Bolton’s Exit from State Dept. Paves Way for Russian, U.S. Plutonium Disposal, Officials Say

U.S negotiators said the absence of former Undersecretary of State John Bolton has paved the way for an agreement between Russia and the United States to dispose of enough plutonium for 8,000 nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, June 17).

The deal, which is expected to be announced next month at the Group of Eight conference in Scotland, results from productive negotiations between the two countries following Bolton’s departure from the State Department, U.S. officials and analysts said.

The program had been delayed since 2003 over White House demands that U.S. contractors be shielded from liability for accidents at disposal sites they help build in Russia.

Since Bolton left the department after being nominated as U.N. ambassador, the United States has also dropped its opposition to Mohamed ElBaradei remaining chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has supported European incentives for Iran to drop its nuclear ambitions, the Post reported.

“Throughout his career in the first Bush administration, he was always playing the stopper role for a lot of different issues and even when there was obvious interest by the president in moving things forward, Bolton often found ways of stopping things by tying the interagency process in knots,” said former Clinton administration official Rose Gottemoeller. “That’s the situation we’re seeing dissipate now.”

“It’s less a question of these decisions being taken because John was no longer in the policy loop,” said Robert Einhorn, a former long-time State Department nonproliferation official. “It’s that John was no longer in the Washington-based policy-making loop because the second Bush administration wants to adopt a different approach to dealing with the rest of the world.”

However, one expert was more cautious in his assessment of the post-Bolton State Department.

“He was a lightning rod because of his strong and blunt statements,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “But this Bush administration is not going to become the Adlai Stevenson administration just because John Bolton has left the State Department” (Peter Barker and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, June 20).

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