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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Today in Iran the foreign ministry repeated that Tehran is not aiming to develop weapons as part of its nuclear program. Also today, an Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz said that it has a leaked document that shows Israeli settlers on the occupied West Bank have topped 300-thousand for the first time. As Matthew Bell reports the two issues are tightly linked to the Obama administration’s Middle East peace agenda.

MATTHEW BELL: Agenda item number one is reassuring Israel that the US is serious about dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. Number two, is re-starting the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Speaking in Israel today, defense secretary Robert Gates said both of these goals would serve the long-term security interests of America’s most important Middle East ally. He said the United States would address Israeli security concerns as Washington works to make the creation of a Palestinian state possible. And as for president Obama’s willingness to engage the Iranians through dialogue.

ROBERT GATES: The president has been quite clear that this is not an open-ended offer to engage, we’re very mindful of the possibility that the Iranians would simply try to run out the clock.

MATTHEW BELL: Gates tried to reassure the Israelis that Mr. Obama is working by a timetable. He wants the Iranians to start talks this fall, and he wants the talks to show some progress by the end of the year. Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak emphasized his government’s position that Iran’s nuclear program poses a grave and growing threat.

EHUD BARAK: No options should be removed from the table, this is our policy, we mean it, we recommend to others to take the same position but we cannot dictate it to anyone.

MATTHEW BELL: The difference among friends here, according to David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is that the Israelis are ready for US-led diplomacy with Iran to fail. And they’re wondering, what happens then?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: They don’t doubt that Washington means well, but they’re curious what happens next. And it’s unclear if the Obama administration is there because the negotiations haven’t even opened. But I think the Israelis are already thinking about plan B.

MATTHEW BELL: Makovsky says US-Israeli coordination on Iran could suffer because the second item on the agenda administration’s Middle East agenda has hit a snag, and that’s over the issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. President Obama has called for a total freeze on settlement growth, but Israel’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has refused. The Palestinians say they won’t even sit down and talk with the Israelis unless settlement building stops. David Makovsky, who co-wrote a new book on US policy in the Middle East, called Myths, Illusions and Peace, says there’s a great deal at stake for Barack Obama in this stand-off.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: I think there’s a logic what the President was trying to do on in terms of curbing settlement activity. But I think by taking it to the end degree, so to speak, instead of facilitating the negotiations, you know, now basically it’s becoming an obstacle to the negotiations. And I don’t think that’s what President intended.

MATTHEW BELL: For weeks, news reports have said the two sides are close to a compromise on settlements, but the longer this rift with the US drags on, the greater the political risk for Israel’s prime minister. Middle East expert Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation in Washington says, no one should know that danger better than Benjamin Netanyahu, whose nickname is Bibi.

DANIEL LEVY: He fell as prime minister in the late 1990′s when he, in a not smart way, got on the wrong side of the Clinton administration. It’s a high stakes game. I think what Bibi is betting on is that the Obama administration won’t have the stomach to go forward with this.

MATTHEW BELL: For now, Israeli public opinion appears to be with Bibi Netanyahu, but Levy says if Mr. Obama can persuade Israelis that what he’s asking them to do is reasonable, and would lead to a chance for peace with the Palestinians, then it will become more and more difficult for Netanyahu to keep saying no to the American president. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: President Obama has made it US policy to strive for a world free of nuclear weapons. As you just heard, US officials talked with the Israelis today about how to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. Washington is also trying to put the brakes on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. But India seems at least, to be getting a free pass.  The United States is apparently about to allow India to re-process spent US nuclear fuel. And yesterday, India launched its first home-built nuclear-powered submarine. Henry Sokolski is the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington. He’s concerned about what nuclear-powered submarine could lead to.

HENRY SOKOLSKI: More nuclear weapons aimed at countries like Pakistan and China, more assertiveness by India to take control of the Indian Ocean. Not exactly a move that will make going to lower levels of nuclear weapons easier for other countries like China, and perhaps if one extrapolates out another decade or so, even countries like Russia and the United States.

LISA MULLINS: Alright, lets talk about the deal that the United States right now is pretty close to agreeing on a deal under which India will be allowed to reprocess spent US nuclear fuel.

