D.C. Spends Millions on Bioterrorism Preparedness

The District of Columbia since 2001 has added more than 30 staffers and millions of dollars to the annual budget for the office that handles bioterrorism preparedness, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Aug. 9, 2005).

The D.C. Health Department’s Emergency Health and Medical Services office had five employees and an annual budget of $350,000 at the time of the anthrax mailings. Today, the office has 38 jobs and an annual budget of $13 million, funded mostly through federal grants.

New funding has allowed for additional emergency training, hiring of specialists and installation of a high-tech system for monitoring patient symptoms and searching for patterns that could indicate the use of biological agents.

The Health Department also now has a crisis center with computers linked to the city Emergency Management Agency and large screens to view news reports and conduct videoconferences, the Post reported.

However, questions remain about the District’s readiness and use of bioterrorism funds. 

The Trust for America’s Health reported recently that the city has inadequate laboratory facilities to test for potential weapons agents and must put a plan in place to make sure health professionals go to work in the face of a disease outbreak.

While the department has not fully escaped its history of funding and leadership problems, “the signs have been very positive recently,” said Shelley Hearne, executive director at the nonprofit Trust. “They’ve had more stable leadership. (Emergency preparedness) has gotten a lot of attention.”

Two reports last year from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department found that the city Health Department had only used about half of the more than $28 million in federal bioterrorism preparedness funds it received from 1999 and 2004.

Officials with the city agency said the spending of HHS money was slowed as they used $20 million received from the Defense Department after the anthrax mailings. There was also stiff competition for hiring specialists from police departments and state agencies around the nation.

“There was a huge spike in demand for people and supplies and equipment,” said Nitin Natarajan, D.C. bioterrorism coordinator.

The Health Department today is using money for equipment and training that would boost the response to a variety of emergencies, from natural disasters to disease outbreaks.

“We’re not just looking at anthrax,” Natarajan said (Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post, March 9).

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Intel Reports Cast Doubt on Iraq War Justifications

By Murray Waas, National Journal

WASHINGTON — Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources (see GSN, Feb. 16).

The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that discussed whether Saddam’s procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon.

Among other things, the report stated that the Energy Department and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed that the tubes were “intended for conventional weapons,” a view disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a nuclear bomb.

The disclosure that Bush was informed of the DOE and State dissents is the first evidence that the president himself knew of the sharp debate within the government over the aluminum tubes during the time that he, Cheney, and other members of the Cabinet were citing the tubes as clear evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Neither the president nor the vice president told the public about the disagreement among the agencies.

When U.S. inspectors entered Iraq after the fall of Saddam’s regime, they determined that Iraq’s nuclear program had been dormant for more than a decade and that the aluminum tubes had been used only for artillery shells.

The second classified report, delivered to Bush in early January 2003, was also a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, this one focusing on whether Saddam would launch an unprovoked attack on the United States, either directly, or indirectly by working with terrorists.

The report stated that U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that it was unlikely that Saddam would try to attack the United States — except if “ongoing military operations risked the imminent demise of his regime” or if he intended to “extract revenge” for such an assault, according to records and sources.

The single dissent in the report again came from State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, which believed that the Iraqi leader was “unlikely to conduct clandestine attacks against the U.S. homeland even if [his] regime’s demise is imminent” as the result of a U.S. invasion.

On at least four earlier occasions, beginning in the spring of 2002, according to the same records and sources, the president was informed during his morning intelligence briefing that U.S. intelligence agencies believed it was unlikely that Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States.

However, in the months leading up to the war, Bush, Cheney, and Cabinet members repeatedly asserted that Saddam was likely to use chemical or biological weapons against the United States or to provide such weapons to al-Qaeda or another terrorist group.

The Bush administration used the potential threat from Saddam as a major rationale in making the case to go to war. The president cited the threat in an address to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, in an Oct. 7, 2002, speech to the American people, and in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003.

The one-page documents prepared for Bush are known as the “President’s Summary” of the much longer and more detailed National Intelligence Estimates that combine the analysis and judgments of agencies throughout the intelligence community.

An NIE, according to the Web site of the National Intelligence Council — the interagency group that coordinates the documents’ production — represents “the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence Community regarding the likely course of future events” and is written with the goal of providing “policy-makers with the best, unvarnished, and unbiased information — regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to U.S. policy.” (The January 2003 NIE, for example, was titled “Nontraditional Threats to the U.S. Homeland Through 2007”).

