Former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay yesterday testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (AFP photo/Tim Sloan). Kay Defends War, Bush Administration Despite Absence of Iraq Weapons By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The former top U.S. weapon hunter in Iraq found himself caught between U.S. senators from both parties yesterday as they argued over the meaning of his view that no weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq (see GSN, Jan. 26). Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, former Iraq Survey Group chief David Kay resisted both Republican suggestions that WMD stockpiles may still be found in Iraq and Democratic attempts to portray President George W. Bush’s administration as having engineered an unjustified new urgency about the threat posed by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein...Full Story

U.S. Senators, Administration Push for Additional Protocol Ratification By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Bush administration representatives told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that the administration supports ratification of the Additional Protocol to the U.S. international safeguards agreement as a message to non-nuclear weapon states that the protocol is important to global nonproliferation efforts (see GSN, Nov. 25, 2003)...Full Story

Democratic Senator Says Bush Policies Increase Risk of Nuclear “Abyss” By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s approaches to addressing nuclear weapons threats are encouraging proliferation and increasing nuclear dangers to the United States, a top Democratic senator said yesterday...Full Story

United States Should Help Secure South Asian Nuclear Materials, Experts Say By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States should launch an effort to help India and Pakistan prevent terrorists from stealing nuclear weapon or “dirty bomb” materials, experts told U.S. lawmakers yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29, 2003)...Full Story

	Thursday, January 29, 2004

Kay Defends War, Bush Administration Despite Absence of Iraq Weapons By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The former top U.S. weapon hunter in Iraq found himself caught between U.S. senators from both parties yesterday as they argued over the meaning of his view that no weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq (see GSN, Jan. 26). Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, former Iraq Survey Group chief David Kay resisted both Republican suggestions that WMD stockpiles may still be found in Iraq and Democratic attempts to portray President George W. Bush’s administration as having engineered an unjustified new urgency about the threat posed by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In a wide-ranging hearing, Kay also expressed continuing support for the Iraq war, faulted U.S. intelligence agencies for relying too heavily on technology, appeared to support an outside investigation into Bush administration use of intelligence and contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent claim that inspectors have found mobile biological weapon laboratories in Iraq. Kay resigned last week from his post and has said repeatedly since then that Iraq appears to have had no WMD stockpiles or assembled weapons before last year’s war.  “We were almost all wrong,” he said yesterday, “and I certainly include myself here. … My view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war … believed that there were WMD. It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.” Kay said he began to realize as early as last July that no “assembled weapons” were likely to be found in Iraq and that his communication of the view to U.S. officials met with “healthy skepticism.” Kay said Hussein sought to maintain weapon delivery programs and the capability to quickly regain actual weapons if given the opportunity. In particular, he said Iraq “was in the early stages of renovating the [nuclear] program, building new buildings. It was not a reconstituted, full-blown nuclear program.” Asked about whether Hussein could have used chemical weapons against invading troops, he added, “We have not found chemical weapons on the battlefield, even in small quantities.” The former U.N. inspector in Iraq said that in the 1990s, “We were better than we thought we were. … Inspections accomplish a great deal in holding a program down.” Kay stressed, though, that the “final truth” about Iraq’s weapons could not have been established by U.N. inspections. Former U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission Executive Chairman Hans Blix today differed somewhat with Kay’s view that intelligence analysts, not the Bush administration, were at fault. “We were skeptical about the evidence” presented by the United States before the war, Blix said in Stockholm. “We were among those who expressed doubts, but we did not deny the possibility that there could be weapons,” he said. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, a frequent critic of the Bush administration’s conduct with respect to Iraq, questioned the impartiality of Kay, long considered a hard-liner on Hussein’s Iraq. Kay cannot credibly dismiss, as he did yesterday in testimony, charges that the administration misused intelligence on Iraq, Cirincione said. “Dr. Kay is in a particularly bad position to be judging the credibility of the intelligence before the war, since he was a direct participant in the creation of the myth that Saddam’s programs presented a growing danger,” Cirincione said today. Administration Did Not Pressure Analysts, Misuse Intelligence, Kay Says Kay expressed continuing support for the war in Iraq despite his group’s failure to find WMD stockpiles. He said weapon hunters have found “hundreds of cases” in which Iraq violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 ― Iraq’s “one last chance to come clean about what it had,” he said ― and that often, Iraqi officials were explicitly instructed not to reveal information. “I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein,” he said, adding that corruption in Baghdad after 1998 made an eventual Iraqi WMD transfer to terrorists more likely. Proliferation to a third party, Kay said, was a bigger risk than the resumption of Iraqi WMD programs. “The way the society was going, and the number of willing buyers in the market … that probably was a risk that, if we did avoid, we barely avoided,” he said. Kay rejected the idea that the administration pressured intelligence analysts to reach conclusions that suited its aims, instead faulting what he called a longstanding overemphasis on technology at the expense of human intelligence. He dismissed the notion, advanced by top committee Democrat Carl Levin (Mich.) and other Democrats, that U.S. assessment of intelligence on Iraq changed