U.S. Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice today appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing (AFP photo/Tim Sloan). Rice Vows Nunn-Lugar Support in Next Administration By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will continue to support efforts to secure nuclear weapons materials in the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world, including new legislation to reduce U.S. legal restrictions on the work, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said today during her confirmation hearing as secretary of state (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2004)...Full Story

U.S. Conducting Secret Reconnaissance Missions in Iran, Preparing for Attack, Report Says The United States has been sending special forces personnel into Iran to identify 36 or more nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed by raids and precision strikes, the New Yorker reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14)...Full Story

Weldon Says North Korea Talks Could Go On Next Month North Korea will watch confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state today, President George W. Bush’s inauguration speech Thursday and the president’s Feb. 2 State of the Union address before deciding whether to resume six-nation talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, U.S. Representative Curt Weldon said today (see GSN, Jan. 14)...Full Story

	Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Spain Indicts Eight for Aiding Sept. 11 Attacks Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon has indicted eight people on terrorism charges for allegedly aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 7). The indictment, released yesterday, accuses the eight of providing logistical support and fake documents for suspects including Ramzi Binalshibh, believed to be a key financier of the attacks and now in U.S. custody, AP reported. One of the eight named in the indictment, Hedi Ben Youssef Boudhiba, is believed to be a member of a group that plotted to conduct a ricin attack in London, according to AP (see GSN, April 23, 2004; Ciaran Giles, Associated Press/Khaleej Times, Jan. 17). Back to top

Rice Vows Nunn-Lugar Support in Next Administration By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will continue to support efforts to secure nuclear weapons materials in the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world, including new legislation to reduce U.S. legal restrictions on the work, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said today during her confirmation hearing as secretary of state (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2004). “Flexibility in the ability to administer the program would be most welcome, and it is just an extremely important program that I think you know that we intend to continue to push,” Rice said, speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The administration does “pay attention, in our relationship, to the progress or lack thereof of democracy, pay attention and push the Russians on questions of accounting fully for their chemical weapons stockpiles, for permitting an understanding of their biological weapons programs,” she said. Rice also engaged in a heated exchange with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) over previous statements regarding the potential existence weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Planned Legislation Supported Funding and political support for the threat-reduction program is considered an important issue for the committee’s chairman, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who pressed Rice for signs the administration would support removing certain U.S. legal constraints on funding and aggressively engage senior Russian officials. “The Bush administration must continue its efforts to safeguard and destroy vulnerable stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction,” Lugar said in an opening statement. Lugar in the early 1990s co-sponsored legislation with former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) that gave birth to the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative, also known as the “Nunn-Lugar” program, to secure and eliminate former Soviet weapons of mass destruction. He has since has served as its foremost advocate. Rice told Lugar the administration supports legislation Lugar plans to sponsor this year that would eliminate conditions Russia must meet to receive certain Nunn-Lugar funding, such as providing a “full and accurate” disclosure of the size of its chemical weapons stockpile, and presenting a practical plan for nerve agent destruction. The conditions, Lugar said, “in the past have slowed or threatened to slow the urgent task of eliminating nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.” The planned legislation also would eliminate a $50 million cap on the use of Nunn-Lugar funds outside of the former Soviet Union. Rice also told Lugar that Bush had urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to push for Russian parliamentary ratification of a U.S.-Russian “umbrella agreement” that would limit the liability of U.S. contractors from injury suits by Russian workers engaged in Nunn-Lugar weapons cleanup projects and would prevent Russian taxation of Nunn-Lugar funds. “This agreement underpins all U.S. threat reduction programs in the former Soviet Union,” Lugar said in a previous statement on his Web site. “Yet President Putin has so far failed to present the extension for a vote,” he wrote. “I’m sure [Bush] will raise it when he sees President Putin in the next several weeks,” Rice said, and added that the Bush administration is reviewing the liability issue. “To the extent there are bureaucratic logjams, they’ve simply got to be broken,” she said. Heated Exchange Rice was nominated for the position by President George W. Bush last November and is expected to gain the necessary Senate confirmation. However, her exchange with Boxer indicated Rice will not get through the hearing unbruised. Before the committee adjourned for lunch, Boxer questioned Rice regarding statements she made on what threat Iraq posed to the United States prior to the war. Boxer said Rice previously had claimed no administration official had ever said Iraq could build a nuclear weapon within a year. Rice’s statement “wasn’t true,” according to Boxer.  She quoted from a speech nine months earlier in which Bush said, “If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.” Boxer said, in addition, that Rice in October 2004 said there was a prewar intelligence assessment that Iraq could gain a nuclear weapon within a year. “It’s hard to even ask you a question about this because you are on the record basically taking two sides of an issue,” Boxer said. “This is a pattern here of what I see from you,” she said. Rice responded, “I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything.” She said the administration had faced “a very difficult intelligence challenge in trying to understand what [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein had in terms of weapons of mass destruction,” and also that she had been “pointing out to people that there was uncertainty” regarding Iraqi capabilities. “Senator, we can have this discussion any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity,” Rice said. “I’m not, I’m just quoting what you said,” Boxer said. The hearing began this morning and is scheduled to run until 5 p.m. today and all day tomorrow. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer, and Richard Lugar serves on the board, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.] Back to top       Pakistani Authorities Seize Computer With Information on Anthrax, Dirty Bombs From Suspected Militant Pakistani authorities recovered a computer containing information on dirty bombs and anthrax from a suspected Islamic militant arrested last month, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Aug. 18, 2003). The suspect, 25-year-old Mohammed Jamil Memon, is believed to be a member of Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen Al-Almi, AP reported. He is suspected of involvement in an April 2002 assassination attempt against Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and a June 2002 bombing that killed 14 Pakistanis near the U.S. Consulate in the city of Karachi. The WMD information on Memon’s computer “seemed to have been downloaded from the Internet,” said Ataullah Wazir, a local police chief in the Swat district, where Memon was arrested on Dec. 19 (Sadaqat Jan, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 18) Back to top       Final ISG Report to Address Whether Banned Weapons Were Moved From Iraq Prior to War A pending U.S. intelligence report is expected to address the oft-stated possibility that weapons of mass destruction might have been smuggled out of Iraq prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 13). U.S. chief weapons inspector in Iraq Charles Duelfer, who is expected to submit his final report next month, suggested last fall before the U.S. Senate that Iraq might have transferred weapons of mass destruction and related equipment out of the country prior to the war. Congressional and intelligence officials have said, though, that they have not seen any information suggesting that alleged Iraqi banned weapons were moved to neighboring countries, AP reported (Katherine Pfleger Shrader, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 17). Back to top

