By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — U.S. efforts to help Russia secure its vulnerable nuclear weapons and related sensitive materials from terrorists have made some “discrete but noteworthy” progress since September 2001, but could take another 15 to 25 years to complete, according to a report released here yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 24). The Race to Secure Russia’s Loose Nukes: Progress Since 9/11, produced by analysts from the Center for American Progress and The Henry L. Stimson Center, assesses efforts made toward accelerating Russian nuclear threat reduction activities that were recommended by the bipartisan “Baker-Cutler” task force in January 2001. Led by former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) and former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler, a Democrat, the task force made some 19 recommendations, including appointing a senior-level White House threat reduction coordinator, accelerating U.S. funding for the problem, and reaching a high-level transparency and access agreement with Russia. The task force report, commissioned by Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, called the prospect of stolen Russian nuclear weapons or materials used by terrorists “the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today,” said the pace then of efforts to eliminate the threat left an unacceptable risk of failure,” and urged accelerated efforts to complete the job by 2011. “Of the 19 policy measures identified by the Task Force, only five have seen meaningful progress towards full implementation,” the report released yesterday says. For the remaining 14, “progress has been minimal.” Praise and CriticismThe report praises Congress and the Bush administration since the Sept. 11 attacks for reaching agreements with Russia to improve security at nuclear weapons facilities previously off-limits to cooperation, for revitalizing efforts to secure global civilian highly enriched uranium, and for boosting international political support — though not strong financial support — for threat reduction in Russia. Furthermore, it praises the administration for an effort Baker-Cutler had not recommended — strengthening global efforts to interdict illicit nuclear shipments in transit. “But overall, the Bush administration and the Congress have neither achieved nor made substantial progress towards most of the strategic objectives,” set out by Baker-Cutler, it says. In particular, it cites “no meaningful acceleration of progress” in the following areas: — drastically consolidating the number of nuclear weapons storage sites; — accelerating security upgrades; — minimizing possible proliferation from general-purpose nuclear submarines; — expanding Russian capacity for eliminating highly enriched uranium and accelerating elimination; — halting plutonium production, taking inventory of Russian stocks, and storing at the central Mayak facility and eliminating up to 100 metric tons of Russian plutonium; — beginning a detailed process for transitioning away from U.S. financial support; and — creating a high-level White House coordinator. Reasons attributed to the current pace of progress, the report says, include noncooperation from elements of the Russian bureaucracy, lingering Cold War suspicions about U.S. intentions regarding site access, U.S. bureaucratic and legal obstacles, “lack of high-level coordination and leadership,” and “inadequate and uneven U.S. funding.” The Baker-Cutler task force, it notes, recommended spending $30 billion over 10 years, from fiscal 2002 to fiscal 2012, on Russian threat reduction. So far, only $1.89 billion is set to be appropriated from fiscal 2002 to fiscal 2006, the report says. Speaking at the release of the report yesterday, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate Joseph Cirincione warned that trends could worsen in the coming years. “How long can we count on Russian cooperation? … I don’t think we know what the future of Russia is,” he said. Graham Allison, director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affair, said he is “much more encouraged” by the Bush administration’s increased efforts in its second term to settle agreements with the Russian government. Energy Department’s Claim ChallengedThe report questions Energy Department claims last year that it expects to see upgraded security at all targeted Russian weapon-grade material storage facilities by the end of 2008 (see GSN, Oct. 7, 2004). The authors said completion is possible by 2012 at the current pace, but added that the United States must first negotiate access agreements for some sensitive sites. “A very significant proportion of Russia’s remaining military-origin fissile materials are located at comparatively few buildings. Secure these buildings, and you significantly boost the total proportion of materials subjected to U.S.-sponsored security upgrades,” Center for American Progress Policy Analyst Andrew Grotto, one of the report’s two authors, said in an e-mail. “These buildings, however, are often located at especially sensitive nuclear facilities, such as places where warheads are assembled and disassembled. Russia has resisted granting the U.S. access to these facilities,” he said. Achieving the 2008 goal would require securing access agreements within the next year, he said. “To meet the 2008 goal, [the U.S. Energy Department] is banking on clearing these obstacles, which would enable a rapid increase in the pace of progress. This would obviously be a great development,” he said. If the pace of progress in securing the material is measured by the amount of material secured per year — rather than the number of buildings — the report says, then the upgrades may not be finished until 2030. The Bush administration has achieved a “negligible” increase to the amount of material secured annually since Sept. 11 — an additional 3 percent per year, it says. The report says it could take between 12 and 37 years to fully secure Russian nuclear weapons storage sites at the current pace. The other author was Stimson Center Senior Associate Brian Finlay.