suddenly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks. Asked about charges that administration members systematically dropped caveats from analysts’ assessments when discussing the Iraqi threat with the public and others outside the administration, Kay said it is “natural” for such caveats to fall away as assessments move up through the government. “Writing caveats has about the same intellectual enjoyment as being a writer for the National Geographic. … Caveats tend to fall into footnotes; they tend to fall into smaller-point type. … You’ve just got limited time and attention, and it’s a natural filtering phenomenon, as opposed to a physical cutting,” said Kay. Blix today adopted a diplomatic line on the matter but questioned prewar U.S. characterizations of the gravity of the Iraqi threat. “I never expressed any doubts about the good faith of governments … but they were wrong. … They were putting exclamation marks instead of question marks behind many statements,” Blix said. Although Kay rejected the idea that intelligence assessments changed after Sept. 11, he said the administration’s stance toward Iraqi WMD was based in part on a generally heightened sensitivity after the 2001 attacks. “After 9/11, the shadowing effects of that horrible tragedy changed, as a nation, the level of risk that all of us are prepared to run, that we would like to avoid. … Where you place yourself on that spectrum of how much risk you’re going to run is a political responsibility which elected officials have and I certainly don’t have,” Kay said. Consistency of Intelligence Over Recent Years Debated Kay said intelligence analysts have believed for “the last 12-15 years” that Iraq was a “gathering serious threat” and were surprised to find no WMD stocks in the country. Last year in Iraq, Kay said, “I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance. And never ― not in a single case ― was the explanation, ‘I was pressured to do this.’ The explanation was very often, ‘The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there’s another explanation for it.’” “Almost in a perverse way,” he added, “I wish it had been undue influence, because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that. The fact that it wasn’t tells me that we’ve got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we’ve got to figure out what was there.” Cirincione, one author of a much-discussed recent report criticizing the Bush administration’s use of Iraq intelligence, rejected Kay’s claim that assessments of the Iraqi threat were largely constant in recent years (see GSN, Jan. 8). “The October [2002] NIE [national intelligence estimate] represented a dramatic change in the intelligence assessment and differed in many ways from all previous intelligence estimates,” said Cirincione, adding that many experts believe a strong “circumstantial case” points to Bush administration pressure as the source of the change. As one example of pre-October 2002 intelligence that contradicted NIE characterizations of the Iraqi threat, Cirincione cited a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment dated September 2002 that is “much more cautious than the NIE and points out that there is no hard evidence on any chemical or biological weapons production or stockpile, period.” In any case, said Cirincione, “Kay is really not in a position to judge this. He has not done an investigation of this issue. He came in after the intelligence assessments, after the war, and before that, he was a perfectly willing participant in the exaggeration of the threat.” Faced with Kay’s insistence that no major, sudden change in Iraq intelligence assessment followed Sept. 11, Levin asked Kay to review intelligence assessments issued before and after Sept. 11 in order to establish whether such a change took place. The request prompted a bemused response from Kay. “Senator Levin,” said Kay, “I’m always happy to take homework assignments from you. I hope it comes with an address for one of those undisclosed locations.” Despite general support for administration conduct, Kay directly contradicted at least one administration claim: Cheney’s assertion last week that trailers found last year in Iraq were mobile biological weapon laboratories. Cheney’s interpretation was for a time common among U.S. intelligence analysts but has since been widely discredited. “I think the consensus opinion is that when you look at those two trailers, while they had capabilities in many areas, their actual intended use was not for the production of biological weapons,” Kay said when questioned by Levin about the vice president’s remarks. Levin and other Democrats are calling for an outside inquiry into the administration’s use of intelligence, something Levin said yesterday is not being explored in a current Senate intelligence committee investigation of Iraq intelligence. Kay appeared to concur in part, saying senators are likely to conclude over time that an outside inquiry is needed. Such remarks prompted Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (Kan.), who is also a member of the Armed Services Committee, to “take umbrage” at the challenge to the intelligence panel, which he described as conducting an “outside,” “independent” inquiry despite suggestions to the contrary. According to Cirincione, the report from Roberts’ committee appears likely to fault intelligence agencies, not policy-makers. Cirincione likened current criticism of the CIA and its director, George Tenet, to the conduct of former President Richard Nixon’s administration toward top adviser John Dean. In  1973, Dean alleged the administration was trying to make him a “scapegoat” and identified Nixon as a participant in the Watergate cover-up. “They’re looking for somebody to hold the bag, and they’ve cast George Tenet in the role of John Dean,” Cirincione said. Inspector Plays Down Possibility of Future Finds Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) vigorously disputed Kay’s assertion that those who expected to find weapons in Iraq were wrong, stressing the possibility that weapons could still be found and the need to “hold … conclusions in abeyance.” Kay acknowledged the “theoretical possibility” of a future WMD find but cautioned that the United States should not delay facing up to its intelligence failure in Iraq in the hope that the “unresolvable ambiguity” around Hussein’s weapon programs will someday be resolved. “I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there,” Kay said. “Is it theoretically possible, in a country as vast as that, that they’re hidden? It’s theoretically possible, but we went after this not in the way of trying to find where the weapons are hidden. When you don’t find them in the obvious places, you look to see ― Were they produced? Were there people that produced them?  Were there the inputs to the production process?” he said. “When the ISG wraps up its work, whether it be six months or six years from now, there are still going to be people to say, ‘You didn't look everywhere. Isn’t it possible it was hidden someplace?’ and the answer has got to be, honestly, ‘Yes, it’s possible,’ but you try to eliminate that by this other process,” he said. Warner also questioned Kay about the possibility of a WMD transfer from Hussein’s government to al-Qaeda or another terrorist group. “There’s no evidence that I know or that I can think of” that such a possibility existed, Kay said. Back to top       U.S., British Experts to End First Visit to Libya This Week A team of U.S. and British nuclear inspectors is set this week to end its first visit to Libya to supervise the dismantling of Tripoli’s nuclear weapons program, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Jan. 28). “We still have some people from the United States and the United Kingdom on the ground in Libya,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. “They’ll end ... this initial visit ... later this week, and then we will continue to work with Libya to help it dismantle its program the way it’s decided to do so,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Channel News Asia, Jan. 29). The International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday that an agency team of inspectors has completed its initial phase of work in Libya, which included an inventory of sensitive nuclear components and materials and the application of IAEA seals. In addition, the IAEA team also worked with the U.S. and British experts to remove Libyan nuclear program materials from the country, the agency said. A team of IAEA experts will remain in Libya to continue work, the agency said. Over the next few weeks, the IAEA is set to conduct verification work on the components removed from Libya (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Jan. 28). Back to top       Iraq War Should Not Be the Disarmament Model, Experts Say By Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire STOCKHOLM — The U.S. claim that the need to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq justified war there should not be a model for how the world combats these weapons, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and other disarmament experts said this morning at a press conference launching the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which Blix chairs (see GSN, Dec. 15, 2003). The lack of discovery of such weapons so far in Iraq showed that sanctions and other pressures on Iraq :had achieved a containment of Iraq during the 1990s,” Blix said. “The United Nations and the world community succeeded in containment without really knowing it.” Blix and others among the panel’s 15 commissioners also took issue with another argument being used by the United States — that invading Iraq is prodding other states into giving up its weapons. Dialogue with Libya and Iran started before the Iraq war, said Blix, so “whether the Iraqi experience injected a concern in Libya, Iran and North Korea … I really don’t know. In a way, one could say that the Libyan case shows that you can, through diplomacy, sanctions and other means, obtain a voluntary renunciation of weapons.” The new commission, organized under an initiative of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, is to make specific proposals on a range of issues relating to weapons of mass destruction, including terrorism and missiles and other delivery vehicles. The commission is expected to publish its recommendations by the end of 2005. “It would be presumptuous to say we are going for something groundbreaking at this stage,” Blix said. However, “there is a need for a fresh assessment,” he said, since “times change … new threats and new risks are arising,” including terrorism and technological advances. Alyson Bailes, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and a member of the new commission said, “The scope of our concern has been drawn so widely, it can cover all known and potential types of weapons of mass destruction,” including “horizontal questions” on the linkages among the various types of weapons. Former Brazilian Ambassador Marcos de Azambuja, another member, said the threats “have reshaped themselves like viruses; they have gained different immunities.” The commission will also be advising the Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed last year to make recommendations on how the United Nations can address evolving security threats. Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group, former foreign minister of Australia and a member of both the panel and the new commission, said, “Obviously any panel devoted to threats to international peace and security has to wrestle with the problem of weapons of mass destruction.” Evans also noted, “Public opinion seems to be extraordinarily complacent about the continuing existence of major nuclear stockpiles.” All the commissioners are serving in their personal capacities and spoke at this press conference on their own behalf, not for the commission. Three of the panelists, including former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, were not in Stockholm. Referring to the Iraq situation, Bailes said, “It would seem a little against reason that just because of one crisis … suddenly to conclude that military pressure is the only way to ‘de-proliferate’.” In the 1990s, she said, six countries “walked away” from nuclear weapons: Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and three former republics of the Soviet Union — Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan — that inherited Soviet nuclear weapons. “None of them were forced,” said Bailes. “It happened because of a shift in profit, motivation, objective security circumstances. All of them were moving towards democracy and independence. In all of those cases, the nuclear powers worked together and played a constructive role.” “The evidence is,” she concluded, “that this is the normal way forward.” Patricia Lewis, director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research and a commission member, said, “There has been a drift over the recent years to try to separate out the issues of disarmament and proliferation.” But, she added, they are “two sides of the same coin, like co-joined twins, we can’t talk about one without the other. Nonproliferation measures support disarmament measures and disarmament measures are absolutely vital if we are going to have nonproliferation.” “The situation … is probably more dangerous today than during the Cold War because we have more players, both state players and non-state actors,” said Jayantha Dhanapala, former U.N. undersecretary general for disarmament, another commission member. “This means traditional restraints that we have had … are no longer of the same quality. We need to review the international legal regimes that we have governing weapons of mass destruction, examine them to see if there are deficiencies in them, whether they need to be updated