As many as six to eight agencies, foremost among them the CIA, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the INR, contribute to the drafting of an NIE. If any one of those intelligence agencies disagrees with the majority view on major conclusions, the NIE includes the dissenting view.

The one-page summary for the president allows intelligence agencies to emphasize what they believe to be the conclusions from the broader NIE that are the most important to communicate to the commander-in-chief.

The President’s Summary is among the most highly classified papers in the government. References to the summaries are contained in footnotes in the so-called Robb-Silberman report — officially, the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction — that was issued in March 2005 on the use of intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. The White House has refused to declassify the summaries or to give them to congressional committees.

The summaries stated that both the Energy and State departments dissented on the aluminum tubes question. This is the first evidence that Bush was aware of the intense debate within the government during the time that he, Cheney, and members of the Cabinet were citing the procurement of the tubes as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program.

In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 12, 2002, the president asserted, “Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.”

On Oct. 7, 2002, less than a week after Bush was given the summary, he said in a speech in Cincinnati: “Evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his ‘nuclear mujahedeen’ — his nuclear holy warriors. ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.”

On numerous other occasions, Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and then-U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte cited Iraq’s procurement of aluminum tubes without disclosing that the intelligence community was split as to their end use. The fact that the president was informed of the dissents by Energy and State is also significant because Rice and other administration officials have said that Bush did not know about those dissenting views when he made claims about the purported uses for the tubes.

On July 11, 2003, aboard Air Force One during a presidential trip to Africa, Rice was asked about the National Intelligence Estimate and whether the president knew of the dissenting views among intelligence agencies regarding Iraq’s procurement of the aluminum tubes.

Months earlier, disagreement existed within the administration over how to characterize the aluminum tubes in a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003. Breaking ranks with others in the administration, Powell decided to refer to the internal debate among government agencies over Iraq’s intended use of the tubes.

Asked about this by a reporter on Air Force One, Rice said: “I'm saying that when we put [Powell's speech] together ... the secretary decided that he would caveat the aluminum tubes, which he did. ... The secretary also has an intelligence arm that happened to hold that view.”

Rice added, “Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me.”

The one-page October 2002 President's Summary specifically told Bush that although “most agencies judge” that the use of the aluminum tubes was “related to a uranium enrichment effort ... INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons uses.”

The lengthier NIE — more than 90 pages — contained significantly more detail describing the disagreement between the CIA and the Pentagon's DIA on one hand, which believed that the tubes were meant for centrifuges, and State's INR and the Energy Department, which believed that they were meant for artillery shells. Administration officials had said that the president would not have read the full-length paper. They also had said that many of the details of INR’s dissent were contained in a special text box that was positioned far away from the main text of the report.

But the one-page summary, several senior government officials said in interviews, was written specifically for Bush, was handed to the president by then-CIA Director George Tenet, and was read in Tenet's presence.

In addition, Rice, Cheney, and dozens of other high-level Bush administration policy-makers received a highly classified intelligence assessment, known as a Senior Executive Memorandum, on the aluminum tubes issue. Circulated on Jan. 10, 2003, the memo was titled “Questions on Why Iraq Is Procuring Aluminum Tubes and What the IAEA Has Found to Date.”

The paper included discussion regarding the fact that the INR, Energy, and the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, all believed that Iraq was using the aluminum tubes for conventional weapons programs.

The lengthier NIE also contained a note regarding the aluminum tubes disagreement:

“In INR's view, Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose.

“INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets.”

One week after Rice’s comments aboard Air Force One, on July 18, 2003, the Bush administration declassified some portions of the NIE, including the passage quoted above, regarding INR’s dissent regarding the aluminum tubes.

But the Bush administration steadfastly continued to refuse to declassify the President's Summary of the NIE, which in the words of one senior official, is the “one document which illustrates what the president knew and when he knew it.” The administration also refused to furnish copies of the paper to congressional intelligence committees.

That a summary was also prepared for Bush on the question of Saddam’s intentions regarding an unprovoked attack on the United States is significant because the administration has claimed that the president was unaware of intelligence information that conflicted with his public statements and those of the vice president and members of his Cabinet on the justifications for attacking Iraq.

