The United States is expected today to announce new sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime for continuing to support terrorist groups and its suspected WMD efforts, U.S. officials said (AFP photo/Sana news agency). Bush Administration to Impose Sanctions Against Syria Today, U.S. Lawmaker Says By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is expected to announce punitive sanctions against Syria later today for failing to end its official support for terrorism and for its suspected WMD efforts, U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told Global Security Newswire (see GSN, April 29). Late last year, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act into law after it was passed by wide margins in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The law bans U.S. exports of dual-use items to Syria and requires the president to impose at least two additional sanctions from a list of six diplomatic and economic measures.  The act also allows the president to waive the penalties if they would interfere with U.S. national security interests. ..Full Story

U.S. Open to Direct Talks With North Korea; Russia Says North Has Right to Nuclear Energy Program The United States said yesterday that State Department special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani could hold bilateral talks with the North Korean delegation during six-nation working group meetings that are scheduled to begin tomorrow in Beijing, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 10)...Full Story

Republican Eyes First-Response Bill Passage Next Month; Democrats Seek Biodefense Improvements By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives could as early as next month pass legislation that would reform the Homeland Security Department’s system for distributing antiterrorism grants to state and local agencies, House Select Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) said today (see GSN, March 19)...Full Story

	Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Republican Eyes First-Response Bill Passage Next Month; Democrats Seek Biodefense Improvements By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives could as early as next month pass legislation that would reform the Homeland Security Department’s system for distributing antiterrorism grants to state and local agencies, House Select Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) said today (see GSN, March 19). “I expect we can get our bill through the House next month,” Cox told reporters on the sidelines of a homeland security conference sponsored by BNA and held in Arlington, Va. The House panel approved the bill in March, and Cox said that no competing measure would supplant his committee’s measure in the chamber. “This is clearly the vehicle,” he said. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Cox said, set a deadline of early next month for other committees to complete their work on offering revisions to the bill. Cox said the Judiciary Committee is likely to seek a provision guaranteeing all states minimum payments based on a percentage of the overall grant budget of Homeland Security’s Office for Domestic Preparedness, which administers the department’s emergency-response funding. He said the percentage is likely to be less than the .75 percent now designated in the budget for the office’s main homeland security grant program, a figure retained in a Senate bill from Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine). Collins and Cox met last week to discuss the outlook for an eventual House-Senate conference on the two bills. Cox called the difficulty in obtaining such a conference a more serious potential obstacle than securing passage of the two bills in their respective chambers. “She’s pretty confident about her bill as well,” he said. Democrats Seek to Improve Biodefense in Defense Authorization The senior Democrat on Cox’s panel, Representative Jim Turner (D-Texas), last week introduced a bill seeking to plug what Turner called a gap in President George W. Bush’s Project Bioshield plan to strengthen U.S. biological defenses (see GSN, May 5). Turner said the Bush administration plan would not sufficiently address the threat of future, potentially bioengineered pathogens. Select Committee on Homeland Security Democratic spokeswoman Moira Whelan said today that Turner and other Democrats are also seeking to address the problem through an amendment to the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill. Cox said today that Turner’s goals could be realized through the defense authorization process, but he did not rule out passage of a bill like the one Turner introduced last week. “I believe that there’s a ‘there’ there, but I’m going to continue to work with him on this,” Cox said. “Our No. 1 goal,” Cox added, “is to implement Bioshield. I think that this is a shared goal with him.” Cox said he has been in talks with Deputy Homeland Security Secretary James Loy about the possibility of organizational changes in the department to improve cyber-, nuclear and biological security. Loy said last week that such changes could come, but Cox said that “the department has not offered specific organizational recommendations.” “The two most significant civilization-ending threats that we face are nuclear and bio,” Cox said. Republican Leaders to Complain to Homeland Security About Procurement House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Cox plan within days to send Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge a letter calling for improvements to eliminate “red tape” that is slowing procurement of technology to defend against terrorism, Cox said today. “There can be no worse mismatch between a mission and a process than this, because we’re in a hurry,” he told the audience of vendors and potential vendors to the department. Cox said the Support Antiterrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act of 2002, which extends liability protections to companies that do business with Homeland Security, is “well-written” and “important” but “is not being implemented.” “The SAFETY Act, by any measure, has failed to achieve its goal,” he said. “Red tape,” he said, is “standing the statutory process on its head” by deterring vendors from joining the effort due to the program’s excessively complicated application process. Cox painted U.S. antiterrorism efforts as an economic battle with al-Qaeda, which he said seeks to harm the U.S. economy. Homeland security efforts, he said, must be approached not only as an expense but also as an investment that stimulates business and can frustrate terrorists’ aims by improving the U.S. economy.  “We’ve got to find ways to make our country more secure that also grow our economy. … Never has the private sector had a greater role in winning a war than in this one,” he said. Back to top