HENRY SOKOLSKI: Correct.

LISA MULLINS: The reason that you are against that, despite the administration’s insistence on oversight and guidelines is what?

HENRY SOKOLSKI: Well, they’re overselling what you can do. They know, and have taken a sound set of positions with regard to blocking and objecting and discouraging reprocessing in the case of middle eastern states, and Iran, because they know, and we’ve had first hand experience that international inspectors cannot keep track of materials that are being made in nuclear fuel plants, and the activity is so close to bomb making that by the time you got a warning, they would have a bomb before you could do anything about it.

LISA MULLINS: You’re saying that the agreement that is reached with India in terms of reprocessing of nuclear fuel is different from any agreement, and in fact, different from the [INDISCERNIBLE], the administration, has been putting forth on nuclear power elsewhere?

HENRY SOKOLSKI: Absolutely. The administration made a decision in May of this year to go forward with nuclear cooperation with an Arab state as a model agreement for other up states. The United Arab merit that forced them to foreswear reprocessing. In addition, the administration backs the UN resolution, as much as the previous administration, not to allow Iran to reprocess. Finally, on the 29th of June, the president announced that he was terminating initial licensing proceedings, called an Environmental Impact Statement, to consider having commercial reprocessing occur here in the US. Now all those found decisions, fly in the face of this decision that, oh, well, in the case of the Indians, none of that ought to apply. And it just looked silly. It makes a hash of what they’re doing.

LISA MULLINS: Is it that difficult though to follow spent nuclear fuel and to find out what’s being done with it once it’s reprocessed? Does it not have a kind of signature that either Indian officials organized [INDISCERNIBLE] could follow?

HENRY SOKOLSKI: [OVERLAPPING] Let me give you an example. My center did a two-year analysis of the IEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, those are the international inspectors that watch nuclear activities, their so-called inspection, or safe guards procedures, and how well they worked in the case of nuclear fuel making. The first thing that we discovered is that they IEA is rightly, and although, all too quietly pointing out that they cannot be relied upon to find illicit plants. But more import, the cleared plans are very difficult to monitor in a way that would allow you to know what’s being produced per year. In the case of Japan, which reprocesses, they have a plant that they’ve just begun where it’s expected that about 50 bombs worth of plutonium will not be accounted for every year. Now that’s just not the kind of margin you wanna have if you are moving towards the world that has fewer nuclear weapons, and fewer countries that can get nuclear weapons. That’s just not something you want to encourage.

LISA MULLINS: It was quite a while ago that India joined the nuclear club. I mean, it already has nuclear weapons. Is the point then moot of the reprocessed fuel the US is selling it?

HENRY SOKOLSKI: I don’t think so. And here’s the reason why, the nuclear rules, which are to be found as something called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which every administration, including this one, claims it wants to strengthen, is very clear, in its very first prohibition that no country, no weapon state, nuclear weapon state will help any other state become a weapon state if it didn’t have nuclear weapons as of 1967. So, that’s India. Now, if you start bending that rule, you run into problems with regard to countries that don’t have nuclear weapons. They point to that and say, well, if you’re gonna help them make nuclear fuel, you’re gonna look the other way as they make more nuclear weapons, why are you being so tough on us? So that’s your first problem. I think the second problem with looking the other way with regard to reprocessing and saying cavalierly, oh, well, it’s gonna be safe guarded because people over inspectors from Vienna are gonna look at it, what is to stop every middle eastern country, and every country including North Korea or Burma saying, well we’d like the same treatment. We think it’s safe guardable and we wanna make nuclear fuel.

LISA MULLINS: Except those countries are not democracies and they’re not US allies.

HENRY SOKOLSKI: Ah, now we’re getting to the nub of is. So is the policy in the United States that if you are a country we like, rules are different for you. And if you change your form of government, the rules will be different.

LISA MULLINS: So what is your main fear here then?

