U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, shown in the Middle East last month, has authorized a plan to reorganize the State Department’s arms control and nonproliferation offices (Getty Images/Mladen Antonov). Bush Looks to Cut State Dept. Arms Control Offices By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — While Congress is on vacation, the Bush administration is planning to quietly eliminate most State Department arms control offices, phasing out senior positions and merging personnel and functions with nonproliferation and other units, according to a notification document sent to Congress and obtained by Global Security Newswire (see GSN, March 10)...Full Story

U.S. Populace Frets Over WMD Terrorism Possibility By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Nearly one in two people in the United States worries “a lot” about the possibility of a terrorist WMD attack, and almost nine in 10 worry at least “somewhat” about such an event, according to a survey released today (see GSN, April 28)...Full Story

Scientists Turn Plague Protein Against Disease By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A tool used by plague bacteria to spread infection may ultimately be the key to developing the first safe and effective vaccine against the pathogen, according to a research article published last week by scientists from the University of Chicago (see GSN, June 14)...Full Story

Iran Delays Resuming Nuclear Work Again Iran announced today it would postpone resuming uranium conversion, backing down from threats to break seals on equipment at Isfahan today, Reuters reported (see GSN, Aug. 2)...Full Story

	Wednesday, August 3, 2005

California Trains Private Guards in Antiterrorism People studying to become licensed private security guards in California have been required since last month to study antiterrorism materials as part of their training, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, May 18). “It's a simple concept, but it's like a 10 times increase in the number of eyes and ears out there," said Gary Winuk, chief deputy director of the California Governor’s Office of Homeland Security. Training includes how to identify a mysterious package or person and who to alert if one is identified. Potential terrorist weapons, weapons of mass destruction and responding to a terrorist attack are also covered.  Four hours of the 40 hours of training is spent studying counterterrorism, said Steve Giorgi, one of those involved in drafting the curriculum. Giorgi is a former deputy director at the state Consumer Affairs Department and a former deputy director for the California Office of Homeland Security, AP reported. Private guards already licensed in California are also receiving the four-hour training course, according to AP.  Lesson materials include a book, a DVD and a compact disc developed in conjunction with the California National Guard, the University of California, Irvine, the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and private security guard companies. Giorgi said these materials were funded by a $200,000 federal grant and are being distributed at no costs to businesses and security firms across the country. “There's no state that does anything like this,” said Steve Reed, a security official at a Sacramento mall who assisted in developing lesson materials and teaches classes. “We’re trying to get them into that mind-set of knowing what to look for and who to call.” There are approximately 200,000 licensed security guards in California, and another 200,000 unlicensed guards, according to AP. “This is basically 400,000 additional eyes and ears out there to observe suspicious activity,” Giorgi said, pointing out that California only has 90,000 sworn law enforcement officials. “Cameras and security officers in the right place really can make a difference” (Don Thompson, Associated Press/Tribune, Aug. 3). Back to top