By David Francis
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Russia has prevented U.S. inspectors from examining ICBMs to ensure that Moscow is meeting treaty obligations to reduce its nuclear missiles, according to a U.S. State Department review of international disarmament pacts released last week (see GSN, Sept. 7). This and other concerns about Russian compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are outlined in the congressionally mandated “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments” report. The State Department found Russia to be in violation of several treaty provisions, although steps have been taken to correct some of these problems, according to the report. The report, which covers the two-year period ending in December 2004, says Russia has prevented the United States from inspecting nuclear warhead re-entry vehicles to ensure that Moscow is accurately representing the number of warheads it deploys. The report also finds that Russia has not declared some road-mobile ICBM launchers after they leave production facilities and has moved the launchers to areas more than 60 miles away from the production facility, a violation of the treaty. The report does not specify whether the launchers are carrying missiles. Finally, Russia has stopped U.S. inspectors from examining launch canisters to determine if any are carrying a missile, and failed to share required telemetry information following ICBM tests, according to the report. All of these actions are violations of the START Treaty, the report says. The treaty, signed in 1991 by the United States and the Soviet Union, aims to reduce the number of strategic weapons deployed in each country. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine agreed to transfer all nuclear warheads in their territory to Russia and to destroy any nuclear delivery vehicles according to the terms of the treaty. The State Department attributes Russia’s noncompliance to differing interpretations of the treaty. “A number of these issues, some of which originated as early as the first year of treaty implementation, highlight the different interpretations of the parties about how to implement the complex inspection and verification provisions of the START Treaty,” the report says. For example, along with blocking inspection of identified warhead re-entry vehicles, Russia has not allowed the United States to examine covered objects so that the United States is satisfied that the objects are not re-entry vehicles. Russian personnel have instead used radiation detectors to prove the items are not carrying nuclear ICBMs, according to the report. Progress has been made in correcting some of these problems. The United States and Russia has come to an interim agreement in which Russia has allowed inspections of road-mobile ICBM launchers during construction and before they were moved to restricted areas. The United States finds this solution acceptable and considers the issue closed, according to the report. Russia and the United States have come to a similar arrangement in regards to examining launch canisters. While details of the agreement have not been revealed, the report said the issue has been addressed with the compromise. The telemetry issue, however, remains open. “The United States has raised several concerns regarding Russia’s failure to provide all treaty-required telemetry materials for some START-accountable flight tests in violation” of the treaty, the report said without providing details of the transgressions. Russia’s Foreign Ministry rejected the report’s findings, RIA Novosti reported. “Those are not new accusations,” the Foreign Ministry said last week in a statement. “The Russian Foreign Ministry has had to comment on similar points in other ‘research papers’ that put Russia in a group of countries violating nonproliferation agreements without providing any evidence many times before.” Wade Boese, research director at the Arms Control Association, concurred that the State Department’s findings are not new. “It doesn’t differ much from previous reports,” Boese said. “These are long-standing issues we’ve had with the Russian implementation of START.” “They list relatively minor things,” he continued. “Clearly they’re below the [ICBM] limits.” The treaty required Russia and the United States to deploy fewer than 1,600 nuclear delivery vehicles and 6,000 warheads by December 2001. Russia is now estimated to have 3,814 strategic nuclear warheads, including 2,270 on ICBMs, 672 deployed on submarines and 872 that could be delivered by bombers, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council estimate. Boese said he was surprised that such minor verification infractions are listed in the report considering the Bush administration has no plans to extend verification requirements past the treaty’s expiration in 2009. As additional reductions required by the 2002 U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty are not required to be completed until the end of 2012, Russia will be able to operate without inspections for three years, according to Boese. The SORT pact requires the United States and Russia to reduce the number of their deployed nuclear weapons to below 2,200 by the end of 2012, but the pact has no verification measures. Boese pointed to the State Department’s Annual Report on SORT as evidence of the apparent discrepancy in the administration’s stance on verification. The report praised “transparency into Russia’s implementation of its reductions” and said “the strategic relationship between the United States and Russia is expected to result in increasing openness over the lifetime of the [SORT].” The same document says, “The administration has not yet considered the question of extending all or part of the START Treaty beyond its scheduled expiration of 2009.” Boese said he doesn’t understand why the State Department would include such minor START infractions if the administration has not yet determined whether to extend it and is praising Russia’s openness. After the 2009 expiration, the START Treaty is essentially “a gentleman’s agreement,” Boese said. “There’s no verification mechanism.”
