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U.S. House Approves White House CTR Funding Request By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a Bush administration request for more than $400 million in the coming fiscal year for a U.S. Defense Department effort to help secure and eliminate weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union (see GSN, Feb. 11). The House voted 391-34 in favor of the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill, which contains full funding for the administration’s $409.2 million request for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, also known as the Nunn-Lugar program after its architects — Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). The administration’s fiscal 2005 request was $41.6 million less than the program’s current funding level of $450.8 million The House version of the bill also contains a provision granting the president authority for one year to waive conditions set by Congress on providing CTR funding for chemical weapons disposal efforts in Russia, according to a Lugar press release. Such funding is set to be used to aid construction of a chemical weapons disposal facility near the city of Shchuchye. The U.S. Senate this week has debated its own version of the defense authorization bill, which also fully funds the White House CTR request. The Senate version of the bill, however, would grant the president a permanent CTR authority to waive conditions such as the requirement that Russia detail its full chemical weapons holdings. A Lugar spokesman told Global Security Newswire today that the issue of the waiver authorities is not likely to be one of “top contention” when the House and Senate work to resolve the bills. Meanwhile, Lugar’s office announced yesterday the progress the CTR program has made in recent months in reducing the number of former Soviet weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. In the last two months, the CTR program has: * removed 100 nuclear warheads from Russian missile systems; * destroyed 15 SS-18 Satan missiles and eight related missile silos (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2003); * destroyed six Backfire strategic bombers in Ukraine (see GSN, Sept. 30, 2003); * destroyed 84 AS-4/Kh-22 long-range, nuclear-capable air-launched cruise missiles that were carried by Bear and Blackjack bombers (see GSN, Jan. 31); * destroyed a total of 51 SS-N-23, SS-N-20, and SS-N-18 Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and * destroyed four SS-24 mobile ICBM launchers (see GSN, Feb. 11). In addition, a number of CTR-funded efforts are still being conducted in Russia and Ukraine, according to Lugar’s office, including the dismantlement of a second Russian Typhoon-class submarine, the dismantlement of Russian SS-18 and SS-24 ballistic missiles; and the elimination of the entire Soviet-era Backfire bomber fleet remaining in Ukraine. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Senator Lugar serves on the NTI Board. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.]
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