U.S. Conducting Secret Reconnaissance Missions in Iran, Preparing for Attack, Report Says The United States has been sending special forces personnel into Iran to identify 36 or more nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed by raids and precision strikes, the New Yorker reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14). “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” a government consultant with close ties to the U.S. Defense Department told the New Yorker. A former intelligence official said a U.S. commando task force is working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists who had had dealings with their Iranian counterparts. In exchange for this cooperation, U.S. officials pledged that Pakistan would not have make nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan available for outside questioning regarding his role in a nuclear black market operation, according to the official. “It’s a deal — a trade-off,” the former official said. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the antiterrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.” Defense Department civilians have also been working with Israeli personnel to identify nuclear, chemical and missile sites inside Iran, the consultant told the New Yorker. The former official added that obtaining accurate intelligence on Iranian WMD programs is a priority for the Bush administration. “They don’t want to make any WMD intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” the former official said. Strategists at U.S. Central Command headquarters have also been asked to revise the U.S. contingency plan for an invasion of Iran, providing for a maximum ground and air attack, the New Yorker reported. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it” (Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Jan. 17). The Pentagon dismissed the allegations in the New Yorker in a release yesterday, saying, “Mr. Hersh’s source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made.” “Mr. Hersh’s preference for single, anonymous, unofficial sources for his most fantastic claims makes it difficult to parse his discussion of Defense Department operations,” the statement adds (U.S. Defense Department release, Jan. 17). Pakistan yesterday denied allegations in the New Yorker article that it was helping to identify suspected Iranian weapons sites for air strikes, Agence France-Presse reported. “There is no such collaboration,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan. “We do not have much information about Iran’s nuclear program so I think this report is far-fetched and it exaggerates facts which do not exist in the first place,” Khan said. “I do not think there is any substance in what has been reported. I think this is pure conjecture,” he added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Jan. 17). Meanwhile, U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday told NBC news that he would not rule out military action against Iran if disputes over its nuclear program were not resolved, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported. “I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table,” Bush said (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Jan. 18). Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Iran was not fearful of an attack, Reuters reported. “We are able to say that we have strength such that no country can attack us because they do not have precise information about our military capabilities due to our ability to implement flexible strategies,” the Mehr news agency quoted Shamkhani as saying. “We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment that has resulted in the greatest deterrent,” he said (Reuters, Jan. 18). Back to top       Weldon Says North Korea Talks Could Go On Next Month North Korea will watch confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state today, President George W. Bush’s inauguration speech Thursday and the president’s Feb. 2 State of the Union address before deciding whether to resume six-nation talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, U.S. Representative Curt Weldon said today (see GSN, Jan. 14). “If there is inflammatory rhetoric in any of these events, my prediction is that we will have more difficulties,” said Weldon (R-Pa.), who led a congressional delegation last week to North Korea. “If there is no inflammatory rhetoric, I predict they will return to the talks following Chinese New Year in early February,” he added, according to Reuters. Weldon said North Korea is willing to abandon its nuclear program, but only with the promise that the United States will not attempt to unseat the regime of Kim Jong Il and that negotiating countries in the six-party talks — which also includes Russia, Japan, China and South Korea — will provide energy and economic support. “I and my colleagues are convinced that they are absolutely serious about the stated possibility of giving up their entire nuclear program,” he said. “They said so repeatedly” (Linda Sieg, Reuters, Jan. 18). Weldon also said he plans to coordinate another trip to Pyongyang with a larger delegation in several months, Yonhap reported. Weldon said North Korea’s No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, offered the invitation while Weldon’s six-member delegation was in Pyongyang last week (Yonhap/BBC Monitoring, Jan. 16). The Bush administration, reacted cautiously to North Korea’s reported willingness to resume talks, Agence France-Presse reported. “If North Korea wants to come back to the talks, that would be welcome,” a senior U.S. official told Agence France-Presse “They haven’t told us that” (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 14). Back to top       Iran Says Trade Talks With EU An Iranian official on Sunday described last week’s trade talks with the European Union as “very positive,” Reuters reported (see GSN, Jan. 14). “Europe had some proposals which we studied and offered them our suggestions. We agreed to continue the talks in March in Tehran,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. Asefi also said Iran was confident that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors who visited the Parchin military complex last week would find no evidence of illicit nuclear activity. “We know what the result will be because we know we haven’t done anything illegal. When the agency’s assessment comes, it will be clear,” he said (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Jan. 16). Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian said Saturday that Tehran would avoid setting a deadline for talks with the European Union on its nuclear program and that Iran could maintain a freeze on uranium enrichment activities until at least midyear, Agence France-Presse reported. “We have reached an agreement with the Europeans not to threaten each other with a deadline,” Mousavian told the hard-line Kayhan newspaper. Evidence of “objective, serious and fundamental progress” in the nuclear talks could lead Iran to extend negotiations and the nuclear suspension for another three months, he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Jan. 15). Equipment Seized Elsewhere, German authorities Wednesday seized nuclear-related equipment bound for Iran at an unidentified company in northern Germany, the Associated Press reported. Four special low-voltage motors were believed to be headed to the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran, according to AP. Nuclear-related materials require a German export permit before being shipped to Iran, said Manfred Knothe, a spokesman for prosecutors in Hanover. In this case, “export permission would hardly have been given,” he said. The German company is being investigated for possibly export law violations, Knothe said (Associated Press, Jan. 14). Back to top       Y-12 to Dismantle Old Warheads The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., plans to dismantle a number of old nuclear warheads in advance of the planned 2007 completion of a new $300 million uranium storage facility, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 6). Uranium taken from dismantled nuclear warheads requires far less storage space than intact warheads, according to AP. The old warheads have been stored intact for safety reasons and because their components were not needed for use elsewhere. “One of the issues in getting ready to inhabit the new storage facility is disassembling a lot of the things that we have here, getting them in the most economical form,” Y-12 general manager Dennis Ruddy said (Associated Press, Jan. 17). Back to top