HENRY SOKOLSKI: I think we’re undermining sound rules for absolutely nothing in exchange, and the administration should be rock back on its heals on this. It’s not a smart move.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. We appreciate your talking to us. Henry Sokolski was a senior non-proliferation official in the administration of the first president bush, he is now executive director of the non-proliferation policy education center in Washington, DC.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: Prosecutors wrapped up their case today in the trial of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. A verdict is expected within two or three weeks. The government of Myanmar charged Suu Kyi in May with violating the terms of her house arrest. That after an American man swam across a lake to her house and stayed for two days. The BBC’s South Asia Correspondent Jonathan Head has been following the trial. Now, it doesn’t sound like Aung San Suu Kyi invited this American man to her home. So why is the government of Burma Myanmar holding her responsible for what he did?

JONATHAN HEAD: Well, it was very hard to understand from a legal point of view, and her lawyers have argued very strongly that you can’t possibly hold someone responsible for a man swimming to your home, when it’s supposedly under very tight guard. In the interpretation that most western governments, indeed many governments in this region have come to is that, this was simple a roost to keep Aung San Suu Kyi locked up. Her maximum period of house arrest was about to expire. When this incident happened, it was almost like a gift in the hands, and they’ve used that to try her under a law which her lawyers argue shouldn’t even exist anymore. It was part of an old constitution, but they are using that saying that you can be essentially charged and jailed for up to five year for violating the terms of your house arrest. Obviously to any outsider it seems completely nonsensical that somebody who’s actually kept under lock and key could be blamed for somebody else breaking into their home.

LISA MULLINS: The person who broke into her home, an American named John Yetah [PH]. Did he take the stand, is he even there?

JONATHAN HEAD: Yes he is, in fact his testimony has amounted to the fact that, you know, he went to visit Aung San Suu Kyi because he had a dream that she was going to be assassinated. And, I mean, that tells you something of the kind of man he is. I mean, most extraordinary trip he made. He fashioned home made flippers out of pieces of wood to help himself get across the lake that banks onto her home. And we know now that in his previous visits here, he’s a member of the Mormon Church. He delivered a Mormon bible and left it behind for Aung San Suu Kyi. But around that time, at the end of last year, he also spent a lot of time on the border between Burma and Thailand trying to make connections with dissident groups there, and they all describe him as a rather sad, rather deluded man. They’re astonished that he’s managed to precipitate this almost international crisis surrounding the Aung San Suu Kyi.

LISA MULLINS: The government of Myanmar Burma is worried about what the outside world is saying right now. We know that the secretary of state Clinton offered the prospect of better relations between the country and the United States, but she said it depended in part on the fate of Suu Kyi. Is that kind of pressure likely to influence what the judge decides in this case?

JONATHAN HEAD: I think there are two factors playing here. Undoubtedly the military underestimated the degree of international outrage that this maneuver they’ve used to keep Aung San Suu Kyi locked up has caused. And that fact that they’ve drawn the trial out, and they’ve allowed limited access to it, you can see them struggling to try and make the process look credible. At the same time, the generals do not like to be seen to be giving into pressure, and they’re generally resentful of it. And so you get a lot of very sharp comment in the state media condemning what they see as international interference. At the same time, as the world is outraged by what’s happening to Miss Suu Kyi, and she’s spent, you know, 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest. I mean, dreadful conditions for a woman her integrity, and obvious popularity. There’s also an awareness that the hard line approach, the sanctions based approach that Western governments have adopted has achieved absolutely nothing. So you’re really getting double language coming from secretary of state, Clinton. I mean, she says Suu Kyi is critical. At the same time, the US and others are trying to find different ways of dealing with the generals, because they recognize they’ve got to prepare for the possibility that the current generation of generals will move on. And there may be people in the military who’ll be easier to talk to, and they need to have some kind of avenues which simply don’t exist at the moment, some channels of communication.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Albinos in much of sub-Saharan Africa are in danger.  Albinos are people who lack the pigment melanin in their eyes, their skin, and their hair. It’s a genetic defect, but in much of Africa, it’s also reason for extreme and deadly prejudice. Phillip Martin has been reporting for us about race and color around the world. Today, Phillip has the first of two stories about the growing threat to albinos.