Bush Administration to Impose Sanctions Against Syria Today, U.S. Lawmaker Says By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is expected to announce punitive sanctions against Syria later today for failing to end its official support for terrorism and for its suspected WMD efforts, U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told Global Security Newswire (see GSN, April 29). Late last year, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act into law after it was passed by wide margins in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The law bans U.S. exports of dual-use items to Syria and requires the president to impose at least two additional sanctions from a list of six diplomatic and economic measures.  The act also allows the president to waive the penalties if they would interfere with U.S. national security interests.  According to Ros-Lehtinen, one of the act’s chief sponsors in the House, the White House is expected to announce today which of the six additional sanctions will be imposed against Syria. She said that while she did not know exact details on which additional measures would be implemented, the administration might choose to impose more than the minimum. Citing administration and congressional sources, the Associated Press reported today that the White House was likely to impose three of the six sanctions included in the law — a ban on Syrian aircraft flying over or landing in the United States, a ban on new investments by U.S. oil companies and a ban on all U.S. exports to Syria except food and medicine. The issue of the implementation of sanctions against Syria was briefly discussed near the end of yesterday’s White House press briefing. While refusing to provide details on when a decision would be made, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that the administration is “moving forward with implementing” the act. “We do have serious concerns when it comes to Syria’s behavior. We want to see Syria change their behavior. We have talked previously about our concerns when it comes to Syria's continued development of weapons of mass destruction, when it comes to their support for terrorism, and when it comes to their failure to adequately police its border with Iraq,” McClellan said. “These are serious matters.  We want to see Syria make more progress on these areas,” he added. The U.S. State Department today refused to comment on when the sanctions would be implemented, referring inquiries to the White House. Saying the sanctions would be imposed “no later than tomorrow,” Ros-Lehtinen today praised the Bush administration’s decision to fully implement the act, calling the move “welcome news” and saying that it sent a “good message to the entire neighborhood” of the Middle East that governments there would be held responsible for their actions. She criticized Syrian President Bashar Assad for being “clearly aligned” with terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. Late last month, the State Department seemingly released mixed assessments of Syria’s record on terrorism. In its 2003 Patterns of Global Terrorism report, the department said that while Damascus continued to support several various militant groups, it also cooperated with the United States against al-Qaeda. During a press briefing held to release the report, however, State Department counterterrorism coordinator Cofer Black characterized Syria as “one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism.” For its part, Damascus seemingly dismissed the potential impact of the U.S. sanctions, according to reports. “All sanctions which would be imposed on Syria would be without effect, except on those who impose them,” Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri was quoted today by Agence France-Presse as having told the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat. “Syria is capable of resisting all foreign pressure” because it possesses “political independence which comes from economic independence,” he added. Back to top       Panama Joins Proliferation Security Initiative Panama has agreed to join the U.S.