Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, has proposed to allow a French nuclear consortium to oversee Iran’s uranium enrichment program (Behrouz Mehri/Getty Images). Iran Offers New Nuclear Plan A senior Iranian official has proposed to allow France to oversee Iran’s uranium enrichment program, creating a possible breakthrough in the Iranian nuclear crisis, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Oct. 2). “To be able to arrive at a solution, we have just had an idea,” Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, told France-Info radio.  “We propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium.”..Full Story

North Korea Pledges to Conduct Nuclear Test North Korea said today that the threat posed by the United States compels it to conduct a nuclear test, CNN reported (see GSN, Oct. 2)...Full Story

Kazakhstan Signs on to Downblending Program By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Kazakhstan has reached an agreement with the U.S. Energy Department and the private Nuclear Threat Initiative to blend down highly enriched uranium stored at a research reactor near Almaty (see GSN, Oct. 11, 2005)...Full Story

	Tuesday, October 3, 2006

U.S. Program to Support Private Insurers Leads More Companies to Buy Terrorism Insurance A U.S. program to protect insurers against paying out enormous damages following a terrorist attack has helped to expand the number of U.S. companies that buy terrorism insurance, the U.S. Treasury Department said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 8, 2005). In a report on behalf of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the department said that 58 percent of U.S. companies now have insurance to cover damages resulting from terrorist attacks.  That percentage has risen from 27 percent in 2003 and from virtually zero before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the New York Times reported (see GSN, Aug. 5, 2005). The costs of terrorism insurance have dropped significantly, the report says, as more companies have participated. Under a federal program created in 2002, insurers are required to issue coverage for most terrorist attacks, although they are exempted from insuring nuclear or biological weapons attacks because the costs are considered to be astronomical. The Treasury report says there is “little potential for future market development” by private insurers to cover the losses of such attacks, according to the Times. The current federal program, intended to serve as a temporary measure to support the industry while it develops more insurance tools, calls for the federal government to shoulder most of the costs up to $100 billion following an attack.  The program is due to expire next year, but the insurance industry is lobbying to have it extended. “Too much about an attack remains uncertain,” said Robert Hartwig, chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute.  “And that makes the long-term involvement of the government in terrorism insurance absolutely essential” (Joseph Treaster, New York Times, Oct. 3). Back to top

