Consensus Sought at Biological Weapons Talks

A Japanese official said yesterday that diplomats from countries involved in talks in Tokyo on the Biological Weapons Convention are close to agreeing that inspections are not an efficient way to control materials covered by the treaty, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Feb. 15).

The inspections issue was the focus of the informal talks that ended yesterday, which were meant to prepare for the next treaty review conference beginning in November in Geneva.

“Although there were some differences in opinions of participants, the overall direction of the talks was that it needs to be recognized that there is a limited efficiency in inspection,” the Japanese official said.   “There was a sense of crisis in the Tokyo conference that if people fail to agree on anything, the credibility of the BWC will be lost.”

The Bush administration has maintained that allowing inspections would compromise trade secrets and security (Agence France-Presse, Feb. 15).

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U.S. Watches Dubai Banks for Proliferation Ties

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Treasury Department representatives are monitoring the possibility that money flowing through banks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, could be supporting WMD proliferation by countries such as Iran, a Treasury official told a House of Representatives subcommittee today (see GSN, Feb. 13).

The director of the agency’s Foreign Assets Control Office, Robert Werner, expressed continued concern in the wake of Dubai-based activities of the Dutch bank ABN Amro that in December 2005 led the United States to fine the bank $80 million for improper transactions with Libyan and Iranian clients. The case involved U.S.-prohibited wire transfers for Iranian and Libyan clients by the bank's Dubai employees.

“I'm very concerned by the type of activities that the ABN Amro case demonstrated,” Werner told the Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. “We intend to look at other situations that maybe may involve other international banks involved in that kind of conduct.”

Asked by subcommittee Chairwoman Sue Kelly (R-N.Y.) whether he was concerned ABN Amro had “laundered” WMD-related Iranian transactions through Dubai, Werner said officials from his office recently met in the United Arab Emirates with officials of that country to discuss WMD proliferation.

He said the office, which administers U.S. sanctions against entities of national-security concern, would continue to monitor Dubai as a possible hub for circumvention of WMD-related sanctions.

“The possible use of UAE-incorporated companies by Iranian agencies or citizens is of great concern to us,” he said.

Despite Kelly's suggestion that Treasury might designate Dubai as a “jurisdiction of primary money-laundering concern,” Werner expressed confidence in his UAE interlocutors.

“They are anxious to engage in a dialogue with us,” he said. “My feeling is that they're striving to work with OFAC.”

Replied the chairwoman, “Perhaps a bit of cynicism on the part of Treasury in dealing with these people might be in order.”

U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order in June 2005 on blocking transfers of U.S. assets to entities of proliferation concern. Eighteen suspect companies have been listed so far under the order, including six in Iran and 11 in North Korea. Among other activities, Werner's office conducts investigations that provide evidence for listings of suspect entities under the order.

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Hussein Tapes Reveal Effort to Conceal WMD Information From International Inspectors

A former top aide to deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said in August 1995 that Iraqi officials were withholding information about weapons of mass destruction from U.N. inspectors, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Feb. 8).

Hussein Kamel, a Hussein son-in-law in charge of Iraq’s WMD effort at the time, explained in taped conversations between Hussein and members of his Cabinet how Baghdad eluded inspectors.

“We did not reveal all that we have,” Kamel said in the tapes obtained by ABC News. “We did not reveal the volume of chemical weapons we had produced.”

Iraqi officials also failed to disclose “the type of weapons … [and] the volume of the materials we imported,” he added. Kamel later defected to Jordan, and was killed after returning to Iraq in February 1996.

Charles Duelfer, the former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said the tapes indicate Hussein’s intent to reconstitute his WMD programs. They are not proof that such weapons existed when the United States and its allies invaded in March 2003, he said.

The tapes “support the conclusion in the report which we made in the last couple of years, that the regime had the intention of building and rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, when circumstances permitted,” Duelfer said.

Hussein is also recorded telling his advisers that the United States could suffer a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction, though not from his regime.

“Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans,” Hussein said.

“In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?” he said.

“This story is coming, but not from Iraq,” Hussein said.

Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, however, is recorded telling Hussein that an individual could perpetrate a biological weapons attack.

A “biological (attack) is very easy to make. It’s so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000,” he said.

“This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state.  An individual can do it,” Aziz said (Gerald Nadler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16).

U.S. Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said the tapes suggest Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to the U.S.-led invasion, television station WZZM reported yesterday.

“From reading some of the transcripts you would think it’s pretty likely there were WMD that were hidden or moved out of the country,” Hoekstra said.

Hoekstra added that there are still some 35,000 boxes of unexamined official Iraqi tapes and documents seized by U.S. forces during the conflict (Phil Dawson, WZZM13.com, Feb. 15).

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State Department Requests Funds to Pressure Iran

The U.S. State Department is seeking $75 million in emergency funding for radio and television broadcasts into Iran and other activities designed to increase opposition to the country’s government, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 15).

The budgeted 2006 outlay to support Iranian dissidents is $10 million, the Post reported.

“The United States will actively confront the policies of this Iranian regime, and at the same time we are going to work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom in their own country,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

However, Martin Indyk, head of Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, said the opposition elements the Bush administration hopes to support have failed in the past, and U.S. aid could undermine their credibility.

“It’s hard to see how $75 million makes a dent in that political reality,” Indyk added.

Rice is scheduled to travel to the Middle East next week to discuss the “strategic challenge to the world represented by the Iranian regime,” the State Department announced, while Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns is expected to discuss the issue with officials from the Group of Eight industrialized nations (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Feb. 16).

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) criticized the Bush administration’s Middle East policy following Rice’s remarks, the Associated Press reported.

“I don’t see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think things are getting worse.  I think they’re getting worse in Iran,” Hagel said.

Rice said Washington is examining “the full range of potential sanctions” the Security Council could implement relative to Iran’s nuclear program. The Bush administration does not plan to begin with aggressive moves, she said.

“There is not a common view on when or how sanctions ought to be taken,” Rice said, “but the Iranian regime is giving the world a very good set of reasons to take serious measures.”

“We want to look at the effect on the international community as a whole of any actions that we take, economies and the like,” she said. “I think you will see us trying to walk a fine line in what actions we take” (Anne Gearan, Associated Press/IranMania.com, Feb. 15).

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy today accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a peaceful energy program, AP reported.

“No civil nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. It is a clandestine military nuclear program,” Douste-Blazy said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, demanded that Tehran re-impose a uranium enrichment moratorium if it hopes for cooperation with Moscow on enrichment.

“When confidence in the Iranian nuclear program is re-established ... we could come back to the possible implementation of the right that Iran has to develop a nuclear energy sector full scale,” Lavrov said (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16).

Chinese cooperation on Moscow’s compromise proposal could help resolve the standoff, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alekseyev said today.

“We are counting on the continuation of close contacts with our Chinese colleagues and other interested countries,” Interfax quoted Alekseyev as saying (Associated Press/eitb24.com, Feb. 16).

The British opposition Conservative Party announced that military action against Iran must be considered, Agence France-Presse reported today.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair should follow President George W. Bush’s example and leave all his options open, Conservative defense spokesman Liam Fox said in Washington.

“It was wrong for the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesman Javier Solana to rule out the use of force. It is wrong for Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to echo him,” Fox said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she remains determined to resolve the dispute with Iran peacefully, AFP reported.

“Germans should not have any fear. We are without doubt living in a time of fresh conflicts but we are behaving in a firm and responsible manner,” Merkel told Germany’s Stern periodical in an interview published today.

Merkel said she believed there was “a real chance for a negotiated solution” (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, Feb. 15).

Few experts believe Iran is likely to soon develop a nuclear weapon, AP reported today.