-sponsored Proliferation Security Initiative, a move that would permit the United States to search Panama’s flagships in international waters if they are suspected of transporting weapons of mass destruction or WMD equipment, Bush administration officials said yesterday (see GSN, April 30). Under the agreement, Panama and the United States would be able to ask each other for permission on short notice to board their respective flagships on the open seas. The ship’s cargo could then be seized if it is found to be related to unconventional weapons programs, according to the New York Times. One senior Bush administration official said Panama’s decision to join the initiative is a “significant expansion” of the effort to halt the smuggling of nuclear, chemical and biological arms and related equipment. The official added that the cooperation of Panama and Liberia would subject nearly 15 percent of the world’s roughly 50,000 large cargo ships to inspections on short notice. “With Panama, we now have the world’s largest, and with Liberia, the second largest shipper signed on to this effort,” said the official, who monitors nonproliferation closely. Liberia signed on to the initiative in February (see GSN, Feb. 13). Panama's minister of government and justice, Arnulfo Escalona, and U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton are scheduled to sign the pact tomorrow, U.S. officials said (Judith Miller, New York Times, May 11). Back to top       CIA Clandestine Service Needs Five Years to Repair 1990s Deterioration, Officials Say U.S. officials have said the CIA would need at least another five years to rejuvenate the agency’s human intelligence service and to effectively gather information against rogue states and terrorist groups, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, May 4). The CIA now has fewer than 1,100 case officers posted around the world — less than the number of FBI agents assigned to the New York field office, officials said. While more new case officers are expected to graduate in 2004 than in any year since the Vietnam War, CIA Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt said late last month that he still needed up to 35 percent more people. “I need hundreds and hundreds, thousands,” Pavitt told the Times. Pavitt said the CIA’s clandestine service bottomed out in 1999, when its numbers had been reduced by 20 percent from Cold War levels. Morale also suffered throughout the 1990s because of increased caution and difficulties in changing to a post-Cold War mission, experts said.  Another factor that has hindered the clandestine service’s efforts was a 1995 directive from then-CIA Director John Deutch that was interpreted as a warning against associating with suspicious individuals, according to current and former intelligence officials, as well as lawmakers. “I’m not going to succeed against terrorism unless I recruit terrorists,” Pavitt said. “I’m not going to succeed in terms of the tough issues in this business unless I’m right in the middle of it,” he added. The problems were illustrated by the CIA’s inability to recruit agents who could have provided information about former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda, which caused the agency to rely heavily on foreign intelligence services, according to the Times. While Iraq had been a major intelligence target for more than a decade, one year prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom the CIA only had four sources within the Hussein regime, according to senior intelligence officials. “If we had been able to successfully penetrate al-Qaeda, imagine what that would have meant!” said former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith. “If we had been able to penetrate Saddam Hussein’s government, imagine what that would have meant!” he said (Douglas Jehl, New York Times, May 11). Back to top       Terrorists Might Have Acquired Alleged Iraqi Weapons, Canadian Prime Minister Says Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin warned that terrorists might have access to the suspected WMD stockpiles of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Winnipeg Sun reported today (see GSN, May 5). Martin said that he believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that the threat of terrorism has increased since U.S. forces captured Hussein. “The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don’t know where they are,” Martin said. “That means terrorists have access to all of that,” he added. Martin also said that he is seeking international support for the creation of an informal organization consisting of as many as 20 international leaders to handle issues such as terrorism (Stephanie Rubec, Winnipeg Sun, May 11). Back to top

