U.S. Officials Tell ABC News That Evidence Points to an Underground Test
By JONATHAN KARL
Aug. 17, 2006 — - There is new evidence that North Korea may be preparing for an underground test of a nuclear bomb, U.S. officials told ABC News.
"It is the view of the intelligence community that a test is a real possibility," said a senior State Department official.
A senior military official told ABC News that a U.S. intelligence agency has recently observed "suspicious vehicle movement" at a suspected North Korean test site.
The activity includes the unloading of large reels of cable outside P'unggye-yok, an underground facility in northeast North Korea. Cables can be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test site to outside observation equipment. The intelligence was brought to the attention of the White House last week.
Even before this most recent intelligence, there has been growing concern within the U.S. government that North Korea has been moving toward a nuclear test. North Korea is believed to have enough nuclear material to build as many as a dozen nuclear bombs, but it has never tested one. A successful test would remove any doubt that North Korea is a nuclear ...   more »

By CLAUDE SALHANI
UPI International Editor
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- The usually timid Syrian president emerged from his customary reserve with an unprecedented speech filled with furor, bravado and threats aimed at his Lebanese opponents, Israel and the United States. As one Syrian blogger put it, "Bashar came out of his silence with a vengeance in a way no one was expecting."
Indeed, Bashar Assad's verbal attack on his enemies carried the punch of Israel's assault on Hezbollah. Assad lambasted Israel, the Bush administration, the pro-U.S. Arab regimes and the March 14 coalition of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians.
Assad's message, according to a Syrian blogger identified only as "Fadi" and posted on Joshua Landis' Syriacomment.com, was simple: "Our camp won, yours lost, accept defeat... here are my terms." While Bashar may only be partially right in saying his camp won, dictating his terms of surrender may be somewhat premature. The fat lady has yet to sing.
Hezbollah can claim victory only in the sense that it did not suffer a defeat and that it survived a 33-day war with Israel.
Yet if victory can be claimed by the heaps of rubble that villages in south Lebanon along with sections of ...   more »

Sunday , August 20, 2006 
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran will offer a "multifaceted response" to a Western package of incentives aimed at persuading it to suspend uranium enrichment activities, but insisted Sunday it would not cease enriching uranium.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said a compromise has to be achieved during future negotiations."We won't suspend (uranium enrichment). Everything has to come out of negotiations. Suspension is not on our agenda," Asefi told a press conference Sunday.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last month calling for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment by Aug. 31 or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions. Iran has rejected as "illegal" the binding resolution, saying it had not violated any of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.
However, Asefi confirmed that Iran would offer its formal response on Aug. 22 to a package of Western incentives offered in June that calls on the Islamic Republic to suspend, not permanently halt, the enrichment program.
"It will be a multifaceted response," he said.
The package offers a series of incentives to Iran including promises that the United States and Europe will provide civilian nuclear technology and that Washington will join direct talks ...   more »

By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 19, 3:55 PM ET
Worried the Lebanon war has given a boost to Iran and militants in the region, three U.S. allies in the Mideast are spearheading an Arab effort to present a plan for reviving the stalled peace process and talks with Israel.
Details remain sketchy, and already Israel has expressed skepticism, saying it doubts any plan the trio put forward will take its security needs into account. But the effort by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan is a clear sign of their worries about tensions and Iran's influence.
So far, the United States has not talked about a wider peace effort in the wake of the Lebanon fighting, instead focusing on ensuring the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah is reined in.
Leaders of the three moderate Arab governments, however, want to seize the opportunity in the war's ashes to restart negotiations with Israel for peace on the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese fronts.
They fear letting the situation stagnate could increase the appeal of radical Islamic groups and allow Iran and Syria to keep using Hezbollah in proxy wars, breeding more resentments and more militancy.
Hesham Youseef, top aide to Arab League ...   more »

Aug 20, 2:29 AM (ET) 
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran on Sunday test-fired a surface-to-surface short-range missile a day after its army launched large-scale military exercises throughout the country, state-run television reported.
"Saegheh, the missile, has a range of between 80 to 250 kilometers (50 to 150 miles)," the report said. It said the missile was tested in Kashan desert, about 150 miles southeast of Tehran, the capital.
Saegheh means lightning in Farsi.
Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment such as missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers. But the new tests, in the wake of the Lebanon-Hezbollah fighting, seemed certain to create new tensions with the West.
State-run television said the missile was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries.
State-run TV showed video showing 10 missiles being launched from mobile launching pads.
Iran said it launched the new military exercises Saturday to introduce a new defensive doctrine. They are being held in 14 of the country's 30 provinces and could last five weeks, the government has said.
The Islamic Republic, which views the ...   more »

The committee, which was announced Wednesday night by Minister Peretz, has been charged with investigating the readiness of the IDF and the Defense Ministry for war, as well as the IDF's wartime functioning. It is to be staffed by former Defense Ministry Director Gen. (ret.) Ilan Biran, other former IDF generals, and Chairman of the Teva pharmaceuticals company Eli Horowitz. The committee is to submit its findings within three weeks.
Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Amnon Lipkin-Shachak will chair the committee. He headed the army until 1998, when he was replaced by Sha'ul Mofaz. More recently, however, he served as an advisor to his friend Defense Minister Amir Peretz - including during the very war in Lebanon that he is now supposed to investigate.
Labor MK Danny Yatom said, "There is a large problem with the appointment of people to a committee that has been formed to investigate the decisions made by their friend."
The Movement for Quality in Government called upon the nominees to the committee not to accept the job. "The committee will be nothing more than a fig leaf against public criticism," the movement's officials said in a statement.
MK Benny Elon (National Union) is ...   more »