Experts disputed yesterday whether Iran is building a heavy-water nuclear reactor at Arak (in February photo) for peaceful or military purposes (AFP photo/Space Imaging). Iran Seeks “Latent” Nuclear Capability, Expert Says By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Iran appears to be developing a “latent” nuclear weapons capability that does not include assembling complete bombs or violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a U.S. expert said yesterday (see GSN, March 23)...Full Story

EU Considers Offering Nuclear Reactor to Iran European negotiators are looking at sending experts to Iran to investigate the possibility of building a light-water nuclear power reactor there in exchange for Tehran’s abandonment of work on a heavy-water reactor, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 23)...Full Story

Judge in D.C. Train Ban Challenge Grills Railroad, U.S. Lawyers on What Federal Protections Exist By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia’s bid to ban rail shipments of chlorine and other toxic gases may hinge on whether the federal government is already doing enough to address the terrorist threat against such shipments, a federal judge said yesterday (see GSN, March 18)...Full Story

	Thursday, March 24, 2005

Pentagon Wants More Battlefield Intelligence The U.S. Defense Department plans to station more intelligence officers in the field in order to deal with threats such as terrorism and weapons proliferation, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, March 22). “The idea is to bring together in one place, for a combatant commander especially, the collectors, the analysts and bring them in contact with his operating forces,” a senior Defense Department official said yesterday. The plan, which is in the final approval stages, would increase the number of defense intelligence personnel, officials said (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, March 24). The bulk of the new activity is centered in the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military’s primary intelligence-gathering service, under a program called the Strategic Support Branch, the Los Angeles Times reported today. Under the program, teams of interrogators, analysts and other operatives are assembled and deployed with special forces units, according to the Times. The teams have expertise in regional languages and culture, a Defense Intelligence Agency said. The agency is also expanding its Defense HUMINT Service, the military’s equivalent of CIA overseas intelligence collection, the Times reported. The Pentagon’s expanding role in intelligence gathering “rubs some people the wrong way,” a Defense Department official involved in the plan said yesterday. The Defense Department maintains, however, that its new activities are legally permissible and do not infringe on CIA duties, according to the Times (Mazzetti/Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 24). Back to top       U.K. Boosts Intelligence Oversight Incorrect assessments of Iraq’s prewar WMD capabilities have led the United Kingdom to increase oversight of intelligence collected by its spy agencies, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, July 14, 2004). “Secret Intelligence Service has developed new procedures, provided additional resources and revised line management arrangements to improve evaluation and to oversee the quality of intelligence,” Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement to the British Parliament. The Joint Intelligence Committee, which prepared the 2002 dossier on Iraq’s WMD programs, has also “reviewed and tightened up” its procedures, Straw said. British leaders have also pledged better training for intelligence analysts and appointment of a professional analysis chief, Reuters reported. The government expects to boost by a third the assessment staff that analyzes intelligence for government ministers (Reuters/Washington Post, March 23). Back to top

Iran Seeks “Latent” Nuclear Capability, Expert Says By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Iran appears to be developing a “latent” nuclear weapons capability that does not include assembling complete bombs or violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a U.S. expert said yesterday (see GSN, March 23). “They absolutely want to stay within the existing rules of the NPT and regime and … they will do everything they can to play by the rules,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, speaking at an event here hosted by the U.S. United Nations Association and the Business Council for the United Nations. “The rules allow you — and in their argument give you the right — which I dispute … to acquire a capability to enrich uranium or to separate plutonium,” he said. In addition to producing nuclear fuel for energy, Iran seeks to follow the model of Japan, which has maintained large stockpiles of plutonium without international recrimination, he said. “Just like Japan, what [Iran] will get as a benefit of that is not only nuclear energy but also a latent deterrent capability. In other words, no other country is going to attack Japan today. In part because if they did, Japan has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons,” though it has not built them, he said. “I think the way the Iranians conceive the strategy is, they would then have the same kind of deterrent power as Japan has,” he said. Perkovich attended a two-day conference on nuclear issues in Tehran earlier this month, during which Iranian officials and negotiators spoke both formally and informally about what they were attempting to accomplish through negotiations with European countries over their nuclear capabilities. Others Say Iran Wants Weapons Despite Iran’s claims that it plans to comply with the NPT, the Bush administration and other experts have charged that Tehran is probably conducting clandestine weapons work that violates the treaty. Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disputed Perkovich’s contention that Iran is not attempting to build nuclear weapons. “I have yet to meet anybody in any European government or anyone frankly at IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] who disagrees [with the idea that] that Iran has a nuclear weapons program,” she said. “Iranians have a nuclear weapons program because Iranians want nuclear weapons,” she said at yesterday’s event. Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior Clinton administration official, said in November he believed Iran would pursue nuclear weapons clandestinely even if it suspended its acknowledged uranium enrichment activities (see GSN, Nov. 10, 2004). Perkovich acknowledged that might be the case. “One of the great unknowns,” he said during his presentation, is that “there may be a disconnect between the [Iranian officials] who are articulating this strategy and what is actually happening on the ground,” he said. “It’s likely that none of the negotiators knows actually every detail of what is happening in the nuclear establishment,” he said in an interview today. Blaming the United States Perkovich said, though, that the idea that Iran does intend to play by the rules makes sense because it potentially offers Iran a strategic advantage, by reducing incentives for neighboring countries to build their own nuclear arsenals. Furthermore, it would serve Iran in its competition with the United States for the support of the international community and particularly the European Union, he said. The United States and Iran are each seeking to isolate the other from the international community, he said. To that end, he said, Iran says it is playing by the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty while Washington seeks to rewrite them. Iran’s argument is, “We want to play by the rules, but the Americans want to change the rules. That the Americans want to do what they always do, which is conveniently interpreting international law, tearing up the parts they don’t like, and then dictating new terms for the developing world,” he said. Iran argues that the United States has backed away from following Article 6 of the treaty, which requires the declared nuclear powers to work toward disarmament, “and is now in the process of tearing up Article 4, which in the Iranians view says, which we could debate, that you have to have cooperation in nuclear technology.” Article 4 specifically declares an “inalienable right” of parties “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” It says also that parties should facilitate and have a right to participate in, “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” Perkovich said that he believed the United States in fact is trying to change the rules, but said he believed rules on nuclear technology cooperation need to be changed. “What we have learned … is that some technologies, in particular uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology, are just too inherently dual use, they have too many inherent weapons applications to be allowed to proliferate to new countries,” he said. He said, though, that to avoid the potential that new rules would readily be violated, they need to be constructed in ways that are perceived fair by the international community, so that they are “largely self-enforcing.” An unresolved “issue is how do we do that so that there is enough consensus so that it’s a fair change … so that people will line up with us on it,” he said. Back to top       EU Considers Offering Nuclear Reactor to Iran European negotiators are looking at sending experts to Iran to investigate the possibility of building a light-water nuclear power reactor there in exchange for Tehran’s abandonment of work on a heavy-water reactor, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 23). The light-water reactor is mentioned in a confidential report dated March 10, which acknowledges that “progress is not as fast as we would wish” in negotiating a settlement on Iran’s nuclear program. The report adds, however, that recent U.S. and Russian displays of support for the diplomatic effort have “strengthened the prospects for a satisfactory outcome.”  