U.S. Program to Secure Soviet Pathogens Grows

By David Francis
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A U.S. program to secure and catalog biological agents at former Soviet laboratories has moved forward quickly in recent years, with increased cooperation from five former Soviet republics speeding progress, U.S. Defense Department officials said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 23, 2005).

The United States has been working closely with the governments of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan to consolidate dangerous pathogens stored at “antiplague” sites, Scott Levac, manager of the Threat Agent Detection Response program at the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said at a briefing here. The goal is to create a disease surveillance network for each nation and consolidate biological agents to no more than three sites in each country, reducing the chance that terrorists would acquire the pathogens.

To date, 11 institutes for consolidating pathogens have been established in the five countries. These “central reference laboratories” are former antiplague laboratories converted for use in the program by the United States and the governments of former Soviet states, with the two sides splitting the cost. 

The program has also engaged former Soviet scientists with biological weapons expertise by offering them work in the new facilities.

“We have really gone out of our way not only to engage individuals but the [research] organizations” inside each country, Levac said.

The United States expects to spend around $400 million on the program over the next five years, said Jim Reid, director of Cooperative Threat Reduction policy at the Pentagon. He added that close cooperation with the former republics has allowed the budget to grow significantly from the $2 million set aside in 1998. 

Cooperation has “allowed us to kind of develop the system in an environment that was supportive of what we were trying to do,” he said.

Reid also said that Threat Agent Detection Response is not taking place within Russia. “Significant policy differences” and disagreements over certification requirements have stopped work on the program between Moscow and Washington, he said without elaborating on disagreements over policy or certification.

The Threat Agent Detection Response program is using some former Soviet antiplague sites as bases of operation. The Soviet Union established the sites in order to detect and respond to disease outbreaks, Levac said. 

Experts consider the facilities to be public health and proliferation risks, as they contain agents such dangerous pathogens as anthrax, bubonic plague and tularemia. One of the primary goals of the program is to improve security at the antiplague sites in which such agents are being consolidated and to collect dangerous agents from shuttered laboratories before they fall into the hands of terrorists. 

All consolidation facilities must meet U.S. Biosafety Level 2 or 3 security standards, which require sufficient security to protect agents that present risks to workers and the public.

Levac said the program functions on three levels — local, regional and state.    Experts at the local level are trained to recognize and respond to disease outbreaks. These experts would report any outbreaks to the central reference laboratories, which would then dispatch teams of epidemiologists to respond.

Sentinel stations have been established at the regional level, with the number of stations depending on the size of the country. Workers at these stations are dispatched to recover pathogens from old Soviet research laboratories around the republics, package them safely and ship them to the central reference laboratories.   

At the central reference facilities, human and veterinary pathogen samples taken from laboratories around the country are consolidated and cataloged, with information on the pathogens sent to an electronic database in the United States.   These laboratories have state-of-the-art security and all workers undergo thorough background checks to protect against security breaches. Each state has at least one of these, Levac said.

This “top-to-bottom” cooperation creates a comprehensive statewide disease surveillance program, Levac said.

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Pentagon Releases National Strategy to Combat WMD

There is a growing threat that hostile states or nonstate actors will use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies, according to a Defense Department report released Friday (see GSN, Feb. 1).

The 2006 National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction says that defending against such arms is becoming increasingly complex and offers guidance to the U.S. armed forces on how to protect against and counter the threat.

The three objectives of the strategy are counterproliferation, strengthened nonproliferation and consequence management following an attack.

The United States will seek to convince potential adversaries that “they will suffer severe consequences” should they pursue WMD programs.

Washington will also deny, dissuade or defend against WMD possession or proliferation by conducting offensive military operations and interdiction efforts such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, according to the report.

Counterproliferation efforts will include measures such as the 1991 Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which provides assistance for dismantling or safely storing former Soviet weapons of mass destruction (U.S. State Department release, March 24).

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U.N. Reportedly Closing in on Iran Deal

Diplomats at the United Nations said late last night that the Security Council was “very close” to a compromise statement on Iran’s controversial nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 28).

After three meetings yesterday of the council’s five permanent members, France and the United Kingdom distributed a draft text that left out some language opposed by China and Russia while still demanding that Tehran reinstate a uranium enrichment moratorium.

“We have reached agreement on the bulk of the text, so there was movement on all sides, and now we need to see whether we can cross this last bridge but we’re very close,” said John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“We have been incredibly flexible. Incredibly flexible.  I probably have never been more flexible,” Bolton added.

Iran, meanwhile, warned in a statement released by its embassy in Moscow that council intervention would “escalate tensions, entailing negative consequences that would be of benefit to no party.”