The United States has indicated that it would delay its push to have Iran’s nuclear activities referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 14). “I am not so concerned about exactly when it happens because I don’t think this matter is so urgent that it has to come on Sept. 19,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday told the Fox News Editorial Board. The IAEA Board of Governors meeting begins Sept. 19, and Iran’s nuclear program was expected to be a major topic of concern. Rather then pressing for action, Washington hopes to send a “political message” to Tehran that it cannot break a commitment not to engage in nuclear weapons-related activities “and have everybody say, well, OK,” Rice said. While there was “a lot of consensus” on the goal of resuming Iran’s negotiations with the European Union, there remained “a lot of difference about tactics,” she said (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, Sept. 14). Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to present a new proposal Saturday for resolving the standoff when he again addresses a U.N. summit in New York, AFP reported today (Agence France-Presse I/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 15). Representatives to the summit from France, Germany and the United Kingdom have attempted to set up a high-level meeting today with Iran, AFP reported. “France is open to dialogue and a contact is possible if the Iranians want it,” said a French diplomat (Agence France-Presse II/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 15). Elsewhere, India is balking at pressure from Washington to sign onto its push for Security Council action on Iran, the New York Times reported yesterday. Indian officials have said Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons but that the Security Council would not solve the standoff at this time. “You have to allow a certain learning process to take place in Tehran rather than banging them on the head,” said one Indian official. A majority vote at the Board of Governors would be possible with Indian support, according to Bush administration officials, but Indian officials have said they prefer a consensus for some type of resolution demanding that Iran resume a nuclear freeze and negotiations. “Whether we get a consensus depends on what kind of resolution we have,” said the Indian official (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Sept. 14).
Recent satellite images indicate that North Korea has resumed construction work at a 50-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, Reuters reported today (see GSN, Sept. 14). The photographs, obtained by the Institute for Science and International Security from a commercial satellite firm, also appear to confirm reports that Pyongyang has refueled a smaller plutonium-producing reactor at the complex, said analyst Corey Hinderstein. Construction on the larger reactor stopped when the United States offered backing for a light-water reactor project in a 1994 agreement. The agreement was rescinded nearly a decade later. “For the first time since the 1994 Agreed Framework froze construction, we saw some new activity at the 50-megawatt reactor site,” Hinderstein said. That includes access road work and possibly a mobile crane. “It’s not indicative of full-scale construction” (Reuters/RedNova.com, Sept. 15). Meanwhile, the chief U.S. envoy to six-nation negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear program today urged Pyongyang to accept an offer already on the table, Agence France-Presse reported. “We have a pretty good deal on the table,” said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, before attending another negotiating session with lead North Korean negotiator Kim Kye Gwan on the sidelines of the talks in Beijing. “The deal consists of really a lot of what the D.P.R.K. should want — security guarantees, a recognition package, access to international financial institutions, a very serious energy package,” Hill said. “If their concern is electricity, there is a very generous electricity package here. If their concern is something else, they ought to tell us what that is,” Hill said. “A light-water reactor for us is a nonstarter.” Japan’s top envoy also dismissed the idea of a light-water reactor at this time. “Basically, what is important is that North Korea commits itself to abandoning all of its nuclear programs and restoring its credibility as a precondition,” said Kenichiro Sasae (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 15). Nuclear and economic experts, however, questioned the practical aspects of such an ambitious project for impoverished North Korea, Reuters reported. Even with outside assistance in constructing a nuclear energy plant, according to Reuters, Pyongyang would be unable to connect new nuclear plants to its aging power grid. “North Korea has no money, no technology and no modern power grid,” said Kim Kyoung-sool, an economist who specializes in North Korean energy policy at Seoul’s Korea Energy Economics Institute. Kim estimated the cost of building a modern nuclear power plant with a 1,000-megawatt capacity at $2 billion to $3 billion, a massive expenditure for a country with an income of some $20.8 billion last year (Park/Herskovitz, Reuters, Sept. 15). Russia, meanwhile, has indicated willingness to construct a nuclear reactor for North Korea, sources close to the talks told the Kyodo news agency yesterday (Kyodo/BBC Monitoring, Sept. 14).