Iran Offers New Nuclear Plan A senior Iranian official has proposed to allow France to oversee Iran’s uranium enrichment program, creating a possible breakthrough in the Iranian nuclear crisis, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Oct. 2). “To be able to arrive at a solution, we have just had an idea,” Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, told France-Info radio.  “We propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium.” “That way France, through the companies Eurodif and Areva, could control in a tangible way our enrichment activities,” he said. Areva is a state-controlled nuclear energy firm and Eurodif is a multinational branch of Areva.  A Eurodif facility in southeastern France produces about 25 percent of the world’s enriched uranium, AP reported. Saeedi offered no other details in the report broadcast today, and his proposal appeared to catch European officials by surprise. “We are not involved in any negotiations” about such a consortium, said Areva spokesman Charles Hufnagel (Angela Charlton, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).  “This is something we have to analyze in greater detail. … It is interesting, but difficult to put in place,” said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who met last week with lead Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani (see GSN, Sept. 28).  Solana has been expected to speak with Larijani again this week, but no time has been scheduled, he said (Deutsche Press Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Oct. 3). While not specifically addressing Saeedi’s proposal, France urged Iran to communicate with Solana to introduce any diplomatic initiatives. “It’s through this channel we await a response from the Iranians on the suspension” of its uranium enrichment activities, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters today.  This summer, the U.N. Security Council demanded Iran freeze its sensitive nuclear activities to create better conditions for diplomatic progress. If Iran agreed to a suspension, then “there could be [a] place for negotiations where each side can make whatever proposals it wishes,” Mattei said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3). Ambiguity about Saeedi’s proposal was reflected in news reports which appeared to use slightly, but perhaps significantly different translations of his radio remarks.  A Deutsche Press Agentur account had Saeedi saying the consortium “would have a tangible way of checking our activities (GSN italics;  Deutsche Press Agentur). Furthermore, a report from the Iran Press Service, produced from Paris, quoted Saeedi as saying the consortium “can monitor our activities in a tangible fashion” (GSN italics).  That report also described Saeedi as a “former nuclear negotiator” (Safa Haeri, Iran Press Service, Oct. 3). Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. officials said yesterday that they were making good progress toward gaining U.N. Security Council support for imposing sanctions against Iran. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told a group of Washington Times journalists that the United States would wait for the results of the expected Solana-Larijani meeting this week and then move forward in the council. “For four months now, we’ve been waiting for an answer,” to a six-nation package of incentives offered to Iran, Burns said.  The United States has said that Tehran must suspend its uranium enrichment activities before U.S. diplomats will participate in talks to further develop the incentives package. “We’ve said if they don’t suspend enrichment, we’ll take them to the Security Council and sanction them,” he said.  “We do believe we have Russian and Chinese support for that.” “If [Iran’s answer] is maybe, it’s a no,” Burns added.  “If it’s ‘We’d like to negotiate this further,’ it has been negotiated for four months.  At some point you have to draw the line.  So I think you’ll have the answer by the end of the week.” Burns said the United States would not offer any security guarantees to Iran in part because of Iranian support for Hezbollah during its recent clash with Israel. “We saw the war this summer not to be just a border war,” Burns said.  “We saw this as a new element in the Middle East — the Iranian and Syrian involvement.” “We are also very concerned about this nexus of terrorism — Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, [Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine].  We think they are coordinating their actions, and we are trying to push back on that,” he added (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, Oct. 3). Back to top       North Korea Pledges to Conduct Nuclear Test North Korea said today that the threat posed by the United States compels it to conduct a nuclear test, CNN reported (see GSN, Oct. 2). “The D.P.R.K. will in the future conduct a nuclear test under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement, without providing a specific date for the test. This is the first statement from Pyongyang to refer to specific plans for a nuclear test, CNN reported. “The U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure compel the D.P.R.K. to conduct a nuclear test, an essential process for bolstering nuclear deterrent, as a corresponding measure for defense,” according to the statement. North Korea’s neighbors quickly warned Pyongyang against testing a nuclear weapon. “Any form of nuclear testing by North Korea would be unacceptable,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  He said the global community would “respond harshly” to such an act. Given North Korea’s history of pledging to do something and then quickly following through on that pledge, “we can’t flatly rule out the possibility” of a nuclear test, said South Koran Foreign Minister Taro Aso (CNN, Oct. 3). U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said he would raise the test threat today at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported. “A nuclear test by North Korea would be extraordinarily serious,” he said.  “The threat is serious enough that we’re certainly going to take this action in the council this morning, by raising it” (Bo Mi-Lim, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3). Back to top       Kazakhstan Signs on to Downblending Program By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Kazakhstan has reached an agreement with the U.S. Energy Department and the private Nuclear Threat Initiative to blend down highly enriched uranium stored at a research reactor near Almaty (see GSN, Oct. 11, 2005). The agreement also calls for the conversion of the VVR-K reactor at Kazakhstan’s Institute of Nuclear Physics, but that process is not expected to be completed until as late as 2011, said Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The reactor, which now burns highly enriched fuel, would eventually run on a very dense fuel made of low-enriched uranium.  