U.S. Open to Direct Talks With North Korea; Russia Says North Has Right to Nuclear Energy Program The United States said yesterday that State Department special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani could hold bilateral talks with the North Korean delegation during six-nation working group meetings that are scheduled to begin tomorrow in Beijing, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 10). “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had meetings, within the context of the six-party talks, with individual delegations, including the North Korea delegation,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. “But I don’t know of anything set or scheduled at this point,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Angola Press, May 10). Meanwhile, chief Russian negotiator Valeriy Sukhinin, arriving in Beijing today for the talks, said North Korea would have the right to pursue a nuclear energy program under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty any country has the right to carry out peaceful nuclear energy programs,” he said. “Moreover, the nuclear powers are obliged to render assistance to the peaceful activities in the nuclear domain of the states that do not possess nuclear arms. All this is possible provided North Korea signs the treaty,” he added. He also said no breakthroughs were expected at the working group meetings beginning Wednesday. “The working group is to prepare the third round of the negotiations on the North Korean nuclear program,” Sukhinin said. “The group is to see what can be done to find solutions to the problems discussed at the main talks,” he added (Itar-Tass, May 11). Japanese officials said today that Japan plans to urge Pyongyang to specify which nuclear facilities it would agree to freeze, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. Japan, South Korea and the United States are demanding that North Korea completely abandon its nuclear development program, saying that the freezing facilities should be the first step in the process. The three countries believe it is important to get a picture of the North Korea’s overall nuclear development to fulfill the freeze (Makoto Miura, Yomiuri Shimbun, May 11). Back to top       Iran Warns Israel Against Attacking Nuclear Sites Iran would retaliate if Israel attacked one of its nuclear installations, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said Tuesday, responding to reports that Israel was considering such action (see GSN, March 10, 2003). “Israel knows our hands are well equipped,” Hassan Rohani said in an interview with Iranian television. “If such an incident happens, it will meet a resolute response from our side,” he added. Rohani did not elaborate, but Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said in December that Iran would use long-range missiles against Israel in the event of an attack, according to the Associated Press. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last month that Iran was “maybe the main existential threat” to Israel. In 1981, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor that was under construction outside Baghdad due to of fears that Iraq would acquire a nuclear weapon (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 11). Back to top       U.S. Decision on Plutonium Pit Facility Expected Soon A report on the U.S. nuclear stockpile that would help determine the location of a new plutonium pit production facility is under review by the National Nuclear Security Administration and is expected to be passed on to Congress within weeks, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 29). The plant, which would build the plutonium cores of U.S. nuclear weapons, could be located at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina; the Pantex Plant in Texas; the Los Alamos National Laboratory or Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, both in New Mexico; or the Nevada Test Site. The report outlines current and future conditions of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, information that officials were awaiting in deciding amongst the potential venues. “You can’t make intelligent decisions if you don’t know what the stockpile is,” noted Linton Brooks, NNSA administrator (Associated Press/Beaufort Gazette, May 11). Back to top       House Democrats Plan Legislative Action Tomorrow on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Budget Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives last week delayed debating two Bush administration nuclear weapons budget request items included in the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing, choosing instead to tackle the issue during a full committee hearing scheduled for tomorrow, according to Defense Daily (see GSN, May 7). The bill contains a $27 million request to conduct feasibility studies for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and seeks $9 million for advanced concept initiatives that could include low-yield nuclear weapons, according to Defense Daily. While criticizing the funding requests during a Strategic Forces Subcommittee markup hearing, Representative Sylvestre Reyes (D-Texas) did not offer any amendments to the bill on the issue. “I expect this will be a full committee issue,” he said. The Senate Armed Services Committee last week approved its version of the bill, Defense Daily reported. Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), however, criticized the funding requests. “There’s no military requirement for any of these weapons,” Reed said. “This is more ideological than strategic,” he added (Sharon Weinberger, Defense Daily, May 11). Back to top

U.S. Army, Contractor Fined for Safety Violations at Oregon Chemical Weapons Incinerator The U.S. Army and Washington Demilitarization Co. were each fined more than $80,000 for bypassing safety systems while testing a chemical weapons incinerator, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 12 2003). No chemical weapons were involved in the test, which occurred between July 18 and July 31, 2003, at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Hermiston. Nevertheless, state regulators still considered the surrogate materials used in the test to be hazardous waste, said Oregon Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman Shelly Ingram. The state fined the Army and its contractor $46,200 each for feeding material into a metal parts furnace without operating an automatic waste feed cut-off system, and another $46,200 each for failing to operate a carbon filtration system. “They disabled the monitoring and they bypassed the carbon filter,” Ingram said (William McCall, Associated Press/OregonLive, May 10).   Back to top

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