By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Two Republican-led House subcommittees yesterday rejected funding for studying the feasibility of a new nuclear weapons capability requested by the Bush administration (see GSN, April 28). “We have taken the ‘N’ out of RNEP,” said Representative Silvestre Reyes (Texas), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, referring to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program. Reyes’ subcommittee approved funds for studying generic earth-penetrating weapons, not nuclear ones specifically. A key Senate committee, however, approved the requested funds for the study. Reyes’ subcommittee also approved money requested to study how a nuclear “bunker buster” might be deployed on a B-2 bomber. “We didn’t lose, we didn’t exactly win, it was kind of a tie,” said Council for a Livable World President John Isaacs, an arms control lobbyist who opposes the program. “It’s not bad, but it’s not a clear-cut victory yet,” he said. A clear victory for the potential weapon’s opponents could be achieved, he said, if language were passed forbidding spending any money on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator in fiscal 2006. House-Senate Language at OddsCongress last year completely denied an administration request of $27.6 million for the bunker-buster program, which was planning to test a potential nuclear weapon casing to see if it could burrow deeper into a hardened target while preserving the nuclear warhead’s ability to detonate. Critics charged such a weapon would have little utility because massive casualties would inevitably result from its detonation, and that the program would harm U.S. credibility when urging nuclear nonproliferation internationally (see GSN, March 3). Arguing that there are a growing number of underground bunkers that U.S. weapons cannot reach, the administration this year requested $8.5 million in its budget for the nuclear earth penetrator in fiscal 2006, which begins Oct. 1. The Energy Department would use $4 million to test the hardened casing of the proposed weapon, while the remaining $4.5 million would go to an Air Force study on how to integrate the large weapon into the B-2 bomber. The House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee yesterday, as it did last year, agreed to none of the $4 million requested by the Energy Department for the fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill for the penetrator test. It did not consider the Air Force study, which is not within its jurisdiction. It is uncertain when the full committee will vote on the bill. The House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee also rejected funding for the Energy Department study. However, it redirected the $4 million to a Defense Department earth-penetrator study, which is intended to evaluate the feasibility of “multiple options” for defeating hard and deeply buried targets, said committee spokesman Josh Holly. In either case, for a nuclear or conventional penetrator, a key element of the study would involve “sled test” that rams a mock penetrator into a concrete block at high speed. The subcommittee also approved the money for the B-2 adaptation study. The full Armed Services Committee is expected to consider the bill next week. The Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, voted for basically the opposite, designating $4 million for the Energy Department’s Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study and rejecting the B-2 adaptation study, according to a statement released today. House Armed Services Committee Democrats praised their panel’s action, saying it should bring the military no closer developing the nuclear earth penetrator capability. “I am pleased that today’s agreement stymies the Bush administration’s effort to create new nuclear weapons over the objections of Congress, and provides our military with resources to continue [developing] conventional ‘bunker busters,’” said Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.). Committee staffers, however, said they were uncertain whether the Defense Department earth-penetrator test might support a future administration bid to begin developing the nuclear earth penetrator, such as by conducting the exact test planned by the Energy Department. “The goal,” committee Democrats said in a joint press release, “is to ensure that the results of [the Defense Department earth-penetrator] study are used for conventional ‘bunker busters.’” “We will remain wary to make sure that the earth penetrator study that does take place remains within the bounds that are intended for it, which is no move toward nuclear,” said Mike Lieberman, a military aide to Representative John Spratt (D-S.C.). Reliable Replacement Warhead Program RestrictionsSpratt at the Strategic Forces markup criticized the decision to continue funding the B-2 integration study. Prior to the committees’ meetings, Armed Services Democrats in closed-door discussions had opposed funding the study and Republicans supported the research. Spratt and the other Democrats agreed not to challenge the funding at least until the full bill reached the House floor, in exchange for language restricting another nuclear weapons program. That program is the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created by Congress last year to explore ways to refurbish existing nuclear weapons so that they are more reliable and more easily and cheaply maintained. The agreed-upon language urges that program not provide capabilities that would enable new missions, such as improved bunker-buster or low-yield capabilities, for U.S. nuclear weapons, Democrats said. “We have taken important strides in this bill to make sure that the Reliable Replacement Warhead does not move us in the direction of new nuclear missions or return us to nuclear testing,” said Spratt in a statement released after the markup. “We have stated in law that its objectives are to reduce the likelihood of a return to nuclear testing, partly by using proven components that are certifiable without further testing,” he added. Representative Geoff Davis (R-Ky.) called it an “important compromise.” A senior Bush administration official told the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee last month that the administration would like to develop a new, smaller stockpile with new military capabilities, including lower yield and bunker-busting weapons (see GSN, April 5). Spratt said that once the defense authorization bill reaches the floor, he would propose or support an amendment that eliminates funding for the B-2 adaptation study. “I think it’s even premature to even talk about adapting the B-2 before we’ve designed the weapon,” he said.
