Chinese parliamentary chief Wu Bangguo met today with senior North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Il, in Pyongyang (AFP/Getty). North Korea Agrees in Principle to Resume Nuclear Talks North Korea and China agreed today that six-nation talks on the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear crisis should resume, but officials from the two nations made no specific plans. The understanding was reached during a visit to Pyongyang by Beijing’s number two official, parliamentary chief Wu Bangguo, who met with senior North Korean officials, including national leader Kim Jong Il (see GSN, Oct. 29)...Full Story

Iran Still “Weeks” Away From Suspending Uranium Enrichment, Official Says Iran has not yet decided when to implement the promised halt to its uranium enrichment activities, according to Tehran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Oct. 29)...Full Story

Republican Senator Criticizes Bush Foreign Policy By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A senior Republican U.S. senator yesterday criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy efforts and called for a national debate over the future course of U.S. foreign policy as part of the 2004 presidential election campaign...Full Story

	Thursday, October 30, 2003

U.S. House Pushes for Nuclear Plant Security Provisions The U.S. House of Representatives voted 346-59 Tuesday to order House negotiators to reinstall several measures that would seek to improve security at nuclear power plants to an energy bill currently being considered by a House-Senate conference, according to Energy Daily (see GSN, Sept. 25). The motion orders House conferees to add several provisions to the energy bill that would amend how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees nuclear plant security tests, plant siting and the transport of nuclear materials, Energy Daily reported. The provisions had been included in the House-approved version of the energy bill, but were removed by the House-Senate conference committee. “Adoption of this instruction is sorely needed, for despite the president’s warnings about terrorist interest in targeting nuclear power plants … the Republican energy conferees apparently have decided to weaken nuclear security legislation previously adopted by the House,” Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said yesterday in a press statement. The NRC has opposed the security provisions that House is seeking to implement, according to Energy Daily, and the U.S. nuclear industry has said the provisions are unnecessary. “We’d certainly prefer” the current draft language, said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade organization (Jeff Beattie, Energy Daily, Oct. 30). Back to top

