U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, met with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday in Vienna (AFP photo). Officials Agree to IAEA Oversight of Libyan Nuclear Dismantlement U.S. and British officials agreed yesterday to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their actions as they dismantle Libya’s recently disclosed nuclear facilities (see GSN, Jan. 16)...Full Story

Pakistan Expands Investigation Into Possible Nuclear Proliferation Pakistan has broadened an investigation into whether its nuclear scientists were involved in any possible proliferation activities. Authorities recently detained eight scientists and four officials from the country’s main nuclear weapons facility, Pakistani Information Minister Rashid Ahmed said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14)...Full Story

House Democrats, Republicans Clash Over Bush Homeland Record By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers Friday called on the Bush administration for greater urgency in efforts to protect the United States against WMD and terrorist attacks...Full Story

	Tuesday, January 20, 2004

House Democrats, Republicans Clash Over Bush Homeland Record By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers Friday called on the Bush administration for greater urgency in efforts to protect the United States against WMD and terrorist attacks. The Democrats’ criticisms, which came on the final working day before Bush’s annual State of the Union address this evening, prompted an immediate, pointed rebuttal from Republican legislators, as well as a White House defense of Bush’s “war on terrorism” strategy. In preliminary findings of a comprehensive homeland security report slated for release next month, House Homeland Security Committee minority members criticized the administration for falling short in efforts to improve nuclear and chemical plant security; bioterrorism and general emergency response preparedness; assessment and use of intelligence; aviation, border and port security; and critical infrastructure protection. “There’s no question we are safer. But the issue should be … are we safe enough? Are we as safe as we need to be?” senior committee Democrat Jim Turner (Texas) said in a conference call with reporters Friday. “The bottom line is that America is not as safe as it needs to be in light of the threats we face. Democrats believe we must move faster and take stronger measures to make sure another 9/11 does not occur,” Turner added in a statement accompanying the report. The Democrats said the administration has failed to adequately staff the Homeland Security Department and to produce a national terrorism threat assessment; to prevent dangerous items from being loaded onto airplanes; to adequately protect borders and screen foreigners; to create a comprehensive system for screening cargo containers for radiological and nuclear materials; to regulate chemical plant security; to secure Russian biological weapon sites and U.S. laboratories that use “weaponizable pathogens”; and to fund first responders at a sufficient level. Within hours of the report’s release, committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) accused the Democrats of “substituting rhetoric for responsible oversight,” adding, “Homeland security is too important to politicize.” “Backsliding from responsible oversight into one-page summaries of major initiatives and a laundry list of homeland security ‘gaps’ is unacceptable amateurism. … The minority owes a duty to every American to recognize that the administration has a comprehensive and coherent strategy that addresses each of the homeland security areas mentioned in their memo,” Cox said. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States “is much safer today than it was on Sept. 11.” He pointed to U.S. military action abroad — taking “the fight to the enemy by waging the war on terrorism” — as evidence of the claim. “The best way to prevent an attack from happening in the first place,” said McClellan, “is to bring those who seek to do us harm to justice before they can carry out an attack here in our homeland.” Representatives Seek to Expand Committee’s Role Turner told reporters the committee could produce this year both a chemical security bill and an omnibus homeland security authorization bill, which he said could address many of the concerns aired in Friday’s report. The committee’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Subcommittee has already produced a bill on funding for responders, which the full committee is expected to take up within weeks (see GSN, Dec. 19, 2003). “For this new department to really work in the most effective way, I think [we need] to have a meaningful authorization process where the Congress and the administration can come together … a bill [that] we then authorize [to say] that this is what we’re going to do,” Turner said. He lingered over the question of bioterrorism defense. “Dealing with bioterrorism,” Turner said, “is a much broader challenge than what you see in the Bioshield legislation,” referring to an administration effort to promote vaccine research and development (see GSN, July 1, 2003). He said congressional reservations about the project stemmed from unwillingness to give the administration a “blank check” for vaccines. Turner stressed the need for a capability to identify biological agents and an ability to quickly develop vaccines in the event of an attack. He said that only two states are capable of emergency vaccine distribution. “We’ve got serious security gaps in the area of bioterrorism, and it is in my judgment a very troubling threat because of the catastrophic nature of that threat,” Turner said. Democrats Criticize Lack of Central Antinuclear Terrorism Authority The Democrats criticized the administration for its “failure to close the gap” on security of nuclear material stockpiles. Citing al-Qaeda’s “end goal” of obtaining and using a nuclear weapon, poor security at ex-Soviet nuclear sites and International Atomic Energy Agency reports of uranium and plutonium theft, the lawmakers appeared to call for a consolidation of nonproliferation activities now carried out in various government agencies. “No single senior official within the U.S. government is responsible, and therefore could be held accountable for, the coordination and ultimate success of multiple American programs designed to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists,” the report reads. The idea of naming “some sort of coordinator for all nonproliferation programs in the U.S. government” is not a new one, according to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace nonproliferation expert Jon Wolfsthal, who said creating such a post could help streamline efforts and is possible despite the complexity of the task. “We have a drug czar; we have an AIDS czar; so it’s clearly something we could do,” said Wolfsthal. Implicit in the Democrats’ criticism, added Wolfsthal, is the idea that U.S. threat reduction programs have evolved over the past decade and are in need of review. “The U.S. government needs to have an honest appraisal of all its [nonproliferation] programs and consider which ones need to be consolidated, which ones need to be strengthened and which ones need to be phased out,” Wolfsthal said. “We have been moving at a staggeringly slow pace of trying to get nuclear materials out of these backwaters. We’re accelerating; we’re doing more over the past couple years; [but] no matter how you slice the numbers, we’re moving too slowly,” he added. In general, Turner told reporters, “We need to be much more aggressive about getting control of that nuclear material.” It is unclear, though, how much responsibility for nonproliferation the fledgling committee could legitimately take on. Turner said specific recommendations are being developed within the committee, but one committee source added that, because of competing priorities and still-evolving committee responsibilities, nonproliferation activities are unlikely to turn up in the omnibus homeland security authorization bill that Turner mentioned. “It’s a very critical area,” said Turner of nonproliferation, “and of course, it involves several other committees in the Congress as well.” Back to top

