WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 2010


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The World


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Concerns about compliance could sink arms treaty


State Dept. report finds Russians may not have resolved some issues


by Walter Pincus and Mary Beth Sheridan RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS A Jewish settler watches over children at a spring in the West Bank. A 10-month freeze on Israeli settlement construction is to end Sept. 26. From Israel, mixed signals on peace effort


Chief envoy stands firm on settlements amid talk of bold gestures


by Janine Zacharia


itamar, west bank — While Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington this week to talk about peace gestures toward the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was planting a tree in a Jewish settle- ment in the West Bank — an in- dication of permanence that few Palestinians would welcome. The contrast showed the con- fusion U.S. officials face in figur- ing out how willing Israel might be to cede territory as part of a two-state solution to the conflict. President Obama’s Middle East


envoy, George J. Mitchell, has been laboring for months to move Israelis and Palestinians into direct talks on the core is- sues that divide them, including the future of Jewish settlements built on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. The peace effort faces a major challenge on Sept. 26, when a 10- month freeze of Israeli settlement construction is set to expire. The United States and Israel for years have quarreled over Israeli con- struction in the occupied West Bank that is widely considered il- legal under international law. The United States, which says set- tlement construction under- mines peace talks, pushed hard for the moratorium on building. Lieberman, who wields im- mense power as the head of the second-largest party in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition, reassured settlers Mon- day that life would return to nor- mal when the freeze ends. “When we took the decision on the settlement freeze, we said ex-


ers for their losses. The Palestinian Authority says


the boycott is an effective way to draw attention to Israel’s settle- ments. Israel sees it as a sign of the Palestinians’ unwillingness to make peace. “Anyone, who wants to see a


JANINE ZACHARIA/THE WASHINGTON POST


Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman tours an archaeological site atop Mount Gerizim. He has been on a settlement solidarity tour.


plicitly that it was only for 10 months and that afterward life would return to the way it was,” Lieberman said during a visit to the Bruchin settlement. “We think people here, who were sent here by previous Israeli govern- ments to live, have a right to live normal lives.” That Israel’s chief diplomat was touring the West Bank, rath- er than traveling to Washington, was not totally surprising: Lie- berman lives in a settlement. And the politician’s domestic initia- tives in recent months have gar- nered more attention than his di- plomacy. His Yisrael Beitenu (“Israel Is


Our Home”) party has sponsored legislation that would strip citi- zenship from Arab Israelis deemed disloyal to the state. He has tangled with Netanyahu over budget matters in a rift that be- came front-page news. And his party has sponsored a bill to change rules related to Jewish conversion that angered Amer- ican Jews from the liberal Reform and Conservative movements. Amid all of this, Netanyahu seems to be trying to minimize Lieberman’s exposure abroad. Following Israel’s raid on an aid ship bound for the blockaded Ga-


za Strip that left nine Turkish ac- tivists dead, Netanyahu sent his industry and trade minister to see Turkey’s foreign minister in a secret rapprochement bid. Ne- tanyahu himself met Tuesday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II to discuss prospects for peace talks. Barak has become the de facto


envoy for Israel’s important rela- tionship with the United States, having visited Washington seven times in the past year. Lieberman has visited once. None of that makes Lieber- man, however, any less important when it comes to Israeli politics. The 52-year-old, born in the for- mer Soviet republic of Moldova, has emerged as a forceful leader of the Israeli right, and one of the most skeptical voices on peace with the Palestinians. On Monday, Lieberman trav- eled from Bruchin to Barkan, an Israeli industrial zone in the West Bank. Lieberman walked past vats of soaking chickpeas and posed for a photo with Palestin- ian workers packaging hummus. Barkan industrialists have complained about the toll a Pales- tinian boycott of settlement goods has taken on their busi- ness. Lieberman pledged to seek ways to compensate factory own-


good example of coexistence, ought to come here,” Lieberman said, noting that half of the indus- trial park’s 6,000 workers are Pal- estinians. Later, Lieberman told a settle- ment leader he would bring mo- bile homes to Barkan to house new Russian immigrants. By con- trast, that same day, the Israeli army removed an illegal mobile home at a settlement outpost. From the bulletproof window of his bus, Lieberman could see Palestinian olive trees burning on a hillside that settler youths had torched in response to the army action.


Soon after, standing atop


Mount Gerizim, Lieberman peered down at a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus, today a major Palestinian population center. A tour guide read to Lieberman from biblical passages asserting Jewish claims to the area. Deputy Foreign Minister Dan-


iel Ayalon, a former ambassador to the United States who is now a member of Lieberman’s party, lis- tened nearby. He said he saw no conflict between Lieberman’s set- tlement solidarity tour and Ba- rak’s message that Israel is ready to make bold peace gestures. “It’s not a contradiction at all,”


Ayalon said, noting that the set- tlement dispute will be resolved only as part of direct peace talks. “On the contrary, it’s just one as- pect that shows the complexity of the issue.”


zachariaj@washpost.com


Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.