Bush Looks to Cut State Dept. Arms Control Offices By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — While Congress is on vacation, the Bush administration is planning to quietly eliminate most State Department arms control offices, phasing out senior positions and merging personnel and functions with nonproliferation and other units, according to a notification document sent to Congress and obtained by Global Security Newswire (see GSN, March 10). The changes, many of which could begin in less than two weeks, appear to reflect a determined shift by the administration away from decades of U.S. focus on promoting international arms control agreements toward ad hoc, less universal efforts to prevent the spread of restricted weapons to terrorists and certain regimes. “We were able to prevail in the Cold War because our government was structured to meet the challenges of the day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement Friday announcing the plan. “Today, protecting America from weapons of mass destruction requires more than deterrence and arms control treaties,” she said.  Offices would be “reconfigured to better focus the department’s efforts to prevent the spread of WMD, including through the Proliferation Security Initiative, counterproliferation, interdiction, and by increasing the focus on WMD/terrorism and threat reduction programs,” the notification says. The changed structure would help “best address the security threats to our nation in the post-9/11 world,” it says. Independent arms control experts criticized the plan. “It dismisses arms control, fragments it, and essentially makes it disappear,” said John Holum, who served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security during the Clinton administration. Rice “has been sold a bill of goods. She thinks that [the State Department] will be more effective, but they’ll be less important in these fields,” he said. “What this reorganization attempts to do is to institutionalize the Bush administration’s negative attitude towards nuclear arms reductions and conventional arms control,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “You can’t precisely say that they are taking the arms control out of the State Department, but it comes close to that,” he said. “All of the functions are going to continue, they are just going to be realigned for efficiency,” said department Arms Control Bureau spokeswoman Leann Bullin. While Congress is Away Rice said Friday that the department would be “working with the committees on Capitol Hill to implement these reforms.” However, the department could begin implementing the changes weeks before Congress returns, Bullin said. The State Department officially notified Congress on July 29, its last work day before recessing until Sept. 6.  “In 15 days, hopefully there will be something to say after Congress has reviewed it,” Bullin said in a phone interview yesterday. “That’s the congressional requirement for review.” While the State Department publicly announced the plan Friday with a press release and comments by Rice, it gave relatively little detail on what would happen. A Refocus of Efforts The plan includes eliminating the department’s arms control and nonproliferation bureaus and creating in their place a single “Bureau for International Security and Nonproliferation” with offices that largely combine staff and functions. The arms control bureau’s senior positions of deputy assistant secretary for strategic affairs and deputy assistant secretary for multilateral and conventional arms control would be eliminated. Each is responsible for three offices that would be disbanded or moved. The nonproliferation bureau positions of deputy assistant secretary for nonproliferation controls and deputy assistant secretary for nuclear nonproliferation also would be cancelled. Each control five offices that would be merged, broken up, or remain intact under the plan. All of those officials would be replaced by three new deputy assistant secretaries, for threat reduction, export controls and negotiations, for counterproliferation, and for nuclear nonproliferation policy and negotiation. The plan would cancel the position of special negotiator for chemical and biological weapons, now held by Ambassador Donald Mahley, who was the senior official responsible for negotiating an inspections mechanism to the Biological Weapons Convention before the administration scuttled the negotiations in 2002. A “WMD/Terrorism” office would be created to “pursue the nexus between WMD and terrorism,” the document says. The office would be “exclusively focused on thwarting terrorist groups seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction — today’s greatest threat to national security,” according to the State Department statement also released Friday. Kimball singled out two particular changes for criticism. The plan, he noted, would combine the arms control bureau’s Office of Strategic and Theater Defenses, which promotes missile defense, with the nonproliferation bureau’s missile technology control elements of its Office of Chemical, Biological and Missile Affairs. “There is a potential for a very real conflict within that office,” he said. The move could “deprive the State Department of independent thinking and advice on these two potentially competing priorities,” he said. The reorganization also would relocate the arms control bureau’s offices for Strategic Negotiations and Implementation and for implementing the Moscow Treaty on deployed strategic nuclear weapons to an expanded Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. Kimball argued that the first office still is needed to conduct negotiations, which would not appear to be under the purview of the new bureau. The Office of Strategic Negotiations and Implementation’s work “is more than simply verification and implementation tasks because there are a variety of negotiations to be conducted, that are being conducted, on agreements that have yet to be concluded,” he said. Form and Substance John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control organization, said he does not believe the changes are great cause for concern, as they should not change the administration’s approach to arms control and nonproliferation for better or worse. “I don’t know that it makes that much difference. Whether the administration is good or bad on arms control or proliferation doesn’t depend on how they organize the State Department but how the top leaders are thinking and what they plan to do,” he said. Kimball, on the other hand, argued that “form does affect substance” and said the administration is arguing that point when it says the reorganization is intended to meet new challenges. “If you have an office that’s focused on one set of things to the exclusion of others, you are going to be losing human expertise, and knowledge, and awareness of what’s going on in other areas that may be useful to U.S. security in the long run,” he said. Former official Holum said the changes could weaken advocacy of arms control and nonproliferation perspectives during interagency policy debates. “The highest ranking person in the State Department whose responsibility will be for nonproliferation will be a deputy assistant secretary. As it is now, the highest ranking person is an assistant secretary,” he said. “You’re going to have people in the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, Commerce, all of the other agencies that are players in this area, at a higher level.   