Officials Agree to IAEA Oversight of Libyan Nuclear Dismantlement U.S. and British officials agreed yesterday to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their actions as they dismantle Libya’s recently disclosed nuclear facilities (see GSN, Jan. 16). IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei announced the deal yesterday after a three-hour meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and his British counterpart, William Ehrman, according to the Associated Press. Under the agreement, the IAEA would be responsible for the removal of nuclear materials from Libya, could oversee the unsealing of materials and reseal them and would have access to the materials once they are removed from Libya, a U.S. official said. “I think we have an agreement on what needs to be done. The agency’s role is very clear.  We need to do the verification,” ElBaradei said. “I think we reached a very good agreement,” he added. While the agency will oversee the dismantlement, U.S. and British experts, according to ElBaradei, will conduct the physical work itself. “We clearly need British and American support with logistics and I think the meeting was trying to coordinate our cooperation,” he said. “We are trying to move fast.  It’s important that we move fast,” ElBaradei added (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Boston Globe, Jan. 20). The IAEA now plans to conduct an inventory of all 10 Libyan nuclear-related sites, according to the Financial Times. Agency officials have previously visited nine of the sites and plan to travel to a uranium “yellowcake” storage facility (Mark Hubband, Financial Times, Jan. 19). Prior to yesterday’s agreement, the IAEA and the United Kingdom and the United States had disagreed, at times publicly, over who would be responsible for the dismantlement of Libya’s nuclear program, according to the Associated Press.  Diplomats said that while both sides had made concessions to reach yesterday’s agreement, some differences still remained. According to one diplomat, Washington and London plan to conduct their own investigation of Libya’s nuclear program at the same time that the IAEA conducts its verification efforts. “The Americans are not interested in having their hands tied,” the diplomat said (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 19). Experts have praised the agreement reached between the two sides, according to the Washington Post. “It was important that the U.S. and the IAEA bury the hatchet,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “This could set a precedent for dealing with other countries such as North Korea,” he said (Slevin/Warrick, Washington Post, Jan. 20). Already, U.S. and British experts have traveled to Libya and could begin dismantlement efforts within weeks, a senior Bush administration official said yesterday. In addition, Libyan chemical weapons scientists are developing plans to incinerate tons of mustard gas agent, the official said. Libya is “in a hurry” to scrap its WMD programs and plans to make a full and detailed declaration of its nuclear program to the IAEA Board of Governors when it next meets, scheduled for March, the senior Bush administration official said (Patrick Tyler, New York Times, Jan. 20). “Our intention is to move very quickly,” a Western diplomat said. “We want to get as much out of Libya or destroyed as soon as possible, particularly on the nuclear side. The timeframe is weeks or months, not years,” the source added (Anton La Guardia, London Telegraph, Jan. 20). Former U.S. Senator Describes 1992 Offer by Libya Meanwhile, in a Washington Post commentary Sunday, former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.) described a 1992 Libya overture to dismantle its WMD programs in exchange for the end of U.S. sanctions and improved relations. According to Hart, a Libyan official contacted him during a business trip in Greece to first broach the idea of improving relations with the United States. The U.S. State Department at the time, however, rejected the idea on the basis that Libya had to first turn over those responsible for the bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, before relations could be improved. Hart wrote that he then met with senior Libyan officials, including the head of Libyan intelligence, who offered to turn over the two Lockerbie bombing suspects. Even though the State Department continued to dismiss the Libyan offer, Libyan officials still wanted to meet with Hart, who suggested that the suspects be flown to Geneva and then turned over to either the United Nations or the United States. While the Libyans agreed, according to Hart, the United States still rejected the idea, on the grounds of jurisdiction concerns. Hart wrote that he then traveled to Libya and met with senior officials, including then-Prime Minister Abdul Salaam Jalloud, who confirmed the earlier offer. According to Hart, when he said that any discussion of improved relations with the United States would have to include an end to Libyan WMD efforts, Jalloud responded that “everything will be on the table.” Even so, the State Department rejected the Libyan offer, Hart wrote. “This account suggests, and strongly so, only one thing: We might have brought the Pan Am bombers to justice, and quite possibly have moved Libya out of its renegade status, much sooner than we have,” Hart wrote. “At the very least it calls into serious question the assertion that Libya changed direction as a result of our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq,” he added (Gary Hart, Washington Post, Jan. 18). Back to top       Bush Plans to Claim Nonproliferation Success in Speech Tonight U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to tout progress in combating WMD proliferation when he addresses Congress tonight in his annual State of the Union address, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 20). Bush has used his last two annual addresses to promote his strategies for addressing nations of proliferation concern. In 2002, he introduced Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil” (see GSN÷ Jan. 30, 2002) and in 2003, he laid out the U.S. case for deposing then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (Greg Webb, GSN, Jan. 20). This year, Bush will defend the U.S. invasion of Iraq as “the right decision. … It’s made our country [and] our world safer,” an aide said. In addition, Bush is expected to claim progress in the war on terrorism and in administration efforts to curb North Korean and Libyan WMD ambitions, according to the aide.  