By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire
UNITED NATIONS — Approval of an agenda at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference is “a very tiny first step” toward making the monthlong session a success, conference President Sergio Duarte said yesterday (see GSN, May 12). “Until the substantive issues can be addressed there won’t be any other development, any relief of tensions,” the Brazilian envoy said at a press conference. Delegates are gathering in closed meetings to decide on how to address those substantive issues, including nuclear disarmament, preventing defections from the treaty, and promotion of regional disarmament, especially in the Middle East. “For many parties, the issue is not to diminish [or] backtrack from what was achieved over the years in the NPT,” Duarte said. “For many, these are paramount concerns. For others, paramount concerns are things that have happened recently in the field of arms control, nonproliferation, disarmament and the gamut of issues that the treaty deals with.” One of the next problems is how to organize subsidiary bodies to focus on specific issues such as the Middle East and security guarantees. Such bodies by their nature highlight some issues over others. “So it’s a question of balance,” Duarte said. “How do you balance the way in which you tackle the issues so as not to give the impression that you are favoring one set of issues against another set of issues.” One proposal calls for three subsidiary bodies, including a panel dealing with “nuclear disarmament and security assurances.” The United States has said it does not favor a separate body for those issues, but the Nonaligned Movement nations want a focused discussion over security guarantees for non-nuclear states against nuclear attack. This could become the next roadblock in the deliberations. Looking ahead at the possibility of some sort of grand bargain that could result in a substantive outcome for this conference, Duarte said, “So far I don’t have the idea that indicates that there is no deal to be made, I don’t have that assessment yet.” This is the way negotiations work, he said. “It is painful, it is protracted, it is difficult to understand … but this is the way it is.” “The real issues are known and it is known that those issues have to be discussed, and if they are not, then the conference will be a failure.” Nongovernmental PerspectivesAs delegates were locked in the agenda debate this week, nongovernmental activists and experts and two U.S. lawmakers made their cases on how to advance the nonproliferation and disarmament agenda (see GSN, May 10). “Some say we should not admit that the NPT is in crisis for fear of undermining it. We disagree. In order to make the treaty work as it was intended, we must recognize that it has long been in crisis,” Xanthe Hall, of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said Wednesday during a session of the conference plenary dedicated to statements by nongovernmental organizations. The organizations promoted an agenda exactly opposite of the direction they consider arms control is moving, calling for broader and firmer international controls, fewer uses for and reduced deployment of nuclear weapons, and a tighter ban on nuclear testing and weapons development. The ultimate goal is abolition of nuclear weapons. The collective recommendations presented to the conference also said the “inherent flaw” in the treaty’s endorsement of peaceful uses of nuclear technology needed to be addressed by placing “all enrichment and reprocessing facilities under multilateral control.” Richard Rhodes, the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, also advocated the abolition of nuclear weapons. “The road to the relative safety of abolition, which is not utopia but simply delayed deterrence, passes through” the treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreements, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the proposed fissile material cutoff treaty and “further treaties, agreements, reductions and dismantlings,” Rhodes said yesterday at a seminar. He endorsed “a posture of delayed deterrence short of abolition,” expressed by former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn in which U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would be shifted from hair-trigger alert to a launch posture of days and weeks. This “would not be abolition, but it would be well along the way, because much the same transparency needed for abolition would be required to confirm that an existing arsenal set for delayed launch was indeed secured against prompt launch,” Rhodes said. U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said the United States must meet its disarmament commitments. “The United States cannot preach temperance from a barstool. We cannot tell the rest of the world that they should disavow an interest in nuclear weapons even as this administration is proposing a new generation of more useful nuclear weapons,” Markey said Monday in a press conference also attended by former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix. Proposals for “bunker-busting” nuclear weapons and resumed nuclear testing “undermine our credibility,” he said (see related GSN story, today). Markey also supported the call for international control of civilian nuclear materials. Markey and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers introduced a House resolution last month listing actions the United States and other countries should take to support the treaty. The resolution, which Markey said he wants voted on before the end of the conference, “reaffirms [Congress’] support for the objectives” of the pact and “expresses its support for appropriate measures to strengthen the NPT.” Those measures include elements of the 13 disarmament initiatives approved at the 2000 NPT conference, along with proposals to make proliferation more difficult. Those measures include “universal adoption” of the IAEA Additional Protocol, ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, accelerating nuclear weapons elimination programs, negotiating reductions of nonstrategic nuclear