By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The House Appropriations Committee yesterday rejected a White House request for authority to extend U.S. threat reduction efforts to nations outside the former Soviet Union (see GSN, March 26).

The request, contained in the Bush administration’s $75 billion fiscal 2003 supplemental appropriations request, was not included in the marked-up version of the bill approved by the Republican-controlled committee yesterday.

The requested authority would allow the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program, also known as the Nunn-Lugar program, to spend up to $50 million in fiscal 2003 and 2004 to secure WMD materials outside the former Soviet Union, including in Iraq.

The authority would enable the administration to carry out a plan for securing, perhaps by purchasing, poorly secured enriched uranium and plutonium at sites around the globe (see GSN, Sept. 3, 2002).

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the expanded authority yesterday, with some modification.  It would limit the authority to fiscal 2003, which ends Sept. 30, and adds a 15-day requirement for congressional notification prior to expenditure of funds.

In the past, House Republicans have criticized the U.S. threat reduction programs for failing to obtain full Russian cooperation and for expanding their activities beyond their initial mandate.  Last year, the House successfully prevented passage of a similar White House authority request.

“It means that it will be a conferenced item, unless it is amended on the House floor, with the Senate and Bush administration on one side and the House on the other,” said Andy Fisher, press secretary for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).

The Senate bill also includes $55 million for Energy Department nonproliferation programs outside the former Soviet Union.

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