He will probably also urge Syria to follow the Libya’s recent example and declare its willingness to unilaterally dismantle its suspected WMD arsenal (McManus, Los Angeles Times). Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called on Syria to heed the Iraqi and Libyan cases. Syria “should follow the example of other nations in the region, especially Libya, [which] made a very important and positive judgment that they were gaining nothing from developing weapons of mass destruction except the condemnation of the whole world,” Powell said (U.S. State Department release, Jan. 16). The Bush administration believes its strategy of increasing pressure on particular countries has helped to support international nonproliferation efforts, the New York Times reported today. “I cannot see how being truthful about the nature of regimes is harmful to those who want to change those regimes,” said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. “When Ronald Reagan spoke out against the Soviet Union,” she said, “it stimulated those inside, who saw they had friends around the world, and they were able to speak out.” Bush’s “axis of evil” speech “really challenged the international community to get serious about this class of states pursuing weapons of mass destruction,” she said. That speech got “the whole world’s attention,” said a senior defense official. “It’s had an effect beyond the three nations, and whether that was accidental or calculated, in retrospect I think it was a smart thing to do,” the official said. Some experts disagreed, however, that a more aggressive U.S. policy should be credited with changes in Iran and Libya. Speaking about Libya, a longtime Republican adviser said that the effect of Bush policies have been “dramatically overblown” and that Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadhafi had initiated efforts several years ago to improve Libya’s international standing (see related GSN story, today; Sanger/MacFarquhar, New York Times, Jan. 20). U.S. willingness to act in the face of international opposition, combined with apparent lapses in U.S. intelligence assessments of Iraq’s prewar WMD capabilities, have combined to threaten the U.S. ability to act in the future, according to other Republicans. “The foreign policy blow-back is pretty is pretty serious,” said Kenneth Adelman, former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and now a member of the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advisory Board. The administration’s “Bush doctrine” of using pre-emptive military to counter pending national security threats has been threatened by the lack of WMD findings in Iraq, Adelman said. The doctrine “rests not just on solid intelligence,” he said, but “also on the credibility that the intelligence is solid.” Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, until recently a senior State Department official, said the failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has restricted U.S. options in future crises. The Iraqi WMD no-show “has to make it more difficult on some future occasion if the United States argues the intelligence warrants something controversial, like a preventive attack,” he said. “The result is we’ve made the bar higher for ourselves and we have to expect greater skepticism in the future,” he added (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Jan. 19). Back to top       U.S. Laboratory Confirms No Chemical Agent in Iraqi Mortar Shells The U.S. Energy Department’s National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has confirmed that a recently discovered cache of Iraqi mortar shells did not contain chemical weapons agents, the Danish army said Sunday (see GSN, Jan. 16). The shells, discovered earlier this month, had initially tested positive for the presence of blister agent. Further testing conducted by experts from the Iraq Survey Group, however, came back negative (Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 19). Cheney Refuses to Confirm Prewar Intelligence Flaws on Iraq Meanwhile, in an interview with USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said “the jury’s still out” as to whether Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons. According to Cheney, it would be difficult to find biological weapons stocks in Iraq because they can be produced on short notice and because “the stuff is perishable and doesn’t last very long anyway.” Even though no evidence of biological and chemical weapons stockpiles have yet been found, though, Cheney said that he still supported prewar intelligence on Iraq, noting that it is “never perfect.” “I am a long way at this stage from concluding that somehow there was some fundamental flaw in our intelligence,” Cheney said (Judy Keen, USA Today, Jan. 19). Israel Conducts Intelligence Review Elsewhere, an Israeli parliamentary panel is completing a seven-month review of Israeli intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, according to Defense News (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2003). The panel, the Investigative Committee for the Intelligence Picture Prior to the War in Iraq, has conducted more than 50 sessions with current and former heads of Israeli military intelligence, the Mossad intelligence service, members of the military’s general staff and academics, Defense News reported. Yuval Steinitz, head of the panel, said that the committee hopes to present a classified report on its findings to senior Israeli officials by the end of the month, with an unclassified summary to be released at the same time. “For 30 years, since the aftermath of 1973 Yom Kippur War, there has been no examination of Israel’s doctrine of intelligence by an official body that is not beholden to the government or to the Israeli military,” Steinitz said (Barbara Opall-Rome, Defense News, Jan. 19). Back to top

