President George W. Bush, shown meeting with congressional leaders yesterday, has announced his plan for establishing a national director of intelligence (AFP photo/Stephen Jaffe). Bush Offers Intel Director Plan U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday offered a plan for a national director with significant budgetary and personnel control over the U.S. intelligence community, but stopped short of backing the Sept. 11 commission’s full recommendations for the position (see GSN, Sept. 7)...Full Story

European Powers Set Deadline for Iran Nuclear Suspension; More Delays to Bushehr Reactor The United Kingdom laid down an ultimatum yesterday for Iran to suspend all nuclear weapons-related activities by mid-November, the London Guardian reported (see GSN, Sept. 8)...Full Story

South Korea Admits to 1982 Plutonium Extraction, Says Revelation Will Not Damage North Korea Dialogue South Korean officials said today the country had conducted a nuclear experiment in which scientists extracted a tiny amount of plutonium, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 9)...Full Story

	Thursday, September 9, 2004

Bush Offers Intel Director Plan U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday offered a plan for a national director with significant budgetary and personnel control over the U.S. intelligence community, but stopped short of backing the Sept. 11 commission’s full recommendations for the position (see GSN, Sept. 7). “We believe that there ought to be a national intelligence director who has full budgetary authority. We’ll talk to members of Congress about how to implement that. I look forward to working with the members to get a bill to my desk as quickly as possible,” Bush said yesterday at the White House. The intelligence director would serve as the head of the U.S. intelligence community — establishing standards, policies and programs; determining its priorities; and ensuring agencies share information, particularly related to terrorism. Work is also expected to include supervising a national counterterrorism center and a possible national center to counter WMD proliferation, according to a White House release. The director would control more than two-thirds of the intelligence budget, roughly $40 billion annually split among 15 agencies, the Washington Post reported today. Under the president’s plan, any intelligence agency head would have to receive the director’s approval to appoint a person to a post within the organization. The director would also be able to offer recommendations on intelligence appointments made by the president. Bush did not follow the commission’s recommendation to place the position within the executive office, the Post reported.   He also proposed giving the job budget control only over foreign intelligence work not related to tactical military operations, while the commission backed full budgetary authority. The presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) knocked the Bush plan as inadequate. “If George W. Bush were serious about intelligence reform, he’d stop taking half-measures and wholeheartedly endorse the 9/11 commission recommendations and work for their immediate passage by Congress,” said Rand Beers, Kerry’s national security adviser (Pincus and Milbank, Washington Post, Sept. 9). A bipartisan group of senators, including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced a bill that would implement the Sept. 11 commission’s 41 recommendations on intelligence reform. “With the introduction of this bill, the Senate now has before it legislation that addresses each of the commission’s 41 recommendations, which together are designed to build unity of effort across the U.S. government — all in an effort to prevent future terrorist attacks,” McCain said yesterday on the Senate floor. Other members of Congress have also backed the commission’s entire report, but Republican leaders in the House of Representatives plan to present their own bill based largely on their expertise, the Post reported. “I think it was highly inappropriate to call for immediate passage of the 9/11 commission recommendations,” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said yesterday (Charles Babington, Washington Post, Sept. 9). Back to top       U.S. Port Security Measures Cover the Waterfront By Katherine McIntire Peters Government Executive WASHINGTON — Two days before his retirement ceremony July 30, Coast Guard Capt. Kevin Dale is a harried man. His crowded, paper-strewn office at Coast Guard headquarters near the Washington Navy Yard on the Potomac River does not reflect the actions of a man on the verge of moving on. Instead, the departing chief of the Coast Guard’s Office of Port and Vessel Security personifies a state of unfinished business. That’s only fitting, since Dale has spent the past two years constructing the regulatory framework for a job that will continue for decades, if not longer. The 2002 Maritime Transportation Security Act, which requires U.S. ports and vessels to develop broad security plans, and the concurrently developed International Ship and Port Facility Security Code, which imposes security standards on ports and vessels involved in global trade, both went into effect July 1. Together they represent the most comprehensive security standards governing the operations of seaports and ships in the history of maritime commerce. The new