Republican Senator Criticizes Bush Foreign Policy By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A senior Republican U.S. senator yesterday criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy efforts and called for a national debate over the future course of U.S. foreign policy as part of the 2004 presidential election campaign. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) advocated a “multilateral” approach and an increased emphasis on diplomacy and other foreign policy tools over the use of military force for addressing international concerns. “The election of 2004 will be about far more than George W. Bush or his Democratic opponent. … The coming election should provide a platform for a vigorous national debate about the direction of American foreign policy,” Hagel said at a two-day conference here featured numerous prominent Democrats (see related GSN story, today). Hagel, a moderate Republican who has challenged his party’s major policies, attacked Bush administration policies on Iraq, WMD proliferation and cooperation with other nations. “Crisis-driven ‘coalitions of the willing’ by themselves are not the building blocks for a stable world. We need to think more broadly and more strategically,” he said, referring to the U.S. strategy to gain international support for invading Iraq in the face of U.N. Security Council opposition. Multilateralism Urged Hagel, the final speaker at the “New American Strategies for Security and Peace” conference and the second Republican lawmaker after Representative Jim Leach (Iowa), echoed many of the themes raised by the Democrats, including many former Clinton administration officials. He urged, for instance, a strengthening of global alliances for addressing issues such as terrorism and proliferation. “America cannot be successful with any of these challenges, including Iraq and Afghanistan, without sustained partnerships and deep cooperation in the diplomatic, economic, intelligence, humanitarian, and law enforcement fields. We simply cannot go it alone,” Hagel said. “Alliances and multilateral institutions must be understood as expansions of our influence, not as constraints on our power,” he said. He further urged a greater sensitivity to the security concerns and interests of other nations. “Too often, American insensitivity toward other nations’ interests is perceived as American arrogance,” Hagel said. He said America’s image around the world “is in need of immediate and long-term repair. The coin of the realm for American leadership has been and will continue to be trust and confidence in our intentions. … Today, that trust and confidence is failing.” Boost Diplomacy Hagel also urged a greater emphasis on nonmilitary tools for promoting U.S. interests. The administration is demanding too much of the military for addressing international terrorism, he said. “Military power alone cannot win this war,” he said, saying longer overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans are devastating military recruitment and retention. “We run the risk of destroying the best military force structure in history,” he said. Hagel cited an internal memo by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld leaked to the press last week, saying it “reflects an unease with a purely military approach” to combating terrorism. He said public diplomacy and outreach initiatives are underfunded and “lacking strategic direction.” Applauding Without Thinking Addressing possible Republican criticism of his appearance at this conference, Hagel said he was acting out of principle. “Loyalty to political party and president is noble, but public service reaches beyond that nobility,” Hagel said. He said, “Republicans should not, in [New York Times columnist] Tom Friedman’s recent words, be ‘applauding without thinking’ in response to President Bush’s policies on Iraq.” He challenged Democrats, likewise, to “offer more than just opposition to the president’s foreign policy.” Hagel praised Bush for being “a steady leader, rallying America and the world to a new sense of confidence as the world struggled to find its equilibrium.” He called, though, for new thinking. “The realities and subtleties of historic change are not always sudden or obvious. … Staying a step ahead of the forces of change requires an ability to foresee and appreciate the consequences of our actions, a willingness to learn the hard lessons both of history and from our own experiences.” Back to top       U.S. Senate Committee Demands CIA Documents on Iraq Intelligence by Tomorrow The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has set a deadline of noon tomorrow for the CIA to provide documents and interviews sought by the committee for its inquiry into U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraq, according to the New York Times (see GSN, Oct. 29). Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and top Democrat Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made their demand in a letter sent yesterday to CIA Director George Tenet. While the letter did not specify what documents or personnel the committee was seeking, it did say the committee was still seeking an explanation as to “inconsistencies” among intelligence assessments about disputed evidence that suggested Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Niger, the Times reported. “In light of the agency’s many other responsibilities, the committee has been patient, but we now need immediate access to this information,” Roberts and Rockefeller wrote (Douglas Jehl, New York Times, Oct. 30). U.S. intelligence agencies are providing large amounts of information to the committee to aid its inquiry, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said. “The intelligence community is working hard to fulfill the committee’s requests and will continue to do so,” Harlow said (John Lumpkin, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 30). Back to top       Critics Contend Bush Has Done Little to Counter WMD Proliferation By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A gathering of international security experts, including former Clinton administration officials and Democratic politicians, this week charged the Bush administration with doing little to combat the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons around the world. They spoke at a two-day conference, entitled “New American Strategies for Security and Peace,” that was intended to offer alternatives to current U.S. international security policies. A prominent criticism among the participants, including a Republican senator (see related GSN story, today), was that the administration has emphasized a unilateral approach to foreign policy that stresses the threat or use of U.S. military force to the detriment of multilateral cooperation. “It’s obvious to me the limits of achieving our worldwide aims by relying exclusively on the military. Our military should be used to back international law and diplomacy — not replace them,” said Democratic presidential candidate and retired Gen. Wesley Clark. “The irony is that the exercise of this ‘shock and awe’ actually shows the limits of this power,” said Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration official, citing the invasion of Iraq. “Ask yourself this question, ‘Are we safer today than we were two years ago?’ The answer is ‘no,’” he said. Bush defended his policies yesterday during a news conference, saying he would characterize them as successful during his re-election campaign. “I’ll say that the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership, and America is more secure. And that will be how I’ll begin describing our foreign policy,” he said. Methods and Priorities Critiqued John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to former Bill Clinton, said the administration’s “unprecedented” unilateral approach to addressing proliferation was counterproductive. Podesta is now president of the Center for American Progress, which co-sponsored the conference here. “We need to enlist the world’s other nations to end proliferation of nuclear weapons as well as chemical and biological arsenals. Instead, the administration is flirting with a dangerous doctrine and developing new weapons that threaten to spark a new arms race,” he said. Podesta also said the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was intended to prevent terrorism and proliferation, has actually hampered such efforts. “It has diverted attention from serious threats, including proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and has led the administration to downplay very real dangers in Korea, Iran and inside Saudi Arabia,” he said. Insufficient resources are being directed toward securing nuclear weapons materials in the former Soviet Union, said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Energy Department nuclear nonproliferation official. “We are still a long way from preventing a nuclear weapon from exploding in lower Manhattan and taking Wall Street with it,” she said. Former National Security Council official Ivo Daalder, now with the Brookings Institution, argued the administration’s declared doctrine of threatening pre-emptive military force against countries believed to be developing weapons of mass destruction is “self-defeating.” “Once you put a country on notice that Washington will pre-empt their acquisition of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, that country will have every incentive to speed up the development and acquisition of precisely those capabilities. … Once you make people part of an ‘axis of evil,’ they are likely to behave in exactly the way they predict,” he said. Alleged Weak on Treaties Amy Smithson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the administration was thwarting progress on the implementation of the major treaties banning chemical and biological weapons. “The bulk of Russia’s 40,000-ton poison gas arsenal still awaits destruction in no small part because the U.S. government has not fulfilled its pledges to help Moscow with this task,” she said. She also criticized the administration for not launching challenge inspections through the treaty to attempt to substantiate its claims that certain other countries are concealing chemical weapons. Smithson also faulted the Bush administration for scuttling efforts in 2001 to create a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention. She said she expected little result from a series of technical meetings that was approved last year as an alternative. “Few experts that I know of in the field, if any, expect anything of substance to come out of this process,” she said. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said that the Pentagon’s counterproliferation efforts are “scattered” and need more managerial focus and funding, that intelligence on weapons of mass destruction could be improved, and that there should be a Homeland Security Department office dedicated to WMD issues. He advocated using “many tools in the toolbox for dealing with weapons of mass destruction,” including arms control treaties, diplomacy, and export controls as well as potentially pre-emption. “I think it is fair to say, however, that since 9/11, we’ve done one thing [pre-emption] in one place [Iraq]. [With other tools] in the toolbox, elsewhere around the world, we have done very little,” he said. Back to top       U.S. Pursues Broader Relations With China While Imposing Proliferation Sanctions While the Bush administration has imposed sanctions against specific Chinese companies for alleged WMD proliferation activities, it has also restrained from more sweeping sanctions in an effort to maintain Beijing’s diplomatic cooperation in other areas, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Sept. 19). “The real lesson we’ve learned is that the relationship with China is mature enough that we can whack ‘em with a sanctions decision and in other areas you keep the discussion going,” a U.S. official said. Some experts have said, however, that separating proliferation concerns from the broader U.S.-Chinese relationship could reduce pressure on Chinese leaders to control companies engaged in proliferation activities, according to the Journal. In contrast, the Clinton administration used both public criticism and restrained sanctions to push for changes in Chinese behavior, said Bates Gill, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s approach “is not about finger wagging in China’s face and portraying China internationally as a bad actor,” Gill said. “It is sanctions and we walk away. So I think the Chinese are less concerned about it, because it doesn’t undermine the broad U.S.-China relationship and it doesn’t undermine China’s international image,” he added (Susan Lawrence, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30). Back to top