“It’s a very complicated process requiring precision from design and engineering to manufacture and installation, and there’s a lot of room for problems,” said Corey Hinderstein, an analyst with the Institute for Science and International Security.

“A vast percentage of centrifuges have to be rejected in testing, up to 60 percent rejection,” said Frank Barnaby, a former British weapons scientist.

While Iran has disclosed plans to install 50,000 centrifuges at its Natanz facility, fewer than half the 1,140 centrifuges assembled by 2004 were good enough to use in cascades, the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported.

Experts said Iran could push ahead with 1,500 centrifuges and produce enough highly enriched uranium for one weapon — though even that would take about three years, they said.

Added Barnaby, “Who do you deter with just one weapon?”(Charles Hanley, Associated Press/IranMania.com, Feb. 16).

Iranian parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel and his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, yesterday signed a document condemning nuclear weapons but endorsing the right of all nations to nuclear energy, AP reported.

“We condemn the making, development and accumulation of nuclear arms, (and) we ratify the right of all countries to make peaceful use of nuclear energy,” the document says (Jorge Rueda, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16).

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Satellite Photographs Reveal China’s Complex of Underground Nuclear Weapons Facilities

Satellite images obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Federation of American Scientists offer the world’s first glimpse of China’s underground nuclear facilities, according to a report released by Imaging Notes this month (see GSN, Oct. 6, 2005).

While China is nowhere near nuclear parity with the United States, according to the report, each country seems to be taking into account the other’s capabilities in modernizing its nuclear arsenal.

The United States has been enhancing its nuclear strike capabilities against targets in the Asia-Pacific region since 2002, the report says. Five submarines equipped with ballistic missiles have been shifted from Atlantic to Pacific ports, with over two-thirds of the U.S. nuclear submarine force now based in the Pacific. The Trident I C4 sea-launched ballistic missile has also been retired and replaced with the longer-range and more accurate Trident II D5, which can carry the most powerful ballistic missile warhead in the U.S. arsenal, the report says.

China, meanwhile, has only one submarine capable of delivering nuclear warheads, but is developing a new class of nuclear-capable submarine, according to the report (Imaging Notes, Winter 2006).

The new images of underground bases in China support U.S. intelligence and Defense Department analyses that conclude China is engaged in a secret military buildup, the Washington Times reported today.

“The Chinese have a whole network of secret facilities that the U.S. government understands but cannot make public,” said on Pentagon official. “This is the first public revelation of China’s secret buildup.”

The photographs, taken from 2000 to 2004, show China’s Xia-class submarine docked at the Jianggezhuang port on the Yellow Sea. Nuclear warheads are believed to be stored inside an underwater tunnel about 450 meters away from the vessel, according to the Times. The photographs also include shots of H-6 strategic bombers and nuclear-capable Qian-5 aircraft.

The U.S. Defense Department’s most recent four-year strategy report, released this month, says China is emerging as a power with “the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States.” 

The most recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concludes that China is deceiving the United States and other nations about its military efforts, the Times reported. Requests from Pentagon officials to visit underground Chinese military sites have been denied.

“The Chinese have denied having any underground submarine facilities,” a Pentagon official added.

China’s nuclear arsenal includes some 45 long-range missiles, 100 short-range missiles and 12 submarine-launched missiles, each with a single warhead, according to a classified Defense Intelligence Agency assessment (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Feb. 16).

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Expert Warns of North Korean, Pakistani Nuke Threats

A nuclear proliferation expert said the United States should focus more attention on North Korea, Pakistan and terrorists than on Iran, the Deseret Morning News reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 17).

“Those are the more urgent threats,” said Joseph Cirincione, nonproliferation director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He said the United State is not concentrating on these threats because of its interests in the Middle East, which include promoting democracy, oil and Israel. 

Cirincione also said that Iran would need at least five years to produce a nuclear weapon.

“Iran is not a nuclear bomb crisis — it's a nuclear diplomacy crisis,” he said.