PHILLIP MARTIN: In a musty apartment building in central Madrid, human rights lawyer Javier Ramirez says he’s fighting to save a man’s life.  This past April, 18-year-old Moszy, as he calls himself, was among 60 African refuges that came ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands.  But with a face as white as chalk Moszy stands out.   He’s an albino, a condition that makes life in much of Africa miserable and dangerous. Moszy is locked away in a Spanish immigration detention center, so Javier Ramirez speaks for him.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: Albinos face persecution in terms of the Geneva Convention for Refugees because these people suffer personal persecution.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez is with the Spanish Commission for Refugees.  He says Moszy is seeking political asylum in Spain because albinos face persecution in his native Benin, in West Africa.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: They suffer violence.  You know, so they face a huge discrimination in their country for origin. And they suffered persecution not only by a few, but also by the huge majority of the community and the society.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez says across most of Africa, discrimination against people with albinism runs wide and deep, particularly in under-developed rural areas where people are less educated.  Thabo Leshilo is editor of the South African newspaper, The Sowetan, which has reported on human rights abuses against albinos in Southern Africa.

THABO LESHILO: ‘Cause there’s still a lot of ignorance. People still believe, for example, that people with albinism don’t die.  That they actually disappear, and don’t get buried.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Leshilo says over the past 19 months, these prejudices have taken a deadly turn. In Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya some 60 albinos have been victims of ritualistic murders in which their body parts have been hacked off and sold.  The buyers are witch doctors acting on behalf of often wealthy, sometimes educated businessmen seeking to improve their fortunes with so-called albino magic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You bring bones here and an albino’s hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How will that help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Help?

PHILLIP MARTIN: This is a recording from A BBC investigation last year that exposed the business of killing albinos for their body parts.  It found that an arm fetches 800-dollars, and a leg up to a thousand dollars.   This conversation voiced over by actors is with a witch doctor in Northern Tanzania.  It was secretly recorded by the reporter posing as a businesswoman in search of albino body parts

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the albino’s hands?

WITCH DOCTOR: We use the potion from that, for your fishing nets.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the legs?

WITCH DOCTOR: The legs will help you in the mining business.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: If I can’t bring these body parts can you help?  I can’t do these things alone because, you know, I’m a woman.

WITCH DOCTOR: There are ways. There are people who can get these body parts for you.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Over the past 19 months, 46 people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania, 10 in Burundi, and at least one in Kenya.  Because traditional healers require body parts from living beings, some victims, as young as 2 months old, have been attacked and hacked to pieces alive. Rick Guidotti, a former New York fashion photographer turned human rights activist, recently traveled to Tanzania to investigate the killings.  He fears that the attacks could escalate as economic conditions worsen in East Africa.

RICK GUIDOTTI: When there’s an opportunity to feed ten children when you bring the bones of one child with albinism, it’s greed but it’s also survival.  And these children, their lives are threatened, and it’s only going to get worse until people stand up and start prosecuting the people that are suspected of these horrifying crimes.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That may finally be happening.  Just last week, eight men who were convicted in connection with the murders of albinos in Burundi were sentenced to prison.  One was told he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. The sentences were seen as a major victory for albino human rights advocates in Burundi.  But so far, despite many arrests, there have been no convictions in neighboring Tanzania. Tanzanian government officials say they are moving as fast as they can, but not fast enough for Peter Ash.

PETER ASH: If I was born in Tanzania, my life would be in danger, because I have exactly the same genetic disorder they do, and I can’t sit by and do nothing.

PHILLIP MARTIN: For Peter Ash it’s personal. Ash is an albino, who lives in Vancouver.  He says he suffered prejudice growing up in Canada, but nothing prepared him for what he encountered in Tanzania.  On a recent trip there Ash says young men taunted him with chants of “Deal, deal, let’s make a deal!” suggesting they could cash in on his body parts.  Now Ash travels with his own security detail to Tanzania, where he says he feels a deep kinship with the country’s albinos.

PETER ASH: There was an almost instant connection that I had with the folks there, because I’m not black and I’m not African and I don’t speak Swahili, but the fact is they are my people.  They are my brothers and sisters because genetically in some ways, they have as much or more in common with me then they do their own people. And I was really gripped by Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” And I decided that was not an option for me.

