Uzbekistan has been touted as a bastion of Muslim moderation, but evidently neither the US nor the Russian governments believe that is entirely true. From AFP:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and Russia carried out a secret operation last week to remove weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, whose government is facing growing Islamist unrest, said the Energy Department....Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Monday the one-day operation, implemented last Thursday, was crucial for enhancing international security.
"The recovery, return and eventual elimination of this highly-enriched uranium are an important milestone in our campaign to reduce this dangerous material worldwide," he said in a brief statement.
The operation targeted 11 kilograms (24.2 pounds) of enriched uranium fuel, including highly-enriched uranium that could be used for manufacturing nuclear weapons, that was brought to Uzbekistan during Soviet times, officials said.
Good job. Now let's keep it out of Iran's hands.
Uzbekistan is unstable, but even if it were stable, so what? No Muslim state should have weapons that could be used 1) by the state itself 2) by another government 3) by elements within the army or security forces who might well pass certain kinds of weaponry to Muslim groups elsewhere 4) by terrorrist groups within the country, who might be able to seize such weaponry.
Muslim states may be offered protection of outside, non-Muslim powers, and the kind of equipment that can be used for internal problems -- jeeps, rifles. Anything more, as one now understands from the Stinger missile folly (were it being done all over again, by people who actually knew something about Islam, would the United States have supplied Stinger missiles? Would the United States have taken the side of the rebels at all, or regarded Communism in Afghanistan as the lesser evil, given that its failures are self-evident, whereas Muslims take the failures of Islamic polities as failures resulting from being insufficiently Muslim). To "recycle petrodollars" by selling advanced weaponry to, for example, the U.A.E. (along with Saudi Arabia, the other great supporter of the Taliban, and the other great Arab bankroller of the Jihad worldwide -- both, of course, ably accompanied by Iran).
Whatever animosity exists between Uzbeks and Kazakhs, the former more numerous, the latter richer and far more secular in outlook (if someone in Kazakhstan describes himself as "Muslim" it is only because he thinks he has to have some such identity -- it hardly matters for most, and the understanding that there is a long, and captivating pre-Islamic history is well understood, as are the benefits of a solid secular educational system created by the Russians, and still functioning). In Uzbekistan, discontent naturally takes on an Islamic cast; repression has been harsh, and effective. But it is hard to keep track of uranium -- and things like that.
now disarm pakistan of their nuclear bombs,
and we might start getting somewhere.
The Russians understand that all Muslims bat for the same team. Nuclear material in the hands of one Muslim group naturally could end up in the hands of another to use as blackmail or as a weapon for the purpose of extending the influence of Islam.
the talk doesn't match the walk when it comes to the west and islam:
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/september/09_15_3.html
Ah, what our governments get up to without informing us! This time, wise move, ought to be done in other satellites of former Soviet Union
wherever there is uranium lying about... Fear though Muslim Terrorists have already got their hands on the stuff.
Doesn't mean anything, russia will just turn around and sell it to Iran or Syria!
Bravo, Putin! Nukes are SERIOUS items that need to be kept WELL AWAY from Megacidal Maniacs (- and not in Uzbekistan alone, either).
In the wake of the Islamo-fascist/Jihadi terrorist atrocities scourging Russia recently, President Putin’s recentralizing State Power in the Kremlin, girding, he declares, for upcoming, robust counter-measures against the fanatical, multi-murderous barbarians (“BASTARDS”, as he's dubbed them).
Though he’d dearly like to receive international co-operation in his gathering onslaught, he’s prepared to strike UNILATERALLY now, “pre-emptively”, beyond his frontiers. Therefore, while Chechnia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and other Ciscaucasian territories (mainly Moslem-majority) will all be subject to EXTRA, gruffly-intrusive attentions from Moscow, the Russians’ll no doubt make incursions into parts of Georgia and carry out assassination-bids in London and Europe as well.
Notwithstanding, if Mr Putin DOES seek the US to array itself with Russia against their common Islamo-fascist/Jihadi enemy, in the misnamed “War on Terror” (WWIV!), he ought to know that the Americans' bottom-line will be the curtailing of every bit of Russian nuclear support for IRAN.
On Sunday disturbing news arrived of a tremendous “mushroom cloud”, spotted a few days before, rising high over the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Korea. There was fear of a North Korean A-Bomb test, but on Monday night, US Secretary Of State, Colin Powell, advised that this “was not a nuclear event” (presumably, a snap, USAF-Japanese Self-Defense Air Force radiation-count having been made and CONFIRMED in the interim).
The DRK’s FM said a couple of hours later that the immense, towering, dense plume was the aftermath of the deliberately-engineered demolishing of a great mountain, for the construction of hydro-electric infrastructure. (Alternate sources advise that this Forbidden Area’s packed solid with a honey-comb of capacious, brimming, subterranean munitions-bunkers - among many such severely-restricted zones in the North - and that some quantity of these armaments-dumps have accidentally exploded, producing this gigantic column of smoke, billowing up into the sky.)
If Pyongyang’a building up its power-generation industry, it’ll demand that much less nuclear energy; will its nuclear activities thus be DRAWN DOWN across the board, or will its atomic reactors, scientists and technicians, etc, thereby be FREED UP, to be employed exclusively for military use? On the other hand, if it was some massive misadventure, how long can a totally opaque Government, that’s not competent to maintain its gargantuan stocks of conventional ordnance, safely be left to continue in clandestine nuclear weapons development?
(However, in the later 1950s or early ‘60s, during the 20th Century’s Cold War, the USSR suffered a disastrous spontaneous blast, akin to North Korea’s: possibly worse - it was one which dispersed copious volumes of chemical agents, plus the abundant amount of motley nuclear wastes stored there, over a wide tract of Siberia - the blighted “foot-print” was tightly closed, “Top Secret”, for decades thereafter - without any interference whatsoever from abroad.)
Despite that - at this prime juncture, in this escalating conflict - the Russians could be most reasonably be requested by Washington, soon, to initiate pressures on North Korea (together with on IRAN, as above) to irrevocably abandon their pursuit of nukes....
The article states:
"The United States and Russia carried out a secret operation last week to remove weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, whose government is facing growing Islamist unrest..."
The main source of worldwide contention exists within the former Soviet Union.
The reality of Putin assuming and gaining his dictatorial powers should be a major concern to the West and the United States.
Whatever the karate expert may intend is a "problem" for US.
This man is the problem.
He will utilize all options, including the Islamic agenda, to further his mind-set glory.
Beat me up! Call me a jackass! Prove me wrong.
I hope I am.
Uzbekistan is also a country with a poor security infrastructure; "even-handed" in its treatment of Islamofascists and the Evangelical Christians who have actually made a dent in the Islamofascists' potential pool of recruits; and under an unpopular dictator. Islamofascist or not, it's a very frail reed to lean on.
Do Muslims really bat for the same team? Ask the Darfuri or Kurdish Muslims what they think of their Arab brethren.
In the end, if the choice is between the Umma and Caliphate and that of the world of the infidel, which choice would even the Kurdish and Darfuri Muslims make? Outside of tribalism, Islam goes for the umma.
"The Eagle and the Bear conducted secret mission"
That we would join together for a world solution could lead to brighter possibilities.
GO YAHWEH