So the State Department will be less of a player,” he said. Combining arms control and nonproliferation expertise, he added, would not necessarily add value, because “arms control and nonproliferation are different disciplines and different functions.” “They are basically saying we care about nonproliferation but we don’t care much about the kinds of international negotiations and structures that make nonproliferation effective,” he said. The document sent to Congress says that by grouping together specialists of various types, the reorganization would “streamline and refocus [arms control and nonproliferation] offices for the future, make them operationally more effective, and save personnel resources.” The plan also would “reduce top-heavy management and improve the personnel structure to better address future challenges and eliminate overlap,” it says. Some personnel would be relocated to work in other national security bureaus of the State Department. Authority to offer early retirement also would be sought “to address the headroom problem in some AC and NP offices,” it says. The notification gives no specifics on how many people would be targeted for early retirement, relocation or inclusion into newly created offices. Kimball said the new Bureau for International Security and Nonproliferation would have about one-third more offices than the current nonproliferation bureau. “If there were problems with management before, those managerial problems can only be made more difficult because that assistant secretary will be responsible for overseeing more people with a wider range of capabilities,” he said. Back to top       U.S. Populace Frets Over WMD Terrorism Possibility By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Nearly one in two people in the United States worries “a lot” about the possibility of a terrorist WMD attack, and almost nine in 10 worry at least “somewhat” about such an event, according to a survey released today (see GSN, April 28). Public Agenda’s Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index, based on a nationwide telephone survey, also indicates most people give the government a grade of C or lower for efforts at “stopping countries or groups from getting nuclear weapons.” The index, which the opinion research group carried out in collaboration with the journal Foreign Affairs, is the first in a planned series of surveys aiming to chart developments in U.S. public opinion about foreign policy. “We thought it would be very good, particularly over time, to track people’s concerns, and I think that this first project does give us a snapshot of people in the midst of making their minds up about an issue of enormous importance,” Public Agenda founder Daniel Yankelovich told reporters yesterday ahead of the survey release. Responses from 1,004 adults surveyed indicate widespread concern over the situation in Iraq and relations with Muslim countries but little coherence in people’s views about how to address those problems. The Iraq war was most often cited as the most important problem in U.S. foreign relations, with 17 percent of respondents placing the war first among their concerns. Terrorism and security worries ranked second, at 11 percent. Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said they worry “a lot” that “terrorists may obtain biological, chemical or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.,” while another 40 percent said they worry “somewhat” about that prospect.    On the question of whether “there may be another major terrorist attack against the U.S. in the near future,” 37 percent of respondents said they worry “a lot,” and 42 percent said they worry “somewhat.” The third option in both cases was “don’t worry.” Asked to grade the government on work toward various goals, 29, 15 and 8 percent of respondents gave the United States grades of C, D and F, respectively, for preventing nuclear proliferation, while 27 percent gave the government a B and 13 percent gave it an A. Asked whether Washington is “giving the war on terror all of the attention it deserves,” 23 percent of people awarded the government a grade of A, while 35 percent gave it a B, 23 percent gave it a C, 9 percent gave it a D and 6 percent an F. In another series of questions, respondents were asked whether various steps would improve U.S. security “a great deal,” “somewhat” or “not at all.” Sixty-five percent said “a great deal” of improvement would result from improved intelligence work, and 74 percent said “exploring new technologies or placing weapons in space” would help at least “somewhat.” “Launching pre-emptive strikes against countries that develop weapons of mass destruction,” according to 30 percent of respondents, would help “a great deal.” Thirty-one and 34 percent, respectively, said such attacks would help “somewhat” and “not at all.” Back to top       U.S., Russian Officials Share WMD Detection Tactics Russian and U.S. customs agents are expected to exchange information on inspecting transport containers for WMD materials at a four-day meeting this week in the Russian port city of Vladivostok, ITAR-Tass reported (see GSN, July 21). Representative from the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Embassy in Russia and Russian customs officials are expected to perform inspections on cargo at the port city. The meetings began Monday.  Last month, Russian customs agents discovered a strontium rod mixed in with scrap metal on a truck at the port. The rod was located with a radiation detection device, according to ITAR-Tass (ITAR-Tass, Aug. 1). Back to top

