G8 faces growing problems with Iran, tensions in Korea (News Feature)

By JT Nguyen Jun 22, 2010, 6:02 GMT

New York - The Group of Eight (G8) annual summit this weekend in Canada will have to deal with a defiant Iran and renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula, while hoping to hold together a fragile coalition among the world's major powers.

Iran has been unruffled by waves of tougher sanctions from the European Union, the United States and the United Nations. Tehran instead pledged new construction of more powerful nuclear plants while its production of highly enriched uranium goes on.

North Korea has been accused of sinking a South Korean navy vessel in March, which killed 46 sailors. The incident has driven up tensions on the peninsula and forced the UN Security Council to become involved.

But leaders of the world's eight most industrialized nations will have their own problems displaying unity when they meet in Muskoka, Canada on Friday for a two-day summit that includes China as an observer.

Divisions among world powers over the Koreas have barely changed in the past six decades. The United States and Western governments back South Korea while China remains North Korea's strongest ally, making joint action difficult on the peninsula's tense stand-off.

Meanwhile Russia and China, having voted for a fresh round of UN sanctions against Iran, have not agreed to the more aggressive measures being pushed by the US and European Union. It will be up to the G8 to ensure that those sanctions bite.

Russia's President Dmitri Medvedev openly criticized the additional US and EU sanctions adopted last week following the fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran on June 9, which Russia and China supported.

'We didn't agree to this when we discussed the joint resolution at the UN,' Medvedev said in a rare interview last week with The Wall Street Journal. 'We should act collectively. If we do, we will have the desired result.'

Medvedev said Moscow is concerned over Iran's nuclear capability, and the prospect that other countries in the Middle East and North Africa would follow suit if Iran builds a nuclear bomb.

But Medvedev said Russia and China stand to lose under the waves of sanctions because of their business ties with Iran. Washington, which already has no ties with Iran, can get away pain-free.

Iran and North Korea, both with world nuclear status ambitions, are the main countries that have defied the G8's eight-year-long partnership against weapons of mass destruction, a policy adopted at the G8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002.

The Global Partnership has been reaffirmed at each annual summit, encouraging cooperation aimed at destroying chemical weapons and the safe disposal of enriched uranium among the G8 and many other countries, from Mexico to Russia to New Zealand.

Iran has broken out of the mold set by the G8 for tight cooperation in keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.

North Korea has been detected illegally shipping arms and nuclear materials to other countries. In addition, it has detonated nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009, and fired missiles capable of carrying warheads.

Exploiting the seeming split among the council's five permanent members (Russia, France, Britain, US and China, which is the only non-G8 member), Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a revision of the UN sanctions resolution, warning of unspecified consequences. The G8 also includes Canada, Germany, Japan and Italy.

Heaping attacks on the Security Council, he dismissed the sanctions resolution as 'not worth a dime and like a used handkerchief which should go into a garbage can.' Meanwhile, Iran's recent agreement to ship low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for medium-enriched uranium for its medical research center remains in limbo because of opposition from Washington and the Europeans.

Since the first round of sanctions against Iran in 2006, the Islamic country has obtained thousands more centrifuges to enrich uranium. Since last year's G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, Iran is believed capable of producing weapons-grade uranium with some additional processing.

To make sure the tougher sanctions will have the intended effects on Iran, the G8 will need to make sure that Iran's arms suppliers, including Russia and China, do not breach the sanctions.

The UN sanctions had already been watered down in order to get the support of Russia and China, leaving untouched Iran's energy industry, which has heavy investment from the two powers.

By contrast, the EU passed unilateral sanctions aimed for the first time at parts of Iran's economy that have nothing to do with nuclear activities, targeting Iran's oil and gas industry, which will affect Germany and Italy, two of the G8 members.

Germany is Iran's second largest trade partner after China.

The US followed up with its own individual sanctions by targeting officers and companies of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, including its commander. The US also blacklisted Iran's largest shipping companies and cited the Post Bank for allegedly dealing in arms.