PHILLIP MARTIN: So two years ago Ash founded Under the Same Sun, a Canadian charity to assist Tanzania’s albinos, who number nearly 200-thousand out of a population of 40 million people, one of the highest rates of albinism in the world.  Bill Oetting, a geneticist at the University of Minnesota, says albinos who escape the body poachers still face the prospect of shorter lives.

BILL OETTING: We have a situation where in Africa being light skin is going to be detrimental from a survival standpoint because you’re going to have a higher susceptibility to skin cancer.  And many individuals who have albinism within Africa do die early because of untreated skin cancer.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That motivated Peter Ash of Under the Same Sun to donate sunglasses, tanning lotion, and protective clothing for albinos in Tanzania.  He’s also funding cancer research and human rights monitoring in the country.  And he’s turned his attention to the albino asylum case in Spain.  While there is less information about the fate of albinos in Benin, where Moszy is from, Ash says he takes his claim of persecution seriously.

PETER ASH: I can tell you that through the whole area of Africa, beliefs exist that people with albinism are cursed, that the mother had sex with the white man, that she had sex with a European ghost, that these people are evil, that they’re possessed, that they’re substandard, that the disease is contagious.  There’s a host of myths that prevail for hundreds of years around people with albinism in large parts of Africa.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Even so, Spanish human rights advocates face an uphill battle proving that Moszy faces a real and deadly threat of persecution, if returned to Benin.  Meanwhile, 10′s thousands of other albinos continue to confront deadly prejudice across much of Africa. For the World, I’m Phillip Martin

LISA MULLINS: Tomorrow Phillip Martin examines efforts to generate positive images of albinos worldwide. For example, a group of South African journalists is sponsoring a writing competition.

SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALIST: This competition is aimed at helping people understand albinism, and also to help in educating in a small way ignorance about albinism in Africa and also in South Africa specifically.

LISA MULLINS: That’s coming up tomorrow on The World.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston.  On June 30th the Iraq war entered a new phase, that’s the day American troops pulled out of Iraqi cities in keeping with a security agreement between the US and Iraq. Most of those US forces are still in the country, and they’re still on duty. The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse accompanied some of them last week as they entered the last major urban stronghold of the group, al-Qaeda in Iraq.

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: It’s nearly a month now since US forces completed their withdrawal from urban centers in Iraq, and yet here we are, sitting in an American armored Humvee, driving into the city of Mosul.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: We’re in a convoy of five vehicles, three Americans and two Iraqis.  One at the front, one at the back, our escort.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Out of the windows you can see quite a lot of destruction still, some buildings completely reduced to rubble, others still bearing the pock marks from bullets.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Lieutenant Gerald Brown is the platoon leaders and this is his first trip back into Mosul since June the 30th. The last time he was here, he and his men came under attack from one of the side streets to the right here.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Today we can see that there’s a very much beefed up Iraqi security force presence.  Sand bags, checkpoints, watchtowers on every corner.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: We’re just getting out of cars now to visit what is basically a scrap yard.

GERALD BROWN: And what we’re trying to do is get all of this wrecked vehicles, trash, get that all moved out of here. Help stimulate the economy as well as accomplish a major project here on the west side of Mosul.

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: But Lieutenant Brown and the other 130-thousand troops that are still stationed in Iraq are much more than just heavily armed garbage men. Mosul and its surrounding area is by the American military’s own reckoning, the most dangerous place in Iraq today. And the threat of violence is never far off.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: No one was injured in that shooting incident but the Americans were getting increasing and unfriendly looking attention from the locals.  So they got back into their Humvees and headed back to base. Reconstruction patrols like this one are an opportunity for the Americans to get their boots, eyes and ears back on the ground. But there are new rules in place since the handover, they have to ask for permission and an escort from the local Iraqi security forces.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Cooperation isn’t always smooth and the Iraqis are keen to show who’s now in charge.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: But just 10 kilometers or so from Mosul in the smaller towns and villages outside you find a rather different story. When the Americans come to patrol here, you get curious and friendly faces. Now most of the problems that people talk about here are not so much problems of security but everyday issues like dirty water, bad roads and unemployment.

[SOUND CLIP]

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Here an old man sitting outside his home says the Americans invaded our country so they should be responsible for everything, these problems too, not just for security. The thing is, soon the Americans want to be responsible for none of it.

BRIAN PENERO: The Iraqi police have come a long way since the beginning of our deployment here.

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Captain Brian Penero is the commanding officer in charge of this area just south of Mosul.

BRIAN PENERO: Their proficiency and their ability to get the job done is going to work me out of job, which is good.

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: Many of the soldiers stationed outside Mosul are effectively out of a job already, confined to barracks. Joint patrols, like the one we went on are relatively rare compared to what they were before the 30th of June. If the pentagon has its way, they’ll soon cease altogether. As the Americans shift their attentions increasingly towards Afghanistan, they’re hoping that the security gains they’ve achieved here in Iraq will hold once they do finally pack up and leave. For The World, I’m Gabriel Gatehouse, in Mosul, Northern Iraq.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

CYNTHIA GRABER: Solar power was a niche technology at the time.  Early photovoltaic panels, which used the sun’s energy to move electrons and create electricity, were expensive and not very efficient. Passive solar panels, meanwhile, captured the sun’s warmth to heat water.  They were cheaper, but of limited utility. But Goldman had heard about a third way.  It was called solar thermal, or concentrated solar power, and it was sort of a hybrid of the other two. It used mirrors to magnify the sun’s heat, generate steam, and create electricity.  It was a fairly simple idea with ancient roots.

ARNOLD GOLDMAN: Some of its first recorded beginnings with Archimedes, the time of Greece, getting people shining mirrors onto ships to burn ships invading.

CYNTHIA GRABER: Still, no one had yet figured out a commercially viable way to use the sun and mirrors to create electricity. Arnold Goldman and his engineers cracked the code. They used miles of what are called parabolic troughs to concentrate the sun’s heat on tubes of oil.  The hot oil was then used to boil water, and the resulting steam was used to spin turbines.  By the end of the 1980s, with the help of government tax breaks, Goldman’s company Luz International had built nine such power plants in the California desert. But then, the energy crisis ended. Governments lost interest in renewables. The company went under. Now, fast-forward a generation.

[SOUND CLIP]

CYNTHIA GRABER: That was the sound of a heliostat, or a huge giant square of mirror shifting just slightly to catch the sun. I’m standing at the Solucar Solar Platform in Seville, Spain, surrounded by a vast array of special mirrors called heliostats. It’s the first commercial solar thermal plant to be built anywhere in the world since those early American ones. Like those first plants, the Solucar facility uses its mirrors to concentrate the sun’s heat to boil water, create steam, and run a turbine, just like in a conventional power plant. But the Solucar site uses a slightly different technology.  Instead of heating oil, its array of mirrors acts sort of like a field of ray guns.  They focus the sun’s heat and aim it at a receiver, a blindingly bright circle of white atop a tower. Valerio Fernandez is the site’s director.

VALERIO FERNANDEZ: The tower is a concrete tower, and receiver is an innovative boiler, that is fed by solar radiation instead of coal or some other fossil fuels. So, I think, [INDISCERNIBLE] are one of the most promising technologies for making a change in the energetic model in the world.

CYNTHIA GRABER: There are two of these towers on the Solucar site, which together produce enough electricity for about 15 thousand homes. And there are dozens more solar thermal power plants being built in Spain. That’s because the Spanish government has subsidized research in the field, and promised a good financial return for solar companies.  And now, a generation after it hit the skids in the US, Spanish companies are using their newfound expertise to bring solar thermal technology back to the place where it was born.

[SOUND CLIP]

CYNTHIA GRABER: Nevada Solar One is first new solar thermal plant in the US in nearly two decades. It came on line in 2007, built by the Spanish company Acciona. The company’s North American CEO Peter Duprey spoke at the plant’s opening.