stockpiles and establishing procedures for eliminating access to controlled nuclear materials by nations that withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Iran might slow its movement toward restarting its uranium processing activities, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, May 12). “No certain day is fixed for resumption of reprocessing. It is possible to postpone it some days,” said Iranian Atomic Organization head Gholamreza Aghazadeh (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/Los Angeles Times, May 12). The International Atomic Energy Agency had “not received not any official notification from Iran regarding their intention to restart the conversion facility,” agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said yesterday (Alan Cowell, New York Times, May 13). Meanwhile, Iran and the European Union held last-minute talks, diplomats at the agency said yesterday. Senior Iranian negotiator Sirus Naseri told Agence France-Presse that talks were continuing (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 12). U.S. officials, meanwhile, began planning for a possible emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency next week. A U.S. official said the Bush administration wants to have a strategy ready for when British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrives Tuesday in Washington (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, May 13). Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Tehran expects to see more seriousness from the European nations. “We expect to get out of this indecisive situation in the talks with our European friends,” he said (Cowell, New York Times, May 13). Elsewhere, United States yesterday expressed support for European countries in their warning that they would abandon negotiations if Iran resumes uranium enrichment, Reuters reported. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Washington had been informed by the Europeans that the letter would be sent (Reuters, May 12).
U.S. President George W. Bush’s recent rhetoric on North Korea has undermined efforts to resume stalled nuclear talks, a senior Chinese diplomat said yesterday (see GSN, May 12). Calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a “tyrant” last month “destroyed the atmosphere” for negotiations and undermined efforts to convince Pyongyang that Washington would be a fair negotiator, Yang Xiyu, China’s top official on North Korea’s nuclear program, told the New York Times. “It is true that we do not yet have tangible achievements” in ending North Korea’s nuclear program, Yang said. “But a basic reason for the unsuccessful effort lies in the lack of cooperation from the U.S. side.” Yang encouraged the Bush administration to seek an “informal channel” for a bilateral discussion with North Korean officials aimed at building confidence, the Times reported today. “I know the U.S. is reluctant to have even informal contacts” with North Korea, he said. “But as the world’s superpower, I would hope it can show more flexibility and sincerity to make a resumption of talks possible.” Yang also said there was “no solid evidence” that North Korea is preparing to conduct a nuclear test (Joseph Kahn, New York Times, May 13). Meanwhile, Japan today suggested moving ahead with multilateral talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program without North Korea’s participation, the Associated Press reported. Tokyo is considering calling for five-party talks involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, said Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura. Meanwhile, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill arrived in Seoul for meetings with top officials. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday urged Pyongyang to resume talks, while calling for the other negotiating partners to stick together. “The key is to keep a united front,” Rice said (Burt Herman, Associated Press/Sarasota Herald-Tribune, May 13). Elsewhere, a top South Korean official expressed optimism that Pyongyang would choose not to test a nuclear weapon, Reuters reported. “I believe that North Korea is undergoing a process of understanding the true meaning of reconciliation and cooperation that we seek,” said Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung. “And it is inevitable for North Korea to choose change and take the path of dialogue,” said Yoon (Lee/Kim, Reuters, May 13). South Korean National Intelligence Service chief Ko Young-koo said neither Seoul nor Washington had hard evidence of North Korean test preparations, Agence France-Presse reported today. “South Korea and the United States have kept watch on Kilju where North Korea has been digging a tunnel for unknown purposes since the late 1990s,” Ko told the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, according to committee member Im Jong-in. “We have no concrete information to confirm some media reports on a possible nuclear test in Kilju,” said Ko (Charles Whelan, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 13).
The University of Texas announced yesterday it would partner with defense contractor Lockheed Martin in a bid to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 6). “The work of Los Alamos national lab is fundamental to national security,” said University of Texas Board of Regents Chairman James Huffines. “The fact the Texas system is being considered for this work is a tribute to our faculty and the research they produce.” University of Texas Chancellor Mark Yudof said the university was not entering the bidding competition to conduct additional classified research. Lockheed Martin would conduct that work, while the university would focus on energy, health and environmental research at the facility. The partnership between the University of Texas and Lockheed Martin comes days after the University of California, which currently runs the laboratory, announced potential plans to join with engineering firm Bechtel to compete for management of the New Mexico facility (see GSN, May 12; Jim Vertuno, Associated Press/Modesto Bee, May 13).
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