Litli Bush/Saddam í Georgíu nagar bindið sitt í sjónvarpinu

Grafið undan almennri skynsemi á deiglunni

Það er ekki hægt að skrifa athugasemdir á þann skrípavettvang af skiljanlegum og ítrekuðum ástæðum og vitnast það síðast af orvellíanísku blaðri þar um átökin í Kákasus. Georgía er gjörspillt skríparíki sérstaklega kostað af alræmdum vestrænum siðvillingum og hegðan ráðamanna þar er eftir því og það laðast ávallt saman sem deilir sameiginlegum gildum og hugmyndafræði og viðhorfum. Hins vegar eru geðraskanir og siðblinda ekki sérstaklega vænleg söluvara til lengdar sem skýrir sjálfsagt hversu illa raðlygurum gengur orðið að selja slíkt nú orðið. Sporin hræða. Góðar stundir.

Bush begs Russia to attack Europe

WARSAW and Washington have reached a preliminary deal on basing elements of a controversial US missile shield in Poland, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced today.

"We have reached a deal with the United States on the shield," after Washington agreed to meet Poland's key demand for defence aid separate from the anti-missile system, Mr Tusk told Polish news channel TVN.

Washington aims to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland plus a radar facility in the neighbouring Czech Republic by 2011-2013 to complete a system already in place in the United States, Greenland and Britain.

The United States insists the plan is to ward off potential missile attacks by "rogue states," notably Iran, and is not directed against Russia.

The shield, however, has become a major source of tension with Moscow. It considers it a security threat designed to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent, and has vowed a firm response if the Czechs and Poles go ahead.

The matter is all the more sensitive because the Czech Republic and Poland were Soviet satellites until 1989, before transforming into staunch US allies when the communist bloc collapsed.

They joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. Moscow therefore feels threatened on its own doorstep.

While Prague signed a radar deal in July, Washington's talks with Warsaw have been grinding on for 15 months.

Amid concerns about the potential risks - not specifically from Russia - of hosting the silos, Poland has persistently pressed the United States to provide a Patriot missile air-defence system.

"Our key demand, the presence of Patriots, has been accepted by the Americans," Mr Tusk said.

"I'm still talking about a preliminary deal," he said.

"We would start with a battery under US command, but made available to the Polish army. Then there would be a second phase, involving equipping the Polish army with missiles."

Mr Tusk said that the United States had also "committed to close cooperation with Poland in the event of a danger from a third party".

Overnight, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that Warsaw was looking for a "kind of reinforcement of Article Five" of the treaty binding NATO's 26 nations.

The article says an attack against one member is an attack against the entire alliance.

Poland, US reach missile shield deal

From correspondents in Warsaw | August 15, 2008

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0%2C25197%2C24184574-12377%2C00.html

Putin for US president - more than ever

By Spengler

If Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were president of the United States, would Iran try to build a nuclear bomb? Would Pakistan provide covert aid to al-Qaeda? Would Hugo Chavez train terrorists in Venezuela? Would leftover nationalities with delusions of grandeur provoke the great powers? Just ask Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, who now wishes he never tried to put his 4 million countrymen into strategic play.

In January I urged Americans to draft the Russian leader to succeed George W Bush (Putin for president of the United States, January 8, 2008). Putin's swift and decisive action in Georgia reflects precisely the sort of decisiveness that America requires.

 

Thanks to Putin, the world has become a much safer place. By

intervening in Georgia, Russia has demonstrated that the great powers of the world have nothing to fight about. Russia has wiped the floor with a putative US ally, and apart from a bad case of cream pie on the face, America has lost nothing. The United States and the European community will do nothing to help Georgia, and nothing of substance to penalize the Russian Federation.

Contrary to the hyperventilation of policy analysts on American news shows, the West has no vital interests in Georgia. It would be convenient from Washington's vantage point for oil to flow from the Caspian Sea via Georgia to the Black Sea, to be sure, but nothing that occurs in Georgia will have a measurable impact on American energy security. It is humiliating for the US to watch the Russians thrash a prospective ally, but not harmful, for Georgia never should have been an ally in the first place.

The lack of consequences of Russia's incursion is a noteworthy fact, for never before in the history of the world has the world's economic and military power resided in countries whose fundamental interests do not conflict in any important way. The US enthused over Georgia's ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and encouraged Saakashvili to overplay his hand. Once it became clear that Russia would not tolerate a NATO member on its southern border, however, Washington had nothing to say about the matter, because no fundamental American interests were at stake.

