Round the horn

Campaigners’ fear for elephants, and their own credibility

BANNING almost all cross-border trade in ivory, as the United Nations did in 1989, doesn’t seem to have achieved its stated aim, that of ending a smuggling business worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Soon the world will be able to assess the effects of a move in the other direction: a decision to let China bid at a one-off auction of legal ivory from four African countries whose elephant populations have stabilised. Hitherto Japan is the only country to have been authorised to make legal bids.

After some hard talking by Chinese officials who say they have clamped down on the black market, and campaigning by environmental groups that disagree, the decision went China’s way at a meeting in Geneva of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a lobby group, said this condemns “the world’s elephants to slaughter” and plays “Russian roulette” with a species whose numbers in some places, at least, are unknown but might be worryingly low. The campaigners’ line is that legal sales merely abet the illegal kind, especially when the black market is way beyond officialdom’s control.

Nobody can deny that China’s black market was rampant until recently. In a report to the UN leaked by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a campaigning group, this month, Chinese officials admitted that between 1991 and 2002 they had lost sight of 121 tonnes of ivory, the equivalent of the tusks from 11,000 elephants.

Is China observing the CITES rules now? A brief visit to China in 2007 by inspectors from the CITES secretariat suggested that things had improved: they said that ivory was becoming harder to find, though they came across a shop in the city of Xi’an with ivory carvings of dubious provenance. A bigger investigation was carried out by TRAFFIC, an independent British-based group that monitors wildlife trade. After studying 10,000 shops between 2006 and 2008, it reported a progressive decline in the availability of illegal ivory. This had coincided with greater police vigilance.

The idea that China is cleaning up its act got another boost in March, when over 750kg (1,650lb) of raw ivory was seized in Guangxi Province. As CITES notes, the penalties for illegal trading include life imprisonment and death. But the EIA, which uses undercover methods to probe the trade, says things are not as good as they seem; in 2007 its researchers found a roomful of illegal ivory, including an uncut tusk, for sale in the city of Dalian. Last month they made a small find in Gansu province.

A more interesting question is how the legal sales now in prospect will affect the black market. A fresh supply of legal ivory may depress the price, and reduce the incentive to poach. TRAFFIC notes that after a legal auction in 1999, the price fell; this led to a decline in poaching over five years. For doctrinaire types, who oppose all trade in ivory, the forthcoming sale is not just a challenge to endangered animals; it could be a threat to the credibility of their best-loved arguments.

The Economist

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So China is legally allowed to buy ivory now. Good. Supply and demand rules every market, and if there's more of a supply of legal ivory, there won't be as much demand for illegal ivory. Pretty simple, really. Poaching is terrible, but legal trade is quite different. If elephant populations are stable, then why not?

Political Immunity

The rules that protected world leaders from prosecution are being rewritten

“THERE is no longer any doubt as to whether the current [Bush] administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, a retired American general who conducted the first investigation into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, declares in a new report on the maltreatment of detainees: “The only question that remains is…whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

APCharles Taylor: a high-flying tyrant comes down to earth

As George Bush’s presidency draws to a close, many others in his administration, including Mr Bush himself, may be asking the same. Like all heads of state and government, along with many of their senior officials, the American president enjoys wide immunity from both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits, at home and abroad, while he remains in office. But once he goes, so does much of his protection. And though nobody expects Mr Bush to face legal problems at home, it is just possible that in some other country, a prosecutor (or a private citizen initiating a civil suit) will try to hold him to account for America’s record in Iraq and elsewhere.

Across the world, leaders are fretting about the judicial moves that might be in store for them, especially after they leave office. Italy’s newly re-elected prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is trying to rush an immunity bill through parliament to protect himself against any prosecution for financial misdeeds. Jacques Chirac, having managed to stave off prosecution while president, has now been charged in relation to a party-funding scandal during his term as mayor of Paris. And one reason why Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is clinging to power could be his fear of being hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Traditionally, government leaders have enjoyed two types of legal protection when abroad: functional immunity, shielding them for life from prosecution in the domestic courts of other countries for acts carried out as part of their official duties; and personal immunity, protecting them from prosecution in foreign courts for all acts while in office—“irrespective of their gravity”, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2002—but only for as long as they stay in power.

