a Seoul military official as saying.
Movement of Missiles by North Korea Worries U.S.
Thom Shanker and David Sanger, The New York Times – Jan 18, 2013
The discovery by American intelligence agencies that North Korea is moving mobile missile launchers around the country, some carrying a new generation of powerful rocket, has spurred new assessments of the intentions of the country’s young new leader, Kim Jong-un.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Exclusive: Leon Panetta on Algeria ‘Terrorism’ and Syrian Chemical Weapons
Luis Martinez, ABC News – Jan 17, 2013
Panetta provided new details about Syria’s mixing of chemical weapons in December and the clearest explanation yet of the Obama administration’s red lines if the Assad regime uses the weapons against its own people.