Washington looks all the sillier for its failure to anticipate a Russian action that Moscow signaled months in advance. After the US and its main European allies recognized the independence of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008, Russia warned that this action set a precedent for other prospective secessions, notably South Ossetia.

There is no longer any reason to put up with the tantrums of long-redundant tribes. If 3.7 million ethnic Georgians have the right to break away from the 142 million population of the Russian Federation, why shouldn't the 100,000 Ossetians living in Georgia break away and form their own state as well? Most of them have acquired Russian passports and want nothing to do with the Georgians. The Ossetians have spoken their variant of Persian for more than a millennium and had their own kingdom during the Middle Ages.

If the West is going to put itself at risk for 3.8 million ethnic Georgians, roughly the population of Los Angeles, or 5.4 million Tibetans, or 2 million Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, why shouldn't Russia take risks for the South Ossetians, not to mention the 100,000 Abkhaz speakers in Georgia's secessionist Black Sea province? Once the infinite regress of ethnic logic gets into motion, there is no good reason not to pull the world apart like taffy.

Forget the Kosovo Albanians, the South Ossetians, the Abkhazians, Saakashvili and the Dalai Lama. These are relics of an older world that might deserve their own theme park, but not their own state. Precisely what are 3.8 million freedom-loving Georgians supposed to contribute to American strategic interests with its US$2 billion a year of exports consisting (according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook) of "scrap metal, wine, mineral water, ores, vehicles, fruits and nuts"? Georgia's hope was to lever its geographical position on the Russia border by making itself useful to the American military.

If it had not been for America's insistence on installing a gang of trigger-happy pimps and drug-pushers in Kosovo, Russia might have responded less ferociously to the flea bites on its southern border. Make no mistake: the American-sponsored Kosovo regime is the dirtiest anywhere in postwar history. Writing in the Spiegel magazine website last April 24 , Walter Mayr described Kosovo as "a country ruled by corruption and organized crime". For example, Mayr reports,

Ramush Haradinaj is a former KLA commander who later became prime minister of UN-administered Kosovo. His indictment in The Hague consisted of 37 charges, including murder, torture, rape and the expulsion of Serbs, Albanians and gypsies in the weeks following the end of the war in 1999. Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, called him a "gangster in uniform". He returned to Kosovo this spring, after his acquittal on April 3. [1]

America's wag-the-dog war against Serbia in 1999 over alleged ethnic cleansing of Muslim Albanians in Kosovo won the undeserved support of Republicans as well as Democrats, to the extent that too many people on all sides of Washington politics risked their reputation to admit that the whole business was a stupid mistake. Washington has simply dug itself in deeper, joined at the hip to a government less savory than any banana republic dictatorship that enjoyed American favor at the depths of the Cold War (See The inconvenient Serbs, Asia Times Online, April 17, 2007.)

America remains so committed to the myth of moderate Islam that it is prepared to invent it. Kosovo, like the Turkey of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, supposedly embodies a moderate, Sufi-derived brand of Islam that will foster an American partnership with the Muslim world. The US intelligence community knows perfectly well that the networks that traffic prostitutes through Albania into Italy and the rest of Europe also move narcotics, weapons and terrorists from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Grozny in Chechnya to Tirana in Albania and Pristina in Kosovo.

The Russians know better. As I wrote in my January 8 endorsement of Putin for president of the United States:

Putin understands how to exercise power. Unlike Iraq, the restive Muslim province of Chechnya now nestles comfortably in Putin's palm, albeit with about half the people it had a decade ago. Russian troops killed between 35,000 and 100,000 civilians in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, and half a million were driven from their homes, totaling about half the population. But that is not what pacified Chechnya. Putin bribed and bullied Chechen clans to do Russia's dirty work for it, showing himself a master at the game of divide-and-conquer. Working from a position of weakness, Russia's president is the closest the modern world comes to the insidious strategic genius of a Cardinal Richelieu. That is the sort of strategic thinking America needs.

Half the world's population now resides in the world's three largest countries, namely China, India and the United States. These are not multi-ethnic, but rather supra-ethnic states, whose identity transcends tribe and nationality. There is no "clash of civilizations", for Confucian, Hindu, American and Orthodox civilization cannot find grounds for a clash. As for the European community, its global ambitions succumbed to geriatric disease a generation ago.

The number of flashpoints for violence in the world has grown in inverse proportion to their importance. The world is full of undead tribes with delusions of grandeur, and soon-to-be-extinct peoples who rather would go out with a bang than a whimper. The supra-ethnic states of the world have a common interest in containing the mischief that might be made by the losers. China, which has an annoying terrorist problem in its Westernmost province, has plenty of reason to help suppress Muslim separatists.

