Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi (shown here in a Feb. 21 photo) today at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference rejected demands by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer that Iran maintain a permanent freeze on its nuclear fuel cycle activities (AFP photo/ Prakash Singh). Iran Nuclear Dispute Takes Center Stage By Greg Webb and Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire UNITED NATIONS — Iran insisted today that it would continue to develop its uranium enrichment technology, holding a steady position in the face of a growing crisis (see GSN, May 2)...Full Story

Equipment Movement May Indicate North Korea Nuclear Test Preparation, Report Says Heavy equipment movement in North Korea could indicate efforts to prepare for an underground nuclear test, the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported today (see GSN, May 2)...Full Story

Official Defends U.S. Missile Interceptor System By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency last week again sought to defend its flagship, multibillion national missile defense program against charges it may never work effectively against enemy ICBMs because it could be fooled by simple countermeasures (see GSN, March 16)...Full Story

	Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Chinese Companies Continue to Export Controlled Items, State Department Official Says Chinese companies continue to export items that could be used by other countries in WMD or missile programs, despite Chinese export controls, a U.S. State Department official said last month (see GSN, March 23). The State Department sanctioned foreign companies 115 times from January 2001 through last month over exports of controlled items; 80 of those sanctions were aimed at Chinese companies, according to the official. “You can see that the great majority of entities we sanction are Chinese entities, and that’s because the great majority of the supply to proliferation programs that we see is from Chinese entities,” he said. Beijing would be “threatened by the destabilization of the world economy” if a war using chemical or biological weapons takes place in the Middle East and disrupts the world’s oil supply, the official said.  “It’s in their interest to make sure that Chinese companies are part of the solution rather than part of the problem,” he said. Some Chinese entities sanctioned under U.S. law, such as the state-owned manufacturers China North Industry Corp. and China Great Wall Industry Corp., are repeat offenders, according to the official.  About 400 of the nearly 1,000 deemed export license applications filed in the year ending September 2004 were for technology involving work performed by Chinese citizens, the official said. Such continued violations seem to indicate “that our sanctions policy is not working very well,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. U.S. sanctions policy should be altered to include penalties for both the subsidiary company and the parent company, and all penalties should be increased, Milhollin said in March 10 testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (State Department release, May 2). Back to top       Details Emerge on Bolton Conduct Former U.S. officials interviewed by U.S. Senate staffers have provided additional details of U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s conduct toward other federal personnel, particularly those who took stands that diverged from his beliefs, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, May 2). Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers have conducted more than 12 interviews in recent days as the panel considers Bolton’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf discussed three instances in which department personnel came under fire from Bolton. “I believe that it would be fair to stay that some of the officers in my bureau complained that they felt undue pressure to conform to the views of the undersecretary, versus the views that they could support,” Wolf said, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by the Times. Bolton blocked State Department officer Rexon Ryu from receiving an assignment after Ryu apparently mistakenly failed to submit a document to Bolton’s office, Wolf said. The officials also supported claims that Bolton has at times gone beyond intelligence estimates in portraying the WMD dangers posed by North Korea, Syria and Cuba, the Times reported. “John strongly believed that just because the intelligence community had a conclusion on an issue, that didn’t necessarily have to be his view,” said former CIA official Alan Foley (Douglas Jehl, New York Times, May 3). Bolton claimed in November 2001 that Sudan was one of five rogue nations — along with Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria — suspected of seeking biological weapons, the Boston Globe reported. At the time, the CIA stated only that Sudan “may be interested” in such weapons. The African nation was later dropped from the agency’s list of nations looking at bioweapons, the Globe reported. “I don’t think that it was commonly believed that Sudan had a growing interest in biological weapons,” said former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Avis Bohlen. “That was not part of the working assumption” (Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, April 29). Amid the continued allegations surrounding Bolton, the Bush administration is trying to shore up support among Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee who have expressed concerns about the nomination, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) is receiving the most attention. The White House is willing to have him meet with Bolton to discuss Voinovich’s concerns on the nominee’s interpersonal skills, AP reported. Senators Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) are potentially less likely to oppose Bolton, according to AP.   