Arms Control

Al Qaeda has expanded its presence in Afghanistan, taking advantage of the sinking security situation to resurface in the country it was forced to flee seven years ago, the top U.S. military intelligence official testified Tuesday. Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described Al Qaeda's efforts as one of the reasons for the Obama administration's decision last month to order additional troops to Afghanistan.

When is it time to dump an old friend who insists on behaving badly? The debate is raging in China. North Korea's latest nuclear test raises the question of just how long the bonds forged between old communist allies will endure. The test was conducted barely 50 miles from the Chinese border. The ground rumbled in northeast China, and some schools were evacuated because of fears of an earthquake. "It was quite shocking.

Attempts to control or reverse nuclear proliferation come in two flavors: Either one tries to control nuclear material (uranium, centrifuges, superfast switches) or one tries to control nuclear information (blueprints, schematics, scientific expertise). For most of the last half a century, the world has shunned the material approach in favor of controlling information. But information is extremely difficult to contain, as is made clear by the growing number of countries that have acquired nuclear weapons in the decades since the United States made the first atomic bomb, from the Soviet Union in 1949 to North Korea in 2006.

North Korea may be able to overcome technical difficulties and assemble a missile capable of hitting West Coast cities within three years, a top Defense Department official said Tuesday, but it is unlikely to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead in that time frame. The U.S. assessment came as North Korea's rulers show signs of preparing for additional weapons tests in the face of international condemnation and new United Nations sanctions.

Israel has warned for years that it might carry out military action to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb. But as the United States and other powers prepare to confront Iran in talks this week, the message from Jerusalem is more restrained. Israeli leaders say they are willing to wait as President Obama plays out his strategy of negotiating with Iran while threatening stronger sanctions if talks fail. They say last week's disclosure of a previously secret nuclear enrichment plant under construction in Iran strengthened the case for harsh international measures.

The U.S. and Russia may be able to find common ground on the key issues of missile defense and nuclear arms reductions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday. Lavrov and Clinton spoke positively, if cautiously, after meeting in Geneva in an effort to ease tensions between the countries. "We did not agree on everything, of course, but we agreed to work on every issue," Lavrov said.

North Korea blew an important year-end deadline to report details of its nuclear program, a worrying sign that dictator Kim Jong Il is once again stalling on his promises of denuclearization. The history of nuclear negotiations with the leadership in Pyongyang is littered with broken promises and non-starter agreements, making this missed deadline a discouraging beginning to the New Year.

American and North Korean officials traded charges Friday over the lagging effort to shut down Pyongyang's nuclear program, raising new doubts about an initiative that the Bush administration has hoped would yield a rare diplomatic success. North Korea's Foreign Ministry declared that it had fulfilled a commitment to provide U.S. officials with a full list of its nuclear activities before a Dec. 31 deadline, and intended to do no more.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency says it has "serious concern" about Iran's potential to assemble a nuclear bomb because the country has not addressed questions about weapons designs, but it credited Iran for clarifying all other issues about its nuclear program history, a report released Friday says. The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency comes as the U.N. Security Council is considering new sanctions against Tehran. Iran has continued to defy earlier U.N.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday imposed a third round of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, even though some members acknowledged that more penalties were unlikely to change Tehran's mind. Key powers also offered political and economic incentives to get the country to stop enrichment and start talking again.