But a growing school of thought is challenging the idea that important folk should be deemed “more equal than others” before the law. The argument that some crimes merit no immunity is almost a century old. Provision was made in the 1919 Versailles Treaty for the defeated German emperor to be tried for “a supreme offence against international morality”. In 1945 the Nuremberg tribunals likewise refused to absolve Nazi leaders of responsibility for war crimes and other atrocities.

But it was not until the past decade that leaders who once saw themselves as untouchable really began to worry. The charters of the ICC and the various international ad hoc tribunals set up to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity all explicitly rule out immunity for anyone. The emerging idea that high office can never provide an absolute defence for such crimes was reinforced by the House of Lords’ ruling in 1999 that Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s ex-dictator, could be prosecuted for torture. Some crimes were so heinous, the law lords said, that they could not be considered part of a head of state’s official functions—though this is still disputed.

A few months later, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian despot, became the first serving head of state to be indicted for war crimes. Charles Taylor was the next. Indicted in 2003 while still president of Liberia, he is now on trial in The Hague. Several former heads of state have also found themselves in the dock on war-crimes charges. They include Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, executed in 2006; Chad’s Hissène Habré, facing trial before a special court in Senegal; and Khieu Samphan, former Khmer Rouge president, now awaiting trial by a UN-backed court in Cambodia.

A third serving head of state may soon be indicted. On July 14th the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is due to announce plans to charge further Sudanese government officials over the continuing atrocities in Darfur. It is just possible that President Omar al-Bashir will be among them. He has refused to hand over Ahmad Harun, his minister for humanitarian affairs, indicted by the court a year ago.

But the ICC, set up under the 1998 Rome Statute, does not have unlimited jurisdiction. It can only prosecute international crimes involving at least one country that has signed up to the court. Although 106 countries have joined that list, America has not; nor has Zimbabwe. This means that Mr Mugabe could not be prosecuted by the ICC unless there was a referral to the court by the Security Council, as happened with Sudan, which is not a party either. It is not clear that recent events in Zimbabwe, however awful, amount to a “crime against humanity”, defined by the ICC’s statute as a “widespread or systematic attack” on civilians. But if the court did take up the case, Mr Mugabe would be equally vulnerable, in or out of office, given the lack of immunity for such crimes.

Theory and practice

There is no technical reason why the ICC should not try to go after Mr Bush, in the unlikely event that it found America was guilty of atrocities in Afghanistan (which is a party to the court, while Iraq is not.)

However, there is another way that the leaders of countries that have stayed out of the ICC could be prosecuted, despite their head-of-state immunity. That is by means of the principle known as universal jurisdiction. This allows states to prosecute international crimes such as genocide, torture and crimes against humanity in their own domestic courts, even when they have no link with the perpetrator, victims or site of the crime.

The scope of universal jurisdiction is disputed. Some say that the principle falls under treaty, not customary, law and is hence restricted in application to states that are party to the relevant treaty; so Britain could not bring action for torture under universal jurisdiction against Mr Mugabe, because Zimbabwe is not a party to the UN Convention Against Torture. Others say so many states have signed accords like the Geneva Conventions and the torture pact that they now amount to customary law.

The idea of “universal jurisdiction” is certainly gathering steam. It is already in use in at least eight European countries, with Spain, Belgium and Britain to the fore. Although the 2002 ICJ ruling on political immunity means that serving heads of state and senior government officials cannot be hauled before the domestic courts of other countries, this can happen after they leave office. Universal jurisdiction was invoked in Britain’s Pinochet case. Mr Habré would probably not be on trial in Senegal if Belgium had not invoked the “universal” principle against him.

Human-rights groups in France and Germany have sought to bring proceedings under universal jurisdiction against Donald Rumsfeld, America’s ex-defence secretary, citing atrocities in Iraq. Spanish prosecutors have invoked the principle to try pursuing several former Latin American dictators for crimes against humanity, though without success.

