US deploying missile defense system to Guam in light of rising DPRK tensions

BBC: The US is moving an advanced missile system to the Pacific island of Guam as a precaution following threats by North Korea, the Pentagon has said.

The Department of Defence said it would deploy the ballistic Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (Thaad) in the coming weeks.

Pyongyang has threatened to target South Korea and the US in recent weeks.

The state's warlike rhetoric follows new UN sanctions and joint military drills by the US and South Korea.

The Thaad system includes a truck-mounted launcher, interceptor missiles, and AN/TPY-2 tracking radar, together with an integrated fire control system.

The Pentagon said in a statement the missile system would be moved to Guam as a "precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat".

"The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and stands ready to defend US territory, our allies, and our national interests," the statement added.

Jon Stewart's remarks cause security headache for US Embassy in Cairo.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Embassy in Cairo has at least temporarily shut down its Twitter feed following an unusual diplomatic incident involving "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart and the Egyptian government.

U.S. officials say the embassy's Twitter account was taken offline on Wednesday after Egyptian authorities objected to a tweet containing a link to a Stewart monologue this week. Stewart mocked Egypt's president for the arrest of a high-profile satirist. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

It was not immediately clear if or when the feed would be restored. The Twitter blackout comes as tensions between Washington and Cairo have soared in recent days over concerns that the Egyptian government is backsliding on the protection of human rights.

Pakistan Power Plant attacked by terrorists

BBC: A policeman and a plant employee were killed on the spot and nine people were taken hostage, police said.

Five bodies were later recovered from a nearby field but the whereabouts of the four remaining hostages are unknown.

No group has said it carried out the raid, but the Taliban frequently launch attacks in the region.

The attack temporarily disrupted power to parts of the city - the supply has now been restored.

The assault by militants armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades took place in the early hours of Tuesday in the southern Badh Bher suburb of Peshawar, an area frequently targeted by militants, correspondents say.

"They attacked the power station at around 02:30 (21:30 GMT Monday). They killed two officials on the spot," Javed Khan, a senior police official in the area, told Agence France-Presse news agency.

The dead include police officers and employees of the power plant.

"They entered the grid station and started setting ablaze each and every thing," police official Mohammad Ishaq told Reuters news agency.

"They kidnapped nine people and killed five of them later and threw their bodies in the fields."

The BBC's Orla Guerin in Islamabad says that there had been fears militants would step up attacks in advance of elections to be held in May.

North Korea firing up Yongbyon nuke facility

By Chico Harlan, Updated: Tuesday, April 2, 8:58 AM

SEOUL — North Korea said Tuesday that it will resume operations of a shuttered nuclear reactor at its Yongbyon facility, allowing the secretive nation to potentially expand its stock of fissile material for nuclear weapons as it threatens war against the United States and its allies.

The brief announcement, carried by the state-run news agency, marked a notable escalation from the rhetoric of recent weeks, which has been fiery but until now backed up by little action.

The graphite-moderated reactor — along with several related facilities — had been shut down in 2007 as part of a diplomatic deal that sent heavy fuel oil to the North. Pyongyang said Tuesday it wanted to to restart the reactor and other nuclear facilities to ease the nation’s “acute shortage of electricity” and to bolster the “nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity.” Experts who have visited the Yongbyon facility say the small reactor is ill-suited for power production and geared instead to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Plutonium can be culled from the spent fuel that is a byproduct of the reactor’s generating process. When the reactor is fully running, it can produce enough plutonium for about one bomb per year, according to atomic experts.

Restarting the reactor will take about six months, “unless they have been doing much of the preparatory work quietly,” Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who has visited the North’s nuclear facilities numerous times, said in an e-mail.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he was “deeply troubled” by rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and called for negotiations to resolve them.

“Nuclear threats are not a game,” he said at a news conference during a visit to Andorra. “Aggressive rhetoric and military posturing only result in counteractions and fuel fear and instability. Things must begin to calm down, as this situation, made worse by the lack of communication, could lead down a path that nobody should want to follow.”

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, said there was “no need” for North Korea “to be on a collision course with the international community.” He said he was sure that no nation intends to attack the North “because of disagreements about its political system or foreign policy. But he expressed fear “that others will respond firmly to any direct military provocation.” Ban added, “Dialogue and negotiations are the only way to resolve the current crisis.”

The North’s announcement comes in the wake of a Workers’ Party pledge that described nuclear weapons as the “nation’s life,” tradable not even for “billions of dollars.” The announcement also suggests that new leader Kim Jong Un is willing to expand his nation’s weapons program even if it upsets neighbors, including the North’s key benefactor, China, whose Foreign Ministry expressed “regret” about the decision to resume operations at Yongbyon.

A former U.S. official who has visited Yongbyon, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak frankly, said the North’s apparent decision is “very dangerous,” because the facilities are not monitored by outsiders.

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What if DPRK topples? Wargamers posit :

ABC NEWS

By COLLEEN CURRY
March 29, 2013


North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un today ordered his missile batteries to prepare to launch against U.S. and South Korea targets, the latest act of belligerence that has left the United States and the world on edge in recent weeks.

But despite Kim's menacing posture, the U.S. military recently wargamed a different scenario: how many American troops would be needed to go in and secure North Korea's nuclear arsenal if Kim's regime collapsed.

That was the objective this February when the U.S. military played out its Winter Wargame, that the autocratic rule of Kim Jong Un unraveled either from civil unrest or a challenge to his power and his arsenal of nukes was up for grabs. It's a scenario that some believe is more likely than a North Korea attack on the south.

"North Korea has relied on these time honored, very effective tools that dictators have wielded all over the world, and what we know about these tools is that they work until they don't," said Jennifer Lind, a Dartmouth professor who has studied potential missions to North Korea.

Recent years have seen the sudden collapse of dictatorial regimes in Libya and Egypt, and Syria is now in flames with control of its chemical weapons in doubt.

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"A regime collapse is always on the table, and we are in an uncertain period of leadership transition," said Rodger Baker, a geopolitical analyst from Stratfor Global Intelligence.

In a war game focusing on the fictitious country "North Brownland," military experts from the Army's forward-looking research arm, the Concept Development and Learning Directorate, assessed how many U.S. troops it would take to go into a North Korea-like place to secure the weapons after a crisis erupted, and how quickly those weapons could be secured.

According to Maj. Gen. Bill Hix, who oversaw the war game, American troops would have to enter the country by air and sea, locate nuclear material in enormous storehouses and unknown underground bunkers, and figure out how to wrest control of nuclear materials and stop reactors. The challenges, Hix said, are significant.

"We looked at this issue of countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear weapons, and fissile material, and the data and the scientists associated with that kind of enterprise," Hix said.

Hix declined to discuss the game's conclusions, but he cited studies that determined that nearly 100,000 troops would be needed to storm the country and secure nuclear material, and that the armed forces are still in need of nuclear experts who could help with such a mission.

"There are obviously many people in the U.S. government or the U.S. who are experts in nuclear reactors or whatever, but not paid to work in a hostile environment where someone is trying to kill you while you are trying to render safe a reactor or fissile material," the general said.

Defense News, which first reported on the wargame, said it took U.S. troops 56 days to get into the country and secure the weapons.

Lind estimated that the mission would need up to 200,000 additional troops to carry out other aspects of stabilizing the country, including efforts to feed citizens, and locating and disarming conventional weapons and artillery.

Those levels would exceed the peak number of troops in Iraq, which was 165,000, and the peak for Afghanistan, which was 101,000.

"Can we get the job done? I think the answer is yes," Hix said. "Can we do it at the speed that may be 

required right now? I think we're challenged to do that."

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