Smallpox Simulation Indicates Lack of Preparedness A smallpox attack exercise conducted Friday in Washington resulted in a largely ineffective response by participants, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, Jan. 5). Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — playing the role of president of the United States — and 11 senior European diplomats and politicians playing other heads of state struggled for seven hours with a tabletop exercise designed to educate officials about the increasing danger of bioterrorism. “The scenario we posited is very conservative,” Tara O'Toole, head of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said following the privately funded $250,000 session. “This could have been much worse.  The age of engineered biological weapons is here. It is now.” The exercise, named Atlantic Storm, posed a scenario in which vaccinated terrorists spread dried smallpox at an airport in Frankfurt, Germany; in subway systems in Warsaw, Poland and Rotterdam, the Netherlands; at New York's Pennsylvania Station and Los Angeles International Airport; and at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey. Within hours, authorities had confirmed 3,320 cases of smallpox and warned that the infection could spread to up to 660,000 people. The leaders argued about whether to share their own national supplies of smallpox vaccine and whether to conduct targeted inoculations of health workers and probable victims or prepare mass vaccinations. They also disagreed over which international institutions ought to lead the response, the Times reported. Those are the probable difficulties real leaders would encounter in the face of a real smallpox attack, according to the Times. “Fortunately, we are not prime ministers anymore,” said Jerzy Buzek, who was Poland’s prime minister during the Sept. 11 attacks and returned to the position for a day during the exercise. “Nobody is ready,” he added (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 17). Back to top       Congressman Urges Amnesty for U.S. Soldiers Refusing Anthrax Vaccination A prominent House Republican said he plans to introduce legislation providing amnesty to U.S. military personnel who refuse anthrax vaccinations under the Defense Department’s mandatory program, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2004). “We need to make sure those who opted out of the vaccine program are not punished,” said U.S. Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the House National Security subcommittee. “An unproven vaccine administered against an uncertain threat is simply not good policy and no punitive measures should be taken against those who chose their health over fulfilling an ill-informed requirement.” The Pentagon’s anthrax vaccination program began six years ago. Nearly 500 service members have refused the vaccine since then and more than 100 have been court-martialed, according to federal court documents. Military personnel who believe they have been mistakenly punished can appeal to the Boards of Correction of Military Records, Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said. The Defense Department halted vaccinations in October after a federal judge ruled the program could not be mandatory. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz subsequently requested emergency authorization to restart the program (Associated Press/Newsday, Jan. 17). Back to top