Iran Delays Resuming Nuclear Work Again Iran announced today it would postpone resuming uranium conversion, backing down from threats to break seals on equipment at Isfahan today, Reuters reported (see GSN, Aug. 2). “We hope to restart work by the beginning of next week when preparations are complete,” said top Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Aug. 3). The plant would convert uranium ore into gas, which could then be enriched into fuel for nuclear power stations or weapons development, according to Reuters. The International Atomic Energy Agency had earlier today made an appeal that Tehran delay the work at least a week so that its inspectors could be in place to monitor the activity. “We need until the middle of next week to get our surveillance equipment in place before any seals could be cut and nuclear activities started,” the agency said in a statement. “The agency calls on Iran again not to start any activities in Isfahan before the IAEA inspection system is in place,” it said (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Aug. 3). British, French and German foreign ministers and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana yesterday sent a letter of warning to Rohani, the London Times reported. “Were Iran to resume currently suspended activities, our negotiations would be brought to an end, and we would have no option but to pursue other courses of action,” the letter says. Tehran, however, insisted there was no turning back on the decision. “The decision has been taken. Work has begun,” said President Mohammad Khatami said on his final day in office (Richard Beeston, The Times, Aug. 3). Rohani said today he had responded in a letter to the European Union, complaining of its “unacceptable threats.” He reiterated that he would likely step down from his post under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office today, but added that there would be continuity in Tehran’s nuclear policy (Hafezi, Reuters, Aug. 3). In his first official address as president, Ahmadinejad said he would work to eliminate weapons of mass destruction around the world, Agence France-Presse reported. “I will plead for the suppression of all weapons of mass destruction,” said Ahmadinejad (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 3). Elsewhere, China today urged Iran and the European Union to continue their diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff, AFP reported. “China supports continued diplomatic efforts to properly settle the Iran nuclear issue within the International Atomic Energy Agency framework at an early date,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, Aug. 3). The United States should guarantee that it does not seek regime change in Iran if it wants to halt Tehran’s nuclear program, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday. “The most important factor would be to guarantee the Iranians that their territorial integrity” would not be violated, Blix told the Associated Press. “For Iran, which feels subjected to American pressure, to refrain from [uranium] enrichment, they probably want some kind of declaration that they are not subjected to any risks — either an attack across the border or via cruise missiles, or that the CIA or someone else tries any subversive measures to change the regime,” said Blix (Mattias Karen, Associated Press/Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug. 2). Back to top       China Offers Fourth Draft of Proposed Joint Statement at North Korea Nuclear Talks China today offered a fourth draft of a proposed joint statement on North Korea’s nuclear program in an effort to conclude more than a week of thus-far fruitless six-nation negotiations, Reuters reported (see GSN, Aug. 2). Delegates in Beijing held bilateral meetings on the text this morning, but an expected afternoon plenary session failed to materialize. “At the moment there are no prospects of a plenary session to be held today,” said top Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae. “Efforts are still being made to reach a final agreement.” The newest version of the statement contains references to eliminating Pyongyang’s nuclear programs and corresponding measures such as energy aid to North Korea by the other parties, top South Korean envoy Song Min-soon said earlier today. Security guarantees to North Korea, international nuclear inspections, civilian nuclear development by Pyongyang and normalization of relations with Tokyo and Washington are also mentioned, the Yonhap news agency reported. The U.S. delegation said the talks could end without an agreement, giving representatives time to return to their respective countries for consultations before reconvening. “I don’t know at this point whether we will get it to an agreed text, but I think it’s getting to an end-game text,” U.S. Assistance Secretary of State Christopher Hill said today (Kim/Ueno, Reuters, Aug. 3). Contested issues centered on what level of dismantlement the North must agree to and whether peaceful nuclear technology could be allowed, said Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura (Audra Ang, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 3). Today’s plenary meeting did not take place because the North Korean delegation failed to show up, a source told Agence-France-Presse. The meeting was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m., but top North Korean envoy Kim Kye Gwan and his negotiators left the meeting venue this morning for their embassy and never returned. “The North Korea delegation has not come out of its embassy compound since midday today,” the source told AFP. “They did not show up at the plenary session scheduled to open in the afternoon,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 3). Back to top       U.S. Slams U.N. Reform Document The United States yesterday criticized a document outlining planned reforms at the United Nations, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, July 6). U.S. Deputy Ambassador Anne Patterson said the document is excessive in length, does not focus on U.S. concerns and is not well organized. She said it focuses too strongly on disarmament instead of nonproliferation. “The document is too long and not worded in a manner that heads of state normally agree to or endorse,” Patterson said. “The development section is over 15 pages long.” Patterson also blasted the document for failing to address the U.S. contention that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the potential for WMD terrorism are the major threats today to world peace, AP reported. The United States would not support the reform document’s language on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which is opposed by the White House, Patterson said. “The nonproliferation and disarmament section falls well short of what the U.S. can accept” (Nick Wadhams, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 2). Meanwhile, seven nations yesterday released a statement calling for a stop to the spread of nuclear weapons and increased disarmament activities, Reuters reported (see GSN, July 27). Australia, Chile, Indonesia, Norway, Romania, South Africa and the United Kingdom hope the statement, released “at a time when the risks of proliferation and actual use of nuclear weapons constitute one of the most fundamental threats to our common security,” will be included in a declaration adopted at the end of a U.N. world leaders summit next month. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen said that 30 countries have already signed on to the statement, and that the declaration has received support from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Jean Ping. Petersen said the United States has not taken a position on the statement. “I really hope it will come in the next few weeks. We’ll see,” Petersen said (Irwin Arieff, Reuters, Aug. 2 ). Back to top