Chafee has said he believes President George W. Bush should be able to choose his own administration. The senator could also need support from the White House as he seeks re-election in 2006, while Hagel might not want to anger Republicans in advance of a potential 2008 run for the presidency (Liz Sidoti, Associated Press/ABC News, May 2). The fourth Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) said she is continuing to investigate the allegations against Bolton. At the moment, she is prepared to support his appointment, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. “I have not learned anything to date that would change my mind,” Murkowski said (Sam Bishop, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, May 2). Back to top

Iran Nuclear Dispute Takes Center Stage By Greg Webb and Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire UNITED NATIONS — Iran insisted today that it would continue to develop its uranium enrichment technology, holding a steady position in the face of a growing crisis (see GSN, May 2). The Iranian controversy has quickly emerged as the top problem facing the nations gathered here to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Officials from Tehran began holding high-level, back-room talks yesterday with key nations to push its position that the world should embrace its uranium enrichment program. “Iran, for its part, is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes,” Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi told the treaty conference this morning. “It is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of nonproliferation.” Last week, top Iranian officials began to ramp up tensions over the issue by reportedly vowing to resume some of the uranium enrichment activity that Tehran has suspended while it holds talks with the European Union. In particular, media reports have indicated that Iran is considering restarting its uranium conversion efforts, a process that changes uranium into a form that can be enriched in centrifuges (see related GSN story, today). Yesterday, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters here that such a move would lead to end to the EU talks. “We are ready to continue these talks,” he said, “based on the reality on the ground that there are no activities which are against the Paris agreement,” the deal struck last November in which Iran promised to suspend all uranium enrichment activities and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify the halt. The EU position, Fischer said, was that “there will be permanent cessation of however you will name it, the enrichment process, and there will be no closing of the fuel cycle” in Iran. Kharazi’s speech today clearly rejected that goal. “No one should be under the illusion,” he said, that Iran would accept measures that “theoretically or practically amount to cessation or even long-term suspension of legal activit[ies] which have been and will be carried out under the fullest and most intrusive IAEA supervision.” U.S. Pushes Hardest In its address to the conference yesterday, the United States maintained its hard-line strategy of being to only nation to publicly reject Iran’s assertion that its nuclear activities are peaceful. “For almost two decades Iran has conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons program,” said Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker. “Iran persists in not cooperating fully,” he said. “Iran has made clear its determination to retain the nuclear infrastructure it secretly built in violation of its NPT safeguards obligations, and is continuing to develop its nuclear capacities around the margins of the suspension it agreed to last November, for example, by continuing construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak.”  Saying the United States supports the efforts of European nations to negotiate a settlement to the dispute, Rademaker added that any resolution “must include permanent cessation of Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing efforts, as well as dismantlement of equipment and facilities related to such activity.” While many nations have urged the United States and other nuclear-armed states to accelerate moves required by the treaty toward disarmament, Rademaker focused his remarks on noncompliance issues raised by the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. “Today, the treaty is facing the most serious challenge in its history due to instances of noncompliance.” He added, “Some [countries] continue to use the pretext of a peaceful nuclear program to pursue the goal of developing nuclear weapons. We must confront this challenge in order to ensure that the treaty remains relevant.” Rademaker repeated proposals made by the United States last year on closing loopholes in the nuclear fuel cycle regime. These steps include universal adherence to the International Atomic Energy Agency Additional Protocol; “creating a special safeguards committee of the IAEA Board of Governors;” and “restricting the export of sensitive technologies.” A “robust” safeguard system “builds confidence that peaceful nuclear development is not being abused. Safeguards are therefore essential to facilitating peaceful nuclear programs,” Rademaker said. “An effective, transparent export control regime” would build confidence that the technology “will not be diverted to illegal weapons purposes.”  