State Officials Oppose Slowing U.S. CW Destruction Colorado lawmakers said they oppose plans leaked in a Defense Department memo last week to delay destruction of the U.S. Army’s chemical weapons stockpile at the Pueblo Chemical Depot, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 12). Major construction on chemical weapons disposal facilities in Pueblo and Blue Grass, Ky., would not begin until 2011, a roughly five-year delay, according to Pentagon documents. Republican Senator Wayne Allard said he was surprised by the plan and that Colorado’s congressional delegation would meet with Army officials to discuss the project. “I thought that everything was settled and it was a go with the water-neutralization process,” he said, referring to the process planned to be used to destroy the chemical agent stored at the site (Associated Press, Jan. 15). Democratic Representative John Salazar yesterday invited a Pentagon official to answer residents’ questions in person about delays in destroying the Pueblo stockpile, AP reported. Salazar wrote to Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition, that he had a “grave concern” over potential destruction delays. “Further delay makes the arsenal a continued security and environmental risk for the region,” wrote Salazar (Associated Press/Rocky Mountain News, Jan. 17). Meanwhile, Alabama state and national officials said they oppose any Defense Department consideration of moving chemical weapons to the Anniston Army Depot (see GSN, Jan. 14). “This is an absurd idea and one I strongly oppose,” said Republican U.S. Representative Mike Rogers of reports that munitions could be moved from the Pueblo and Blue Grass sites to operating disposal facilities in other areas of the country. Local lawmakers plan to meet with lawyers in Montgomery to determine what measures they could take to block any potential transfer, said Democratic Representative Lea Fite. “I know it is a federal thing, but we have to try to do everything we can,” Fite said. “We promised this community that we would build it, burn it and forget it” (Amy Sickmann, Anniston Star, Jan. 16). Back to top       Hussein’s Lawyers Claim to Have Witnesses Exonerating Former Iraqi Leader From CW Charges Attorneys defending former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Sunday that they have witnesses who would say that Hussein’s regime was not responsible for the 1988 use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2004). Witnesses “are ready and willing to appear before the Iraqi court to testify that the regime of President Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the chemical attack on the Kurdish population,” said Ziad al-Khasawneh, Hussein’s chief lawyer. “Those witnesses cannot be challenged in terms of the weight of their testimonies, their persons, positions and connection to the event,” he said. Hussein’s defense team has previously claimed to have documents supporting its argument that the Iraqi military did not have the chemicals needed to conduct the attack that killed about 5,000 people, AP reported. Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawer has said that the trials of Hussein and other former senior officials could begin soon after the national elections, which are set to be held Jan. 30, AP reported (Jamal Halaby, Associated Press/Miami Herald Jan. 16). Back to top       Russian Official Briefs U.S. Delegation on Disposal Senior Russian official Victor Kholtsov recently briefed a U.S. delegation consisting of Defense Threat Reduction Agency officials and lawmakers on the progress of Russian chemical weapons destruction, Interfax reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2004). The U.S. delegation was told that last year the Russian Federal Industry Agency focused on building chemical weapons disposal sites at the village of Maradykovskiy, the town of Kambarka and the village of Shchuchye, said Kholtsov, deputy head of the agency. U.S. and Russian experts are now set to meet early next month to analyze progress in joint efforts against chemical weapons proliferation, Interfax reported (Interfax/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Jan. 17). Back to top

India May Export Missiles, Official Says India may soon begin exporting ballistic missile systems, a senior Indian missile development official said Friday (see GSN, Jan. 3). “India is charting a favorable course in the field of developing missile and missile systems in the country. India could perhaps be looking at exporting missiles,” said Vijay Kumar Saraswat, program director for development of ballistic missile defense systems. “These missiles will be the ones that could be used in local warfare,” Saraswat added (PakTribune.com, Jan. 15).   Back to top

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