North Korea Agrees in Principle to Resume Nuclear Talks North Korea and China agreed today that six-nation talks on the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear crisis should resume, but officials from the two nations made no specific plans. The understanding was reached during a visit to Pyongyang by Beijing’s number two official, parliamentary chief Wu Bangguo, who met with senior North Korean officials, including national leader Kim Jong Il (see GSN, Oct. 29). “Both sides agreed in principle that the six-way talks should continue,” China Central Television reported (Ted Anthony, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 30). “The Korean nuclear issue must be solved peacefully through talks, despite its complexities or whatever trouble or turbulence may be met along the way,” Wu said during talks with his counterpart Kim Yong Nam, the head of North Korea’s parliament (BBC News, Oct. 30). As the talks progressed, Pyongyang announced that China had “decided to provide grant-in-aid to the D.P.R.K.” (Agence France-Presse, Oct. 30). U.S.-North Korean Treaty No Longer Demanded North Korea told the United States last week that it would no longer demand a formal nonaggression treaty with Washington, but would instead settle for a “president’s letter,” Asahi Shimbun reported today. During a meeting last week in New York, North Korean deputy U.N. ambassador Han Song Ryol delivered the message to David Straub, director of the U.S. State Department’s office of Korean Affairs (Nobuyoshi Sakajiri, Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 30). Defector Visits Washington A top North Korean defector, meanwhile, is in Washington for talks with U.S. officials. Hwang Jang Yop said yesterday that Kim Jong Il told him once that North Korean researchers had “succeeded in developing nuclear weapons.” The North Korean leader also “asked me about how to commend the officials who succeeded in developing nuclear weapons,” Hwang told a Japanese television station. He said, however, that he had never seen any nuclear weapons. “I do not know for sure if North Korea possesses nuclear weapons,” he said before meeting with several U.S. lawmakers (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, Oct. 30). Hwang also met the U.S. State Department’s top representative to Asia, James Kelly. “Mr. Hwang provided his thoughts and analysis on the situation in North Korea now and his views on regional issues, most notably North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday (Matthew Lee, Agence France-Presse, Oct. 30). Back to top       Iran Still “Weeks” Away From Suspending Uranium Enrichment, Official Says Iran has not yet decided when to implement the promised halt to its uranium enrichment activities, according to Tehran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Oct. 29). The suspension would proceed, said Ali Akbar Salehi, but probably not for “a matter of weeks, maybe before or after the (next IAEA) board meeting,” which is scheduled to begin Nov. 20. In a deal brokered by France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Iran agreed to stop enriching uranium, at least temporarily, and to answer questions about its controversial nuclear development. Some Western officials expressed concern with the delay in suspending uranium enrichment. “This talk … raises concern that the Iranians may in fact be dragging out a process that could be resolved in a short amount of time,” said a Western diplomat (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 30). Back to top       U.S. Needs New Effort to Ease Indian-Pakistani Tensions, CFR Says By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States needs to begin a long-term diplomatic effort to help India and Pakistan resolve their long-standing dispute over Kashmir — a region that has the potential to become a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed rivals, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report released today (see GSN, Oct. 22). The report, prepared by a CFR task force that included former U.S. Ambassador to India Frank Wisner and former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Nicholas Platt, outlines several recommendations by which the United States can help India and Pakistan resolve the Kashmir dispute and reduce regional tensions. The report also sets out a number of recommendations for new U.S. policies toward India and Pakistan individually to help improve bilateral relations and to help resolve U.S. national security concerns posed by the region. “After a half century mainly on the periphery,” the report says, India and Pakistan “have become far more important for U.S. national security interests.” In its report, the CFR task force called on the United States to begin a long-term diplomatic effort to “assist — not to mediate or arbitrate” India and Pakistan’s dispute over Kashmir. “Given the fact that India and Pakistan are now nuclear armed, the possibility of a conflict involving the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945 remains all too real. To date, neither government appears to have made the political decision that its national interest would be served by movement toward genuine detente and a Kashmir settlement — except on its own terms,” the report says. To help launch a bilateral process to resolve the conflict, the United States should urge Pakistan to permanently prevent cross-border terrorism and to modify its current negotiating stance with India — a stance that sets progress on the Kashmir dispute as a precondition for working on other Indian-Pakistani issues, the report says. With regard to India, the United States should urge New Delhi to “reach an understanding” with the regional Kashmiri government and increase economic development in the region, the report says. It also recommends that the United States call on India to reduce the level of its military forces in the region and improve their human rights records. In addition, the United States should also call on India and Pakistan to begin broader nuclear discussions “without holding these to progress on the Kashmir dispute,” the report says, adding that such talks should include discussion on the establishment of nuclear risk reduction centers. During a speech earlier this month at the Middle East Institute in Washington, South Asian expert Michael Krepon also stressed the need for Pakistan to cease viewing nuclear discussions as a bargaining chip in the Kashmir dispute (see GSN, Oct. 16).  The report also calls for the United States to work to work India and Pakistan into the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and to pressure the two countries to implement stricter export controls to prevent nuclear proliferation. “Any further leakage — such as the reported Pakistani assistance to North Korea’s uranium enrichment program — should have serious consequences for bilateral relations … and not be swept under the rug,” the report says. U.S. Bilateral Relations With India, Pakistan In addition to providing recommendations on how the United States can help India and Pakistan resolve their dispute over Kashmir, the report also outlines measures to help Washington improve its individual relations with each of the two countries.  Describing Pakistan as “one of the most complex and difficult challenges facing U.S. diplomacy,” the report calls on the U.S. Congress to approve a White House proposal to provide Pakistan with a five-year $3 billion economic and security aid package (see GSN, June 24). While the White House has proposed that the aid be divided equally between economic and defense aid, the CFR task force recommended that the aid package be slanted toward economic concerns — with two-thirds of the proposed funding provided as economic aid and one-third provided for security assistance. The report also recommends that any U.S. assistance to Pakistan over a “baseline” of $300 million annually for five years be conditioned on Islamabad implementing economic and political reforms and fulfilling nonproliferation responsibilities. The report praised the growing improvement in U.S.-Indian relations, saying it “marks a major turning point.” To continue to improve relations, the United States should consider India a “friendly” country for the purpose of approving the export of controlled military items and should ease restrictions on U.S. dual-use exports to India. Washington should also increase its political, military and intelligence cooperation with New Delhi, the report says. Back to top       No Nuclear “Black Market” Exists, Kazakh Foreign Minister Says Kazakh Foreign Minister Kassymzhomart Tokaev said yesterday that he doubted the existence of an international “black market” for the illegal sale of nuclear materials, according to the Financial Times (see GSN, Oct. 6). Tokaev instead suggested that secret transfers of nuclear materials between governments remained a major cause of nuclear proliferation, the Times reported. “It’s very difficult to believe that this black market exists,” Tokaev said. “I have really heard nothing (certain) about this kind of market, if it exists at all,” he said (Mark Huband, Financial Times, Oct. 30). Back to top