standards are meant to impose a level of order on a sector of the global economy notoriously resistant to government oversight. “The whole system is built for speed and efficiency,” says Dale. “Any time you introduce security measures, you slow that system down. There’s a certain resistance to any change, and we are requesting huge changes in the way the maritime community operates.” The Coast Guard, as the lead agency for maritime security for the world’s top sea-trading nation, spearheaded the international effort to develop globally accepted standards and was charged with implementing MTSA regulations in the United States. The law requires thousands of players, from small marina operators to multinational conglomerates, to develop and implement security plans. The Coast Guard must approve all plans. The law also requires the eventual development of identification cards for port workers and improved monitoring of ships and cargo. The maritime security law demands that the Coast Guard exercise regulatory oversight far beyond anything it has ever done in the past. To make an enormously complex job even more difficult, the Coast Guard moved from the Transportation Department into the Homeland Security Department during the course of developing and implementing the port and vessel security regulations, which meant bringing an entirely new team of managers up to speed on a fast-moving program. To expedite the process of drafting and implementing the regulations, the Coast Guard brought in people from other agencies, including Transportation, Defense, and the Office of Management and Budget, as well as representatives of agencies within Homeland Security, such as the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration, to incorporate their concerns as the regulations developed. It proved an effective, if at times unwieldy, process, Dale says. By law, it had to be completed in one year. By comparison, the agency had several years to implement the far less ambitious 1990 Oil Pollution Act, which aimed to tighten environmental restrictions on oil tankers after the Exxon Valdez ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989. Until MTSA was enacted, the Oil Pollution Act was the Coast Guard’s most ambitious regulatory endeavor. To ease the agency’s burden, Congress waived requirements that the Coast Guard seek public input in formulating the new security regulations. Nonetheless, Coast Guard leaders feared that a difficult job would become impossible if they didn’t involve people with a stake in implementing MTSA. So they launched an aggressive outreach plan to include industry and the public. The agency held seven all-day, heavily attended public meetings nationwide last year, which generated thousands of comments that Coast Guard officials took into consideration when developing the final regulations. “Flexible Consistency” It would be hard to find a slice of the economy more diverse than maritime trade. More than 95 percent of the imported goods Americans buy arrive in this country on ships. From gasoline to coffee and clothing, most of what you’ll find in your local shopping center or mall is a product of maritime commerce, the bulk of it arriving on the 8,000 foreign-flagged vessels that make 50,000 port calls a year. Now the Coast Guard must ensure that all these vessels — except for fishing boats, small motorboats and most pleasure craft, which are generally not covered by MTSA — are held to more rigorous security standards. That’s the easy part. Coast Guard officials have an expression they use when talking about the 361 ports that serve the United States: If you’ve seen one port, you’ve seen one port. Everything from caviar to crude oil, from cruise ships and pleasure yachts to tankers and container ships, comes in through ports. They encompass factories, railheads, major highways and, in some cases, airports. They are as diverse as the commodities that transit their waters. The Port of Houston is dotted with miles of refineries, while the combined ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach, the third-largest port complex in the world, receive 45 percent of the goods arriving in this country by container ship. It would be impossible — and foolish — to develop one-size-fits-all regulations for improving security at ports. “We got a lot of strong feedback that we needed to be flexible about how ports meet new security mandates, and that we have to be consistent in how we apply [these rules],” says Dale. The Coast Guard achieved this policy of “flexible consistency” by generating performance-based goals, rather than prescriptive requirements, and then centrally reviewing port and vessel security plans developed by owners and operators to ensure all were evaluated based on the same criteria. F or example, rather than telling port operators that they must install specific types of fencing, use security cameras and post a precise number of guards, the Coast Guard instead is requiring ports to control access to their facilities. It’s up to the port authorities to figure out how to do that effectively. It’s then up to the Coast Guard to ensure that the plans the ports develop comply with MTSA requirements, and that the ports and vessel operators implement them in a timely manner. In many cases, owners and operators are developing plans using standards and templates established by trade associations and