Pakistan Expands Investigation Into Possible Nuclear Proliferation Pakistan has broadened an investigation into whether its nuclear scientists were involved in any possible proliferation activities. Authorities recently detained eight scientists and four officials from the country’s main nuclear weapons facility, Pakistani Information Minister Rashid Ahmed said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14). The detainees include two retired brigadier generals who serve as directors of the facility, the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories, as well as a top aide to Abdul Qadeer Khan himself, acknowledged as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, according to the Washington Post. The detentions are part of a “local investigation” into whether Pakistani nuclear scientists aided Iran’s nuclear program, Ahmed said. He and other Pakistani officials said that the most recent detainees could be released within a few days. Pakistani officials have said that if their country’s nuclear scientists aided Iran, they did so without official permission. Other officials, however, said that Khan and other Pakistani scientists visited Iran during the late 1980s with the knowledge of Islamabad. “The government had responded positively to the Iranian request for cooperation in its nonmilitary nuclear program,” a Pakistani official said. “It has now emerged that some scientists may have crossed the limits,” the official added (Lancaster/Khan, Washington Post, Jan. 20). Pakistani authorities have suggested that Khan himself may have been involved in nuclear weapons-related proliferation to Iran, according to United Press International. “So far, our investigations indicate that only one man is behind this alleged transfer. It is wrong to blame an entire nation for the mistakes of an individual,” a senior Pakistani official said, but did not name Khan. “We gave him the status of a national hero when he did something for the country, but now if he makes a mistake, he will have to pay for his mistake as well,” the official added (Anwar Iqbal, Washington Times, Jan. 20). Some Pakistani analysts have said that an attempt by President Pervez Musharraf to detain or punish Khan would likely backfire. Tariq Rahman of the Quaid-e-Azam University said that the public would regard such a move as an unacceptable attempt “to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear scientists and its nuclear weapons” (David Rohde, New York Times, Jan. 19). Back to top       Dutch Officials Confirm Urenco Consortium as Source of Illicit Nuclear Equipment Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot and Economic Affairs Minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst yesterday publicly confirmed for the first time that uranium enrichment centrifuge technology developed by the British-Dutch-German consortium Urenco may have been transferred to several countries of concern, including Iran, Libya and North Korea, according to the Los Angeles Times (see related GSN story, today). Bot and Brinkhorst made their acknowledgments in written responses to questions posed by a member of parliament, according to the Times. They said it was unknown how the technology was transferred. “There are indications now that, in addition to (Iran and Pakistan), North Korea and Libya also possess this type of technology,” Bot and Brinkhorst said. “The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] and AIVD (Dutch intelligence) are still investigating this,” they added. U.S. officials have suspected that Abdul Qadeer Khan, acknowledged as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, stole the centrifuge designs while working for Urenco in the 1970s, according to the Times. Khan was convicted of the theft, but the verdict was later overturned. A spokesman for Urenco said that the company did not conduct business with Iran, Libya or North Korea and that the technology may have been transferred outside of its control (Douglas Frantz, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 20). Back to top       Russia to Resume Tu-160 Bomber Flights Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Mikhailov announced last week that Russia would resume flights of its Tu-160 “Blackjack” strategic bomber this week, according to RIA Novosti. The flights were halted in mid-September after one crashed during a mission (see GSN, Sept. 19, 2003). Prior to November 2003, the Russian Air Force operated 15 Tu-160s, according to ITAR-Tass. Each bomber is capable of carry 12 strategic cruise missiles (ITAR-Tass, Jan. 15). Back to top       Security Chief Replaced at Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant The federal contractor that operates the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has named a new head of security there, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 16). Willis “Butch” Clements is the new manager of safeguards and security at the plant, according to AP. Officials with contractor BWXT refused to say if the selection of Clements as the new head of security was related to an announcement last week by the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight that security at the Y-12 plant performed poorly during a recent exercise The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration also replace the head of security at its Oak Ridge National Laboratory following the exercise (Associated Press, Jan. 20). Back to top       Description of U.S. Delegation’s Visit to North Korea Delayed Until Tomorrow Public hearings on the recent nonofficial U.S. visit to North Korea have been postponed until tomorrow, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 15).  Former Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Siegfried Hecker had been scheduled to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in both open and closed sessions today, but the open session was delayed one day to prevent any surprise developments from upstaging tonight’s State of the Union address, according to the Post (Al Kamen, Washington Post, Jan. 19). Back to top

