Senate Eases WMD Threat Reduction Restrictions

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate yesterday decisively approved a repeal of several restrictions on the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which works to secure and destroy excess unconventional weapons in Russia and other nations (see GSN, June 22).

Lawmakers voted 78-19 to pass an amendment to the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill sponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and 29 other Republicans and Democrats.

Debate on the full bill was suspended yesterday and resumed this morning. 

The House of Representatives did not include similar language on CTR restrictions in its version of the bill, which was approved in May. The Bush administration supports the repeal legislation. 

The White House also supports an alternative contained in the House bill, which would extend through 2007 presidential authority to waive the restrictions.

Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) developed the initial legislation creating the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, also called the Nunn-Lugar program, in 1991.

The amendment would repeal three provisions contained in the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act of 1993, and the Russian Chemical Weapons Destruction Facilities law passed in 1999. 

The restrictions require the U.S. government to certify annually that CTR recipient countries have performed certain actions, primarily in areas of weapons dismantlement.  

For instance, without certification that Russia spends at least $25 million annually on chemical weapons destruction and provides a full and accurate declaration of its chemical weapons stockpile, U.S. support is blocked for construction of the major Shchuchye chemical weapons destruction facility.

Such restrictions have hampered U.S. efforts to assist Russia in eliminating unconventional weapons as well as WMD materials and technology, Lugar said.

They “bring about delay, sometimes very severe delay, at a time that we take seriously the war on terrorism, and the need, as a matter of fact, to bring under control materials and weapons of mass destruction as rapidly and as certainly as possible,” he said.

That effect, he said, runs “contrary to almost all common sense.”

“If we came to a conclusion that for some reason the Russians had not spent precisely the amount of money that we think they ought to spend, does any senator believe we at that point should stop taking warheads off of missiles, should stop trying to get control of weapons of mass destruction in the chemical and biological areas? Of course not,” Lugar said.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), the initial sponsor of the defense authorization bill, spoke against the amendment. He said prior to the vote that the certification criteria were important for informing the U.S. public and Congress on whether threat reduction funds were being well spent. 

He added that the current rules help to ensure that recipients “are committed to right-sizing their militaries, complying with arms control agreements, providing transparency regarding how CTR assistance is used, and respecting human rights.”

Warner said the certification requirements do not impede Nunn-Lugar assistance because Congress has given the president authority to waive the restrictions. 

Lugar said delays in funding have occurred in the past, including in 2002 when spending was frozen for six months pending passage of a temporary waiver by Congress.

The defense bill also separately includes all $415 million requested by the Bush administration to fund the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in fiscal 2006 and a provision to transfer authority, from the president to the defense secretary, for approving Nunn-Lugar projects beyond the former Soviet Union.

Albania last year became the first non-former Soviet country to receive Nunn-Lugar funding, to help destroy a stockpile of chemical weapons (see GSN, Oct. 22, 2004). President George W. Bush reportedly has said the program could be used to support retraining Iraqi and Libyan weapons scientists for civilian employment.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Richard Lugar serves on the NTI board.  NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]

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