That fuel, however, has yet to be developed, Wilkes said.  Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois is working on the fuel, and that work will largely determine the timeframe for the reactor conversion, he said. In the agreement with Kazakhstan, the highly enriched uranium is to be blended down to a proliferation-resistant form inside the country at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant.  Citing security reasons, Wilkes declined say how much uranium was involved. Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate at Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom, called the announcement significant.  “This particular reactor has a bunch of HEU in the back room that they were basically not ready get rid of until they knew they could convert the reactor,” he said. In 2005, Kazakhstan began blending down highly enriched nuclear fuel that had been stored at a closed reactor on the shores of the Caspian Sea, Bunn said.  Like a number of former Soviet states, however, Kazakhstan had a large amount of excess nuclear fuel to manage.  “It appears that as the Soviet Union was grinding to a collapse, the wheels came off the system that makes sure they were sending the right amount” of nuclear fuel for reactors, he said. Many sites had excess fresh fuel that was enriched to 36 percent uranium 235, Bunn said.  With the dissolution of the Soviet Union the fissile material became a security concern and potential target for terrorist seeking nuclear weapons.  While that material is not considered weapon grade, it could still produce a nuclear yield if enough material was used and it also could be used in a radiological “dirty bomb.” In 2005, Kazakhstan transferred about 2,900 kilograms of fresh nuclear fuel for downblending in a project financially supported by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency. An Energy Department statement calls the recent U.S.-Kazakh agreement an important step toward fulfilling President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s pledge late last year to rid Kazakhstan of its highly enriched uranium. Still, Bunn said, “it will be while a while before Kazakhstan can be declared an HEU-free zone.” By the time the downblending project near Almaty is complete, however, the last traces of Soviet highly enriched uranium in the country will be dealt with, said Wilkes, the NNSA spokesman. At least $4 million for the joint project announced last week will come from the U.S. government.  The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit organization, has committed up to $1.3 million. The project is part of an initiative to repatriate highly enriched uranium from former Soviet republics and satellite states back to Russia for conversion. As part of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, NNSA officials most recently removed 40 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from a Polish facility about 20 miles outside of Warsaw (see GSN, Aug. 10). The material, unused fuel for a research reactor, was transferred to a facility in Russia for conversion to a low-enriched form. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.] Back to top       Khan Did Not Reveal Nuclear Secrets, Daughter Says The daughter of former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has denied that he gave her secret information about Pakistan’s nuclear program.  She described as “ludicrous” the charge made by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in his recently published memoir, the BBC reported today (see GSN, Sept. 27). Musharraf said that Khan had sent a letter to his daughter Dina instructing her to “go public on Pakistan’s nuclear secrets” by providing information in the letter to British journalists. In fact, said the daughter in a press statement, the letter was intended for Khan’s wife and it contained his account of the investigation into the international nuclear smuggling network he once led, the BBC reported. “The letter gave his version of what actually transpired and requested my mother release those details in the event of my father being killed or made to disappear,” said Dina Khan. The letter contained “people and places,” but not nuclear information, she said. She also complained about Khan’s treatment since the investigation and his house arrest. “Our mail is opened, our mobiles are tapped and the house is bugged,” Dina Khan said. “The investigation into the nuclear scandal was officially closed months ago, yet my father’s situation remains unchanged.  Perhaps the hope is to have him rot quietly at home, forgotten by all,” she said.  “That will never happen.  The truth will come out eventually, it always does” (Gordon Corera, BBC News, Oct. 3). Back to top       Lab Spent $60M on Unnecessary Project, Report States The Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico spent $60 million on an unnecessary nuclear weapons repair project, the Energy Department’s Inspector General’s Office said in a report last week (see GSN, March 15). Sandia administrators in February 2003 informed the facility’s parent agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, of problems with “spin rocket motors” on U.S. B61 nuclear bombs, the Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday.  The motors maintain stability in bombs released at high altitudes. Sandia ultimately received the funding to replace the motors. “We believe there’s a strong technical basis for replacement of the B61 spin rocket motor,” Doug Mangum, B61 program manager at the laboratory, told the Journal. The inspector general’s report states that the laboratory at a February 2003 showed 20 “test anomalies” in rocket motor performance among “several hundred” tests from 1997 to 2002.  However, the report found that the rocket motor had not failed in 17 of those instances “and therefore did not fully support Sandia’s assertion that a new motor was needed.” The report does not address allegations by two Sandia employees that they were directed to help “sell” the project even though evidence indicates it was not needed, the Journal reported. Personnel reductions at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous DOE agency, undermined its ability to oversee nuclear weapons programs at Sandia, according to the report and internal agency documents. “One senior NNSA weapons program official acknowledged that, due to staff reductions, the information presented by Sandia was accepted without question and had not been validated,” the report states (John Fleck, Albuquerque Journal, Oct. 2). Back to top