While these initiatives “call for action outside the formal framework of the NPT, they are grounded on the norms and principles of nuclear nonproliferation laid down by the treaty. If adopted, they will each answer directly real threats to the vitality of the treaty,” Rademaker said.  He also argued that the right in the treaty to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes is not unequivocal. While the treaty does offer the benefits of nuclear technology, he said it is conditional on meeting other requirements in the pact, specifically commitments not to participate in the transfers of nuclear weapons or weapons technology to other countries.    Rademaker also said the United States “remains fully committed to fulfilling our obligations under Article 6,” which requires the nuclear powers to move toward eventual complete nuclear disarmament   “We are proud to have played a leading role in reducing nuclear arsenals,” he said. The Moscow Treaty of 2002 will reduce strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200, and the numbers of nonstrategic warheads have dropped by 90 percent since the end of the Cold War, he said. “We have also reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our deterrence strategy and are cutting our nuclear stockpile almost in half, to the lowest level in decades.” The non-nuclear states addressing the conference also said noncompliance was a concern but were not as ready as the United States to place so much of the blame on Iran, nor were they willing to accept U.S. disarmament steps as significant progress. Germany’s Fischer said in his speech yesterday, “Our efforts must be directed equally towards the two central aims of this treaty,” preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting nuclear disarmament. “We can only successfully tackle this challenge if everyone contributes: nuclear-weapon states are called upon to live up to their commitments to further reduce their arsenals. Non-nuclear-weapon states must exercise their right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in a way that does not give rise to concern about misuse and military nuclearization,” he said.  “The breaches that have been identified with regard to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA have shaken our confidence in the aims of its nuclear program,” Fischer said. Therefore, France, Germany and United Kingdom “are conducting intensive negotiations with Iran in order to dispel the international community’s serious concerns.”  Those negotiations have “already borne fruit” in that Iran has “made a commitment to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities for the duration of the negotiations,” he said. A long-term agreement must “ensure that Iran’s nuclear program can only be used for peaceful purposes. This is the core issue, and we must come to a satisfactory mutual agreement on this matter,” Fischer added. “We must also critically assess the current situation with regard to nuclear disarmament,” Fischer said. “We should re-examine the existing arsenals of strategic and sub-strategic nuclear weapons and energetically work to further reduce them. …What we need now is new impetus for nuclear disarmament — not the least to effectively counter the danger of an erosion of the Nonproliferation Treaty.” Other nations New Zealand’s Disarmament Minister Marian Hobbs said the New Agenda Coalition — an ad hoc grouping of seven non-nuclear allies of the United States – “sees the pursuit of nuclear disarmament as a fundamental tool in addressing the international community’s deep concern about proliferation. Nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation are mutually reinforcing processes.” The coalition — Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden — has become something of a negotiating counterpart to the nuclear powers in the NPT review conferences, working to extract as many disarmament commitments as possible from the five nations. The New Agenda and other states did not dismiss disarmament steps taken by the nuclear powers, such as the Moscow Treaty, but said the initiatives fell short of what was agreed to at the 1995 and 2000 review conferences.  “We are willing to give credit where credit is due,” said Hobbs, acknowledging that “collective efforts are being made by the nuclear weapon states and others to secure the vast amounts of nuclear material that remain worldwide.”  On the other hand, she said, “The majority of weapons reductions are not irreversible, transparent or verifiable, and the role of nuclear weapons in security policies has not been diminished.” The New Agenda also wants to address “the troubling development that some nuclear weapon states are researching or even planning to develop new or significantly modify existing nuclear weapons. These actions have the potential to create the conditions for a new nuclear arms race and would be contrary to the treaty,” Hobbs said. Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern of Ireland, said, “We are concerned when it appears that nuclear weapons are still reaffirmed as central to strategic concepts for the foreseeable future. … Such plans do nothing to inspire confidence.”  The consensus agreement from the 2000 review conference included what has become known as the 13 practical steps — specific actions the nuclear powers would take as part of their commitment to elimination their nuclear weapons. Rademaker did not refer to the steps in his speech, but U.S. officials on other occasions have dismissed many of the steps as outdated. Ahern said the 13 steps — including ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and reducing the number of nonstrategic weapons — “retain a particular legitimacy. It is a matter of regret and deep disappointment that some parties now seem to cal this agreement into question.”  Fischer said Germany also continued to support the 13 steps. “Nuclear weapon states must also reaffirm their unequivocal undertaking to nuclear disarmament, and they must back this up with confidence-building steps,” he said. Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar of Malaysia, speaking on behalf of the nonaligned parties to the treaty, said, “The stress is on proliferation, rather than disarmament in good faith. This lack of balance in the implementation of the NPT threatens to unravel the NPT regime.” Back to top       Equipment Movement May Indicate North Korea Nuclear Test Preparation, Report Says Heavy equipment movement in North Korea could indicate efforts to prepare for an underground nuclear test, the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported today (see GSN, May 2). U.S. spy satellites have captured frequent movements of trucks, cranes and other heavy equipment in the Kilju region in northeast North Korea, a South Korean official was quoted by Chosun Ilbo as saying. “U.S. intelligence authorities believe the images and other information point to preparations for a possible underground nuclear test,” the source said. U.S. and South Korean officials have since denied the report, Reuters reported. A tunnel project was, however, detected in Kilju in the late 1990s and is being monitored closely, a South Korean Defense Ministry official told Reuters. “It is not clear what the purpose of the tunnel is,” the official said. Some South Korean experts criticized Seoul’s low-key reaction to the situation. “There appears to be a conscious attempt to underestimate the North’s missile threat,” said Kim Tae-woo, an expert on North Korea’s WMD program at the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses. “That’s despite the fact that South Korea is a hostage in the situation” (Jack Kim, Reuters, May 3). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United States has substantial military power in the Pacific, Reuters reported. “I don’t think anyone is confused about the ability of the United States to deter — both on behalf of itself and on behalf of its allies — North Korean nuclear ambitions or gains on the (Korean) Peninsula,” said Rice. “The United States maintains significant — and I want to underline ‘significant’ — deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region so I don’t think there should be doubt about our ability to deter whatever the North Koreans are up to,” she said. Rice urged North Korea to resume negotiations (Reuters, May 2). Analysts said Sunday’s missile test may have been an attempt by North Korea to force the United States to take it more seriously, the Financial Times reported. “North Korea’s leadership is demonstrating that they have options to counter the pressures being imposed upon them at a time of spiraling tensions on the peninsula,” said Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute. Other analysts said the missile test could be an attempt to force Washington into bilateral talks, the Times reported (Anna Fifield, Financial Times, May 3). U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he would not rule out the possibility of bilateral meetings between Washington and Pyongyang if North Korea keeps to the established six-party framework for addressing its nuclear program, Yonhap reported. “If they would like to talk to us in private, bilateral ways within the six-party process, or if they would like consultations between the rounds of the six-party process, I would be very open to those proposals,” Hill said in an interview with the Hankyoreh newspaper published yesterday. “Right now they have made it difficult because they are boycotting the process and they are looking for us to make some kind of concessions to show that they win, we lose,” he said. “What we cannot do is allow a situation where they try to bilateralize the talks and turn this into a U.S.