The United States bars some technology needed for a light-water reactor from Iran, meaning U.S. support would be necessary for the exchange to occur (see GSN, Feb. 14). Heavy-water reactors are considered to be well suited to produce plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons. The report also says Iran has requested security guarantees and a relaxation of controls on goods sold to Iran (Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, March 24). Meanwhile, the European Union is studying an Iranian proposal put forth yesterday that would allow Tehran to conduct small-scale uranium enrichment, officials and diplomats told Agence France-Presse (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 24). Yesterday’s negotiations in Paris concluded with no date set for a new round, the Associated Press reported. “There was a constructive and positive climate,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said at the conclusion of the meeting. The purpose of yesterday’s “intensive” and “businesslike” negotiations was to lay the groundwork for future talks, Iranian negotiator Sirus Naseri told AP (Jamey Keaten, Associated Press/The Guardian, March 23). Elsewhere, an Iranian exile said today that Tehran was secretly enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons at a new underground facility at its Parchin military complex, Reuters reported. “Iran has completed an underground tunnel-like facility in Parchin, which is now engaged in laser enrichment,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian exile in Washington who has reported accurately about secret Iranian atomic facilities. “This underground site is camouflaged and built in an area of Parchin that deals with the chemical industry,” he told Reuters, citing “well-placed sources inside the Iranian regime” (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, March 24). Back to top       Disputed U.S. Intelligence on North Korea Uranium Exports Angers Some in South Korea Evidence that the United States may have misled Asian nations about intelligence on North Korea’s nuclear exports has sparked anger in South Korea, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, March 21). The Korea Times newspaper yesterday referred to the situation as “Another Intelligence Fiasco.” “If the U.S. administration really offered false information … Washington’s credibility and morality would be in tatters,” the conservative Chosun Ilbo editorialized under the headline, “Did Washington Lie to Seoul?” The ruling Uri Party on Tuesday accused Washington of destabilizing the Korean Peninsula with “distorted” intelligence and “oppressive” policies on Pyongyang, the Times reported. South Korean experts familiar with the intelligence said it is an ambiguous case. “It looks like these were separate deals. North Korea supplied Pakistan [with uranium hexafluoride]. Pakistan supplied Libya.  There is no evidence that North Korea knew anything about Libya,” said a South Korean official. The official called Sunday’s Washington Post story disputing the U.S. intelligence “70 percent correct,” saying that the U.S. official who briefed South Korea last month did disclose the Pakistani role but “aggrandized” North Korea’s part in the deal. Testing by the International Atomic Energy Agency has yet to determine the origin of the Libyan uranium, according to the Times. “Tests have not shown anything indicating that the uranium hexafluoride was from North Korea,” a Western diplomat said (Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, March 24). The U.S. Embassy in Seoul on Tuesday denied that Washington misled allies about North Korea’s role in the uranium transfer, the Yonhap news agency reported yesterday. “The Washington Post story about nuclear material exported to Libya is inaccurate,” the embassy said in a press statement. “The United States has not misled allies or anyone else about the matter.” The United States informed its allies of the “intelligence community’s assessment of the most likely source” of the material, the statement says. “Whether the intended recipient was the A.Q. Khan network or Libya is irrelevant to our proliferation concerns regarding North Korea,” the statement says. “That nuclear material was transferred is a source of significant concern for the United States and other participants in the six-party talks” (Yonhap/BBC Monitoring, March 23). Meanwhile, U.S. President George W. Bush urged North Korea yesterday to return to six-party talks but disavowed press reports of Washington having set a June deadline for a new round of discussions, Agence France-Presse reported. “For the sake of peace and tranquility and stability in the Far East, Kim Jong Il must listen,” Bush said. “I’m a patient person. And so are a lot of people that are involved in this issue. But the leader of North Korea must understand that when we five nations speak, we mean what we say,” he added. “And fortunately, it’s not just the United States of America saying that,” he said, referring to the other participants in the talks — China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. “When the president said ‘patient,’ he was referring to any sort of June deadline. He was saying we have not set any deadline,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told AFP (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, March 23). There was no breakthrough on the impasse over negotiations this week during discussions in Beijing between North Korean Premier Pak Pong Ju and Chinese officials, AFP reported. “Regarding this visit, on the question of when the six-party talks can resume, there has been no breakthrough on the progress,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. Liu