approved by the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard will certify these procedures over the next several months. About 6,400 owners and operators, however, crafted their own plans, which Coast Guard security contractors reviewed. A Government Accountability Office study, “Maritime Security: Substantial Work Remains to Translate New Planning Requirements Into Effective Port Security,” released in June, showed that contractors required revisions to all independent plans — and the Coast Guard concurred. “It’s very difficult to know how good is good enough,” says Dale. “We bought ourselves a problem on the other end,” he adds, referring to the need to certify compliance with the performance-based regulations over the next several months. The Coast Guard intends to conduct on-site compliance inspections of all facilities by January 2005 and all vessels by July 2005. It will be a daunting task, one that GAO auditors are concerned about. The GAO report concluded that the enormity of the task could overwhelm the Coast Guard: “Inspectors will have to make decisions about whether owners and operators have identified all vulnerabilities and adequately addressed them. These decisions are complicated, in part because owners and operators have considerable choice in how to mitigate vulnerabilities, and because the Coast Guard will be seeing many of these plans for the first time. “Other challenges include ensuring that enough inspectors are available, training them adequately and equipping them with useful guidance for making on-site inspection decisions. In short, these challenges are formidable because the Coast Guard expects to handle the added July-to-December inspection load mainly by using reservists with widely varying degrees of training and experience.” In the longer term, the Coast Guard will have to ensure that owners and operators continue implementing their plans. Pulling Out the Rabbit From its inception, MTSA has posed an enormous burden for the Coast Guard. “We had to build a staff in record speed.” says Cmdr. Suzanne Englebert, who recently became the commanding officer in the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office in St. Louis. Englebert orchestrated much of the nuts-and-bolts work necessary for meeting the July 1 deadline, working out of what staff called the “boiler room” at Coast Guard headquarters. Because the Coast Guard did not receive funding for new hires, the agency shifted personnel from other areas and in some cases brought on reservists to help. A staff of about 100 people worked 14- to 16-hour days, on average, seven days a week, with employees rotating Saturday and Sunday duties. Englebert describes the experience as “invigorating.” She says, “This was the first real regulatory [effort] DHS had to do — we had to get it done on time.” The agency received 2,100 questions from port and vessel owners and operators in the course of crafting the regulations, says Capt. Mike Rand, who was responsible for implementing vessel and facility security plans. There were a number of questions about creating security plans for hazardous cargo. Not all such cargo is equally dangerous. For example, drilling mud — a byproduct of oil production — is classified as a hazardous material because it contains pollutants. But it wouldn’t make a good terrorist weapon and therefore shouldn’t require the same sort of safeguards as ammonium nitrate, the highly combustible fertilizer Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Rand, now based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as an officer in the Coast Guard’s European Command, says the ongoing challenge will be to continually refine and improve the security plans. Englebert agrees. “I don’t want you to think we did this without trauma,? she says. “Nor do I want you to think we did it perfectly. What we succeeded in doing was putting the framework for port security in place in one year.” Dale worries that the Coast Guard has created another expectation. “We kind of pulled the rabbit out of the hat here,” he says. Coast Guard captains of the port — the officials in charge of compliance at ports nationwide — may have to continue to pull rabbits out of their hats to enforce the new security requirements. Capt. Mary Landry, captain of the Port of Providence, R.I., says “This has been a very compressed time frame. The industry was reading the new regulations at the same time we were reading them.” She and her staff held workshops throughout the Providence region to make sure all port officials and vessel owners knew what to expect. “You just hope you don’t miss anybody,” she says. While the larger ports and vessels that make frequent calls tended to at least be aware that changes were coming, that wasn’t the case for some small ports. One port in Landry’s jurisdiction, for example, receives one shipment a year — a barge carrying fireworks for Fourth of July celebrations. It is critical that those officials understand the latest regulations, she says. Among other things, Landry’s staff is boarding many more vessels to review security plans. “It’s not just MTSA; you have the parallel international code,” she says. She’s in constant touch with colleagues at other ports to be sure Providence is interpreting and enforcing requirements consistently. She also brought on three Coast Guard reservists to augment her Marine Safety Office staff of 