Efforts to isolate Iran and support for the U.S. stand from Russia, China and India would help the matter, Cirincione said. “It’s going to take time for that to work,” he said.

However, Cirincione warns that heated rhetoric could lead to military action against Tehran. 

“I'm very worried about that situation with Iran right now,” he said (Stephen Speckman, Deseret Morning News, Feb. 15).

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U.S. Energy Department Faults Los Alamos Workers’ Complacency for Causing Radiation Contamination

A U.S. Energy Department report found that complacency and poor federal oversight was behind a 2005 accident at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that led to the spread of small levels of radioactive material at several private homes, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 26).

Certain properties of americium 241 limited the spread of the material, preventing the accident from being much worse, according to Douglas Minnema, chairman of the department’s Accident Investigation Board.

The accident involved contamination by americium of 18 uranium nitride pellets that were then shipped from the Los Alamos plutonium facility to its Sigma site, AP reported. The mishap occurred on July 14 but was not discovered until July 25. 

By that time a worker had been exposed to the material. The man and his wife traveled to Kansas, and she went on to Colorado. Traces of radiation were later found in the employee’s home in New Mexico, his wife’s home in Colorado, and at a motel room and relative’s home in Kansas, AP reported.

Contamination was also discovered in Pennsylvania after a package was shipped from the Sigma facility at Los Alamos to a naval research laboratory there. 

Workers at the plutonium facility packed radioactive pellets with the knowledge that contamination was possible. However, they made no attempt to determine contamination levels or let the recipients know about the potential for exposure. A Sigma employee, meanwhile, accepted the package without making sure required radiological controls had been activated.

Also blamed in the report are the Los Alamos office of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which failed to discover workers were not following protocol, and the administration’s Washington office for not providing sufficient guidelines to the laboratory.

Los Alamos officials said the incident posed no threat to the public. The laboratory is now developing plans to make facility policies clearer and to better train employees.

Laboratory spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas declined to say whether any workers were disciplined because of the incident.

The Energy Department said more than $250,000 has been spent in response to the accident (Associated Press, Feb. 16).

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Iran Escalates Missile Testing, Sources Say

Iran has completed four successful missile test launches this year, including one of its Shahab 3 intermediate-range ballistic missile, Germany’s DDP news agency reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 9).

“Iran is currently very active with missile tests,” said one source.

Several Shahab 3 missiles were reportedly transferred from Iran’s western border to near the cities of Kermanshah and Hamad, where they are within firing range of Israel, according to DDP.

Some security experts warned that Tehran might be trying to acquire components in Europe to transform the Shahab 3 into a nuclear-capable weapon (DDP news agency/BBC Monitoring, Feb. 15).

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Russia to Upgrade Missile Defense Radar System

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that his country is upgrading its antimissile early warning radar system, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 15).

The system is being improved to “operate as effectively as possible in any conditions, so that our radars can cover the whole area in all strategic directions,” Ivanov told Interfax.

Older systems in former Soviet territories now outside of Russian borders are expected to be replaced by new radars at strategic locations within the country. The first has been installed near St. Petersburg.

“Another such radar will be built and placed in southern Russia in the near future,” Ivanov said.

The radars, which take 1 1/2 years to build, are replacing systems in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, Ivanov said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Feb. 15).

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Turkey to Complete Missile Shield

Turkey is working on an antimissile shield in response to the potential for U.S. military operations in Iran and Syria, The New Anatolian reported today (see GSN, June 3, 2005).

Members of the Turkish Defense Industry’s Executive Committee are expected to meet tomorrow to discuss completion of Turkey’s three-part missile shield by purchasing long-range missiles.   Low-range missile defense batteries are in place, while Turkey is augmenting its medium-range defenses.

The committee is expected to discuss whether a plan is needed to secure the long-range missiles. The committee is expected to consider the Patriot, the Russian S-300 and the Israeli Arrow 2 systems (The New Anatolian, Feb. 16).

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