added that Chinese President Hu Jintao was considering a rare visit to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leader Kim, possibly indicating Beijing’s frustration with the stalled negotiations, according to AFP. “North Korean Premier Pak Pong Ju, on behalf of Kim Jong Il, has invited President Hu Jintao to visit North Korea at a convenient time,” Liu said. “The two sides are negotiating the arrangements regarding the visits,” he added (Agence France-Presse, March 24). Back to top       Australia to Push Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty Australia plans this year to press nations to complete a pact to ban new production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, The Australian reported today (see GSN, Feb. 23). “We hope that during the course of this year, we can contribute to further measures to stop the spread of nuclear weapons by getting the [United Nations] to adopt the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty,” Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday after visiting Hiroshima, Japan. Downer acknowledged that some nations, including the United States, have said that verification procedures for such a treaty could easily be evaded, but said Canberra must support the treaty because of its role as a leader in nuclear nonproliferation (Peter Alford, The Australian, March 24). Back to top       Russian Researcher Serving Sentence for Nuclear Espionage Refuses Chance for Pardon A Russian arms control researcher serving a 15-year prison sentence on charges of passing classified information about Russia’s nuclear weapons to a London firm has refused to admit guilt in order to receive a presidential pardon, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 17, 2004). “Igor Sutyagin does not consider himself guilty and has not committed any crime. His conviction was a judicial error,” his attorney, Anna Stavitskaya, said yesterday. Sutyagin has maintained he gathered only open-source information, which he legally passed on to the consulting firm Alternative Futures. Russia’s FSB security service, however, has said the company was a front for the CIA (Agence France-Presse, March 23). Back to top

Tabloid Photos of Elvis, Others to be Decontaminated Photographs from the former Florida headquarters of tabloid publisher American Media Inc. will be decontaminated as workers finish cleaning the first building struck by the 2001 anthrax mailing, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2004). Sun Photo Editor Bob Stevens was one of five people killed following exposure to anthrax in 2001, and the AMI office building has been shuttered since then. Real estate investor David Rustine bought the building in 2003, according to AP. Rustine planned to destroy 4.5 million pictures — including a photo of Elvis Presley in his coffin — along with 305,000 pounds of other materials that have all been kept in sealed storage since the attacks. Several photographers objected, and Rustine agreed to decontaminate the items, AP reported. This effort will be 20 times larger than decontaminating documents from Capitol Hill following the anthrax mailings to Washington, said John Mason, president and CEO of contractor Bio-ONE. “We will be applying everything we have learned to enable us to decontaminate half a million documents a day,” Mason said. Rustine will maintain control of the cleansed photographs and other items, according to AP. Bio-ONE plans to use the building for its crisis management venture, but first must prove to local and federal agencies that it is fully cleansed (Associated Press/Miami Herald, March 24). Back to top

Judge in D.C. Train Ban Challenge Grills Railroad, U.S. Lawyers on What Federal Protections Exist By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia’s bid to ban rail shipments of chlorine and other toxic gases may hinge on whether the federal government is already doing enough to address the terrorist threat against such shipments, a federal judge said yesterday (see GSN, March 18). Presiding over a U.S. District Court hearing on rail operator CSX’s request for a preliminary injunction to block implementation of the city law, Judge Emmet Sullivan focused on provisions of the Federal Rail Safety Act that could be construed to allow legislation like Washington’s in cases where the federal government has not addressed the threat in question. “What drove the city council to this point, I assume, because I’m hearing it again and again, is the perceived inaction of the federal government,” said Sullivan, who said he would deliver a decision on the injunction request by April 8. The judge opened the hearing by citing Jan. 26 congressional testimony in which former top presidential antiterrorism adviser Richard Falkenrath said “toxic-by-inhalation industrial chemicals” are “acutely vulnerable and almost uniquely dangerous.” “The federal government has made no material reduction in the inherent vulnerability of hazardous chemicals targets inside the United States,” Falkenrath said at the January hearing. He said the “poorly secured chemicals … in some cases are identical to the chemical weapons used in World War I” and “present a mass casualty terrorist potential rivaled only by improvised nuclear