39. Officials at the ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach had a leg up, says Capt. Peter Neffenger. In June 2001, in response to warnings of terrorist attacks in the final report of the bipartisan Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, chaired by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, federal, state and local law enforcement officials at the port took steps to improve security. Before Sept. 11, the Coast Guard had begun cataloging critical infrastructure at the port, such as bridges, rail lines and oil facilities, and developing voluntary security standards. Since the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex is a critical part of the global trade system, it frequently figures into worst-case scenarios imagined for future terrorist attacks. More than 14,000 containers a day are unloaded there. If the port complex were to close, there wouldn’t be enough remaining capacity in the entire United States to redistribute the workload, says Neffenger. “There’s a tremendous amount of infrastructure in a very small geographic area here,” he says. “Everybody recognizes the vulnerability, and that drives tremendous cooperation.” A major continuing challenge to enhancing port security is the cost, says Neffenger. The Coast Guard estimates it will cost port officials and vessel operators, many of whom operate on small profit margins, more than $7 billion to comply with the new regulations over the next 10 years. To date, Congress has authorized $500 million in port security grants. High Stakes While federal officials believe MTSA is a major step forward in improving security at U.S. ports, nobody seems to consider it anything more than the first small step toward preventing terrorists from exploiting the weaknesses inherent in the still wide-open world of maritime trade. The new law doesn’t cover small pleasure boats, for example, even though it was a small, explosive-laden watercraft that was used in the October 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. In addition, the 110,000 fishing vessels that regularly unload their perishable goods at U.S. ports fall outside MTSA regulations. Michael Mitre, security director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, who lives and works at the ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach, says enormous security gaps remain at the ports: lax inspection of containers, both inbound and outbound; inadequate identification procedures of workers, especially truck drivers who arrive and depart from ports with little scrutiny, and the Coast Guard’s insufficient capacity to enforce new regulations. “The Coast Guard has never traditionally been an on-terminal enforcer of regulations,” Mitre told a House panel in June. “You don’t ever see teams of Coast Guard on the grounds. . . . It’s a huge job. Having a young 19-year-old come on [to make inspections] is going to take an immense amount of training. Usually training comes in the form of osmosis. People that run these terminals, they’ve been working on them for five, 10 years before they really fully understand how unique terminal operation is.” Dale concedes that there is much work yet to be done: “People can sit down and conjure up dozens and dozens of threats. No one’s going to deny they’re there. What we’ve done is put in place some basic security measures. We’ll be looking to see if they’re effective.” Dale’s Coast Guard career has been unusual in the sense that he has been involved in port security and anti-terrorism planning since the 1980s — long before the Sept. 11 hijackers moved terrorism to the top of the nation’s agenda. Early in his career, a colleague advised him that focusing on security would be a professional mistake. If he wanted to move up the ranks in the Coast Guard, he was told, he should focus on environmental issues. Dale didn’t care; security issues were of greater interest and concern to him. On Sept. 11, Dale’s only brother, Brian, was on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. “This is only a small piece of a very big problem. It’s meant a lot to me to be able to do this,” Dale says. “It’s not for my brother — that’s far too simple. This is a tremendous problem. The stakes are different, and they’re very high.” Back to top       Commission Calls for More Transportation Protection The U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s focus on protecting airplanes from terrorists has left other forms of transportation vulnerable to an attack, the Sept. 11 commission said in a document released yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 18). “Other transportation modes are at risk and have significant vulnerabilities,” the commission said in a 20-page addendum to its July report (see GSN, July 23). The Homeland Security Department and Transportation Security Administration should develop a plan by Feb. 1 to safeguard people, equipment and facilities, the commission said. It offered 94 recommendations for consideration, including checking ship and train travelers’ names against a terrorist watch list and basing priorities on assessed risks, according to the Associated Press. TSA officials plan in 2005 to take over from airlines the duty of checking passengers’ names, and a transportation security plan is set to be finished by the end of this year, AP reported. Mass transit systems and ports remain most open to attack, said Brian Jenkins, a counterterrorism analyst at the RAND Corp. Money is limited, so the areas of greatest risk must be identified, he said. “Do you spend lots of money on terminals, shopping malls, train stations, bus depots?” Jenkins said. “None of these decisions are easy.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate yesterday rejected an effort by Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to double the $150 million allocated in a Homeland Security Department spending bill to develop nuclear weapons detectors for ports, AP reported (Leslie Miller, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 9). Back to top