The United States believes Rus- sia is not fully complying with international pacts involving chemical and biological weapons, although Moscow has settled most questions about violations of a nuclear arms treaty with the United States, according to a State Department report to be made public Wednesday. The State Department Compli- ance Report had been requested earlier this month by seven of the eight Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They were concerned because the last report in 2005 highlighted what they described as “direct vi- olations of START I by the Rus- sians, ” a reference to the Stra- tegic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 1991. The report comes at a crucial time, as the Senate considers a new treaty that would replace START I. The Obama administra- tion hopes to have it ratified by year’s end, when Democrats will likely lose some of their Senate seats. The Foreign Relations Committee could vote on the treaty as early as next week. But key Republicans are estab- lishing tough conditions for ap- proval — including ironclad com- mitments from the White House to dramatically increase spend- ing on the maintenance of the nu- clear-weapons complex. Presi- dent Obama has tried to address those concerns by laying out a plan to spend $80 billion on the nuclear weapons complex over the next decade. The new compliance report, obtained by the Washington Post, says that several issues raised in the 2005 version have been re- solved, on subjects such as the movement of Russian road- mobile missiles and inspection of reentry vehicles. But the report may nonetheless fuel the debate over the new treaty, because it says a number of other compli- ance issues remained unresolved when the treaty expired last De- cember. The unclassified version of the report does not identify them. To pass, the treaty will need at least eight Republican votes plus those of all 57 Democrats and the two independents. Most Repub- licans haven’t yet indicated which way they will go. In recent weeks, the battle over the treaty has intensified, with the Heritage Foundation launch- ing a nationwide campaign


against it, and former presiden- tial candidate Mitt Romney branding it Obama’s “worst for- eign policy mistake.” For its part, the administration has amassed a bipartisan nation- al security Who’s Who of support- ers of the treaty, including five former defense secretaries and six former secretaries of state. On Tuesday, seven of the eight


retired commanders of U.S. nu- clear forces added their voices to those calling on the Senate to rat- ify the treaty. “We will under- stand the Russian strategic forces much better with the treaty than would be the case without it,” said the letter to the Senate foreign re- lations and armed services com- mittees. It was signed by every leader of


the strategic nuclear command from 1981 to 2004, except retired Adm. Richard W. Mies. The new treaty would reduce each side’s deployed long-range nuclear warheads to 1,550, from 2,200. The treaty preserves a 15- year-old verification system that allows the Russians and Amer- icans to “look under the hood” of each other’s nuclear facilities. Some critics say they don’t want to kill the treaty. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the Republican whip, said he wants to ensure enough funding so the nuclear- weapons complex is still effec- tive. Republicans are also con- cerned about whether the new treaty could constrain future U.S. missile defense systems. Some treaty supporters sus-


pect that Republicans are drag- ging their heels to deny Obama a victory before the November election. Kyl rejected that idea. “It is not my purpose to delay, but if our legitimate requests are not dealt with appropriately, then it could be delayed,” he said in an interview. The full compliance report, with classified sections, was sent to Congress earlier this month, but many senators have not yet read it. The document says the U.S.


government does not believe Russia is in compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention because it has not declared all its stockpiles nor destroyed those it has acknowledged, despite a 1997 plan to do so. The report also says Russia


may not be in compliance with the international convention banning biological weapons. Rus- sia committed in 1992 to dis- mantle a secret biological weap- ons program it inherited from the Soviet Union. Although Russia has said it is in compliance, it has “not satisfactorily documented whether this program was termi- nated,” according to the report. pincusw@washpost.com, sheridanm@washpost.com


Strict immigration rules threaten Japan’s future as population slides


japan from A1


two retirees by 2060. But the economic partnership


program that brought Paulino and hundreds of other nurses and caretakers to Japan has a flaw. In- donesian and Filipino workers who come to care for a vast and growing elderly population can- not stay for good without passing a certification test. And that test’s reliance on high-level Japanese — whose characters these nurses cram to memorize — has turned the test into a de facto language exam. Ninety percent of Japanese nurses pass the test. This year, three of 254 immigrants passed it. The year before, none of 82 passed. For immigrant advocates, a pass-or-go-home test with a suc- cess rate of less than 1 percent cre- ates a wide target for criticism — especially at a time when Japan’s demographics are increasing the need for skilled foreign labor. For many officials in the gov- ernment and the medical indus- try, however, difficulties with the program point to a larger dilem- ma confronting a country whose complex language and resistance to foreigners make it particularly tough to penetrate. Kan’s goal to double the num- ber of skilled foreign workers seems reasonable enough, given that Japan currently has 278,000 college-educated foreign workers


— the United States has more than 8 million, according to the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development — but it meets some resistance. An Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll in June asked Japanese about accepting immigrants to “main- tain economic vitality.” Twenty-six percent favored the idea. Sixty- five percent opposed it. And the likelihood of substantive changes in immigration policy took a ma- jor hit, experts said, when Kan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan saw setbacks in parliamentary elections this month. Political analysts now paint a grim picture of a country at legis- lative impasse. Foreigners such as Paulino find it difficult to get here, difficult to thrive and difficult to stay, and at least for now, Kan’s government will have a difficult time changing any of that.