devices, certain acts of bioterrorism and the collapse of large, occupied buildings.” Sullivan returned often yesterday to Falkenrath’s testimony, challenging attorneys for CSX to contradict the analysis by providing evidence of federal protections that could render the city ban invalid. CSX and federal government attorneys described in general terms a confidential security plan developed cooperatively by railroads and the United States, but Sullivan repeatedly proclaimed himself unsatisfied by what he called a “secret” plan that no one in the courtroom appeared to have seen. “I’m astounded that I’m not getting an answer to what this plan does to address that very dramatic hypothetical situation” of an attack on a hazardous materials tanker in central Washington, Sullivan said. Lawyers for the United States, which is supporting CSX’s request to have the ban overturned, said the plan could be made available to Sullivan but not necessarily to lawyers for the city. The rail cars at issue pass within blocks of the U.S. Capitol, the National Mall and other key federal sites, and a rupture could result in a toxic cloud that a U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientist has estimated could claim thousands of lives within minutes. Press reports indicated early this month that a confidential U.S. Homeland Security Department report mistakenly posted for a brief time on a Hawaii state Web site makes reference to a chlorine tank explosion as a potential terrorist attack scenario (see GSN, March 16). Attorneys for CSX focused yesterday on the possibility that the Washington law could trigger a series of similar laws across the country, rendering train shipment of hazardous materials all but impossible. In their initial complaint to the court, they wrote that the Washington measure “invites other local jurisdictions to enact copycat legislation which could, by crazy-quilt coverage, bring to a halt the interstate shipment of critically important materials throughout the United States of America.” Asked yesterday by Sullivan why CSX “hasn’t … just made a policy decision that D.C. is uniquely situated and that no hazardous materials are going to be transported through the city,” attorney Irvin Nathan, representing the rail company, replied, “This is not a unique situation. Every major city believes that its citizens are important, and they are.” “It cannot be up to every city council across the country to make its determination as to whether the federal government is doing enough, and especially enough for it,” Nathan said. Similar laws “have been proposed” in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Baltimore, he said, “and their eyes are on this court.” D.C. Attorney General’s Office lawyer Robert Utiger retorted that future ban attempts in other cities should stand or fall on their own merits. He suggested that rails in some cities might not pass through densely populated areas as they do in Washington, making similar legislation inappropriate in such locales. Baltimore City Council member Kenneth Harris, who was chief sponsor of a ban bill introduced March 14, said this week in an interview that he was waiting to see what fate awaited the Washington bill in Sullivan’s courtroom before deciding how to proceed in his city. Contacted before yesterday’s District Court hearing, Harris said he expected to call council hearings on his bill for next month. He said at least 12 of the council’s 15 members support the ban and that City Solicitor Ralph Tyler had given him no indication the mayor would oppose the measure. “When you’re talking about public safety … I’ve got to do what’s best for the city of Baltimore,” Harris said. Back to top       Blue Grass, Pueblo Depots Receive $70 Million Chemical weapons depots in Colorado and Kentucky are set to receive $70 million to prepare for the construction of munitions incinerators at both sites, the Denver Post reported today (see GSN, March 16). The Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado will receive $40 million, while $30 million was set aside for the Blue Grass Army Depot, according to a memo from the Pentagon signed by acting Defense Undersecretary Michael Wynne. Money will be used site preparation, fencing and installing utilities, the Post reported. “I’m glad the DOD has finally decided to release these funds,” Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) said in a prepared statement. “It is the first positive sign we’ve seen in a long time. Pueblo has been patient, but they’ve waited long enough. It is time to get these projects going” (see GSN, Feb. 24). U.S. Army officials have been studying whether weapons stored at the depots might be shipped to operating incinerators, saving billions in construction costs and helping the United States meet the expected 2012 deadline for full disposal of its chemical arsenal. “My feeling all along has been that once we spend this much money, even for phase one (infrastructure), that the project can’t stop,” said John Klomp, a former Pueblo County commissioner. “I think this $40 million is more significant than just the dollars themselves. Whether it’s intended or not, it’s a commitment to the project” (Erin Emery, Denver Post, March 24).   Back to top

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