U.S. has eyes "wide open" to risks on Iran deal: Kerry

By Caren Bohan and Will Dunham

WASHINGTON Sun Nov 24, 2013 11:19am EST

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at London’s Stansted Airport November 24, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Carolyn Kaster/Pool

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration insisted on strong safeguards in a nuclear deal with Iran and has no illusions about the risks that the Islamic state might not follow through on its obligations, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday.

Kerry sought to reassure skeptics in the Congress who worry that the six-month agreement gives Iran too much leeway and that it might end up using it as a stalling tactic.

Kerry told CNN that U.S. officials entered into the deal with their eyes “absolutely wide open.”

“We have no illusions. We don’t do this on the basis of somebody’s statements to you. We do it on the basis on actions that can be verified,” he said.

The deal reached by Iran and six world powers, including the United States, gives Iran some initial relief from sanctions in exchange for halting its most sensitive nuclear work, the high-grade enrichment of uranium.

The deal does not require Iran to stop all enrichment but does demand a halt to refinement above a purity of 5 percent. Refined uranium also provides the fissile core of an atomic bomb if refined to a high degree.

Influential U.S. Senator Bob Corker, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” pledged to hold the Obama administration’s “feet to the fire” to ensure that Tehran is not given excessive leeway.

Corker, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the pact allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium must not “become the norm” for a longer-term agreement.

“I think you are going to see on Capitol Hill, again, a bipartisan effort to try to make sure that this is not a final agreement,” he said.

Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, agreed: “We will not stand by (and) just let this be the final deal.” Cardin also appeared on Fox.

Speaking on the ABC program “This Week,” Republican Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Congress may allow the administration to see how the deal works over the next six months.

But he added that in the future, there could be “a strong movement in the United States Senate to move ahead to tighten sanctions” on Iran.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kerry also sought to provide reassurances to Israel, which views the nuclear deal as misguided.

“Israel is threatened by what has been going on in Iran,” Kerry told CNN.

“But I believe that from this day – for the next six months – Israel is in fact safer than it was yesterday because we now have a mechanism by which we are going to expand the amount of time in which they (the Iranians) can break out (toward making a nuclear bomb). We are going to have insights to their program that we didn’t have before,” he added.

(Additional reporting by Aruna Viswanatha and Jackie Frank; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jackie Frank)

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Reuters: Politics

U.S. has eyes "wide open" to risks on Iran deal: Kerry

British military wastes 1.58 billion amid wide spending cuts - report

Published time: September 08, 2013 12:26

Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine HMS Astute (Reuters / David Moir)

Britain’s Ministry of Defense has been implicated in 1.58 billion pounds ($ 2.47 billion) of wasteful spending over the last two years, which comes at a time when the country faces stringent defense cuts, UK media reported.

Accounts from the 2012-2013 books obtained by The Daily Mail show that while the country was getting rid of older regiments, firing thousands of armed forces personnel and sending historical equipment to the junk yard, it was doing so to balance out losses, bad spending and accounting errors.

And while some personnel were getting the sack, hundreds of others were being overpaid because of a clerical blunder, with the sum totaling 640,000 pounds and no plans to recover it.

Losses in the anti-missile storage department have led to the MoD writing off more than half a billion pounds, adding to that the purchase of the wrong types of bombs for training programs and almost 400,000 pounds for lost equipment in Canada. 

Various other items on the list simply pile up on top of the mistakes: 100,000 pounds in security at the G8 summit, 1.5 million pounds in overpaid tax by the revenue department and almost 500,000 pounds for a dispute over computer services at one of the academies of the armed forces. 

In the last financial year, 33.5 million pounds allocated for military purposes got misplaced by the bookkeepers. The balance had to be written off as, according to a note in the books, there is no information on where it went.

Also, while the MoD withdrew large amounts of military equipment from service – including ships and planes – it was giving other equipment away as gifts, namely 50 Leyland DAF trucks worth 450,000 pounds each to Uzbekistan and counter-terrorism training equipment to Pakistan priced at 294,000 pounds. 

While some other costs related to the early withdrawal of several expensive aircraft models are projected to be in the billions, the MoD said that money would be saved in the long term.

However, the biggest loss of money was incurred in a deal with Germany, in which old army barracks and compounds previously belonging to the British had been handed back. The reduction in the value of the buildings because of plans for early British withdrawal from the country came to 1.5 billion pounds. Similar to the scrapping of expensive equipment, the MoD believes the above gifts will eventually save on long-term costs, because the German estate is no longer needed following a decision to withdraw troops. They promise taxpayer savings of 240 million pounds a year, cutting back on the cost of returning personnel and their families to home soil earlier.

Shadow Defense Secretary, Jim Murphy, lashed out at the blunders on Saturday, saying that “this incompetent waste will come as a shock to a country angry at defense cuts… Multi-million pound mistakes at a time of mass sackings of service personnel and defense equipment being scrapped.” The Secretary went on to say that “Ministers should minimize waste and prioritize protection for those who serve and their families.”

The sweeping cuts are taking place in the military at a time when the intelligence budget has just received its largest boost. British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osbourne, has come out with a review of public spending for 2015-2016, which shows health, science, education and the military slashed, while the country’s spy agencies –MI5 and MI6 – are set to receive around 100 million pounds in bonuses. Intelligence is now at the top of the British government’s spending agenda.

The MoD reacted to the criticism by saying that “the vast majority of write-offs are not items lost or wasted but occasions where we have sold off or scrapped redundant military equipment or gifted equipment to another country” and that “for the first time the MoD has a balanced budget” with a 10-year equipment plan for the military estimated at 160 billion pounds.

Problematic, however, is also the issue of public anger at Britain’s austerity program, which has intensified since George Osborne came to power in 2010. Weak economic growth and a costly welfare system disturbed the government’s original plans to wipe out a budget deficit which it inherited at 11.2 percent of GDP, according to the International Business Times. 

Britain has also recently lost its triple-A credit rating, having to ask the International Monetary Fund to postpone its cuts and increase investment into infrastructure.

Late June saw thousands take to the streets – teachers, doctors, unions and activists – to protest against Britain’s austerity policy.

RT – News

British military wastes 1.58 billion amid wide spending cuts - report