-North Korean talk where the other four parties are just spectators,” Hill added (Yonhap/BBC Monitoring, May 2). Japan and the European Union yesterday released a joint statement urging Pyongyang to return to six-party talks and eliminate its nuclear reactors, Reuters reported (Teruaki Ueno, Reuters, May 2). Back to top       Iran to Resume Some Nuclear Activities While Sticking to Uranium Enrichment Freeze Iran confirmed today that it plans to resume some nuclear activities, but would stop short of enriching uranium, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 2). “Very certainly we will resume some of our activities,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “We are in the process of discussing among ourselves which activities, but this does not concern enrichment,” he said, adding that a decision would be made in about a week. “The negotiations [with the EU] are continuing, and as long as they continue the suspension of enrichment will continue,” Asefi said. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned that a decision by Iran to resume enrichment “would lead to a collapse of the talks,” forcing Brussels to side with Washington and refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council. He said the goal of talks was a “permanent cessation of the enrichment process,” which diplomats have said includes uranium conversion, according to AFP. Asefi, however, said Iran was not concerned about such warnings. “The Europeans know that we are not afraid of threats. This kind of rhetoric will have no impact on Iran,” he said. Iran should not unilaterally resume any enrichment activities, said International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. “I would hope that the Iranians will not take any unilateral decisions to initiate any activities that now are currently suspended. I think that any future move has to be agreed between both parties,” he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, May 3). Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani was quoted Sunday as saying that Iran could resume uranium conversion next week, AFP reported. “It is unlikely that we will resume enrichment, that is to say the activities at Natanz. But some activities at the UCF (Uranium Conversion Facility) at Isfahan could resume next week,” said Rohani (Agence France-Presse/TODAYonline.com, May 1). No additional negotiations with British, French or German officials have been scheduled, said Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, who met with Fischer yesterday, AFP reported. “We were discussing ways and means of how to move ahead. Still we have to continue our negotiations,” Kharazi said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, May 2). Iran’s threat to resume some nuclear activities has led to greater tension between the EU negotiators and Washington, diplomats said yesterday. Senior European officials expressed frustration to their U.S. counterparts over the Bush administration’s refusal to participate in talks, the Financial Times reported. At the same time, Washington was concerned that the EU would not keep its promise to refer Iran to the United Nations when the time came, said one U.S. official (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, May 3). Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday spoke again of U.S. support for the negotiations, AFP reported. “I reiterated to the foreign minister our support for the EU-3 negotiations with Iran that are aimed at getting Iran to give confidence to the international community,” Rice said, referring to French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who was traveling in Washington. Barnier and Rice had “a lot of questions still on whether Iran is taking [the negotiations] seriously,” said a senior State Department official. “It’s hard to say that [the negotiations] are solid when you have a party to the talks who every time they come to a new round threatens to blow the whole thing up,” the official said (Agence France-Presse/TurkishPress.com, May 2). Back to top       U.S. Not Prepared for Nuclear Terrorism, Experts Say The U.S. government has failed to prepare for a nuclear terrorist attack, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 22). For example, limited numbers of first responders have been trained to rapidly evacuate people downwind of a radiation cloud, according to public health specialists and government documents. “The United States is, at the moment, not well prepared to manage an [emergency] evacuation of this sort in the relevant time frame,” said Richard Falkenrath, former deputy homeland security adviser. “The federal government currently lacks the ability to [rapidly] generate and broadcast specific, geographically tailored evacuation instructions” across the country. The White House’s Homeland Security Council and the Energy Department both produced reports, obtained by the Post, detailing the effects of a terrorist nuclear strike on Washington. U.S. officials are in the early stages of planning strategies to communicate with endangered downwind communities, according to the Post. The Homeland Security's Web site, Ready.gov, also offers questionable information, experts said. A graphic indicates a person in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear blast could seek protection by going around a corner. “Ready.gov treats a nuclear weapon in this case as if it were a big truck bomb, which it’s not,” said Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists. “There’s no information in Ready.gov that would help your chances” of surviving a nuclear explosion or the resulting fallout, he said. While they acknowledge much work remains to prepare for nuclear terrorism, Homeland Security officials say progress has been made. “A lot of good work’s been done, and a lot of federal resources are poised to respond,” said Gil Jamieson, who helps run the department’s programs to coordinate emergency response efforts. “Can more work be done?  