World leaders at a U.N. summit in New York yesterday signed a treaty outlawing possession and trade of nuclear-weapon or dirty-bomb materials by nonstate actors, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 14). Fifty leaders were expected to sign the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism by the end of the day today, according to AP. Twenty-two member states must ratify the treaty for it to take effect. The treaty would make illegal the possession of radioactive material or weapons with the intent to cause death, injury or damage to property or the environment. Damaging a nuclear plant, threatening to use radioactive material or devices or unlawfully demanding radioactive material would also be made a crime. The treaty would only apply to crimes that include activities that cross national borders, AP reported. However, member states would be required to pass national legislation outlawing the acts designated in the pact (Kim Gamel, Associated Press/South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Sept. 14). U.S. President George W. Bush and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan addressed terrorism in summit speeches yesterday, Knight Ridder reported. “We know that this war will not be won by force of arms alone. We must defeat the terrorists on the battlefield, and we must also defeat them in the battle of ideas,” Bush said. “We must change the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish and recruit.” “Terrorism constitutes a direct attack on the values that the United Nations stands for,” Annan said. “We must be at the forefront of the fight against terrorism.” In addition, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution yesterday calling on countries to make inciting terrorism illegal. Annan expressed frustration, however, that the summit did not address nuclear nonproliferation. “We have allowed posturing to get in the way of results. This is inexcusable,” he said (Hutcheson/Strobel, Knight Ridder/Yahoo!News, Sept. 15).
A review team has determined that the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration and the Defense Department need to improve cooperation to safeguard U.S. nuclear weapons and materials, Inside Missile Defense reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 7). The panel, formed by NNSA chief Linton Brooks in 2003 and headed by former Strategic Command chief Adm. Richard Mies, was told to “examine security structure, organization, interrelationships, and policies, procedures and practices in the nuclear weapons complex,” according to an NNSA statement. The group submitted its findings in May report, which was made public last week. The group found 13 security problem areas at the nuclear security agency and made 155 recommendations for improvements, according to Inside Missile Defense. Brooks said more than 70 percent of the recommended changes recommended have already been made. The others “should be addressed by the end of the year,” he said. “Mies correctly identified a number of institutional concerns that we also have recognized and have worked to change during the last three years,” Brooks said. “I believe that security oversight and execution are greatly improved over where we were when I asked for this review. Adm. Mies advised NNSA about his findings as the review was under way and that has helped us to get where we are today.” Mies’ group found that better cooperation was needed between the Pentagon and National Nuclear Security Administration to implement the “Design Basis Threat,” a post-Sept. 11 assessment of threats facing U.S. nuclear stockpiles. Defense Department and NNSA personnel should work together to develop countermeasures to threats so that “standards for nuclear weapons and materials are fully consistent for essentially equivalent conditions,” the team says in its report. Brooks’ agency and the Energy Department should also standardize how Design Basis Threat policy is implemented and interpreted by agency officials, according to the report. “Clear guidance” is needed for defining “mission-critical facilities” and defending against improvised nuclear weapons and radiological and chemical sabotage. Security against internal threats also needs to be tightened, according to the report. Design Basis Threat implementation plans should be consolidated by NNSA officials into a master plan for all nuclear sties, the report recommended. The Energy Department plans to have the Design Basis Threat policy implemented by the end of fiscal year 2006, the report says (Sebastian Sprenger, Inside Missile Defense, Sept. 14).
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