All this activity has encouraged countries to pursue miscreant ex-leaders in their own courts, where international immunity laws do not apply. Each country is free to determine what immunity, if any, it grants to its heads of state, government ministers and legislators. Its scope varies widely, as does the ease with which it can be lifted. But the past decade has seen a flurry of domestic prosecutions against past leaders, whether for human-rights abuses or financial crimes. In Uruguay, Suriname, Thailand, Peru and Bangladesh, ex-heads of state or government are either in the dock or awaiting trial; meanwhile Israel’s prime minister is under investigation (for fraud). The once-cosy blanket of immunity is starting to look rather threadbare.

The Economist

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What's to be disputed about holding people responsible for their crimes? Holding a position of power doesn't justify or excuse criminal acts, therefore it should not keep anyone from facing the consequences of said acts. I definitely agree that heads of state should not have total immunity. Actually, I think they shouldn't be granted any immunity at all. Each person should be responsible for their actions, regardless of their current (or former) station in life. Actually, I didn't know that automatic immunity for heads of state existed. Universal jurisdiction sounds like a very good way to hold people accountable. It's something all countries should implement.

The Marathon's Not Over

In some parts of the world, family planning is still a distant dream

THREE decades ago, many pundits were saying that an ever-rising population could lead to global disaster. They argued that ecological catastrophe, resource wars and other tragedies were inevitable unless radical measures were taken to defuse the coming “population bomb”. Happily, a mixture of technological innovation, economic dynamism and successful population-control strategies have helped defuse that bomb, or at least delay its detonation.

As the United Nations commemorated World Population Day this week, there was reason for cheer. Population experts have been busy revising their long-term scenarios downward to account for falling fertility not only in wealthy Europe and Japan but also in poor countries like Bangladesh and Kenya. Stan Bernstein of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) even insists that “this is one of the great development success stories of the last 40 to 50 years,” pointing out that the active use of family-planning techniques in developing countries has shot up from 10% to 12% in the early 1960s to over 60% today.

That is impressive, but there is a second, less happy population story. Even as the world in general has been getting a grip on the population problem, things still look bleak for the poorest people in the world. Mona Byrkit of CARE, a charity, calls this the “huge unfinished business” of the population-control movement.

In a report released this week, experts at the World Bank show that 35 countries (31 of them in sub-Saharan Africa) are lagging badly, with sky-high fertility rates and limited access to family-planning tools. In contrast with the relative success that many post-Soviet countries have had in increasing access to contraceptives, the agency’s investigators have shown how African women are too often forced to turn to poorly executed abortion as “contraception of last resort”—sometimes with fatal results (see chart above).

What particularly troubles Sadia Chowdhury, one of the report’s authors, is what the agency calls “unmet need for contraception”: the difference between how many children a woman in, say, an African village wants to have and the number she actually ends up bearing. Even allowing for all cultural and economic factors that might prompt such women to produce more children than their sisters in wealthy countries, there seems to be a huge gap (see chart below).

Why does this happen? Money is not the main reason. In most developing countries, contraception is in theory available to the indigent either free or at nominal cost through state agencies. The trouble is that these bureaucracies are often inefficient, understaffed and incapable of working properly in rural areas.

Politics clearly plays a role. One factor, says CARE’s Ms Byrkit, is the social conservatism of the Bush administration, which makes it hard for those receiving American funding (for HIV/AIDS, for example) even to work with charities providing abortion counselling. Another problem is flagging political momentum. The very success of many parts of the world in limiting population has sapped donors’ enthusiasm. The UNFPA’s Mr Bernstein likens this to the first finishers of a marathon declaring the race over before the rest of the runners cross the finish line.

If bad politics leads to terrible results, the reverse may also hold good. Ms Chowdhury points to the success of her native Bangladesh; she says political will and female empowerment can make all the difference even in a poor country. And there are some other positive signs on the political front. The UN has recently, and not before time, decided that population control should be one of its much-vaunted Millennium Development Goals.

July 10th, 2008, The Economist

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How can contraception be more effectively distributed to poorer developing countries? Changing negative perceptions about condoms and abortion both in the donor and benefiting countries would surely help. No woman should have to end up with more children than she is willing to have. This, even more than the issue of overpopulation, is the most important reason for making sure everyone has access to a family planning center, no matter where they live.