British Scientific Panel Calls for Creation of BWC Advisory Group The British Royal Society, the national academy of science, has called for the creation of a scientific advisory panel for the Biological Weapons Convention, BBC News reported today (see GSN, Nov. 23. 2003). According to the Royal Society, treaty members should establish an agency similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which oversees the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention. “The absence of a formal scientific advisory panel is a major constraint to developing a more effective Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,” said Julie Higgins, the society’s foreign secretary (Alex Kirby, BBC News, Jan. 20). Back to top

U.S. Seeks to Increase Production of Israeli Missile Interceptor Israeli missile defenses are expected to receive a boost early next month when the Bush administration submits its fiscal 2005 defense budget to Congress, the China Daily reported Saturday (see GSN, Jan. 14). If approved, the budget would support a doubling of the production rate for the Israeli Arrow missile interceptor, produced jointly by the United States and Israeli, according to defense analysts. “We will be increasing production in a substantial way,” said one Israeli source following U.S.-Israeli talks on missile defense cooperation. Congress delivered $154.8 million for the Arrow in fiscal 2004 and $145.7 million a year earlier, according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. Israel conducted a successful Arrow test last month (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2003), and an intercept test using an actual Scud missile target is planned for this summer in the United States (China Daily, Jan. 17).     Back to top

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