NEWS BRIEFS

Taiwan Referendum Stumbles, Chen Pushes Ahead

St. Kitts and Nevis Sign CTBT

Australia Cleared of Exaggerating WMD Threats

Energy Department to Aid Iraqi Scientists

Taiwan Referendum Stumbles, Chen Pushes Ahead

Not enough Taiwanese voters cast votes March 20 on a proposed referendum about buying advanced missile defense systems for the results to be official, but President-elect Chen Shui-bian indicated in his acceptance speech that he feels authorized to act.

Chen, who was wounded by a gunshot on the election’s eve and whose miniscule victory margin is being contested by his presidential challenger, declared, “The government will abide by the democratic decisions made directly by the people and respond with concrete action in the new major national policy areas of ‘strengthening defense’ and ‘negotiations based on equality.’”

Although Chen’s statement is somewhat ambiguous, his policy direction seemed to be further clarified by Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun’s statement that the insufficient voter turnout “does not mean that the public is opposed to the referendum itself or the real significance of the two questions.”

Taiwanese voters were asked to respond to two questions in the island’s first ever referendum. The first asked whether the government should buy advanced missile defenses if China did not stop targeting the island with ballistic missiles. The second asked whether negotiations should be conducted with China to establish cross-strait relations through a so-called peace and stability framework.

More than 90 percent of voters who responded to the two questions cast affirmative votes. However, the number of voters participating did not exceed 50 percent of all eligible voters, which was the legal threshold to make the vote results count. Followers of Chen’s presidential rival boycotted the referendum, which accounts for why roughly 13 million votes were cast in the presidential election, while the referendum questions tallied approximately 7.4 million votes.

Beijing, which strongly dislikes Chen and disapproved of the referendum, crowed March 20, “Facts have proven that this illegal act goes against the will of the people. Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China is doomed to failure.” China earlier condemned the referendum as a thinly disguised attempt by Chen to ease Taiwan toward a declaration of independence, which the mainland resolutely opposes. Whether Taiwan will actually procure missile defenses remains to be seen. Taipei has begged off on past U.S. entreaties to beef up the island’s defenses as being too costly.

St. Kitts and Nevis Sign CTBT

St. Kitts and Nevis became the 171st signatory of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) March 23.

The CTBT, which opened for signature Sept. 24, 1996, currently has 171 signatories. Of those countries, 44 designated states with proven nuclear facilities must ratify it before the treaty can enter into force. Of the 44 specified countries, India, Pakistan, and North Korea still have not signed, and only 32 have ratified the treaty. Nuclear-weapon states China and the United States are among the notable signers that have yet to ratify the agreement.

Australia Cleared of Exaggerating WMD Threats

An Australian parliamentary investigation into Canberra’s intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has cleared Prime Minister John Howard’s government of pressuring the intelligence community or grossly exaggerating intelligence claims.

Although the committee concluded that Australia’s intelligence community had not been subjected to overt government pressure to change its assessments of Iraq’s WMD capabilities, a report said that the influence of a “policy running strong” may have unconsciously affected analysis. Overall, the Australian intelligence community was “more moderate, more measured and more skeptical” than American or British intelligence agencies. However, in the months preceding the war, the intelligence community increasingly accepted analyses that assumed the worst. In particular, reports by the Office of National Assessment “extrapolated too much from efforts at concealment and…dropped the caveats of uncertainty.”

In addition, the committee concluded that the government’s presentation of the intelligence to the public was “more moderate and more measured than that of either of its alliance partners.” Howard “did not use highly emotive expressions such as those used in the United States,” and the government did not say that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were deployable in 45 minutes, although Australian agencies had intelligence similar to that which led the British government to make the claim. However, the government suggested that Iraq had larger WMD arsenals than was suggested by Australian intelligence and exaggerated the immediacy of the threat posed by Iraq.

The committee recommended that an independent inquiry conducted by former intelligence officials assess the performance of the intelligence agencies in order to recommend necessary changes. Howard quickly announced that he would accept the recommendation and appointed former intelligence analyst Philip Flood to lead the investigation. Flood was given wide-ranging powers to interview government officials, and Howard himself said that he would be willing to provide evidence. Howard also announced that the government would provide a $400 million funding boost to intelligence and security agencies. The extra money is in addition to other increases since September 11, 2001, and brings the total Australian security budget to almost $3 billion.

Energy Department to Aid Iraqi Scientists

The Department of Energy announced Feb. 25 that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will begin a new program “to provide employment opportunities to Iraqi scientists, technicians, and engineers.” The program is designed to aid the reconstruction of Iraq and “prevent the proliferation of…weapons of mass destruction (WMD) expertise to terrorists or proliferant states,” according to an NNSA press release, which added that this program “complements” a similar State Department effort announced in December.

The program is to be “implemented by an international partnership of scientists” from an Arab nongovernmental organization, other international organizations, and the NNSA. The participants will “discuss priorities and options for technical cooperation” after first completing a “survey of Iraq’s science and technology infrastructure.”

In a March 5 interview, David Kay, former lead inspector of the Iraq Survey Group, who has met recently with many Iraqi scientists, criticized the U.S. handling of these projects. Kay said U.S. implementation was “much slower…than it should have been” to prevent the flight of Iraqi WMD personnel.