in light of new developments and new threats.” “Multilateralism continues to be the only way forward [because] these are common threats,” he added. Another effect of the Iraq war, said commission member Alexei Arbatov, a former deputy of the Russian Duma, was that the United States has lost more than political support in the world at large. While the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan “put international terrorism on the defensive,” he said, “Iraq did just the opposite. What was lost was this enormous moral support for the United States. In place of the moral support came deep distrust towards American policy.” “International terrorism is now on the offensive,” Arbatov said, “we are now in a much worse situation.” Commission member Therese Delpech, director for Strategic Affairs at the Atomic Energy Commission in Paris, said “it is very important to be conscious of the new threats coming from the bio-sciences” and information technology. “The combination of the two could have devastating military applications,” she added. Speaking to Global Security Newswire after the press conference, Evans said, “It’s very important that this commission get some preliminary ideas before the panel at a relatively early stage.” The commission’s “ideas should prove enormously helpful to the panel in focusing its mind on how to respond” to such threats, he said. Back to top       Bolton in Russia to Urge Moscow’s Participation in PSI U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton met today with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak in Moscow in an effort to persuade Russia to join the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led effort to interdict shipments of WMD-related cargo, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Jan. 16). Russia is the only member of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations to have not joined the effort. U.S. officials have said they want Russia to join before the next G-8 summit, scheduled to be held in the United States in June. While Russia shares “the direction” of the PSI, there are also concerns that it violates international law, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said. During his two-day visit, Bolton is expected to discuss a number of nonproliferation issues with Russian officials. For example, he is expected to call on Russia to not provide fuel for a nuclear power plant it is currently building in Iran until Tehran provides further evidence that it is not seeking to develop a nuclear weapons program (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2003; Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Jan. 29). Bolton is also expected to discuss with Russian officials North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and the progress made by the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in reducing both countries’ nuclear arsenals, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Sept. 19, 2003). A senior U.S. diplomat said that Bolton is also expected to bring up U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperation and Russian obstacles to the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helps to fund WMD disposal efforts there (see GSN, Jan. 13; Judith Ingram, Associated Press, Jan. 29). Back to top

U.S. Senators, Administration Push for Additional Protocol Ratification By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Bush administration representatives told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that the administration supports ratification of the Additional Protocol to the U.S. international safeguards agreement as a message to non-nuclear weapon states that the protocol is important to global nonproliferation efforts (see GSN, Nov. 25, 2003). Representatives of the Energy, State, Commerce and Defense departments said the administration expects the International Atomic Energy Agency to invoke the agreement, which permits greater agency activities here, only rarely. They added that a special “national security exclusion” in the U.S. version of the protocol would be invoked as often as deemed necessary to exclude IAEA inspections of specific sites. “The Additional Protocol gives the IAEA the tools it needs to discover undisclosed programs at the early stage. … If we’re going to get the benefits inherent to the Additional Protocol, the United States is going to have to lead the way,” said Linton Brooks, who heads the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration. “I expect that the IAEA will be very sparing in seeking to exercise its rights,” Brooks added, “since, after all, it already knows that we’re a nuclear weapons state.” Under the national security exclusion, the United States can, unconditionally and without the possibility of IAEA appeal, declare a site to be off-limits for reasons of national security. Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) called the exclusion clause “crucial” to U.S. acceptance of the protocol, while Brooks cited a need to head off “risks to U.S. security [caused] by additional IAEA presence in the United States.” “Implementation of the USAP [U.S. Additional Protocol],” said Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation Susan Burk, “will be entirely different in both practice and concept than in non-nuclear weapon states. … The United States will not provide to the IAEA information of direct national security significance to the United States or access to activities and locations of direct national security significance to the United States, and will exclude inspector activities that are inconsistent with the national security exclusion at a given location.” Although all panelists indicated the United States would not hesitate to invoke national security, Brooks said the exclusion clause would not be used frivolously. “It’s not a national inconvenience exemption; it’s not a national burden-on-someone-who-has-to-fill-out-a-form exemption; it’s a national security exemption,” Brooks said. The administration officials said the United States can also protect its security through its choice of what items, materials and activities to declare under the Additional Protocol. “If we can’t provide access, we won’t declare the activity,” said Brooks. Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Negotiations Policy Mark Esper added that no Defense Department-owned or -operated sites will be declared and that no “location-specific” environmental sampling will be allowed. Lugar and the four panelists stressed the importance of U.S. ratification as an example to other countries. Although the United States insisted on the national security exclusion, it is also the only declared nuclear weapon state to have accepted all provisions of the IAEA’s model Additional Protocol ― a fact the panelists said should help encourage other countries to adopt the protocol. The IAEA currently conducts monthly inspections of three Energy Department nuclear sites. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, declared nuclear weapon states are not required to submit to IAEA inspections, but all have offered the IAEA access to parts of their civilian nuclear activities. Bush submitted the Additional Protocol to the Senate for ratification in May 2002. Lugar expressed hope the measure can make it through the Senate within months. Back to top       Democratic Senator Says Bush Policies Increase Risk of Nuclear “Abyss” By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s approaches to addressing nuclear weapons threats are encouraging proliferation and increasing nuclear dangers to the United States, a top Democratic senator said yesterday. In a speech titled, “Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy,” Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged the Bush administration with making the United States less safe by how it deals with proliferation issues such as North Korea, terrorists nuclear ambitions, and Russian nuclear arsenals. “In each of these areas, this administration has been pursuing policies … more likely to lead us into, not away from a nuclear abyss, policies more likely to encourage, not stem, the spread of nuclear weapons,” he said. Biden suggested that only a Democratic president could implement positive changes. “I hope this administration changes course. More realistically, it will be up to a new Democratic administration to put us back on the path to real security,” he said. Accidental Launch Speaking at a conference sponsored by the Arms Control Association, Biden said the administration “seems unconcerned” about U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons being kept on high alert and the consequent risk of an accidental nuclear strike (see GSN, Jan. 28). “The risk of nuclear exchange stems not from our intentions but because of the fact that armies train for worst-case scenarios. And so long as we and the Russians keep thousands of nuclear warheads prepared to respond within     minutes of receiving a warning of attack, the risk of nuclear war remains,” he said. A mistaken radar reading by Russia could prompt an accidental launch, he said, adding the United States should “get off the dime and get the Joint Data Exchange Center up and running.” That early warning data exchange center, created in a 2000 agreement, has been stalled by “a disagreement over tax and liability provisions,” a senior defense official said last March. “We also need to finally begin reducing our own nuclear stockpile, as the administration promised last year,” Biden said. Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), also addressing the conference, called the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty signed by President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002 an “arms control [treaty] in name only.” “It does not actually require the elimination of any nuclear weapons, there is no timetable for compliance, no definition of deployment, and it does not provide for additional verification mechanisms,” he said. Ret. Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, former chief of the U.S. Strategic Command called the treaty “good” but “nothing new,” and criticized the treaty for not requiring nuclear warhead reductions until 2012. He told the conference, however, “both sides of the aisle have screwed this one [nuclear arms reductions] up big time.” He said guidance on the nuclear force structure “starts at the White House” and that guidance on the U.S. strategic approach set out by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 was not amended until 1997.  “The Cold War had been over since 1991. What’s wrong with that picture?” he said. He said further that when he was heading the Strategic Command, Congress had mandated that U.S. nuclear force levels remain “at artificially elevated START I [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] nuclear weapons levels until [the] Russians signed START II, even though I didn’t need them. It’s terrible,” he said.  As a condition for supporting START II, Congress prevented the Pentagon from making the reductions called for by the treaty until Russia ratified the pact. Ultimately, the treaty never entered into force and Congress waived the ban on reductions. Proliferation to States Biden said the administration’s declared policy on preventive war “amounts to a proliferation policy instead of a nonproliferation policy.” “Consider the administration’s strategy of preventive war, including the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that may not even have weapons of mass destruction, let alone be threatening us with them,” he said. “This strategy runs the risk of prompting countries to develop nukes, since they risk a U.S. nuclear attack even if they don’t go nuclear. They will see the acquisition of nuclear weapons as the sole insurance policy against regime change,” he said.  Biden said that U.S. research and development of new nuclear weapons undermines international nonproliferation efforts and taboos against nuclear weapons use. New low-yield warheads “would lower the barrier between conventional and nuclear war” and pursuing new warheads in general undermines the “central bargain in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” he said. That treaty also has been undermined, he said, by the U.S. withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, failure to submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for ratification, abandonment of START II, and recently stated reconsideration of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty it previously advocated. He called Bush’s plan to field a long-range missile defense system this October “premature,” saying he favored research but opposed the fielding because the system will be “untested” and lack critical components and is at this time “destabilizing.” Praise on Libya Biden praised the administration’s “apparent” success in reaching a deal with Libya deal to eliminate Tripoli’s banned weapons and activities as a model for efforts to counter state proliferation because of its mix of diplomacy and threatened force. Administration officials have contended that the current war on Iraq was important for signaling to states that the United States is willing to use force to eliminate banned weapons programs and Biden’s comment appeared to support that contention. “So how do we counter proliferation to rogue states? The apparently successful recent agreement with Libya … is a product of international isolation, sanctions and hard-headed diplomacy, and arguably our demonstrable willingness to use force,” he said. “This shows that negotiations and agreements are indeed possible with countries of concern, even ones with mercurial leaders who have supported terrorism,” he said. Biden suggested Libya’s case was an exception to the administration’s usual approach and said it