European Powers Set Deadline for Iran Nuclear Suspension; More Delays to Bushehr Reactor The United Kingdom laid down an ultimatum yesterday for Iran to suspend all nuclear weapons-related activities by mid-November, the London Guardian reported (see GSN, Sept. 8). The deadline for compliance is the November board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a British official said yesterday. Failure to meet that date could lead to a referral of Iran’s case to the U.N. Security Council and possible sanctions, according to the Guardian. “Iran needs to meet its commitments. We would like it to meet its commitments before then, but if it doesn’t, Iran needs to know and it needs to know now, that there is going to be a decision point in November and at that point a very serious option ... is referral to the United Nations Security Council,” he said. British, French and German foreign ministers backed the ultimatum last weekend at a meeting in the Netherlands.  German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday said Iran’s nuclear activities were “extremely alarming,” and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said a nuclear arms race in the Middle East was the “nightmare scenario.” Iran had broken its word on nuclear suspension commitments it made to the three European countries last year, added a French government source. The new position brings the European powers closer to the mindset of U.S. officials, who have questioned the European policy of “constructive engagement,” according to the Guardian (London Guardian, Sept. 9) However, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said yesterday that referral of Iran to the Security Council would lead Iran to bar International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the country. “That would spell the end of inspections,” he said. Iran is ready to work with the agency and to provide written guarantees that enriched uranium would not be used in weapons, Bot said (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, Sept. 8). Iran this week offered some concession before next week’s IAEA board meeting. The British official, however, said the concessions were late, unclear and had not been formally offered. Iranian Defense Minster Ali Shamkhani said yesterday in a statement that “Iran will not achieve peace by giving concessions” (London Guardian). Meanwhile, Iran continues to purchase centrifuge components on the international black market, often skirting sanctions and export controls, Western intelligence officials said. IAEA officials refused to comment on the information acquired by Agence France-Presse. While the agency’s investigation into Iran’s link with the nuclear smuggling network developed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan is continuing, a non-U.S. intelligence official said Iran has been acquiring nuclear-related materials from countries other than Pakistan. “There are companies all over Europe involved. The Iranians want to keep these channels open for ongoing operations and future operations,” the official said. The official said the Iranians have “for centrifuge production, kept purchasing materials in recent months” in Russia, according to AFP.  “Iranian scientists, including nuclear scientists, are coming and going also to and from China,” the official added. While Iran deals with China and with Russia on civilian nuclear equipment and technology, analysts said the Islamic republic uses front companies to avoid export controls on sensitive equipment. The Iranians have used front companies in various countries “to buy things needed in centrifuges,” said David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security. It would be “most probably less than a year before the Iranians will be in control of the technology to enrich uranium,” an intelligence official said. “By that time they would have enough feed material for their centrifuges so that they won’t be dependent on foreign inputs.” A diplomat close to the United Nations said Iran was “almost self-sufficient” in centrifuge technology, but lacked magnets needed to turn the rotors (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 9). Elsewhere, intelligence officials and an Iranian exile who has previously reported accurately on Iran’s nuclear program said the country is using negotiations with the European powers to buy the time it needs to make nuclear weapons, Reuters reported. “Iran continues to use existing differences between the U.S. and Europe to their advantage and tries to drag out talks with the EU to buy time,” exile Alireza Jafarzadeh told Reuters. “They feel they have bought at least 10 months,” Jafarzadeh said, citing sources in Iran familiar with a recent high-level meeting on