Unfortunately, modern weapons technology makes it possible for a spoiler state to inflict a disproportionate amount of damage. China recognized this when it cooperated with the United States to defuse the North Korean nuclear problem. The most visible prospective spoiler in the pack remains Iran. If America wants to recover from its humiliation in the Caucasus, it might, for example, conduct an air raid against Iran's nuclear facilities, and justify it with the same sort of reasoning that Russia invoked in Georgia. Contrary to surface impressions, Moscow wouldn't mind a bit.

Note
1. See The Slow Birth of a Nation Der Spiegel Online, April 24, 2008.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag01.html

Upprifjun ... fortíðin leiðir til nútímans enda okkur sagt að pæla ekki í hinu liðna heldur horfa fram á veginn

Ocalan's capture spells trouble for Caspian plans

By Michael Lelyveld, Asia Times, 24 February 1999. Turkey's success in capturing the Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan could mean more trouble for its plan to pipe petroleum from the Caspian Sea. The preferred pipeline routes from the Caspian carefully skirt Kurdish strongholds where Turkey has fought to exert its control. But the pipelines will still stretch across the borders of a volatile region.

Gloomy picture overshadows oil bonanza

By Michael Lelyveld, Asia Times, 8 May 1999. A dark picture of Caspian Sea development. Poverty, pollution and corruption in the midst of oil exploration and wealth for the privileged few.

Caspian Sea oil a prize the U.S. wants to control

By Tom Hundley, The Chicago Tribune, 25 November 1999. The leaders of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement to build a new 1,080-mile pipeline that could carry a million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The U.S. hails the pipeline as a major foreign policy triumph because Caspian oil will not have to flow through Russia or Iran to get to the oil-hungry markets of the West.

Russia Aims At Caspian Sea Settlement

By Sergei Blagov, IPS, 29 September 2000. Russia is urging the Caspian littoral states—including Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan—to reach agreements to protect bio-resources without waiting until the Caspian Sea is divided formally among them. The Caspian, the world's largest inland sea, is a focal point of an accelerating clash of interests among Russia, its newly independent neighbours and Iran—mainly because the 700 mile-long sea contains six separate hydrocarbon basins.

Caspian pipeline skirts trouble spots

By Bill Anderson, UPI, Tuesday 27 November 2001. The grand opening of a 900-mile pipeline that has thrown open the door to the vast oilfields of the volatile Caspian Sea region. The pipeline was built in a little more than a year by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and links the huge Tenzig field of western Kazakhstan to the seaport of Novorossiysk.

World Bank Pipeline in Georgia and Azerbaijan Illustrates Problems with Extractive Industries

From CEE Bankwatch Network, Monday 27 May 2002. The issue of the harm which extractive industry projects have created in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Baku-Supsa pipeline was the first fast-track component of the contract of the century, involving partial development of the Chirag oil field and related facilities in the Caspian Sea.

New moves on Caucasus chessboard

By Paul Goble, Asia Times, 21 April 1999. Several events in the southern Caucasus last week may lead to fundamental changes in power relationships not only there but across a much larger portion of the world as well. And because of that, some of the players both within the region and beyond appear to be positioning themselves to respond with new moves.

A Discreet Deal in the Pipeline: Nato Mocked Those Who Claimed There was a Plan for Caspian Oil

By George Monbiot, Guardian (London), Thursday 15 February 2001. During the 1999 Balkans war, some of the critics of Nato's intervention alleged that the western powers were seeking to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. The Trans-Balkan pipeline, due for approval at the end of next month, is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea.

Iran, Azerbaijan face off as Caspian oil row turns nasty

DAWN, Wednesday 25 July 2001. Iran and Azerbaijan refused to back down after an Iranian warship threatened an Azeri oil research vessel in disputed waters. This casts a shadow over the multi-billion-dollar development of the Caspian Sea's oil reserves with the participation of Western companies.

Iranian Nation Determined to Protect Caspian Sea

Tehran Times, 16 May 2002. President Khatami said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is against any kind of unilateral and inflammatory measure in the Caspian Sea. Iran is willing to continue logical negotiations to determine the legal regime of the Caspian Sea fairly so that all the Caspian littoral states would be fairly provided with Caspian resources.

The empire isn'nt in Afghanistan for the oil!