The discreet charms of international go-betweens

FOR two months, Kenya, East Africa’s most prosperous and supposedly stable country, hovered on the brink of self-immolation as two warring political factions ripped the country apart after a disputed election at the end of 2007. Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, was brought in to try to resolve the conflict between the ruling party, which was accused of rigging its presidential victory, and the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). As ethnic violence raged nearby, negotiators from the two sides would sometimes almost come to blows themselves as Mr Annan tried to find common ground between them.

But when deadlock loomed, both sides’ negotiating teams were smuggled off to a secret location in a game park for two days, with just Mr Annan and his secretariat, including a team from a little-known group called the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD). There, with no distractions from the media and far from the political circus in the capital, Nairobi, came the vital breakthrough. The main outlines of a deal between the two sides were talked through in an atmosphere of relative calm; a new national unity government, comprising both the ruling party and the ODM, was inaugurated a few weeks later.

Originally, Mr Annan had flown into Nairobi with just two people from the CHD, a Swiss-based organisation of mediators. During his six weeks or so of mediating he drew on the considerable resources of the UN, but he also made constant use of his CHD backup.

They provided him with tactical advice on the mediation process, such as when to take the negotiators on “retreat” and how to involve the media. And they also drafted agreements as the two sides spoke during the negotiations, so that at the end of a day an agreed statement could be issued immediately to the press. This gave the mediation the vital momentum that Mr Annan wanted.

The Kenyan talks provide a good example of the sort of skills that a new kind of international mediator can bring to the age-old work of conflict resolution. For as the nature of the world’s conflicts has changed in the past decade or so, so the demand for a new type of mediator has grown too.

The CHD, for instance, founded by just four people only nine years ago, now has a staff of over 70. The UN has traditionally provided a forum for the discussion and resolution of international disputes. However as Kreddha, a Dutch-based mediation group, argues: “There are no equivalent mechanisms for intrastate dispute resolution...despite the fact that most violent conflicts today are not international but intrastate in character.” The new mediators provide the new mechanisms.

Many of these contemporary conflicts involve insurgents, secessionists or even “resource-warriors”, like those in the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria, who clash with governments. Rival politicians can be brought into open conflict by elections, such as in Kenya, or now Zimbabwe.

The new kinds of disputes involve non-traditional parties such as international mining or oil companies pitched against indigenous people, as well as national governments tackling more established terrorist groups. One study has shown that over the past 15 years military victories have resolved only 7.5% of conflicts, while negotiations have prevailed in 92% of cases; “the challenge is thus not being a skilful warrior but a skilful negotiator.”

The UN might, at best, offer some bureaucratic and political clout, but it is also big, cumbersome and leaky. In its place, the new mediators operate on a much smaller scale and offer discretion, secrecy and flexibility. Mr Annan used the CHD in Kenya because it has no political agenda, so could be relied upon not to leak material in order to influence the talks one way or another. These mediators are ideal for getting involved in highly charged disputes between governments, for instance, and indigenous “terrorist” groups; they can set up back-channels, of the sort that proved vital in bringing about the eventual peace deal between the British government and the Irish Republican Army.

Thus the CHD provided a first conduit between the rebel Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government, as the Indonesians refused to use the UN because of anger over its role in East Timor. In Nepal, the CHD established the first links between the government and the Maoist insurgents in 2000. Here a key factor was “plausible deniability”, as was trust. Andrew Marshall, who sought out the first Maoist interlocutors, says that “neither side wanted their own people and cadres to know they were talking to the other side”, so the leaders of both the government and the rebels invested their trust in the third party, CHD, to keep the talks secret. Eventually, several countries got involved and this year the Maoists prevailed in elections.

The CHD also acted as a back-channel between the Spanish government and the Basque separatist movement ETA leading up to a ceasefire in 2006; it is currently trying to bring together the Darfur rebel groups in Sudan as one negotiating body. Kreddha has been involved in mediation work in the Niger Delta, and in New Caledonia between a mining corporation, Goro Nickel, and an indigenous environmental organisation called Rheebu Nuu. Such disputes are often called “resource conflicts”, and require specialist mediators with a knowledge of international law. Another new organisation called Conflicts Forum, founded by a former British intelligence officer, Alastair Crooke, attempts to serve as an interlocutor between militant Islamist groups, such as Hamas and Hizbullah, and the West.