‘A lack of urgency’


“There’s a lack of urgency or lack of sense of crisis for the de- clining population in Japan,” said Satoru Tominaga, director of Ga- ruda, an advocacy group for Indo- nesian nurse and caretaker candi- dates. “We need radical policy change to build up the number” of such workers. “However, Japan lacks a strong government; if any- thing, it’s in chaos.” When Japan struck economic


partnership agreements with In- donesia and the Philippines, at- tracting nurses and caretakers


CHICO HARLAN/THE WASHINGTON POST


Joyce Anne Paulino, a Filipino nurse, works in a nursing home in Japan. To stay long-term, she must pass an exam in Japanese.


wasn’t the primary objective. Ja- pan sought duty-free access for its automakers to the Southeast Asian market. Accepting skilled labor was just part of the deal. But by 2025, Japan will need to almost double its number of nurs- es and care workers, currently at 1.2 million. And because of the test, substandard language skills, not substandard caretaking skills, are keeping the obvious solution from meeting the gaping need. The 998 Filipino and Indone- sian nurses and caretakers who’ve come to Japan since 2008 all have, at minimum, college educations or several years of professional ex- perience. Nurses can stay for three years, with three chances to pass the test. Other caregivers can stay for four years, with one chance to pass. Those who arrive in Japan take a six-month lan- guage cram class and then begin work as trainees. They are allotted a brief period


every workday — 45 minutes, in Paulino’s case — for language study. Many also study for hours


at night. “The language skills, that is a


huge hurdle for them,” said Kiichi Inagaki, an official at the Japan International Corporation for Welfare Services, which oversees the program. “However, if you go around the hospital, you under- stand how language is important. Nurses are dealing with medical technicalities. They are talking to doctors about what is important. In order to secure a safe medical system, they need a very high standard of Japanese.” Advocates for foreign nurses and caregivers do not play down the importance of speaking and understanding Japanese. But they emphasize that the Japanese characters for medical terminol- ogy are among the hardest to learn; perhaps some jargon-heavy portion of the certification test, they say, could be given in English or workers’ native language.


A new culture


When Paulino boarded a flight from Manila to Tokyo in May


-0.7%


SOURCES: U.S. Census Bureau International Data Base, Ministry of Justice of Japan


2009, she had a sense of trepida- tion and adventure — not that she could express it in Japanese. She saw her mission as a way to make better money and “explore her- self,” she said. Her first chance for exploration came onboard, when a meal of rice, which she doesn’t like, came with chopsticks, which she didn’t know how to use. “All the way to Japan, we were joking about that,” said Fritzie Pe- rez, a fellow Filipino nurse who sat in the same row. “We were say- ing, ‘Joyce, how are you going to eat?’ ” Now eight months into her


stint at the Tamagawa Subaru nursing home, Paulino feels com- fortable speaking and joking with the elderly people she cares for. “She did have problems ini-


tially, especially in the Japanese language, but there’s been so much improvement,” said Kei-


0


’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 4.5% 5.3% 5.8% 6.4% 7.2% 7.2%


Total foreign nationals as a percent of total population THE WASHINGTON POST


suke Isozaki, head of caretaking at the home. “She’s not capable of writing things down for the rec- ord, but otherwise she’s as ca- pable as any Japanese staffer.” Paulino said she is nervous about her test, scheduled for Jan- uary 2013. This month, 33 nurses and caretakers returned to their home countries, discouraged with their chances. Her friend, Perez, described the language study and the caretak- ing as “serving two masters at the same time.” “When I get home, that’s when I


study,” Paulino said. “But every time I read my book, I start to fall asleep. It’s bothering me. Because [the test] is only one chance. And I don’t know if I can get it.” harlanc@washpost.com


Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.


Population decline


With Japan’s population of 126.8 million projected to drop as fewer births compensate for deaths, the country’s prime minister is taking steps to relax immigration policy.


Japan’s population growth rate Annual average


0.3% Projected 5.72 ’10 ’15 ’25 ’90 ’95 ’00 ’05 -0.2%


Registered legally 1.91


2.22 11


Total foreign nationals in Japan In millions


9.15


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