According to interviews and records, Bush personally read the one-page summary in Tenet’s presence during the morning intelligence briefing, and the two spoke about it at some length. Sources familiar with the summary said it was highly significant that the president was informed that it was the unanimous conclusion of the intelligence agencies participating in the production of the January 2003 NIE that Saddam was unlikely to consider attacking the U.S. unless Iraq was attacked first.

Cheney received virtually the same intelligence information, according to the same records and interviews. The president’s summaries have been shared with the vice president as a matter of course during the Bush presidency.

The conclusion among intelligence agencies that Saddam was unlikely to consider attacking the United States unless attacked first was also outlined in Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs, highly classified daily intelligence papers distributed to several hundred executive branch officials and to the congressional intelligence oversight committees.

During the second half of 2002, the president and vice president repeatedly cited the threat from Saddam in their public statements. “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” Cheney declared on Aug. 26, 2002, to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

In his Sept. 12 address to the U.N. General Assembly, Bush said: “With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.”

In an Oct. 7 address to the nation, Bush cited intelligence showing that Iraq had a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. “We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States,” the president declared.

“We know that Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America,” he added. “Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.”

In his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, the president once again warned the nation: “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.”

In March 2003, as American, British, and other military forces prepared to invade Iraq, the president repeated the warnings during a summit in the Azores islands of Portugal and in a March 17 speech to the nation on the eve of the war. “The danger is clear:  Using chemical, biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country,” Bush said in the March 17 speech. “The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it.”

Senior Bush administration officials say they had good reason to disbelieve the intelligence that was provided to them by the CIA, noting that the intelligence the agency had provided earlier regarding Iraq was flawed.

And more recently, a 511-page bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on prewar intelligence regarding Iraq concluded: “Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysis determine the Iraqi regime's possible links with al-Qaeda.”

The White House declined to comment for this story. In a statement, Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council said, “The president of the United States has talked about this matter directly, as have a myriad of other administration officials. At this juncture, we have nothing to add to that body of information.”

The 9/11 commission concluded in its final report that no evidence existed of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Saddam and al-Qaeda, adding, “Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”

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Dems Seek Cuts in FY 2007 U.S. Defense Spending

A group of Democrats in the House of Representatives are calling for reduced spending on nuclear weapons and missile defense in their plan to slash $60 billion from the White House’s proposed defense budget for fiscal 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today (see GSN, Feb. 10).

The House Progressive Caucus would shift the money to homeland security, children’s health care, job training, overseas humanitarian aid and other programs.

“It’s time we invested more in our people and less in our defense contractors,” Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said at a press conference.

The White House has proposed a $439 billion defense budget for fiscal 2007.

Among the proposals in the “Common Sense Budget Act” are reducing the number of warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal to 1,000 in order to save $14 billion, and saving $8 billion by cutting back on missile defense development.

The proposal is unlikely to succeed, the Chronicle reported. Instead, the Republican-led Congress is expected to consider spending less on civilian domestic programs in order to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and for cleanup from Hurricane Katrina (Edward Epstein, San Francisco Chronicle, March 9).

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U.S. Twin Goals on Iran Draw Criticism

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is pursuing twin goals in Iran: stopping an alleged nuclear weapons program and changing the country’s clerical regime, a senior official said yesterday at a congressional hearing (see GSN, March 8).

Critics at the hearing suggested this approach might work to cross purposes and lead to war, by threatening the regime while at the same time trying to compel its cooperation in forgoing a potential security addition.

We “just seem to be trying to provoke and aggravate and [be] looking for a fight,” said Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas).

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns described the dual strategy yesterday before the House International Relations Committee. 

He said the United States over the past year has sought to muster multinational pressure through the International Atomic Energy Agency and potentially through the U.N. Security Council to compel Iran to give up nuclear activities Washington believes are intended for weapons.

In addition, the Bush administration has pursued policies designed to encourage the Iranian people to “change their own government and form a democratic government in the future.”

The United States has sought to “create a large and diverse international coalition of countries on each of these issues designed to deny Iran a nuclear weapon, and to roll back its support for terrorism, and to influence the people of Iran who we see as victims of the regime, and to assert a comprehensive and aggressive American foreign policy to counter Iran on all of these issues,” Burns said.

