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Details Sought on Nuclear Counterterrorism Plan By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — Experts and reporters yesterday questioned the details and significance of a new international initiative led by the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear terrorism (see GSN, July 17). U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph fielded the comments, following his presentation on the “Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism” at an event here sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation. The initiative, as described July 15 in a joint statement by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, would include efforts by participating countries to better control and protect nuclear materials, prevent their proliferation and respond to attacks. It also would “ensure cooperation” in spreading technical means for stopping proliferation, “ensure that law enforcement takes all possible measures to deny safe haven to terrorists seeking to acquire or use nuclear materials,” and “strengthen our respective national legal frameworks to ensure the effective prosecution of, and the certainty of punishment for, terrorists and those who facilitate such acts.” “I think this is a very positive step by the administration. What needs to be done now is putting the meat on the bones. It’s unclear to me by reading the joint statement as well as the fact sheet what exactly will occur,” Jofi Joseph, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who was in attendance, said in an interview today. “It was an interesting announcement because it said all the right things that a lot of nonproliferation experts have been advocating for several years but it leaves you scratching your head about what is going to happen,” he said. At yesterday’s event, Undersecretary Joseph suggested that Washington and Moscow were still hammering out the details of the initiative, and are aiming to conclude “an agreement on the basic principles and the program of action in the fall.” Marvin Klemow, a consultant to the Israeli Aircraft Industries International, asked about the focus of the initiative. “You’ve laid out a comprehensive kind of approach but I think that we’d all agree we need to start with the primary threats. My question to you is do we and the Russians have an understanding as we proceed down this path about what the primary threats are and how we might focus initial attention on these threats? “The primary risks of course deal with the availability of materials to terrorist groups. There is a clear consensus not just with Russia and the United States but well beyond that, that the first line of defense has to be protection,” Joseph responded. “We are implementing a number of protective measures. We have been doing so for a number of years with the Nunn-Lugar programs as well as with many of the [Department of Energy] programs,” he said. “We are clearly agreed on the first step, but we are also agreed that that step is not going to give us sufficient protection against the threat and that terrorists could acquire these types of materials. We are therefore determined to work for greater detection capabilities and interdiction capabilities,” he said (see GSN, July 17). Joseph added, “If we are not successful, if there is a use of a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb, we are also agreed to work together in order to mitigate the consequences and deal directly with the effects of that attack to contain and minimize the losses.” Jofi Joseph said today some of what was proposed appears to resemble efforts already undertaken by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency has “had some programs under way for the last two to three years that address a lot of these issues.” “A lot of what you’ve described overlaps with existing programs that are already in place, like the G-8 Global Partnership and Global Threat Reduction Initiative,” Dan Horner, a reporter from McGraw Hill Nuclear Publications, said at the presentation. Through the 2002 Global Partnership initiative, G-8 countries agreed to provide $20 billion in funding over 10 years for securing and destroying weapons of mass destruction in Russia and beyond (see GSN, July 17). Through the Global Threat Reduction Initiative announced May 2004, the United States with Russian and IAEA cooperation aims to secure and remove highly enriched uranium from research reactors worldwide (see related GSN story, today). Undersecretary Joseph said the initiative was intended in part to encourage countries to do what they already should be doing. “What we want to do is effect a change in the posture of our partners, so that they do take action, so that they do meet all of their requirements under [U.N. Security Council Resolution] 1540, so that they do work together so that we can build our capacity to detect the movement of material and our capacity to more effectively interdict that movement.” “Quite frankly, if there is a little duplication, that’s probably reassuring more than disturbing, given the consequence of failing to address all aspects of the nuclear terrorism threat,” Joseph added. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, asked why the administration waited five years following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, to start such an initiative. He noted a negative review of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism efforts by the presidential Sept. 11 commission. “What took us so long to get something like this global initiative going? The president said we were in a race with the terrorists. It seemed we were walking leisurely along. I’m much encouraged by what you said, but wouldn’t it have been nice if it had started about five years ago?” he said. Undersecretary Joseph responded, “This administration has taken a number of very important steps in order to improve our defense posture against nuclear terrorism,” citing the creation of national counterterrorism and nonproliferation centers, which he said were recommended by the commission. “We have been working with our friends and allies as well,” he said, noting the administration’s Megaports initiative and successful passage of Resolution 1540, which calls on countries to take steps to prevent WMD proliferation. “We think that we have taken a great number of steps and made significant progress. We need to do more and this new initiative is an expression of our intent and determination to do more and to work with Russia, which I think is really important as an aspect of this initiative.”
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