Iran’s nuclear program attended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Officials at the meeting also decided to allocate an additional $2 billion from Iran’s central bank reserves to supplement some $14 billion already spent on what Jafarzadeh called Iran’s “secret nuclear weapons program.” Failure to act now could be the key for development of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability, an intelligence official told Reuters. “The Europeans express helplessness, despair and lack of strategy, which is exactly what (the Iranians) want to hear,” a senior non-U.S. intelligence official said. “This is their golden opportunity, between now and the coming of a new (U.S.) administration.” The official said the international nuclear agency was making a mistake by not being more aggressive with Iran due to what it saw as a lack of conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing. “If the IAEA would wait forever to see a smoking gun … it will be too late,” the official said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Sept. 9). Elsewhere, a Russian official said yesterday that the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Russia is building, faced further technical delays, Reuters reported (see GSN, Aug. 26). “It won’t be launched till 2006. Unfortunately the launch is again facing delays, and the delays are for objective reasons,” said the Russian Atomic Energy Agency official. “There are certain technicalities remaining to be settled” The official denied statements by diplomats and specialists that the slowdown is caused by continuing U.S. opposition to the plant (Maria Golovina, Reuters/Boston Globe, Sept. 9). Back to top       South Korea Admits to 1982 Plutonium Extraction, Says Revelation Will Not Damage North Korea Dialogue South Korean officials said today the country had conducted a nuclear experiment in which scientists extracted a tiny amount of plutonium, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 9). The experiment occurred in April and May 1982 in Seoul at a Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute research reactor, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Science and Technology. “This experiment was conducted by a small group of scientists to analyze the chemical characteristics of plutonium,” the statement says. “We have no written data left on the result of the experiment and the amount of plutonium extracted, but we estimate that a very minute amount in the range of milligrams was extracted.” “We also confirmed that we informed the IAEA in September 1983 that the nuclear material used during the experiment was lost and should be exempt from safeguard measures,” the statement says. A South Korean delegation departed today for IAEA headquarters in Vienna to further explain the 1982 experiment and another uranium-based experiment disclosed last week. “Our government and the IAEA are trying to narrow some differences that the two sides have over contents of our report to the IAEA and over whether the contents were verified,” the ministry’s statement says. South Korea said it would “thoroughly” honor all its obligations as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, according to AP (Sang-Hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 9). South Korean officials today also played down a warning from Han Sung Ryol, North Korea’s envoy to the United Nations, regarding the possibility of a nuclear arms race on the Korean Peninsula, AP reported. “Despite Han’s remarks yesterday, we do not know yet if his comments represent North Korea’s official stance on the issue,” said Lee Bong-jo, vice minister of South Korea’s Unification Ministry. “As far as we know, Han never said North Korea would not attend the six-party talks [on the communist nation’s nuclear program], so at this moment we don’t believe that Han’s remarks necessarily mean that North Korea will withdraw from the talks,” Lee said. South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck flew to Tokyo today for talks with Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, according to AP. “If North Korea has arguments to make, it can come to the fourth round of six-nation talks to make them,” Lee told the Yonhap News Agency prior to his departure (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 9). Meanwhile, Chinese officials said they believed the South Korea matter could be “entirely clarified” and urged patience in this “difficult moment” in the wake of Han’s comment, Agence France-Presse reported. “In the 80s, South Korea had some activities we all now think it shouldn’t have had,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said. “We have seen relevant reports and we attach importance to them and we hope that through the IAEA team that has been sent to the ROK (South Korea), the matter can be entirely clarified” (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 9). Elsewhere, a Japanese official today said the International Atomic Energy Agency should conduct thorough inspections regarding South Korea’s plutonium experiment, AFP reported. “It was inappropriate,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said of the experiment. “We hope the IAEA will conduct strict inspections. “We must not allow this to lead to development of nuclear weapons,” he added (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 9). Back to top       