By Jared Israel, The Emperor's Clothes, 22 June 2002. The Anglo-US-German assault on Afghanistan was not for oil. The United States' main pursuit in Afghanistan is part of a geo-strategic concept. The U.S. strategy of promoting Turkey as a regional Imperial proxy force, strengthening its relations with Georgia and Azerbaijan with the goal of weakening Russian influence.

Where Iran must draw the line

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, [e-mail], Asia Times, 31 October 2002. Iran's boundaries in the Caspian Sea is a hotly contested question that has been the subject of protracted negotiation since 1992, when officials of the Caspian littoral states—Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan—gathered in Tehran for the first time to tackle the outstanding issues of the so-called Caspian legal regime.

Russia had no choice but to counterattack in S.Ossetia - Gorbachev

Leaders in the Caucasus must stop flexing military muscle and develop the grounds for lasting peace

All comments (119)

• 
• • Mikhail Gorbachev
  • The Guardian,
  • Wednesday August 13 2008
  • Article history

The past week's events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force - both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar - it only made the situation worse.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.

What happened on the night of August 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenceless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.

The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of US instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of Nato membership, emboldened Georgian leaders.

Now that the military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position. When the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia first flared up, I proposed that they be settled through a federation that would grant broad autonomy to the two republics. This idea was dismissed, particularly by the Georgians. Attitudes gradually shifted, but after last week it will be much more difficult to strike a deal even on such a basis.

Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development. Nothing is more important. The region's political leaders need to realise this. Instead of flexing military muscle, they should devote their efforts to building the groundwork for durable peace.

Over the past few days, some western nations have taken positions, particularly in the UN security council, that have been far from balanced. As a result, the security council was not able to act effectively from the very start of this conflict. By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its "national interest", the US made a serious blunder. Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone's interest. But it is simply common sense to recognise that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region.

The international community's long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible. Building this type of system would be challenging and could only be accomplished with the cooperation of the region's countries themselves. Nations outside the region could perhaps help, too - but only if they take a fair and objective stance. A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus.

· Mikhail Gorbachev was the last president of the Soviet Union; he was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1990

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/russia.georgia1

Sambandslausir hagtalnaframleiðendur

Innlent | mbl | 13.8 | 12:23

Atvinnuleysi var 1,1% í júlí

Skráð atvinnuleysi í júlí 2008 var 1,1% og voru að meðaltali 1968 manns á atvinnuleysisskrá. Hlutfall atvinnuleysis er því óbreytt frá júní og er atvinnuleysi enn með minnsta móti, að sögn Vinnumálastofnunar. Atvinnuleysi er nú nokkru meira en á sama tíma fyrir ári þegar það var 0,9%. Meira

Viðskipti | mið. 16.7.2008

Atvinnuleysi 3,1% á öðrum fjórðungi

Á öðrum ársfjórðungi 2008 voru að meðaltali 5700 manns án vinnu og í atvinnuleit eða 3,1% vinnuaflsins. Atvinnuleysi mældist 3,2% hjá körlum og 2,9% hjá konum, samkvæmt upplýsingum, sem Hagstofan birti í dag. Samkvæmt viðmiðun Hagstofunnar mældist atvinnuleysi 3,2% á sama tímabili á síðasta ári og 2,3% á fyrsta ársfjórðungi þessa árs.

Meira

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Einhver er að ljúga/blekkja. Það er ekki hægt að vera bæði með 1% og 3% atvinnuleysi á sama tíma. Er ekki einhver ráðherra við meðvitund sem ber ábyrgð á þessum hagtalnaframleiðendum? Fyrir hvað er verið að borga þessu liði laun? Ætti það kannski sjálft að vera á atvinnuleysisskrá ???

Ósvífinn glæpalýður sem ætti að vera fyrir stríðsglæpadómstóli vegna þáttöku í stríðum á upplognum forsendum ætti ekki að glamra mikið

Erlent | AP | 12.8.2008 | 14:53

NATO fordæmir óhóflega valdbeitingu

 Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, framkvæmdastjóri NATO, sagði að sendiherrar NATO-ríkjanna hefðu á fundi í dag fordæmt óhóflega valdbeitingu Rússa í Georgíu. Bandaríkjastjórn er að undirbúa að veita Georgíu efnahagsaðstoð til að tryggja stöðugleika stöðugleika í landinu í kjölfar átaka Georgíumanna og Rússa. AFP fréttastofan hefur þetta eftir háttsettum bandarískum embættismanni.

Georgíustjórn óskaði í dag eftir hernaðaraðstoð frá NATO, einkum við að skipta um ratsjárkerfi, sem eyðilagðist í árásum Rússa.   

