RTC Director

6.4-Magnitude Quake Rattles Northeast Japan

A moderately strong earthquake rattled northeast Japan late Tuesday, but there were no reports of injury or damage.

Preliminary data from the Japanese Meteorological Agency says the estimated 6.4 magnitude quake was centered off the coast of Iwate Prefecture, an estimated 10 kilometers below sea level.

No tsunami alert was issued.

Earlier this month, Japan marked the one year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated coastal northeastern Japan, killing nearly 20,000 people.

by RTC Director

Syria Accepts Annan Peace Plan

International peace envoy Kofi Annan says Syria has accepted his plan to end violence in the country.

A spokesman for Mr. Annan said Tuesday Syria's response came in a letter to the U.N.-Arab League envoy.

Mr. Annan met with Chinese officials Tuesday in Beijing, including Premier Wen Jiabao, as China pledged to support his mediation efforts.

The plan calls on Syrian government forces and rebels to agree on a cease-fire and engage in dialogue. The blueprint, endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, does not include a Western and Arab demand for President Bashar al-Assad to resign – a requirement that Russia and China oppose.

U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said Tuesday there is a basic structure in place to discuss with Russia and China what they can do to support Mr. Annan.

“I think we felt like we made some progress with regard to Syria in that, despite the differences that we've had — and they continue with regard to Syria — there is the framework for cooperation through the Kofi Annan initiative which, again, at the very least, provides a framework for stopping the violence, initiating greater humanitarian access to the people of Syria and initiating a transition in that country. Again, we believe very strongly that that transition has to involve Assad leaving power.”

In Istanbul, Syrian opposition groups are meeting in an effort to forge a united front before a major conference April 1.

Opposition member Bassam Jaara said Tuesday the meeting is an important dialogue between different sides of the opposition as they work to revise their structure.

“We want everyone to sign a declaration today produced by the Syrian National Council (SNC). It is a declaration that sets Syria's new identity after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, a Syria that is democratic, plural, civil and guarantees equality to all the Syrian people.”

He said the goal is to agree to a declaration pledging a democratic Syria that guarantees equality to all Syrians.

Western and Arab nations calling themselves the “Friends of Syria” are due to meet Sunday in Istanbul to discuss support for the Syrian opposition's struggle to end decades of autocratic rule.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the conference after meeting Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and foreign ministers of five Gulf Arab states in Riyadh later this week. The State Department said Clinton's efforts at both gatherings will focus on ending Syria's bloodshed.

In Syria, activists say fighting killed at least eight people across the country Tuesday, including in the Damascus suburb of Douma, the flashpoint city of Homs and northern Idlib province. Their reports could not be independently confirmed because Syria tightly restricts foreign reporting.

Fighting was also reported along Syria's border with Lebanon.

Syria's state news agency SANA said the country's parliament has called on Mr. Assad to consider delaying parliamentary elections scheduled for May 7 in order to allow for the outcome of a “national dialogue.”

The election is part of what the government calls a series of reforms based on a new constitution approved by referendum in February.

The United Nations says more than 8,000 people have been killed in the Syrian government's crackdown on the uprising during the past year. Damascus blames the violence on what it says are foreign-backed terrorists.

by RTC Director

World Leaders to Continue Efforts to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

Leaders of more than 50 nations have reaffirmed their commitment to reducing the world's stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama told attendees at the start of Tuesday's final session of the two-day Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul that the international community must make “a serious and sustained effort” to reduce the world's stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

“There are still too many bad actors in search of these dangerous materials, and these dangerous materials are still vulnerable in too many places. It would not take much, just a handful or so of these materials to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and that's not an exaggeration, that's the reality that we face.”

Mr. Obama acknowledged the progress that has been made since he hosted the 2010 summit in Washington, and noted that the number of nations participating this year has grown to more than 50.

He said the result will be a “larger global architecture” that will also allow the international community to “safely and effectively” pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

But a statement issued Tuesday at the end of the summit offered no substantial plan for achieving that goal. Martine Letts, a high-ranking official at a Australian research center tells VOA the forum in Seoul is just one small part of what she calls a “a broad enterprise” in securing nuclear material.

“Summits are great in declaring lofty ideals…obviously the devil lies in the details. In particular, the capacity of nations to control such material within their borders. And there are many nations which have nuclear material, not just the known nuclear weapons states, where the security of that material is an issue of considerable concern. So declarations aside, what is important is to make sure those countries have the capacity and the political will and the governance arrangements to control those materials.”

The summit has been overshadowed by North Korea's recent announcement that it will launch a satellite next month. Many Western nations believe the launch is actually a test of a long-range missile.

Shortly after arriving in South Korea, Mr. Obama warned Pyongyang the launch would jeopardize the recent agreement in which the U.S. would provide the regime food in exchange for the North freezing its nuclear program. North Korea issued a statement Tuesday saying it would go ahead with the rocket launch, and called the U.S. president's remarks “confrontational.”

In his opening remarks at Tuesday's opening session, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said North Korea would be violating United Nations Security Council resolutions if it went ahead with the launch.

Letts says the isolated regime used the satellite launch to hijack the nuclear summit and its stated agenda. But Ben Rhodes, Mr. Obama's deputy national security advisor, insisted during a press conference that North Korea has not been the summit's central focus.

“What this is about is preventing an act of nuclear terrorism, and in the aftermath of September 11th, you'll recall that the great concern of policymakers in Washington and around the world was the potential for terrorist groups like al Qaida to obtain a nuclear device and explode it in an American city. And they'd expressed their interest in doing that, and we also knew that there was significant amounts of nuclear material that was not adequately secured around the world, and that there were smuggling networks that could potentially be exploited as well, for terrorist groups to obtain this material.”

The United States and leading European suppliers of medical isotopes — Belgium, France, and the Netherlands — announced Monday they will move away from the use of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) to a less potent form of the material.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the four-nation deal reduces the chance of the material falling into the wrong hands.

“Each reactor may look small but when you look at the plutonium being shipped and secured, the amount of highly enriched uranium being secured, now nearly 200 research reactors slowly being converted to this. This is something which I would not characterize this as small stuff.”

The Fissile Materials Working Group, an international coalition of nuclear experts, says the agreement marks an important step forward towards securing the global stockpile of nuclear materials, but insists bolder action is needed.

by RTC Director

Senegal’s Sall Wrests Presidency From Former Mentor

Macky Sall is set to become the next president of Senegal after defeating his political mentor Abdoulaye Wade in a runoff election Sunday.

Mr. Sall was a staunch supporter of Mr. Wade's opposition Senegalese Democratic Party when it defeated the ruling Socialists in 2000, bringing Mr. Wade to power.

He went to serve as Mr. Wade's minister of interior and mining before being picked to serve as prime minister from 2004 to 2007.

In 2007, he successfully led Mr. Wade's re-election campaign. He lost his job as prime minister but went on to become president of the National Assembly.

It was during his tenure as the head of the National Assembly that Mr. Sall made what he says on his website was perceived as a “heavy political mistake:” He dared to summon Mr. Wade's son, Karim, before the National Assembly for questioning over financial irregularities.

Soon after, Mr. Sall quit the PDS and the National Assembly. He went on to found his own party, the Alliance for the Republic, under which he was elected mayor of his hometown of Fatick.

Mr. Sall was one of 13 opposition candidates in the first round of the presidential election, which Mr. Wade won with 35 percent of the vote. The losing candidates turned their support to Mr. Sall, who promised to reform the government and lower basic food costs.

At 85 years of age, Mr. Wade is Africa's second oldest leader. Mr. Sall is more than three decades his junior.

by RTC Director

Two British troops shot dead in Afghanistan

Two British soldiers have been killed in southern Afghanistan by a gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform, defence secretary Philip Hammond has said.

The shootings took place at an international military base in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, on Monday.

Nato said the attacker was shot dead by International Security Assistance Force soldiers.

The incident comes after 17 Afghan civilians were killed in an attack for which a US soldier has been charged.

by RTC Director

Hu Says China Takes Pyongyang Missile Launch Seriously

U.S. officials say the United States and China have agreed to coordinate their response to a scheduled North Korean missile launch that has overshadowed this week's nuclear security summit in Seoul.

An aide to U.S. President Barack Obama says Chinese President Hu Jintao expressed his nation's “serious concern” about the planned launch at a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Obama on Monday.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes briefed reporters on the meeting. He said Mr. Hu told the U.S. president that China has already expressed its concern to Pyongyang. He said the two leaders agreed to consider what steps to take next if the launch goes ahead.

In remarks Sunday, Mr. Obama had urged China to stop turning a blind eye to North Korea's nuclear defiance and use its influence to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. China is North Korea's main ally and trading partner, but Beijing says its political influence over Pyongyang is limited.

In a speech at Hankuk University in Seoul earlier Monday, Mr. Obama warned Pyongyang that it could continue down the road it is on, but that would lead to more broken dreams, more isolation and ever more distance between the people of North Korea and the dignity and opportunity they deserve.

The American president said the same applies to Iran. Mr. Obama told the audience that Iran stands alone, as the only member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty unable to convince the international community that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. He said the United States and other nations have offered to help Iran develop nuclear energy peacefully, but time and again Tehran has refused, taking instead what he called the path of denial, deceit and deception.

Mr. Obama said ahead of a meeting Monday with the Russia president that he would discuss a diplomatic resolution to the situation.

Although it is not on the agenda of the formal summit, North Korea's recent announcement that it will launch a satellite into space using a long-range rocket has captured the attention of the assembled leaders. The North says this is part of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the April 15 birth of its late founder and president, Kim Il Sung.

The U.N., U.S., European Union, Russia and Japan have warned North Korea that its scheduled rocket launch is in violation of U.N. resolutions, and they have urged Pyongyang to abandon the plan. Even North Korea's ally China has expressed concern that a launch would undermine stability in the region.

The United States has said the launch would cancel an agreement to send North Korea a large shipment of U.S. food aid in exchange for halting its nuclear and long-range missile programs.

Ahead of the summit, U.S. officials announced that Ukraine has completed the removal of a consignment of highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs. The material, Russian in origin, has been sent back to Russia.

by RTC Director

Seoul Nuclear Summit kicks off

The second Nuclear Security Summit has just kicked off in Seoul, South Korea.

A welcoming ceremony has been held for the leaders and representatives of 53 nations and international organizations, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, US President Barack Obama, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, and European Council President Herman van Rompuy. The reception, the first event of the two-day Summit, will be followed by a working dinner among the leaders on Monday evening.

The leaders will begin official discussions on responses to nuclear terrorism, protection of nuclear materials and facilities as well as prevention of illegal trafficking of nuclear materials.

President Hu Jintao is due to deliver a speech Tuesday morning to elaborate on China’s position, including the nation’s efforts to strengthen nuclear security. He will review the achievements of the past two years in strengthening international cooperation and technical improvement in the nuclear field.

The Seoul gathering is the second Nuclear Security Summit, following the inaugural event in Washington in 2010.

by RTC Director

China: No decision yet on attending Syria meeting

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei says that under the current situation, China has not considered attending the second "Friends of Syria" meeting scheduled to convene in Istanbul in April.

Hong said, "We think actions taken by the international community regarding Syria should help ease the tension there, promote political dialogue, resolve disputes and maintain peace and stability in the Middle East.

The resolution of the Syrian crisis requires the participation of, and dialogue between, major parties involved, and the international community should create favourable conditions for that. China will continue to work with all sides and play an active and constructive role in finding a peaceful and proper resolution to the Syrian issue.

At the invitation of the Chinese government, the UN-Arab League’s joint envoy on Syria Kofi Annan will visit China from March 27th to 28th.

China values and supports Annan’s mediation efforts and hopes to discuss political solutions for Syrian crisis during his visit."

by RTC Director