Tehran also highlighted a compromise proposal it had made involving a potential nuclear fuel production facility set up in Iran with international coordination.

“In terms of satisfying its needs, Tehran cannot remain dependent on international suppliers,” the statement says.

Diplomats said the full Security Council would meet this afternoon to discuss the new text.

“I think that we are making progress, but I think we are not yet at the final stage,” said China’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya.

Among the concessions to Beijing and Moscow, the draft gives International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei 30 days to report to both the agency and the council on Iran’s compliance with agency mandates. The schedule previously had been set at 14 days. The new draft also goes into less detail about those agency demands, according to AP (Nick Wadhams, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 29).

Another change is the weakening of language calling Iran’s actions a possible “threat to international peace and security,” the New York Times reported today.

The new text instead notes the council’s “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Bolton said the distinctions might seem esoteric to outsiders.

“But they are important points about the role of the Security Council and the IAEA, and it’s important to get it right because we want to send a clear message to Iran,” he said (Warren Hoge, New York Times, March 29).

Foreign ministers from the U.N. powers and Germany are scheduled to meet tomorrow in Berlin to discuss a long-term strategy for managing the crisis, Agence France-Presse reported today.

“I think the focus will be on the medium to long-term issues about how to get Iran ... back into the mainstream of the nonproliferation framework and how to get it to roll back its program,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

“The six-nation meeting is an important part of the efforts of the international community to properly resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through negotiation,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (Agence France-Presse I/OutlookIndia.com, March 29).

Moscow, meanwhile, called on Iran to give an “unambiguous” reply to the offer to enrich its uranium in Russia, AFP reported.

“Iran must give an unambiguous agreement or refusal to this offer so that all the worries in the international community are resolved,” said Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 28).

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Rice Reaffirms Multiple Goals on Iran, North Korea

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday reaffirmed the Bush administration’s multifaceted approaches toward Iran and North Korea, involving simultaneously emphasizing nuclear nonproliferation and changes to other regime policies on issues such as human rights and support for terrorism (see GSN, March 9).

“I think diagnosing the problem is … most important, and it is that Iran is a problem not just on the nuclear side but also concerning terrorism and its human rights record at home,” she said, testifying before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.

Rice called Iran’s alleged effort to develop a nuclear weapon “the single biggest threat from a state that we face,” and said that diplomacy “has gone relatively well to tell the Iranians that they will be isolated from the international community if they continue to seek the weapons.”

She said the United States also would seek to expand international pressure on Iran to address alleged support for terrorism in the Middle East and other policies such as its human rights record.

“We need now to broaden that thinking and that coalition, and not just to what Iran is doing on the nuclear, but what they’re also doing on terrorism,” she said, calling Tehran the “central banker for terrorism in the Middle East.”

She said the administration also has means for “sharpening the contradiction between the Iranian people and a regime that does not represent them through our democracy activities, through broadcasting, through support for nongovernmental organizations there, through highlighting the Iranian human rights record.”

Rice said European countries were “completely united” with the United States on efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear activities and that “they increasingly note the problems with the Iranian regime.”

Rice said the State Department was also aggressively trying to highlight North Korea’s human rights policies while addressing its nuclear program.

“We think one of the important elements here is to mobilize public opinion internationally about the human rights situation in North Korea,” she said.

Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) at the hearing praised the administration’s focus on North Korean human rights polices.

“I think is good and important … to expand the debate into the human rights area where the North Koreans are amongst the world’s worst, if not the world’s worst on human rights violations,” he said.

Critics have charged that administration emphasis on multiple regime policies has undermined efforts to negotiate nuclear nonproliferation agreements for Iran and North Korea.

“Washington cannot decide whether the top priority of its Iran policy should be regime change or nonproliferation; as a result, others of the major powers do not trust and will not fully support its antinuclear efforts,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace President Jessica Mathews wrote in a New York Times commentary published last week.

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Saudi Arabia Reportedly Conducts Nuclear Work

Pakistani experts are reportedly assisting Saudi Arabia with a secret nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, June 16).

The German magazine Cicero cited Western security sources as saying that Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca from 2003 through 2005. Some of them abandoned their hotel rooms for weeks at a time between October 2004 and January 2005, German security expert Udo Ulfkotte told Cicero for a report in tomorrow’s edition.

John Pike, a U.S. security analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, told the magazine that “Saudi Arabia … ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program.”

Saudi scientists have been working in Pakistan since the mid-1990s, according to Western security services.

Satellite images also indicated that Saudi Arabia has constructed a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos housing missiles similar to Pakistan’s long-range Ghauri, Western security services told Cicero (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 28).