Arizona Man Gets Seven Years for Ricin Attempt A U.S. federal judge in Phoenix, Ariz., yesterday delivered an 87-month prison sentence to a man convicted of trying to make the deadly toxin ricin (see GSN, July 3). Denys Rays Hughes, 59, was convicted in June of attempted production of a biological toxin for use as a weapon, among other charges.  Law enforcement officials said Hughes was a loner survivalist who had no specific plans for using the ricin in an attack, the Arizona Daily Star reported (Arizona Daily Star, Oct. 3). “Hughes was a home-grown threat who tried to create a homemade toxin for use as a weapon,” said prosecutor Paul Charlton.  “We may never know his motive, but his intent was clear” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3). On announcing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll said the case was among the most serious he had presided over (Arizona Daily Star). Back to top

NYC to Improve Chemical Sensor System The New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to improve sensors in place at Grand Central Terminal and expand the detection system to at least one additional transit station, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 7, 2005). The city deployed sensors in Grand Central Terminal ahead of the 2004 Republican National Convention.  They were a temporary addition that ended up becoming permanent. The Protect system collects and tests air samples for chemical agents.  However, technicians found that a janitor passing by with a bucket of cleaning materials could set off a sensor.  Dust and fumes from trains also caused trouble, requiring more frequent changing of filters. “It’s a more difficult environment in that terminal, in terms of dust, dirt and chemicals,” said Anthony Policastro, deputy director of the Infrastructure Assurance Center at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, which developed the system. Despite those and other technical challenges, the Transportation Authority last spring decided to maintain the system.  It plans to spend $3.9 million for the upgrade and expansion project. Improving the sensors at Grand Central is expected to cost $611,000, the Times reported.  The city will also pay $1.6 million to install the system at Pennsylvania Station and $1.7 million for a three-year maintenance contract for both sites. The system is expected to be in place at Penn Station in six to eight months.  It ultimately could be placed at other high-traffic subway stations in the city. Both Grand Central and Penn Station are also equipped with biological and radiation detectors. Amtrak plans to spend $5.5 million over the next two years to install chemical sensors in its sector of Penn Station, and at stations in Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. (William Neuman, New York Times, Oct. 3). Back to top       U.K. Spent $4M on Chemical Weapons Raid British authorities ultimately spent more than $4 million on the June raid of a London house whose inhabitants were suspected of preparing a chemical weapon, the London Daily Telegraph reported today (see GSN, June 12). No evidence of a plot has subsequently surfaced, and brothers Mohammed Abdul Kahar and Abul Koyair were released from custody without being charged.  Kahar was shot in the shoulder during the raid. Costs to the Metropolitan Police for the raid include: —More than $1.6 million in overtime for more than 200 police officers involved in the operation; —Nearly $170,000 in hotel charges for two families displaced during the forensic search of the house; —More than $226,000 for “operational feeding, barriers, technical support and restoration of property,” according to Scotland Yard; and —Nearly $300,000 for “specialist equipment” apparently used in the search. A large portion of the cost, more than $1.8 million, was for salaries that would have been paid to officers even had the raid not occurred, the Telegraph reported. “The police are working at a time of unprecedented threats, and nobody would want the Met to cut corners in the fight against terrorism,” said Damian Hockney, a member of the Metropolitan Policy Authority for the One London Party. “But that doesn’t mean that we simply hand over a blank check.  This is a staggering figure and I have some concerns about it:  for example, hotel costs of pounds 90,000 seem very high.  There were question marks over many aspects of Forest Gate.  I believe that the Met has learned lessons from it, but the size and cost of future operations must be proportionate” (John Steele, The Daily Telegraph, Oct. 3). Back to top

U.S. to Deploy Four Patriot Launch Pads in Japan The U.S. deployment of Patriot Advanced Capability 3 air-defense systems on the Japanese island of Okinawa is to consist of four launch pads, each carrying six missiles, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 2; Associated Press/The Scotsman, Oct. 2). The four launch pads will be placed in and around the U.S. Kadena Air Base, Kyodo News reported (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, Oct. 2). Back to top