Some mediation work can be instantly glamorous and hugely fulfilling, as in Kenya, but most of it is attritional; often it is pretty boring. Negotiations can drag on for years, but here again the small mediators can add a lot of value. Foreign politicians from America and Britain, for example, may bring a lot of pressure to bear on a dispute for a short amount of time, but inevitably they come and go according to the whims and demands of domestic politics. Professional mediators can stick with a conflict for years, thus building up a level of trust and knowledge that cannot easily be replicated. Much of a mediator’s work lies in getting the logistics right; trusted third-party interlocutors are needed simply to arrange meetings and book hotel rooms which will not be bugged by the other side.

In the case of CHD, it can also get visas and facilitate travel for “terrorists” taking part in talks in neutral venues like Switzerland or Norway. Both are strong financial backers of the centre, and neither is a member of the EU; they are thus outside the conventions restricting travel for those on some terrorist watch lists. Small countries backing small mediators can make a big difference; the betting now is on Mr Annan and his team trying to repeat their Kenya trick in beleaguered Zimbabwe.

The Economist

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Now that sounds like a good, challenging, rewarding, fulfilling career. Sad that the use of secret ambassadors is neccesary for groups who don't want anyone to know they're in negotiations with the other side, but at least the talks are occuring. A group like the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, which has no political intrests and which no one has ever heard of, has the potential to do some major good during international crises. In fact, it already has, which is impressive. Now that's what I want to do when I grow up.

Not a sword, but peace

In some cases, only the religious have the patience to be reconcilers

WHEN George Bush visited Rome last year, he wanted to see everybody who mattered in world affairs: Pope Benedict, the leaders of Italy—and members of the Sant’Egidio community.

AFPTumbling barriers: George Carey and Yasser Arafat

Started by a high-school student in 1968, this Roman Catholic fellowship now has 60,000 members in 70 countries. Its founding ideals were prayer, mission and solidarity with the poor. But it has also become the leading player in a crowded sector, that of faith-based peacemaking.

Helping warring parties (who may or may not profess a religion) to come together is not quite the same as inter-faith dialogue, though the two things can overlap. Faith-based mediation often involves putting to work in hard secular places the virtues that at least some religious people possess (discretion, modesty, empathy, a non-judgmental cast of mind, an ability to overcome cultural barriers).

Since the early 1990s, Sant’Egidio mediators have helped broker deals in places like Mozambique, Guatemala, Kosovo and, most recently, Côte d’Ivoire. Africa and Latin America are the main fields that Christian peacemakers plough. What many world leaders want to know is whether such groups bring anything unique to the business of reconciliation.

According to Mario Giro, Sant’Egidio’s head of international affairs: “What really makes the difference is neutrality, impartiality…and the ability to bring in outside powers as guarantors of an eventual deal.” He feels faith-based bodies know more about the grassroots reality of a situation because of their contacts with local religious figures, be they priests, imams or missionaries. “And all the more so if they are involved in inter-religious dialogue.”

Sant’Egidio’s mediators are not the only faith-based go-betweens to have done well. Vatican diplomats have mediated between governments and rebels in several African nations, notably Burundi, where the Holy See’s man, Michael Courtney, was killed in 2003 at a time when he was deeply involved in peace work.

The Netherlands Institute of International Relations found 27 Christian, Muslim and multi-faith peace groups to look at for a study issued in 2005. Their strengths, it reported, included “long-term commitment, long-term presence on the ground, moral and spiritual authority, and a niche to mobilise others for peace”. But there were weaknesses, such as “a lack of focus on results and a possible lack of professionalism”. A further risk, the institute said, was that the impulse to proselytise would obstruct the search for peace.

Peacemaking by Christian evangelicals in south Sudan seems to have been mired at times by an unhappy mix of missionary work and mediation. That is a qualification to the view, set out in a 2001 report from the Congressionally-funded United States Institute of Peace, that “faith-based organisations have a special role to play in zones of religious conflict.” In the Middle East, any progress has stemmed from secular initiatives. But that, says Sharon Rosen, could be a reason why progress is so scant.