He noted the administration has requested $75 million in extra funding for fiscal 2006 to expand television and radio broadcasts through Voice of America and Radio Farda into Iran, and “to work with some of the private American radio and TV stations from the states of California and New Jersey and the Washington, D.C area to help them get the American message into Iran itself.”

The White House would use $10 million of the money to “work through nongovernmental organizations around the world and with some of the European NGOs to try to plant some roots of democracy, of independent journalism, of civil society into Iran,” he said, adding, “We can’t say everything that we’re intending to do, obviously.”

The State Department recently created a Iranian Affairs Office, through which the department plans to “reach out to the Iranian people to support their desire for freedom and democracy,” according to a leaked department cable recently posted on the Internet.

Burns said Tehran posed four particular “challenges” to U.S. interests, identifying a potentially nuclear-armed Iran at the top.

“The greatest immediate threat that we face is that Iran is clearly trying to create a nuclear weapons capability,” he said.

In addition, he said, “Iran is the leading director and chief ‘central banker’ of the major terrorist groups in the Middle East that have killed Americans and killed Israelis and Lebanese, and which stand in direct opposition to peace in the Middle East.”

Iran also has attempted “to exert a dominant role in the Middle East itself and to make Iran into the most powerful country in the Middle East,” he said.

Burns cited fourth “the repression of the people of Iran by this autocratic regime.”

“That in essence, in our judgment, represents the totality of the threat that Iran poses to American interests, as well as to those of our friends and allies around the world,” he said.

Several lawmakers at the hearing questioned the wisdom of the approach, Paul in particular.

“I know the interventions that most everybody advises are well intended, but interference in the internal affairs of other nations does not do much good for us. Playing the policeman of the world has not been beneficial,” he said.

Paul suggested that pursuit of regime change in Iraq backfired on the United States.

“I just think that all these options on the table to do to Iran what we’ve done to Iraq ought to make us sit back and say, what have we done these last three years; isn’t it time for a reassessment?” he said.

He said further the administration’s pursuit of a nuclear energy deal with India signed last week also seemed counterproductive to the effort to gain Iranian cooperation.

“Does India follow all the rules? They don’t even belong to the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty. And we reward them with technology and money. Same way with Pakistan,” he said. 

Burns defended the India deal, saying, “India is democratic and peaceful and a great friend of the United States. Iran is autocratic and adversarial and … one of the greatest threats facing our country today.”

He said the two countries are “going in opposite directions concerning their relationship with the IAEA,” noting nuclear-armed India as part of the deal agreed to place some of its nuclear facilities under international safeguards within eight years. That concession comes in exchange for potential U.S. nuclear material and technology exports and a U.S. effort to persuade the multilateral Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow India to receive such exports despite its nuclear weapons program.

Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) asked whether drawing distinctions might undermine efforts to muster international cooperation on pressuring Iran.

“The issue here appears to be how we compel a China or a Russia that has a different relationship with Iran to understand how it’s OK for us to draw these distinctions with India, but it’s not OK for them,” he said.

Burns said the administration has judged “our policy towards India and its new initiative will not have a negative impact on our ability to prosecute an effective international response to counter Iran.”

Representative Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) asked whether application of the so-called “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war against countries suspected of proliferation and ties to terrorism is a possibility.

“The president has made clear that there are no options off the table and that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable,” Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph said in his testimony before the committee.

“I know you didn’t come here to scare us, but I think you’ve frightened me a little bit,” Paul said. 

“Considering the results in Iraq, I would hope that our planning and our discussion now would concentrate on where we went wrong in Iraq, because we can’t find many successes there,” he said.

Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said the administration should consider attempting bilateral talks with Iran, “rather than seeking only to support negotiations of the EU or the efforts of Russia to control the reprocessing of nuclear materials to the satisfaction of the international community.”

“We will not be well served by another military venture into the Middle East, and neither will the cause of nonproliferation. So I think it’s about time we enhance and elevate our diplomatic efforts,” she said.

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U.N. Powers Meet on Iran

Delegates from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council yesterday met to discuss the Iran nuclear crisis, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 8).

The International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday sent the matter to the Security Council for consideration and possible action.

Officials from China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States agreed that the next step would be a nonbinding presidential statement on Iran and that any further moves should not be rushed, council diplomats said.

“We are at a very tentative stage,” said British Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry. “This is an incremental approach, we’ll do it on that basis.”

The United Kingdom proposed that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei report again in two weeks on Iran’s compliance with agency resolutions, one diplomat said.