De Hoop Scheffer sagði, að yfirlýsing Dimitrís Medvedevs, forseta Rússlands, um að aðgerðir Rússa hefðu verið stöðvaðar, væri mikilvæg en dygði ekki til. Sagði Scheffer, að allir aðilar yrðu að draga heri sína til baka til staða þar sem þeir voru áður en átökin í Suður-Ossetíu hófust 6. ágúst.

Hann undirstrikaði, að NATO liti svo á, að þetta þýddi að virða ætti landamæri Georgíu en bæði Suður-Ossetía og Abkhasía eru innan þeirra.

Georgíustjórn sagði í dag, að hersveitir landsins hefðu í dag farið frá Kodorigljúfri í Abkhasíu, eina svæðinu sem herinn réði í því héraði. Fyrr í dag sást til rússneskra skriðdrekasveita stefna þangað. 

 

 

Israeli media says US sending more arms to Georgia

Russia Today
August 11, 2008

The United States is sending fresh supplies of weapons to Georgia from its base in the Jordanian port of Aqabah. That’s according to the Israeli newspaper – Maariv.

The paper says the US began flying weapons from the transport hub on Saturday.

According to Maariv, the US is hiring Russian-made freight planes belonging to UTI Worldwide Inc. to transport arms and ammunition to Georgia. The paper says the Pentagon is redirecting supplies to Tbilisi that were earmarked for Iraq.

The Aqabah terminal is used by the US to supply troops in Iraq. The American military relies on the hub mainly because it’s safer to use Aqabah than Iraq’s own ports in the Persian Gulf.

Georgia stocks a wide range of weapons from many sources. This is a strategic move in case Russia were to block off the channels through which it gets its military supplies.

 

Serial warmongering lunatics: Rice: Israel can attack Iran if it wants

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended Israel's right to make its own decision about whether it takes military action against Iran, in an interview released over the weekend.

"We don't say yes or no to Israeli military operations. Israel is a sovereign country," she said in response to a question from The Politico Web site as to whether she was concerned that America would be blamed in the case of an IDF attack on the Islamic Republic.

Her statements come amid speculation that Washington has warned Jerusalem not to attack Iran and media reports that the US told Israel it doesn't have the green light to use Iraqi airspace for any such attack.

At the same time, Rice emphasized diplomacy.

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"We are in very close contact with the Israelis and we talk about the diplomatic track that we're on," she said. "They've said that diplomacy can work here. And I know they're doing their part to talk to all of the countries with which they have good relations to explain why it's important to have a tough edge to our diplomacy."

Asked if she would use the opportunity to tell Israel it shouldn't strike Iran, Rice replied that the US and its international partners announced this week that they would be looking at further sanctions against Iran after it failed to meet another deadline to begin negotiations over its nuclear program, as it continued enriching uranium in defiance of the international community.

The US has been holding consultations with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - about beginning work on a fourth sanctions resolution.

At the same time, amid indications that will be a slow process, particularly with signs the Russians are hesitant about ratcheting up the sanctions language, the US and EU are taking their own additional measures outside the UN framework.

"We're on a diplomatic course and that's the important thing," Rice said.

In the interview, she also dismissed the concern that Teheran could hold the world's energy markets hostage because of its large role in the international oil market and its control over a key shipping route.

"I don't know what the Iranians would do without the revenue that they receive from selling oil. And so the idea that they would somehow deprive the world of Iranian oil exports would have to have a pretty devastating effect on Iran itself," she said.

The interview was released the day before the Institute for Science and International Security published a report arguing that force wouldn't be particularly effective in ending Iran's nuclear threat.

In the report, titled "Can military strikes destroy Iran's gas centrifuge program? Probably not," David Albright, ISIS president and a former UN weapons inspector, lays out short-comings including a lack of sufficient intelligence to be able to destroy all of the nuclear production sites, Iran's ability to quickly replicate whatever centrifuges are destroyed, and the likely strengthening of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's domestic standing in the wake of such an attack.

Albright and co-authors Paul Brannan and Jacqueline Shire also reject any equivalence between a strike on Iran and that carried out by Israel in Iraq in 1981 to take out the Osirak reactor, or its attack on an alleged incipient reactor in Syria last September.

"This analogy is grossly misleading. It neglects the important differences between a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program and a reactor-based program, and fails to account for the dispersed, relatively advanced, and hardened nature of Iran's gas centrifuge facilities," they write. "It also ignores the years Iran has had to acquire centrifuge items abroad, often illicitly, allowing it to create reserve stocks of critical equipment and raw materials."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218104249803&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull