An excellent newspaper, the Euro-WSJ, and I make no apologies for quoting from yet another story from today's edition. This one has you groaning with anguish and even feeling pity for American diplomats and politicians. I confess, it passed me by but apparently Jordan has discovered quite respectable amounts of uranium in its desert - before I take the story further I thought it worthwhile copying this fascinating diagram giving the main sources for uranium in the world:
As a result of its find, and also its fright and worry as a nation that depends utterly on imported oil when the price of oil shot up three years ago, the government took a decision to switch to nuclear energy. It has opened talks with the USA to buy their technology in the building of nuclear power stations. Thus, they have emptied the bucket of poo straight into Obama's lap! He is happy to sell them the technology but only on the basis that the Jordanians agree to buy their nuclear fuel ready-made on the open market and not build sites capable of producing it for themselves - as the Iranians are doing - and thus allowing some future Jordanian government to produce nuclear elements for military use. The Jordanians are standing firm on the not unreasonable grounds that if they have the uranium to hand it would be a nonsense to import the finished product. However, the USA has the whip hand over certain essential technical parts of nuclear power station construction without which the Jordanians will be stymied. In fact, an agreement was almost reached in the dying days of 'Dubya's adminstration but they were too busy cutting a deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who were happy to buy their nuclear rods from the open market because they, of course, have no uranium of their own. However, to add complication to complexity, the Americans are hamstrung by the fact that the UAE has a get-out clause to the effect that if another Arab state gets a better deal than they have then they will be free to make such arrangements as they see fit. So, as it stands there is an intractable impasse whilst the usual suspects - France, Russia, South Korea and the Chinese - sniff around. Meanwhile Israel views the whole matter closely with a beady and suspicious eye.
Still, never mind, we can all relax knowing that The Greatest Wisest Most Humane Statesman in the History of the World has the problem in hand, er, when he doesn't have a nine iron in it, that is. And one would wish to draw a delicate veil across the policy, enforced by 'The Wise One', that precludes any sort of civilan nuclear energy inside America whilst keeping busy flogging it to everyone else!
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