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U.S. Questions North Korean Commitment to Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Talks

A senior U. S. official on Monday questioned North Korea’s commitment to the six-nation nuclear disarmament process, the Yonhap News Agency reported today (see GSN, March 28).

Washington remains committed to the six-nation negotiations but will also continue its crackdown on Pyongyang’s alleged financial misconduct and illegal drug smuggling, said Stephen Rademaker, acting assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

“The United States is committed to utilizing all tools available to protect against illicit North Korean activities, including efforts to end currency counterfeiting and smuggling, money laundering, and revenue generated from the illicit transfer of WMD materials and equipment,” Rademaker said.

North Korea has used the financial issue to take the nuclear negotiations “hostage,” he said.

“Such behavior calls into question North Korea’s commitment to the (six-party) joint statement and the complete and verifiable elimination of its nuclear programs,” he said (Yonhap News Agency I, March 29).

South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok said yesterday that certain factions within Washington might be impeding resolution of the nuclear issue, Yonhap reported.

“There now also exist voices that they need to first confirm the North’s willingness to open up, and that it may be better to tackle other issues such as the human rights issue at the same time,” Lee said.

While such beliefs do not predominate in the Bush administration, according to Lee, they are beginning to influence the nuclear standoff.

“This may provide a significant amount of opportunities for us (South Korean government). But what is clear, I believe, is that it is disrupting other countries’ concentration on resolving the nuclear issue,” Lee said.

“I think there are no other ways but to try (to bring North Korea back to the negotiations) by mobilizing every available communication channel with the North,” he added. “I cannot say how long our efforts will last or whether the situation will head for the worst” (Yonhap News Agency II, March 29).

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U.S. Air Force to Focus Nuke Work in New Mexico

The U.S. Air Force said its nuclear weapons operations are to be consolidated at the new Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Nov. 14, 2004).

“It's a great advantage of having it here,” said Col. Greg Foraker, director of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Directorate. “We consider Kirtland the nuclear center of the world.”

The Air Force is charged with supporting maintenance and security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Foraker said the Air Force work includes switching parts, scheduling maintenance, identifying weapons problems and coordinating their transport (Associated Press, March 29).

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Pentagon Designates Money for Pueblo, Blue Grass

The U.S Government Accountability Office said Monday that the Defense Department is properly obligating money to prepare Army facilities in Colorado and Kentucky for chemical weapons disposal, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported (see GSN, Jan. 31).

The office, in a letter to Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said Pentagon had designated $103 million for preparation work at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado. Previously impounded funds have also been released.

McConnell and other critics last year charged that the Pentagon has delayed construction of processing plants at the depots by holding up congressionally appropriated money. The Pentagon said in spring 2005 it would release the funds, and McConnell asked the accountability office to make sure that occurred (Lexington Herald-Leader, March 28).

Meanwhile, Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the start of weapons destruction at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, the Pine Bluff Commercial reported.

“We’ve had the safest, most compliant, most productive startup,” said David Reber, project manager for contractor Washington Demilitarization. The arsenal has experienced fewer injuries and environmental noncompliance complaints while processing rockets and chemical agent at a faster pace than site in Alabama, Oregon and Utah, he said.

Work has been suspended at the site since January to allow for replacement of piping in the pollution abatement system.   Processing is expected to continue by mid-May.

Pine Bluff has the second-largest chemical weapons stockpile in the United States. It had 3,850 tons of nerve agent at the start of weapons processing. The stockpile includes M55 rockets filled with sarin and VX, VX landmines and ton containers of mustard gas. The facility is expected to switch from disposal of sarin rockets to VX rockets in about a year, Reber said (Amy Riggin, Pine Bluff Commercial, March 28).

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China Reports Successful Interceptor Missile Test

China announced Sunday that it had successfully tested a missile interceptor similar to the U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missile, the Dong-A Ilbo reported (see GSN, March 27).

The missile, launched from a desert in northwestern China, successfully shot down a target missile and a high-flying reconnaissance plane, according to a People’s Liberation Army bulletin.

“This marks the official launch of the interceptor missile unit. We can intercept not only high-flying reconnaissance planes or missiles but also low-flying targets. Our accuracy is significantly high as well,” the commanding officer in charge of the test was quoted as saying.

China has criticized the U.S. missile defense system for creating instability and provoking an arms race, according to Dong-A (Yoo-Seong Hwang, Dong-A Ilbo, March 28).

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Canadian Prime Minister Says No Plans to Reopen Missile Defense Talks With United States

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he did not foresee discussions on Canada’s rejection of involvement in the U.S. missile defense program occurring during an upcoming meeting with President George W. Bush, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Feb. 27).