PETER DUPREY: You know, with this plant we’re spearheading a new revolution in renewable energy Nevada, in the southwestern United States, and really truly around the globe.

CYNTHIA GRABER: The US southwest has some of the world’s most abundant sunshine.  And there are once again growing incentives to develop solar and other renewable energy sources in the US.  Both of which are drawing other Spanish companies across the ocean as well. Abengoa, for instance, the company that built the solar tower outside Seville, is finishing plans for a plant in Arizona. And after watching for years as others fostered the technology that they first developed, Americans are getting back in the solar thermal game, including Arnold Goldman.  A few years ago Goldman decided the time was right to reassemble his old team, under a new name, Brightsource Energy. Goldman’s company recently signed agreements in California for more than two and a half gigawatts of solar thermal electricity.  Other American companies have signed agreements for more than three gigawatts of solar thermal power.  That’s enough solar electricity to power closet to two million American homes, and counting. You might say it’s a dream come true. For The World, I’m Cynthia Graber.

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LISA MULLINS: Russia is not exactly friendly territory for non-governmental originations, or NGO’s. In the past, Russian authorities have gone as far as kicking some NGO’s out of the country, only allowing them back in under different names. A recent report by the human rights launch details other obstacles, as Jessica Golloher reports from Moscow.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Working in Russia can be full of bureaucratic red tape for the average citizen. There are lots of rules to follow, there are forms to fill out, licenses to get, job descriptions to be approved, but the situation can be even worse for those who work for foreign NGO’s in the former soviet union, organizations that the government may see as a threat. Matthew Schaaf is an NGO liaison for human rights watch here in Moscow.

MATTHEW SCHAAF: Organizations that work on controversial issues or that are affiliated in some way with the political opposition do appear to have more trouble with the authorities.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: One such organization is Golos Samara, a voters rights NGO situated in Samara, on the Volga River in the south of the country. It was the site of the 2007 summit between the  European Union and Russia. Schaaf says right before the meeting, the government cracked down on NGO’s throughout the area, it didn’t matter what they specialized in.

MATTHEW SCHAAF: A voters rights NGO came to their office one day to find that the whole building was locked because of fire safety violations.  They were also accused of using illegal software.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Schaaf says the government has been using a 2006 law, that allows for unnecessary audits and demands that NGO’s maintain cumbersome and unnecessary paperwork, just to make it more difficult for them to operate. In 2006 the Russian parliament passed anti-extremism legislation that expanded the definition of extremism to include slandering a public official, hindering the work of authorities and involvement in hooliganism or vandalism for ideological, religious or ethnic reasons. Russian officials claim the legislation will stop hate crimes. Oppositionists say the law is just one of many that the Kremlin uses to force NGO’s out of Russia. Alexander Verkhovsky is director of the SOVE Center for information and analysis in Moscow, an organization that researches nationalism and xenophobia in Russia. He says it’s ironic that the Russian government has used anti-extremism legislation to prosecute NGO’s when he’s received death threats from skinheads himself.

ALEXANDER VERKHOVSKY: Some neo-nazi groups, they sent us death threats by email or by phone, some people even came to my house. They sent me a video. It explained that I am an enemy of Russian people, that I support terrorists. My house was exposed, my address, my photo.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Verkhovsky says police have done nothing. Rights groups aren’t the only institutions who think laws governing NGO’s here need to change. During his during his inaugural visit to Russia, President Barack Obama took the time to address some 100 civil society leaders about the importance of change. Here is Mr. Obama in an excerpt on Russia’s state run, English-language television channel.

BARACK OBAMA: For history teaches us that real progress, whether it’s economic or social or political doesn’t come from the top down, it typically comes from the bottom up. It comes from people, it comes from the grass roots, it comes from you.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Russian president Dmitry Medvedev was invited to the conference but decided at the last minute not to attend. His spokesperson cited a scheduling conflict. There has been some change. The state Duma is debating a bill that would ease some of the tighter regulations governing NGO’s. Matthew Schaaf, with human rights watch, points out the new law only affects one third of the NGO’s here and more importantly, it doesn’t address some of the bigger issues NGO’s face, like violence. For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher in Moscow

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.