The trick in all peacemaking is to find new commonalities, says Ms Rosen, an adviser to Search for Common Ground, a non-government body dedicated to conflict resolution and prevention. Its Jerusalem offices will soon host the secretariat of a Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, set up last year: members include the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, representatives of the sharia court of Palestine and the Christian patriarchates. One aim is to build mutual respect in a way that will assist more conventional peacemaking by diplomats and politicians. “I do not believe that inter-faith dialogue will bring about peace in the Middle East,” says Ms Rosen. “But I do believe that it is essential if peace is to be brought about. To ignore religion is a very grave mistake and I think the Oslo accords made that mistake.”

Her husband, Rabbi David Rosen, co-signed an ambitious effort to correct that error: the Alexandria declaration of January 2002, in which rabbis, muftis and top Christians, including George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury, agreed that the “holy land” was too sacred to be sullied by blood. Perhaps the best thing about such idealistic initiatives is that they create human networks of trust that come into play (often secretly) in crises—such as the siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in May 2002. The right sort of religious peace-broking is really vital if the dispute itself has to do with religion.

The Economist

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Now that's something that makes sense. If people are having a religious argument, who better to resolve it than someone who actually understands the roots of the theology? With non-religious issues it's a little less practical, due to some religions' obsession with converting people to the 'one true faith'. If you're trying to get people to stop fighting with each other, trying to make them switch religions at the same time is most likely not going to get very much done.

A hero at home, a villain abroad

New revelations on the sort of weapons expertise that was on offer to all comers have deepened the world's worries about nuclear proliferation

EPA

COMPACT in design, efficient in operation and capable of inflicting immense destruction over long distances. There is something truly spine-chilling about the sophistication of the wares displayed in a build-it-yourself bomb catalogue that was apparently shared with members of an international nuclear smuggling ring by a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The quality of the goods on sale, it now appears, was every bit as alarming as the geographical scope of his network.

New nuggets of information, suggesting that bomb-making know-how as well as enrichment was on offer, have emerged in a report by David Albright, a former weapons inspector who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security, an independent research outfit in Washington, DC. Mr Albright says modern designs for small, ingenious nuclear weapons have been discovered among the computer files of three Swiss citizens who were associated with Mr Khan.

“Why did [they]...have these designs, unless they had sold or intended to sell them for Mr Khan?”: that is one of Mr Albright's rhetorical questions. Without going into quite so much detail, America's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, confirmed on June 15th that the administration was as concerned about possible dissemination of weapons know-how by the Khan network as it was over the spread of uranium enrichment technology.

It now seems that on computers belonging to the Swiss trio (and reportedly on others in Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand) was the design of a modern nuclear warhead, tested and deployed by Pakistan, its parts ready-coded for ease of manufacture. But who were the likely buyers? And will this discovery prod Pakistan to tell the world more about the illicit trade Mr Khan had developed into an art form?

The network's customers for other nuclear technologies and equipment were Libya, Iran and North Korea, though suspicion has at times attached to Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Syria too. But Libya has been out of the bomb business since 2003. Jaws dropped when among the haul of equipment and documents it handed to inspectors was an Islamabad dry-cleaner's bag containing most (not all) of the drawings for a clunky Chinese-designed nuclear weapon from the 1960s, given to Pakistan before China decided that spreading the bomb was a dumb idea.

Unlike the Maoist model, the modern, computerised bomb design would fit easily on Pakistan's Ghauri missiles. Pakistan denies it, but these are a knock-off of North Korea's 1,300km-range Nodong rockets. Pakistan appears to have paid for its Ghauris with some nuclear assistance. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, denies this too. But in his autobiography he admitted that the Khan network had supplied Kim Jong Il's regime with some 20 uranium-enriching centrifuges.

Whatever the truth behind their missile deal, Pakistani officials were genuinely shocked to be told recently that Mr Khan was selling their most closely guarded weapons secrets too, according to Mr Albright. North Korea did test a nuclear device, in 2006. But its bomb used home-produced plutonium from Mr Kim's Yongbyon nuclear reactor for its fissile core; the Pakistani design touted by Mr Khan and his partners uses uranium.