However, officials said that the two neighbors are expected to renew their joint operation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). 

“There had been discussions between both governments on the whole issue of NORAD, and in the course of those discussions, the government of the United States did not press us on any issue pertaining to the missile defense shield,” Harper said.

“So I think that the matter is put to rest for the moment,” he said (Agence France-Presse, March 28).

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Experts Criticize U.S. Port Security

The United States is “not acting like a nation at war” in terms of keeping weapons of mass destruction from being brought into the country, one cargo expert said yesterday at a Senate hearing (see GSN, March 28).

Detectors at points of entry around the country would not find everything a terrorist might try to smuggle into the United States, said Stephen Flynn, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,. He told a Senate subcommittee that “we are living on borrowed time” in terms of cargo security, the Baltimore Sun reported.

“We have a version 1.0,” he said of security efforts. “We need a version 2.0.”

Former Sept. 11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean said that keeping terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons was the panel’s most crucial recommendation, as the detonation of an atomic device would cause the most casualties.

“We still do not have a maximum effort against what everybody agreed is the most urgent threat to the American people,” he said at the hearing.

Studies by the Government Accountability Office found weaknesses in efforts to keep a nuclear weapon from reaching the United States, including potential corruption of overseas officials and technological shortcomings of detectors being placed here and at foreign locations.

Cost overruns are also a concern, as GAO officials found that the Homeland Security Department could break its $1.3 billion budget for installing monitors around the United States by $342 million.

GAO Investigator Eugene Aloise said that Homeland Security by December 2005 had installed 670 radiation detectors at points of entry, with plans to install a total of more than 3,000 more by 2009. However, that would require the rate of installation to increase to 52 per month, an increase of 22 per month. Aloise said this increase was unlikely to occur.

Homeland Security is working to speed the pace of installation, said Vayl Oxford, chief of the agency’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. A new plan is expected to result in 98 percent of container-held cargo crossing the southern border to be screened for radiation by the beginning of October. Seaports are expected to meet this same goal by October 2007, with all cargo containers entering the United States to be screened by late 2011, Oxford said (Gwyneth Shaw, Baltimore Sun, March 29).

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff today said that the United States expects to spend more than $500 million to bolster WMD detection ability at ports, Agence France-Presse reported.

The money would be used for equipment that can detect radioactive materials, he said in Singapore.

President George W. Bush charged the new Domestic Nuclear Detection Office at Homeland Security with “innovation, research and the deployment of antinuclear detection equipment,” Chertoff said, adding that in his fiscal 2007 budget request the president “put over $500 million dollars” toward such efforts.

“Perhaps the greatest threat — and the one we work hardest to prevent because there's very little you can do to respond — is the possibility of a nuclear device being detonated by a terrorist,” he said. “Unlike other kinds of threats where response and protection can mitigate the damage, in a nuclear bomb there’s not a lot of protection against it and there's not a lot of response. You better prevent it up front.”

The United States will continue to push for technological improvements for cargo-screening devices, Chertoff said. Close to 100 percent of cargo will be screened for radiation by next year with a special device, he said.

“But we want to build the next level of monitors — wider, quicker, cheaper and more precise,” he said.

The device can inspect cargo while boxes are being moved, allowing for the quick movement of cargo.

The United States also plans to work to install devices at more ports around the world and improve tracking and inspection of containers to ensure they have not been tampered with.

“We're going to be looking in the next year or two to build a capacity to have better information about what's in containers. We're going to look to the private sector to pioneer this,” Chertoff said (Agence France-Presse, March 29).

Meanwhile, Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said that terrorists could acquire enough material for a nuclear bomb, then smuggle it into the United States from Canada, the Montreal Gazette reported.

Day said Canada is working to reduce the risk that this would occur.

“It is always possible,” he said. “But we can minimize the possibility.”

U.S. GAO spokesman Paul Anderson said nuclear material smuggled into the United States in an undercover security test was first brought into Canada with the knowledge of Canadian officials.

“They knew we were coming,” he said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he did not know a test had been conducted. Day said border-crossing exercises are commonplace.

“Well, there are tests going on all the time — on our side, in the United States. All countries are constantly testing their own systems and running tests to minimize the danger and to look at the increased technology that we might have to have,” he said.

He said Canada is continuing to work on ways to minimize risk of terrorists smuggling nuclear materials. 

“I've been to a number of our ports and a number of our borders already. As the United States have, we have the capacity and the technology to X-ray containers, to measure possible radioactivity. That capacity is there, it is used. ... No system is perfect but it is very significant the amount that we do have in place now, and we want to see it improved,” Day said (Elizabeth Thompson, The Gazette, March 29).

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