has not applied that model to dealing with North Korea. “Here, the administration has largely dithered and delayed,” he said, with Bush failing to instruct his officials to negotiate “in good faith” or give them “leeway to do so.” He said after the speech that any disarmament deal with North Korea, if one is possible, would have to include a “nonaggression pact,” but said some “neoconservatives” within administration are unwilling to pursue that seriously. “It’s a little bit difficult for the neocons to conclude that they were going to forbear [opposing] the continued existence of a regime in North Korea that is evil,” he said. Nuclear Terrorism Biden said the administration has not spent enough to help Russia and other countries secure fissile material that could be used by terrorists to build a nuclear weapon, blaming “ideologues within the administration” in remarks after the speech. “Today, the world spends only $1 billion to $2 billion on this — and several U.S. programs are stalled by long-standing liability disputes,” he said in the speech. “The U.S. and Russian presidents need to take a hands-on approach, end the bureaucratic battles, and restore a spirit of cooperative problem-solving,” he said. Biden advocated an “international compact in which nations agree to wipe out any group that dared set off a nuclear device” as well as improvements to capabilities to collect and analyze nuclear blast debris for helping to identify the source of an attack. Legislation he proposed for the latter died in committee last year. Back to top       United States Should Help Secure South Asian Nuclear Materials, Experts Say By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States should launch an effort to help India and Pakistan prevent terrorists from stealing nuclear weapon or “dirty bomb” materials, experts told U.S. lawmakers yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29, 2003). The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony yesterday from three U.S. experts on ways the United States could work to advance nuclear nonproliferation goals in South Asia and to aid the two countries in improving relations. According to Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Center, one way the United States can advance nuclear risk reduction in the region is by helping both India and Pakistan to secure both nuclear weapons materials and nonfissionable radioactive materials used for civilian purposes, such as in some medical devices. “I think we can work together with India and Pakistan, because we all have this common problem of nuclear terrorism,” Krepon said. He also said that such an effort could lead to expanded collaborative efforts to reduce nuclear dangers in South Asia. “It’s the easiest way in,” Krepon said, noting the increasing concern in both India and Pakistan over the threat of terrorists developing radiological weapons. “I think this is the door that’s most ajar,” he added. While agreeing that working to reduce nuclear terrorism in South Asia was important, Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution disagreed that the United States was the most appropriate country to provide such assistance. “It will be seen as the camel’s nose in the tent by them into their nuclear establishment,” Cohen said. During questioning, committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) expressed support for the idea (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2002). The senator was an architect of Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the U.S. effort to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and related materials in the Soviet Union. Lugar noted that Pakistan might be hesitant to support any such effort because of concerns that it would be a cover for U.S. intelligence. “But leaving aside how they feel about it, over the course of time we might be able to demonstrate that there is real value in United States cooperation in helping to secure materials, both the weapons types and … in the laboratories and elsewhere, as we are finding in our own homeland security,” he said. Dialogue In his testimony, Krepon stressed the need for India and Pakistan to resolve their dispute over the Kashmir region, a frequent flashpoint between the two countries, to advance nuclear risk reduction in the region. To aid the process, the United States can offer increased financial assistance to both countries to improve the humanitarian situation in their sections of Kashmir and can offer to aid India and Pakistan in monitoring any agreements they might reach regarding the withdrawal of conventional forces along the Line of Control dividing the region, Krepon said. “If they asked us, we ought to be prepared to help,” he said. Next month, India and Pakistan are scheduled to hold three days of talks in Islamabad as part of a planned peace dialogue agreed to earlier this month by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Both sides have expressed hope that the dialogue will lead to a resolution of the Kashmir dispute (see GSN, Jan. 27). During yesterday’s hearing, though, experts offered differing assessments of the dialogue’s likely success. Former U.S. Ambassador to India Frank Wisner expressed confidence in the dialogue’s chances to improve relations between India and Pakistan, noting the political strength of both Vajpayee and Musharraf in their respective countries and the two leaders’ increased commitment to and involvement in resolving their countries’ lingering disputes. Cohen, however, said he was “pessimistic” that the dialogue would be a success unless senior Indian and Pakistani officials maintained pressure on diplomats to complete the effort within a set timeframe (see GSN, Jan. 21). Otherwise, “the natural tendency for government officials in both countries is to do nothing,” he said. In addition, the dialogue must also include a “reciprocal process of concession” by both India and Pakistan to avoid repeating the failures of past efforts, Cohen told the committee. “So far, the history has been that one side has given something, the other side has not responded, and that’s the end,” he said. “If I were in public office, I wouldn’t bet my job on this reaching a successful conclusion,” Cohen added. Wisner said the United States could aid the Indian-Pakistani dialogue by working behind the scenes to ensure that core issues are addressed and that the leadership of both countries remains engaged in the process (see GSN, Jan. 13).  “I know from first-hand discussions with leaders in New Delhi that this kind of quiet, purposeful American nudging is appreciated,” he said.  Wisner also called for an internal reorganization to consolidate and better coordinate U.S. foreign policy approaches to South Asia. He stopped short, though, of calling for the appointment of a U.S. special envoy to the region. The United States should also work with its allies to use various aid packages to reward India, Pakistan and Kashmiri groups for progress made in negotiations, Cohen said. He also said that the United States should not take a position on the final shape of any Kashmir settlement, and should instead cast the whole issue as one of human rights.  “Pakistanis can claim in the end that their struggle resulted in a more humane treatment of the Kashmiri people, even if Kashmir is not joined to Pakistan. Indians will remove a blot on their democracy. And the Kashmiris, of course, will recover a semblance of normal life,” Cohen said. Back to top       Retired U.S. Nuclear Commander Calls for Strategic Arms Cuts By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A retired U.S. Air Force general formerly in charge of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal yesterday criticized a number of Bush administration nuclear arms initiatives and called for significant cuts. Gen. Eugene Habiger called the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, signed by President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002, a “good treaty,” but criticized its timeline. The treaty requires both countries to remove from deployment all but 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads by Dec. 31, 2012. The treaty, also known as the Moscow Treaty, does not specify what should happen to the removed warheads or define any warhead levels beyond 2012 (see GSN, June 2, 2003). “That’s 21 years after the end of the Cold War. What’s wrong with that picture?” he said in a speech to an Arms Control Association conference. Habiger called for significant additional cuts, but did not specify whether they should apply only to deployed warheads, or to the total strategic arsenal. “It’s time for us to get down to lower levels,” he said. “Cold War Really Didn’t End” Habiger, who retired in 1988 and said he strives to be nonpartisan in his public comments, blamed “both sides of the aisle” for insufficient reductions to U.S. and Russian nuclear forces (see related GSN story, today). He also attributed U.S. and Russian policies to a persisting Cold War mentality. “The Cold War really didn’t end and both the United States and Russia have relatively large numbers of nuclear weapons. They are like two boxers, ready to go after each other, and neither of them wants to back away,” he said. He praised a RAND study published last year that warned that current nuclear weapons postures and other factors could contribute to an accidental or unintended U.S. or Russian nuclear weapon launch (see GSN, Jan. 28). Habiger said the total elimination of nuclear weapons “is never going to happen” and would be unwise because warheads will continue to be needed for deterrence against various WMD threats. Lowering numbers of nuclear weapons down to around 1,000 per side would require a re-emphasis on targeting Russian cities, as there would be insufficient numbers for effectively targeting forces, he said. “You’ve got to go back to city-busting,” he said. Other nuclear states would also need to be included in reductions, he said. “I see a world at some point in the future to be at a few hundred nuclear weapons for the United States, for Russia, for China and hopefully far less for other countries,” he said. New Weapons Habiger criticized administration plans for researching and developing new nuclear weapons capabilities as “a terrible waste of money.” “To go out and spend upwards of $10 billion for a weapon that has very, very little military utility does not make a lot of sense,” he said, adding the B-61 mod-11 bunker-busting warhead developed in the 1990s is “all we need.” Those comments echoed criticism this week by another retired Air Force commander, Gen. Charles Horner, who commanded the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Space Command and was in charge of all allied air assets during the 1991 Gulf War (see GSN, Jan. 26). Tactical Nuclear Weapons Habiger also blamed “both sides of the aisle” for insufficient transparency on tactical nuclear weapons. He said the CIA estimates that Russia has between 12,000 and 18,000 tactical nuclear weapons. “No one has stepped up to the accounting, the inventory of tactical nuclear weapons both in Russia and the United States. That is unacceptable in my view,” he said. Back to top       Pakistani Proliferation Investigation Focuses on “Father” of Nuclear Weapons Program Pakistan’s investigation into possible nuclear proliferation activities by its scientists is increasingly focusing on the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Jan. 28). A senior Pakistani official said there was “strong indications” that Khan sold the design for uranium enrichment centrifuges that have been found in Iran. “All these investigations are pointing toward Dr. A. Q. Khan. But who provided what to whom, this is very difficult to establish,” a senior official said. Five days ago, a “security ring” was established around Khan’s house to prevent him from leaving the country, Pakistani officials said yesterday. In addition, investigators are examining a number of bank accounts established throughout the Persian Gulf region, with some suspected of having been used by middlemen involved in sales of nuclear-related technology to Iran and some of being controlled by Khan, according to the Times. “It’s very difficult to track money,” the senior official said. “We have some leads and these leads are credible. People are pointing fingers at certain individuals,” the official said. Even though Khan’s annual salary as head of the Khan Research Laboratories, Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons facility, was only $2,000 a month, he was still able to purchase a number of homes in Pakistan and live lavishly, according to officials. Pakistani intelligence agencies had noticed that Khan was amassing large amounts of wealth, but chose to ignore it, a senior intelligence official said (David Rohde, New York Times, Jan. 29).  