Congress Doubts Value of New Radiation Detectors By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers have withheld all funding for deployment of next-generation radiation detectors until the Homeland Security Department proves the new monitors are a significant improvement over those currently in place (see GSN, Sept. 27). Questions about the new technology, known as the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitor, are nothing new.  The Government Accountability Office in March noted the considerable cost of the detectors, up to $500,000 per machine compared to $180,000 for the monitors now being used, while questioning the improvements offered by the new technology. The congressional doubts, however, come just as lawmakers passed a sweeping port security measure that authorizes $3.4 billion in spending over five years and requires all containers at the nation’s 22 busiest seaports to be scanned for radioactive material by the end of 2007 (see GSN, Oct. 2). Due to the volume of shipments pouring through U.S. ports and the relatively low percentage of containers scanned, government officials have expressed concerns that radioactive or fissile material could be smuggled into the country.  Either could be devastating in the hands of a terrorist group. Media reports and lawmakers have said that only 5 percent of the 11 million cargo containers entering the United States each year are scanned for radiation. At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, however, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said 80 percent of cargo coming through U.S. seaports would be scanned by the end of the year. Still, Congress is weary of the detectors that Homeland Security has heralded as a vast improvement.  Initial testing of the new monitors “indicates the effectiveness of the new technology may fall well short of levels anticipated,” lawmakers wrote in the recently approved fiscal 2007 Homeland Security appropriations bill. The authors of the bill included language blocking the deployment of the detectors until Secretary Chertoff certifies that the new technology would provide a “significant increase in operational effectiveness.”  Based on tests of the next-generation system, GAO auditors wrote earlier this year that the technology has not been proven superior, and actually obtaining that proof “currently does not seem certain.”  After a 2005 preliminary test of the next-generation monitors, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory concluded that the new detectors were “equal to, but no better than” those already in place. Tests by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, a branch within Homeland Security, determined the new machines to be better than current monitors in detecting “threat-like” amounts of radioactive material while weeding out naturally occurring sources of radiation, according to the GAO report.  As the amount of radiation-emitting material decreased, however, so did the functional differences between the two technologies. Current equipment detects radiation without identifying the isotopic signature of the material, meaning that background radiation from common, benign sources often causes false alerts.  Kitty litter, bananas, granite and fertilizer have set the machines off, and the GAO report found such nuisance alarms comprise almost all of the radiation alerts at ports of entry. Part of Homeland Security’s hope with the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors is that by identifying a source of radiation as the potassium in a shipment of bananas or another harmless material, false alarms can be averted.  Agency officials have said they expect the newer machines to reduce the number of containers flagged for secondary inspections annually from more than 800,000 to 15,000. Despite the GAO misgivings about the efficacy and cost-benefit ratio of the new devices, in July the Homeland Security Department announced a $1.2 billion plan to develop the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors (see GSN, July 17). By 2011, the department plans to deploy 1,400 of the newer detectors at both ports and border crossings.  Some of the 80 ASP prototypes are scheduled for installation beginning in November at the New York Container Terminal in Staten Island, N.Y.  Others would be sent to the testing facilities in Nevada and at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, said the language in the appropriations bill will have essentially no effect on Homeland Security plans for the detectors.  “This is something we had been anticipating,” she said. The $1.2 billion plan announced in July is part of the department’s fiscal 2006 funding and will pay for research and development by three vendors — Raytheon, Thermo Electron and Canberra — for one year.  DNDO testing of the prototypes and cost-benefit analysis is scheduled for late 2006 and early 2007 and had been planned prior to the congressional mandate in the spending bill, Burke said. DNDO Director Vayl Oxford has said that the detector deployment strategy includes a mix of old and new devices.  It is unclear, however, if the hold on full-scale deployment of the next-generation equipment would affect installation of monitors at the nation’s busiest ports, something Congress has demanded by the end of next year, Burke said.  “I think that’s yet to be determined.” Back to top

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