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Lugar Seeks to Ease CTR Rules
U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) has asked the Defense Department to include in its 2007 legislative proposals language that eliminates some certification requirements for cooperative threat reduction programs, Inside the Pentagon reported last week (see GSN, Jan. 31). Lugar, in a Dec. 27, 2005 letter, asked for the restrictions to be lifted in the former Soviet Union and in other countries. “The annual certification and waiver process wastes money and valuable time — time and resources lost in the fight against proliferation,” Lugar wrote in the letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “It is imperative that you continue to express your support for the elimination of the certification requirements as well as for the transfer of authority for operations outside the former Soviet Union,” Lugar wrote. The threat reduction program, created through legislation by Lugar and then-Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) in 1991, provides money to countries in the former Soviet Union to destroy and secure WMD stockpiles and materials. The fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill allows President George W. Bush to waive annual certification work required by the legislation that created the threat reduction program. Under the earlier bill, countries cannot receive financial assistance without showing that they are in compliance with international arms control treaties, recognize human rights, invest substantially in nuclear weapons disposal and do not have military modernization programs that “exceed legitimate defense requirements.” In the fiscal 2003 defense bill, U.S. lawmakers gave the president authority to waive those requirements in the interest of national security. The president must give a comprehensive justification to Congress if he wants the waiver. “The certification and waiver processes consume hundreds of man-hours of work by the State Department, the intelligence community, the Pentagon, as well as other departments and agencies,” Lugar said in a floor speech last year. “This time could be better spent tackling the proliferation threats facing our country,” he added. “Instead of interdicting WMD shipments, identifying the next A.Q. Khan, or locating hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons, our nonproliferation experts spend their time compiling reports and assembling certification or waiver determinations” (Sebastian Sprenger, Inside the Pentagon, Jan. 26).
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