Despite other evidence to the contrary, North Korea insists it got no uranium help from Pakistan or anywhere else. Recently (or so America and Israel say) it was caught out helping Syria to build a nuclear reactor (which Israel later flattened) that could produce plutonium for weapons, just like Yongbyon did. America seems ready to let both these matters go for now, so long as Mr Kim furnishes an accurate and verifiable inventory of his plutonium production. The gamble is that this would be a big step towards a six-party deal, to include South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, that could lead eventually to the dismantling of all North Korea's nuclear programmes.

Unlike Libya and North Korea, Iran flatly denies any weapons intent. It bought uranium-spinning equipment from Mr Khan, but says its nuclear work is entirely peaceful. Yet it has defied a string of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that the work be halted until inspectors can be sure of that. The trouble is that uranium enriched a little can be used in nuclear-power reactors, but when enriched a lot can be abused for bomb-building.

Iran's determination to enrich on regardless looks like dooming the latest offer of negotiations from America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The six have promised Iran assistance with other, less proliferation-prone nuclear technology, and direct talks on a whole range of economic, trade and security issues that Iran itself raised in a set of counter-proposals last month. A crucial difference between the two offers is that Iran wants to enrich on regardless, on its own territory, whereas the six insist the work be suspended before negotiations start.

Unless Iran shows willing, says Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, European governments are prepared to extend their sanctions on Iran, for example by freezing the overseas assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest commercial bank. (That move is not quite a done deal, but Mr Brown is confident it soon will be.) Despite record world energy prices, the Europeans may consider blocking investment in Iran's oil and gas industries too. America already has tough sanctions in place, though Russia and China do not.

Iran's insistence on enriching, whatever the cost, deepens suspicion of its motives. Now there are more worries. Like Pakistan's Ghauri missiles, Iran's Shahab-3 rockets are clones of Mr Kim's Nodongs. So the Khan network's modern warhead design would fit them just as nicely.

There is no evidence of any such transaction, but American and other intelligence agencies recently showed nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, evidence pointing to Iranian weapons work which America thinks may have stopped in 2003—though others believe it continues. This includes both high-explosive testing for possible nuclear triggers and work on a Shahab-3 missile cone to accommodate a nuclear warhead. Iran has dismissed the material as fabricated. But it has yet to give a convincing explanation of why it had a document, supplied by Mr Khan and his associates, on shaping uranium into spheres—a technique useful only in weapons building.

That is as far as the evidence goes. Pardoned by Mr Musharraf after a public confession in 2004, Mr Khan was put under house arrest. Neither American officials nor IAEA inspectors have been allowed to question him. Now the revered “father” of Pakistan's bomb is campaigning for release, and he seems to have many admirers among his compatriots. But the revelation that he was preparing to sell his own country's nuclear crown jewels surely ought to be enough to goad the authorities into questioning him more thoroughly. Without further information on the scope of his network and the real nature of his nuclear dealings, it will be impossible to assess how many other people (both salesmen and customers) are still engaged in the same murky business.

The Economist

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Selling nuclear weapons is like selling drugs, except a lot more dangerous. Both are highly profitable, highly illegal, and sell to shady customers. Nuclear weapons are lethal and a huge risk to have. What are you going to do with an item capable of causing the destruction of our entire planet? It's playing with fire. Especially when multiple parties own and are willing to use such items. It remains secure only as long as the balance of power remains intact, but the more countries obtain nuclear weapons the more shaky the situation becomes. That there is a catalouge of instructions for how to make such weapons is, while hardly surprising, a petrifying thought.

Authoritarian governments can lock up bloggers. It is harder to outwit them

WHAT do Barbra Streisand and the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, have in common? They both tried to block material they dislike from appearing on the internet. And they were both spectacularly unsuccessful. In 2003 Ms Streisand objected to aerial photographs of her home in Malibu appearing in a collection of publicly available coastline pictures. She sued (unsuccessfully) for $50m—and in doing so ensured that the pictures gained far wider publicity.