Scientists Turn Plague Protein Against Disease By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A tool used by plague bacteria to spread infection may ultimately be the key to developing the first safe and effective vaccine against the pathogen, according to a research article published last week by scientists from the University of Chicago (see GSN, June 14). While plague continues to occur naturally, a more recent fear is that it would be used in an act of bioterrorism. Terrorists could develop an aerosolized version of pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs and can be passed from person to person. Pneumonic plague would kill anyone infected who did not receive antibiotics shortly after exposure, according to a University of Chicago Hospitals press release. The possibility of terrorists acquiring such a contagious weapon has created “an urgent need for vaccine development to protect humans against bubonic and pneumonic plague,” researchers wrote in a paper published in the August edition of Infection and Immunity. Plague has been used historically as a primitive weapon, with infected bodies catapulted into cities or used to taint water supplies. However, it would take “a lot of training and a lot of equipment” to turn the plague bacteria into a sophisticated weapon, said university Microbiology Department research associate Melanie Marketon. Both the United States and Soviet Union worked with pneumonic plague during the Cold War, according to a release by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. “It’s been used as a weapon in the past, and I would certainly say it could be done again,” Marketon said in an interview. Plague bacteria could be collected from humans or animals that had become infected naturally, said David Withum, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bioterrorism preparedness coordinator in Fort Collins, Colo. Still, high levels of scientific expertise would be needed to weaponize the germ, he said. U.S. laboratories that work with plague use multiple layers of security to ensure the bacteria are not misused, Marketon said. The U.S. Patriot Act also mandates restrictions on access to select agents such as plague, anthrax and ricin. Marketon said she expects that laboratories in other nations have developed similar safeguards. The Chicago scientists, with a colleague from Michigan State University, published two papers on the plague. One focuses on the method by which the bacteria overcome a body’s immune system. The other looks at how a protein used in the infection process could be turned against the plague. Researchers exposed mice to the plague, and then examined the animals’ spleens two to three days later, according to an article published online July 28 in Science Express. They found that the large majority of infected cells were macrophages, neutrophils or dendretic cells — the components of the “innate” immune system that provides a body’s first line of defense against infection. Those cells are supposed to break up bacteria and present them for elimination by the more powerful T and B cells.  The “adaptive” immune system can take up to 10 days to fully respond. “By that time, with plague, the host is dead,” study author Olaf Schneewind, university microbiology chairman, said in the press release. Identifying the specific cells targeted by the bacteria could help researchers develop drugs to counteract that destructive interaction, thus bolstering the immune system, Marketon said. There is no direct evidence yet that the plague infection process in mice occurs identically in humans, but previous animal testing and reports on human plague victims indicate similarities, Marketon said. The plague bacterium injects its toxins into a cell through a needle-like extension. Key to the process is the LcrV protein, which helps puncture the cell membrane and suppresses the cell’s immune response, according to the Infection and Immunity article. “Without it, the bacteria are relatively harmless,” Schneewind said in the release. Researchers previously have found that the protein’s harmful effect on the immune system would block its use as a vaccine, the paper states. The University of Chicago scientists tested 11 versions of the protein, each time removing a different set of 30 amino acids. Testing found that one version produced infection-neutralizing antibodies that protected mice against higher than lethal doses of the bacteria while doing minimal damage to the immune response. “Our data provide the first evidence of plague vaccines that do not suppress innate immune responses … and that may be useful for plague vaccination in animals, and, perhaps, humans,” the paper states. Further animal testing is anticipated in developing the vaccine, according to the press release. Preparing it for actual use against bioterror would take years, said researcher Katie Overheim. “This isn’t something that will be a vaccine two weeks from now,” she said. “We’re still just in the beginning phases.” Back to top       U.S. Considers Postal Delivery of Emergency Drugs U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said the United States is considering using postal workers to deliver drugs in the event of a bioterrorism attack, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 1). “We're finding that the distribution systems are not adequate to put medicines in the hands of people fast enough, so we're beginning to look at alternative ways to speed that up,” Leavitt told AP. “We're looking at having more points of distribution, for example. We're experimenting with having the Postal Service be able to deliver them, because they walk those routes every day,” he added. Leavitt said fire stations are also being considered as drug distribution centers (Kevin Freking, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 2). Back to top