Charges Against Two in South African WMD Probe Follow Rumors of Plea Deal in Meyer Case Two German men suspected of involvement in international nuclear smuggling were brought before a South African court today, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 8). Gerhard Wisser, 66, and Daniel Geiges, 65, both permanent residents of South Africa, appeared on four counts of violating the Nuclear Energy Act and a law banning WMD proliferation, according to AFP. The men “unlawfully and intentionally imported, held in transit and exported goods which may contribute to the design, development, production, deployment, maintenance or use of weapons of mass destruction without a permit,” according to the charge sheet. The three nuclear charges relate to possession, manufacture and export of uranium-enrichment equipment, according to AFP. Their arrests follow that of South African engineer Johan Meyer for alleged possession of nuclear-related equipment and reputed links to a nuclear smuggling network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The charges against Meyer were dropped yesterday, suggesting that he may have reached a plea deal, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 9). A senior South African official said that Meyer was prepared to “tell all,” the Washington Times reported. “He’s squealing and willing to do a deal to tell us, the Americans and the Europeans, all we want to know,” the official told the Times (Paul Martin, Washington Times, Sept. 9). Back to top       Japanese Gear Found at Libyan Nuclear Facility Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency found restricted precision instruments in a wooden box labeled “Made in Japan” in a Libyan nuclear facility, Japan Times reported today (see GSN, Aug. 11). Agency personnel found the instruments, which can be exported only under strict control, during inspections between December 2003 and March of this year, following Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi’s announcement that his regime would end all its WMD programs (see GSN, Dec. 29, 2003), sources said. The restricted devices, manufactured by a company based in the city of Kawasaki, can be used to precisely measure the size and shape of machinery parts, the Times reported. Libya imported the instruments to control centrifuge rotors for enriching uranium intended to be used in nuclear weapons, the sources said. The Japanese Foreign and Trade ministries and the National Police Agency have sent a joint investigative team to the United States, where some of the devices are being held, the Times reported. Authorities are also investigating whether the export violated Japan’s export control regime (Japan Times, Sept. 9). Back to top       Kazakhstan Signs Facility Agreement Under CTBT Kazakhstan today signed a facility agreement with the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, according to a press statement (see GSN, May 30, 2002). The agreement allows the commission to carry out work on International Monitoring System facilities on Kazakhstan’s territory. Compliance with the terms of the treaty, which Kazakhstan ratified on May 14, 2002, is monitored by a global verification regime, of which the International Monitoring System is a part (Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization release, Sept. 9). Back to top

U.S. Navy Widens Anthrax, Smallpox Vaccinations The U.S. Navy has initiated its plan to give anthrax and smallpox vaccinations to Navy and Marine personnel and some civilian workers working near locations including Iran, Afghanistan and the Korean Peninsula, Inside Defense reported yesterday (see GSN, June 30). A Sept. 1 order issued by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark begins implementing a Defense Department plan announced June 30. The order extends Central Command’s anthrax and smallpox vaccination programs to every country within the command’s responsibility. U.S. Pacific Command is also to begin vaccinating military personnel assigned to the Korean Peninsula for 15 days or more, according to Clark. According to Clark’s memo, other locations involved in the expansion are: Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Thomas Duffy, Inside Defense, Sept. 8). Back to top

Malfunction Halts Disposal Work at Umatilla A malfunctioning trap door brought an unexpected halt yesterday to the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility’s first day of destroying sarin-filled rockets (see GSN, Sept. 8). This was the latest delay in the effort to dispose of nearly 3,700 tons of nerve gas rockets and other munitions at the U.S. Army facility in Oregon, the Associated Press reported.  “This is exactly why we work step by step,” said Army spokeswoman Mary Binder. “There are lots of moving parts.” Disposal began yesterday morning with an M55 rocket carrying about a gallon of sarin, AP reported. The rocket’s metal nose was to be chopped off and sent through a trap door into the decontaminating furnace. The trap door, however, did not open (Andrew Kramer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 8). The problem was fixed by late Wednesday afternoon, Binder said. Another rocket was set to be destroyed today on a separate line, AP reported (Associated Press/KATU.com, Sept. 8).   Back to top

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

© Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.