That self-defeating behaviour coined the phrase “Streisand effect”, illustrated by an axiom from John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of the internet, that: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” But the big test of the rule is not whether it frustrates publicity-shy celebrities. It is whether it can overcome governments’ desire for secrecy.

In November 2007 Tunisia blocked access to the popular video-sharing sites YouTube and DailyMotion, which both carried material about Tunisian political prisoners. It was not for the first time, and many other countries have blocked access to such sites, either to protect public morals, or to spare politicians’ blushes. What was unusual this time was the response. Tunisian activists and their allies organised a “digital sit-in”, linking dozens of videos about civil liberties to the image of the presidential palace in Google Earth. That turned a low-key human-rights story into a fashionable global campaign.

It was the same story in Armenia in March, where the president, Robert Kocharian, ended his term in office with a media blackout that, supposedly, extended to blogs (self-published websites which typically contain the author’s personal observations and opinions). Like all other outlets, the authorities said, blogs could publish government news only. The result was a soaring number of blogs hosted on servers outside Armenia—all sharply critical of the authorities.

Some countries still think that the benefits of censorship are worth the opprobrium. China unabashedly blocks foreign news sites, with state-financed digital censors playing an elaborate game of cat and mouse with those trying to elude them. Saudi Arabia makes a positive virtue of the practice, warning those trying to access prohibited websites of the dangers of pornography: sources cited include the Koran and Cass Sunstein, an American scholar who argues that porn does not automatically deserve First Amendment protection.

Such authoritarian countries are increasingly co-operating: Chinese software for finding keywords and spotting dangerous sites is among the best in the world. But international co-operation cuts both ways. If Egypt, for example, buys Chinese web-censorship technology, the Egyptian bloggers may learn ways to bypass it from their Chinese colleagues before the technology arrives.

That may keep information flowing fairly freely. But it does not keep bloggers out of prison. Security officials who once scoffed at blogs, or ignored them completely in favour of bigger and more conspicuous targets, are now bringing their legal and other arsenals to bear. A common move is to expand media, information and electoral laws to include blogs. Last year, for example, Uzbekistan changed its media law to count all websites as “mass media”—a category subject to Draconian restriction. Belarus now requires owners of internet cafés to keep a log of all websites that their customers visit: in a country where internet access at home is still rare and costly, that is a big hurdle for the active netizen. Earlier this year Indonesia passed a law that made it much riskier to publish controversial opinions online. A Brazilian court has ruled that bloggers, like other media, must abide by restrictions imposed by the law on elections.

The chilling effect of such moves is intensified when governments back them up with imprisonment. From Egypt to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia to Singapore, bloggers have in recent months found themselves behind bars for posting materials that those in power dislike. The most recent Worldwide Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, a lobby group, estimates their number at a minimum of 64.

International human-rights organisations have taken up their cause. But the best and quickest way of defending those in prison may be with the help of other internet activists. Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian digital activist who now lives in exile in the Netherlands, says that this beats traditional human-rights outfits when it comes to informing the world about the arrest of fellow bloggers. He co-ordinates the campaigning efforts of Global Voices Online, a web-based outfit that began as a collator of offbeat blog content and has now branched out into lobbying for free speech.

Such issues were expected to be in sharp focus at Global Voices’ annual summit in Budapest this week, where hundreds of bloggers, academics, do-gooders and journalists from places like China, Belarus, Venezuela and Kenya were due to swap tips on how to outwit officialdom. The aim, says Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard academic who cofounded Global Voices, is to build networks of trust and co-operation between people who would not instinctively look to the other side of the world for solutions to their problems.

That is a worthy if ambitious goal. Doubtless, authoritarian governments are in close touch too, sharing the best ways of dealing with the pestilential gadflies and troublemakers of the internet. But they will not be posting their conclusions online, for all to see. Which way works better? History will decide.

The Economist

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The internet is an information-sharing interconnected network. Anything one person can see, anyone with an internet connection will also be able to see. I think it's rather futile to try and keep information about yourself or your government off the web. Any attempts will just cause far greater publicity, as demonstrated by Barbara Streisand. So why try? I suppose authoritarian governments are not well known for being logical. So they lock up renegade bloggers and twenty more will write about how unjust it is to be jailed for talking about things presidents are embarrassed about.