|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Senate Ups Money for Nuclear Test Ban Organization By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate yesterday raised potential funding for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization by $5 million to $19.4 million, which if approved by Congress would partially reverse a nearly $8 million budget cut by the Bush administration for fiscal 2006 (see GSN, June 27). Administration officials have attributed the budget cut to a broader White House budget reduction effort, and not to any change in support for the organization. The added CTBTO funding is a tiny component of the $32 billion fiscal 2006 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that passed the Senate last night with a 98-1 vote. It also is small relative to the Vienna-based organization’s $105 million 2005 budget, which mainly funds ongoing expansion of an international network of stations for monitoring restricted nuclear weapons tests. Its potential impact on the organization, however, could be substantial because a significant reduction in dues from the United States — the organization’s largest contributor — could significantly disrupt the CTBTO activities and perhaps prompt other countries to reduce contributions, some observers have said. “The additional funds will make it much more likely that the United States will find the money to pay its full assessment for IMS [the International Monitoring System] and will help keep the world from becoming a much more dangerous place,” Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who co-authored the amendment to boost funding with Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), said yesterday in a statement. Lugar is the chairman and Biden is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Adding the money is important for “ensuring the organization does not have to make radical changes in its operations,” said Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association. It will also help in “reducing the growing gap in U.S. contributions to the organization,” he said, noting the administration in 2001 began withholding annual contributions specifically for the on-site inspections mission and treaty promotion activities of the organization. He described those withholdings as “accumulated nonpayments.” The $19 million payment still would leave the total U.S. contribution this year short of the $22 million the United States had committed to pay. If the increase survives a conference over differences with the House bill, which includes only the $14.4 million budgeted by the administration, the money would be taken from the State Department Economic Support Fund, which is intended to promote economic and political stability in strategically important regions. Biden cited help from the staff of Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee in redirecting the money. In a move linked to the increase, however, Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) also amended the appropriations bill to allow a key State Department official to redirect money assigned to the Test Ban Treaty Organization or the larger State Department Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining and Related Programs budget, for use on “certain nonproliferation efforts and counterproliferation” projects, such as the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative. While the Bush administration opposes ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, since taking office it had funded about 22 percent of the organization’s annual budget to help build the monitoring network, which is said to be valued for its growing capability to detect nuclear testing across the globe. CTBTO member states in 2004 approved a budget increase for the organization for this year, from $95 million to $105 million. That effectively raised the U.S. contribution from around $19 million to $22 million. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a letter this year that the budgeted reduction did not signal a change in U.S. support for organization activities and that funding to make up the shortfall might be found in next year’s fiscal 2007 budget. “That’s no way to run a railroad,” Biden said in his statement this week. “It would be far better to find some of that extra money now and not put the United States so far in arrears,” he said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