U.S. Army Works to Restart Newport CW Destruction U.S. Army officials are working to remove the flammable chemical in wastewater produced by VX nerve agent destruction at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana so that the waste can be safely disposed of, The News Journal reported today (see GSN, July 1). Work at Newport stopped in June because of concerns about the potential for fires caused by the waste product. Once the chemical is removed, the Army hopes to restart weapons disposal, according to the News Journal. Army Chemical Materials Agency spokesman Jeff Lindblad said changes are planned so that the waste product would not ignite spontaneously at temperatures of 140 degrees or lower, the standard used nationally for hazardous waste management. The waste product was originally believed to be flammable at 200 degree, but subsequent tests showed the ignition point to be between 68 and 88 degrees. The problem was traced to a compound called diisopropylamine. “They'll basically try to remove it. I'm not sure of the whole process.   They're looking at various ways,” Lindblad said. The wastewater ultimately could be shipped east for final processing and dumping in the Delaware River. Delaware officials plan to monitor the  process, said David Small, deputy secretary for Delaware's Natural Resources and Environmental Control Department. The state is awaiting safety test results from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We're still in a holding pattern, as far as I know,” Small said (Jeff Montgomery/News Journal, Aug. 3). Back to top

Israel Asks Ukraine to Demand Return of Nuclear-Capable Missiles Smuggled to Iran Israel has requested that Ukraine insist on the return of 12 nuclear-capable X-55 cruise missiles smuggled to Iran four years ago, Ha’aretz reported Monday (see GSN, April 11). Officials made the appeal last week during a visit to Israel by Ukrainian Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko, according to Ha’aretz. Tehran has denied ever having received the weapons (Ze’ev Schiff, Ha’aretz, Aug. 1). Kiev, meanwhile, denied that the issue had been discussed during Grytsenko’s visit, ITAR-Tass reported Monday. “All reports that Anatoliy Grytsenko discussed the return of missiles from Iran during his visit to Israel are considered provocative and pursuing the goal of worsening relations between Ukraine and Middle East countries,” the Defense Ministry said in a press statement (ITAR-Tass, Aug. 1).     Back to top

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

© Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.