Chemical Treaty Progressing Too Slowly, Top Official Says The head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, yesterday said treaty parties were not acting quickly enough to enact legislation to implement the treaty and prevent chemical weapons proliferation (see GSN, Oct. 27). So far, only 40 percent of the treaty’s 157 signatories have adopted domestic legislation to apply the treaty’s provisions, said OPCW Director General Rogelio Pfirter. “The rate of implementation is far from satisfactory, Pfirter said during the organization’s first regional meeting in Singapore. Pfirter said there was a “real threat” of chemical weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. Chemical Weapons “are not simply the unwanted heritage of a bygone era, and the emergence of international terrorism has added a sense of urgency to what already was in its own right a very serious security concern,” he said (William Choong, Straits Times, Oct. 30). Pfirter also praised Russia’s efforts in destroying its vast chemical weapons stockpile, saying Moscow had made “a good start” by destroying 1 percent of its chemical weapons. “We look forward now to Russian political will and Russian ingenuity, I would say, to allow for much quicker progress in destruction of stockpiles,” he said Martin Abbugao, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 29). Back to top       Army Chemical Weapons Burn Pace Slower Than Projected The U.S. Army overestimated the pace at which it can operate its Anniston chemical weapons incinerator in Alabama, the Birmingham News reported today (see GSN, Oct. 17). Army officials originally said they would be able to destroy as many as 40 M-55 rockets every hour, but project manager Tim Garrett yesterday projected the pace to be between 34 and 36 rockets per hour. Officials are set to begin trial burns Sunday to show state and federal regulators that the facility can safely operate for six-hour stretches. Since Aug. 9, the Army has gradually increased the plant’s chemical destruction speed and has operated for about 510 hours, Garrett said (Katherine Bouma, Birmingham News, Oct. 30). Back to top

Japan Seeking North Korean Missile Limits as Part of Nuclear Deal Japan is hoping that any written security assurance offered to North Korea in an attempt to defuse the crisis surrounding Pyongyang’s nuclear program would include measures to reduce the threat posed by North Korean ballistic missiles, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Tuesday. Japan would make its request during the next round of six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, according to Kawaguchi. She said that Japan wants North Korea to eliminate its Nodong ballistic missiles and to suspend tests of its Taepodong missile. “Japan’s security issue is an essential part of the equation. So is the North’s missile issue,” Kawaguchi said (Makoto Miura, Daily Yomiuri, Oct. 30).   Back to top

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