Absolutely.” Another report, completed in 2003 by the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, says the government lacks rules for dispatching first responders to radiated areas. The potential for a nuclear attack “requires a fundamental shift in radiological protection policy for members of the public and emergency responders,” the report says.   Progress in these areas has only started, officials said (John Mintz, Washington Post, May 3). Back to top       German Politicians Call for Withdrawal of U.S. Nukes Representatives from Germany’s ruling coalition and opposition parties called on the United States remove all its nuclear weapons from Europe, Agence France-Presse reported Sunday (see GSN, Feb. 9). Washington could “send a message in Russia’s direction to revive the nonproliferation process,” Gert Weisskirchen, the foreign affairs spokesman for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats, told the Berliner Zeitung. Guido Westerwelle, leader of the opposition Free Democrats, said the nuclear weapons in Europe were all relatively short-range, making them practically useless in targeting faraway enemy states. About 480 U.S. nuclear weapons are stationed in Europe, according to AFP, with an estimated 150 of those in Germany (Agence France-Presse, May 2). Back to top

Bioshield II Legislation Introduced in Senate Three U.S. senators last week introduced Bioshield II legislation to continue to promote development of countermeasures to a bioterror attack (see GSN, July 21, 2004). The initial Project Bioshield, signed into law last year, set aside $5.6 billion to fund development of drugs and other products against a WMD event. However, potential manufacturers and analysts said roadblocks remained to development of such products (see GSN, Oct. 4, 2004). “The best way to combat the very real and serious threat of bioterrorism is to utilize our greatest strength — the entrepreneurial talent of our nation — in our national defense,” Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), who co-sponsored Bioshield II with Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), said in a press release. “The Bioshield law enacted last year takes the first step, but without additional reforms, companies are not likely to risk their own capital to fund this research, leaving us with a government-funding model that will be exceedingly expensive and not likely to produce the results we need,” Lieberman added. Bioshield II calls for tax incentives to promote capital investment in research, patent incentives and other intellectual property protections, and liability protections for manufacturers whose vaccines cannot be fully tested, as they would be designed to counteract potentially fatal infections. The legislation pledges federal money for products that meet government specifications, but sets no specific funding levels, the press release states. Legislation introduced in January by Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and Senate GOP leaders also seeks to expand on the original Bioshield. Lieberman, Hatch and Brownback hope to combine their proposals with the earlier bill (U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman release, April 28). Back to top       Senators Cast Doubt on U.S. Bioterror Preparedness By Fresia Rodriguez Cadavid and Elaine Povich CongressDaily WASHINGTON — U.S. senators expressed concern Thursday that despite the government's ongoing efforts, the nation remains susceptible to a bioterrorist threat (see GSN, April 1). At a hearing on bioterrorism, Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said while progress has been made to improve national security, the country should not underestimate how far it needs to go to safeguard the country's food and vaccine supplies. President George W. Bush’s fiscal 2006 budget seeks $274 million to beef up a series of programs to combat the threat of bioterrorism, up from $100 million the previous year, senators said. But critics have charged that the budget also calls for cuts in antibioterrorism efforts at the local level. Doubts raised by Gregg came as Penrose Albright, the assistant secretary for science and technology at the Homeland Security Department, testified specifically on the Bioshield program coordinated by the Homeland Security and HHS departments. Signed into law last July, the program will provide $5.6 billion over 10 years for the purchase of vaccines to combat biological weapons. It also would expedite research into addressing the threat posed by the weapons. After passing the bill, lawmakers immediately began work on a Bioshield II bill aimed at industry concerns that impediments remain to industry development of such products (see related GSN story, today). Albright testified there is not a “good way” to identify pathogens, such as anthrax and smallpox, coming across the border into the United States. He added that the department is focusing efforts not on prevention but on detection before infected populations exhibit symptoms of a bioterrorism attack. Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) questioned whether the United States has enough protection on its borders against deadly germs being brought into the country. Albright said it is almost impossible to protect against biological agents being brought into the United States, since a supply as small as a quarter could cause widespread sickness. “No, we don't have a good way of detecting someone trying to bring a vial of pathogen across the border,” he said. He added that the best way to protect the nation is to detect an attack when it occurs so that vaccines can be distributed as quickly as possible. Noting that the flu can be lethal to vulnerable populations such as the elderly, Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) said the country was unprepared to deal with an influenza pandemic. Craig said the nation “lucked out this year. We made it through the flu season.  But I was amazed at our vulnerability there.” He said a small amount of influenza virus could cause an epidemic. “The flu isn't a seasonal nuisance,” Albright said. “The flu is a very, very unique threat to this country, going back to [the epidemic of] 1918.” Stewart Simonson, assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness at HHS, stopped short of agreeing with Craig's assessment, saying “I would not say we are unprepared, but it presents an enormous challenge to us.” Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Gregg also questioned whether the process used by Simonson's office to award vaccine development contracts ensured open competition and delivery to prevent a vaccine shortfall. Gregg noted that during this year's flu season, the main manufacturer of flu vaccine, Chiron Corp., was forced to withdraw its supply because of contamination, causing a severe shortage in the United States. “Are we creating the same situation with anthrax?” Gregg asked, referring to the flu vaccine shortfall last winter. Simonson responded that the agency has negotiated a contract with California's VaxGen for 75 million doses of an anthrax vaccine and also has ordered 5 million additional doses from other suppliers to satisfy immediate needs. Although Simonson said the different agreements show that they are “seeking not to put all our eggs in one basket,” he added that he remains unsure if the contract award process is being done right. “We're learning as we go,” he said. Back to top

Newport Still Aims to Ship Wastewater The appearance of a potential new technology for eliminating VX nerve agent without creating wastewater has not changed the U.S. Army’s existing plans for chemical weapons neutralization at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana, the New Jersey Courier-Post reported Saturday (see GSN, April 11). Perma-Fix Environmental Services of Atlanta claims that its mobile technology could eliminate VX without creating hydrolysate wastewater. The Army has faced strong opposition to its present plan to ship hydrolysate from Indiana to be treated at a New Jersey plant and then dumped into the Delaware River. Weapons disposal is expected to begin in the next two weeks. Shifting gears now could delay the project by two years and increase costs by $300 million, the Army said. “Right now, we’re still moving forward with our proposed contract with DuPont,” said Jeff Lindblad, spokesman for the Army Chemical Materials Agency. “It’s not our intent to solicit new bids on a secondary waste treatment process.” Perma-Fix President Louis Centofanti argues that his company’s technology has already been tested on Army VX and could be installed quickly and at a reasonable price, the Courier-Post reported. U.S. Representative Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) said he questions the Army cost estimates. He said a group of lawmakers from his state and Indiana will press the Army to consider alternatives to wastewater shipments. Plans include placing in a Defense Department authorization bill, “a prohibition or, at the very least, a delay until further studies can be done,” Andrews said. “They’re just wrong and we’re not going to let them do it,” he said (Lawrence Hajna, Courier-Post, April 30). Back to top

Official Defends U.S. Missile Interceptor System By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency last week again sought to defend its flagship, multibillion national missile defense program against charges it may never work effectively against enemy ICBMs because it could be fooled by simple countermeasures (see GSN, March 16). Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said at an event hosted here by the National Defense University Foundation that the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system has an “ability to deal with simple threats.” Building and linking additional radars in 2005 and 2006 will “allow us begin to address those more complex threats,” he said. The Missile Defense Agency has been rapidly constructing the system — installing interceptors in Alaska and California, constructing numerous sophisticated sensors, and linking up a massive command and control network. It plans to spend at least $20 billion on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program through fiscal 2011. The agency also plans to conduct an unprecedented, more operationally realistic intercept test of the system at an undetermined date this year. The test, Obering said, would incorporate for the first time the interceptor missile-kill vehicle combination now deployed in the system instead of a previously used prototype, fire the interceptor from an operational silo, use an existing operational radar to track the target missile, and use the same command and control software that is in the deployed system. That test is intended to satisfy a congressional requirement made last year to conduct a more operationally realistic intercept test by Oct. 1, which supposedly would illustrate the system’s potential capability against an actual attack. Critics said last week that even if all of those plans come off, it is still doubtful that the system could be made to work effectively against even a simple threat. Even shiny balloons could easily fool the system, they said. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, the senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, during a question and answer session at the event, cited to Obering a letter released last month by 22 civilian scientists. “Even if the defense components work perfectly as designed, technical assessments demonstrate that the GMD system will be unable to counter a missile attack that includes even unsophisticated countermeasures,” the letter said. Defining the Challenge Defense Department officials have identified a potential North Korean long-range missile carrying a nuclear warhead as the primary near-term threat that requires the missile defense system. Last week, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, told lawmakers that North Korea was believed to have developed a miniaturized warhead capable of being carried by a ballistic missile into U.S. territory. The Washington Post reported the assessment, but also that the intelligence community’s consensus view was that North Korea was years instead away from developing such a weapon (see GSN, April 29). Responding to Gard’s comment, Obering said that the critics “are correct [given the system’s available sensors] in terms of our ability to deal with very, very complex threat suites.” He said, though, “It can deal with simple threat suites,” without specifying what those would include. He described as “very complex” countermeasures “Mylar balloons, and chaff and other things.” Thomas Cochran, director of the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, disputed the complexity of such countermeasures, arguing they could be included in a rudimentary attack. “I just submit that if you can deliver a warhead from North Korea to the United States, you would not consider Mylar balloons and reflecting tape which could defeat that IR [infrared sensor on the kill vehicle] a complex countermeasure,” he told Obering. Obering said that while launching a Mylar balloon decoy with a warhead may not be difficult, doing it well has proven tricky even for the U.S. missile defense testing program. “I will tell you, it’s a very interesting environment, space is,” he said. Obering said the scientists who issued the letter may be out of touch with the latest capabilities for dealing with countermeasures. “We know a lot more about that than probably anybody on this planet because of our experimentation program,” he said of the agency. Obering said further that previous successful intercept tests of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system were done in the presence of balloons. “We had balloons in those tests and we were able to intercept a warhead as part of it. People dismiss that from us, they just kind of skim over that as part of our test program,” he said. Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, countered in an interview: “They had balloons that did not look like the warhead. They had large balloons and small balloons.” “That’s not an unreasonable thing to do in the early phases of testing … but there’s no country in the world that’s going to deploy a large balloon decoy with its medium sized warhead. They will either deploy identically sized balloons with the warhead in one of them or balloons that look like the warhead,” he said. Alternatives Sought In addition to addressing the countermeasures challenge, Obering said, the agency is pursuing multiple additional technological strategies for stopping an ICBM attack at different stages of flight, including by striking the missile as it boosts into space and as it heads toward earth. An emerging approach he cited is to develop multiple miniature kill vehicles that can be launched from a single interceptor missile against numerous targets. The agency created a multiple kill vehicle program in its fiscal 2006 budget released this year and projects spending $1.3 billion on it through fiscal 2011.   The technology potentially “dramatically alters the statistical probability of kill in favor of the defender and provides for early, decisive engagement of an adversary complex,” an agency budget document said this year. The multiple kill vehicle approach, though, has been considered potentially too costly by officials (see GSN, April 10, 2002). The agency continues to seek innovative ways to reduce the per-interceptor cost down to below $50 million, according to an agency document released last year.   Back to top

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