A Pakistani intelligence official said Khan has acknowledged meeting with black market dealers. Both Khan and his aide Mohammed Farooq, also under investigation, have denied, though, making any money from their contacts and of being involved in providing technology to either Iran or Libya, according to the Associated Press. Khan “says he is the victim of an international conspiracy,” the intelligence official said. Retired Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, head of the Pakistani Army from 1988-1991, said that Pakistan’s own nuclear weapons program had relied on covert suppliers and that Pakistani scientists may have merely shared their contacts with Iran and Libya. “These scientists who are being questioned today, the only crime you can say they committed was to tell the Iranian friends or the Libyan friends ‘Go to such and such a place and the item is on sale. Buy it from them,’” Beg said (Matthew Pennington, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 28). Back to top       U.S. Delays Plans for New Plutonium Pit Facility U.S. plans to build a new nuclear weapon production facility were set back yesterday when the National Nuclear Security Administration announced it would delay issuing a final environmental impact statement for constructing a controversial new site (see GSN, June 3, 2003). The Bush administration has sought to build a new facility to manufacture plutonium “pits,” the core components of U.S. nuclear weapons, but some Republicans in Congress have resisted the push. “While there is widespread support in Congress for this project, I believe we need to pause to respond to concerns that some committees have raised about its scope and timing,” said NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks. Following a cautionary report from a House of Representatives subcommittee, Congress provided only $11 million of the $23 million the administration requested to design the facility (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2003). The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development said it was “premature” to design the pit facility until more precise plans are made regarding the size of the future U.S. nuclear arsenal (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, Jan. 29). “I think some people in Congress have really been asking the [Energy] Department questions about how many pits we need, what the size of the stockpile is going to be and some of those overall questions, which need to be answered before you know exactly what sort of facility you want to build,” said Representative Mac Thornberry (R-Texas). “I think that’s what has caused the delay,” he added (Jim McBride, Amarillo Globe-News, Jan. 29) Brooks promised to consult with Congress before proceeding. “We are taking a conservative, prudent course to develop a capability that will enable the nation to be ready for future contingencies without wasting tax dollars on excessive capacity,” he said (Lobsenz, Energy Daily). Brooks had originally intended to issue the environmental assessment in April and to then announce the location of planned facility. Five possible host sites are under consideration, including Carlsbad, Calif., Los Alamos, N.M., Amarillo, Texas, the Nevada Test Site and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina (see GSN, Aug. 1, 2003). He did not say when he now plans to make the site decision or release the environmental assessment (Associated Press, Jan. 29) Back to top       Energy Department Seeks to Improve Nuclear Weapons Plant Security Training The U.S. Energy Department is hoping to enhance security at its nuclear weapons facilities by establishing a training facility dedicated solely to its small force of security testers, National Defense reported in its current issue (see GSN, Jan. 27). The department uses its Composite Adversary Team to conduct mock attacks on U.S. nuclear weapons plants to identify weaknesses in security plans there, and the value of those exercises would improve if the team were able to have its own training site, said Glenn Podonsky, the department’s director of independent oversight performance assurance. A dedicated training facility would allow the team to practice using live explosives, which team members are now unable to do, he said. The 26-member team of mock attackers consists of nuclear weapons plant security personnel who are pulled from their regular duties to conduct two or three one-week training sessions a year at Camp Pendleton, Calif. and the Nevada Test Site, near Las Vegas. The group is “as good as, if not better than, any military organization we have today,” Podonsky said. Preparing for a mock attack requires weeks of preparation, Podonsky said, beginning with the team leader visiting the target facility to plan the attack. The facility’s management is then alerted that the exercise will take place within a specific time window, although the specific time, date or nature of the attack is not provided in advance. An armed contingency force provides security just in case the facility comes under real attack during the exercise, he said (Geoff Fein, National Defense, February 2004). Back to top

House Democrats Call for Revitalizing U.S. Smallpox Vaccine Program Calling federal efforts to vaccinate U.S. health care workers against smallpox “an embarrassing failure of government, with serious implications for homeland security,” Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday called on the Bush administration to reassess the smallpox bioterrorist threat and improve the U.S. ability to respond to such an attack (see GSN, Jan. 26). Led by Representative Jim Turner (D-Texas), the Democratic members of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security released a 19-page report yesterday lambasting U.S. efforts to prepare for the possibility of a smallpox attack. In December 2002, President George W. Bush announced a U.S. smallpox preparedness plan that included goals of vaccinating 500,000 health care workers in a first wave and millions of workers after that. To date, fewer than 40,000 workers have volunteered to receive the vaccine (see GSN, Dec. 12, 2003). The report identifies three “key failures” for the vaccination program’s poor performance, including poor funding of public health agencies, delayed preparation of a plan to compensate volunteers who suffered vaccine side effects (see GSN, Dec. 15, 2003), and ineffective efforts to convince health care workers that smallpox is a serious threat. “As a result of poor management and leadership of the vaccination program, the confidence and credibility in the government from vaccinated and unvaccinated health care workers, first responders and the public is being undermined,” the report says. The report recommends several steps to improve U.S. readiness, starting with reassessing the threat of terrorists using smallpox as a weapon. If that threat is reaffirmed as serious, then several steps are necessary, the report says: *         include the vaccination program into a larger smallpox preparedness program and provide more help to cities and states to assess their needs and implement changes; *         renew efforts to encourage health care workers to volunteer for the vaccine by describing the nature of smallpox threat and the compensation available to volunteers who suffer side effects; *         provide adequate resources for states and localities to implement the vaccination program without affecting other public health activities; and *         integrate the smallpox preparedness program into a larger strategy to respond to bioterrorist or other health emergencies (House Select Committee on Homeland Security minority office release, January 2004) Back to top

North Korea Offers Nigeria Ballistic Missile Aid North Korea has offered to provide ballistic missile assistance to Nigeria, the Nigerian government said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2003). The offer was made du