The United States is likely to seek to have the presidential statement note Iran’s lack of compliance with agency resolutions, diplomats said. France and the United Kingdom are expected to support such a move.

“We talked about the role and reaction of the Security Council to the continued Iranian violation of the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said following the meeting. “Now that it’s here, we’ll proceed in a careful and deliberate fashion.”

“We will follow a gradual approach ... because we want Iran to go back to suspension, so the action will be gradual and reversible if Iran goes back to suspension,” said French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere.

China and Russia, meanwhile, are expected to resist any tough action.

Russian Ambassador Andrey Denisov said Iran would not have sufficient time to move on compliance in the two weeks called for by the British proposal, AP reported.

Harsh measures by the Security Council could lead Iran to abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and close its atomic facilities to inspection, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“We should all strive for a solution which would not endanger the ability of the IAEA to continue its work in Iran, while of course making sure there is no danger for the nonproliferation regime,” he said.

Lavrov said France, Germany and the United Kingdom had suggested new negotiations in Vienna, with the participation of China, Iran, Russia, the United States and ElBaradei.

However, European and U.S. diplomats denied any knowledge of such a plan, AP reported (Nick Wadhams, Associated Press, March 9).

U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency Gregory Schulte yesterday called on the agency to conduct “special inspections,” the London Guardian reported.

Such inspections would be far more intrusive than the agency’s current method in Iran, said a diplomat. The strategy was used to little effect 13 years ago in North Korea, according to the Guardian.

Schulte said Iran had enough uranium to build 10 nuclear bombs.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom released a statement saying that Security Council action was inevitable. They said there was “no credible civil use” for Iran’s uranium gas stockpile (Ian Traynor, The Guardian, March 9).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran remained determined to pursue its nuclear program, despite the threat of Security Council action, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Some powers think that if they sit in a session, they can force the Iranian people to retreat. But all the Iranian nation, young or old, urban dweller or villager and farmer or factory worker are all saying one thing: nuclear energy is our undeniable right,” Ahmadinejad said.

Iran’s Assembly of Experts, an 86-member clerical body, said the nuclear issue is “at the center of the psychological war against the Islamic regime.”

“The Iranian nation is determined to guard this great national asset with all its power, and if the aggressors do not stop their interference to the undeniable right to our nation, they will pay a heavy price,” the assembly said in a statement.

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, however, warned against isolating Iran.

“If we cannot interact with the world community while maintaining our national interests, then we will have great problems in the future,” he said.

Regarding the potential for sanctions, he said, “We have to do our best not to reach that point.”

Washington, meanwhile, said Iran continued to deepen its isolation.

“I think that provocative statements and actions only further isolate Iran from the rest of the world,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, March 9).

British Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency Peter Jenkins dismissed Ahmadinejad’s warnings as “bluster,” AFP reported yesterday.

“It seems to me that the Iranians are being over-confident in some of the assumptions they are making about the possible consequences of persisting on their current course,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins admitted that the U.N. nuclear watchdog had not discovered “firm evidence” of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

“On the other hand, [ElBaradei] has come across a number of indicators that the military may be involved in Iran’s nuclear program and he has not been able to discount those indicators as false or irrelevant,” he added (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, March 8).

China today called for further diplomacy, Reuters reported.

“On the Iran nuclear issue, yesterday ElBaradei said the problem should be solved through peaceful negotiations,” said Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. “That makes sense.  There is still room for cooperation. ... We support EU and Russian engagement with Iran” (Reuters/Yahoo!News, March 8).

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White House Rejects Criticism of India Nuclear Deal

The White House yesterday issued a response to criticisms of its nuclear technology sharing agreement with India, Agence France Presse reported (see GSN, March 8).

On fears that the deal would heighten the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, the Bush administration said it “has no intention of aiding” New Delhi’s weapons program.

“We do not intend to pursue a similar nuclear cooperation initiative with Pakistan,” the White House said.

Supporting the nuclear program of a nation that remains outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty will not encourage the suspected weapons efforts of Iran and North Korea, according to the statement.

“It is not credible to compare the rogue regimes of North Korea and Iran to India. Unlike Iran or North Korea, India has been a peaceful and vibrant democracy with a strong nuclear nonproliferation record,” the White House said.

The administration does not expect the deal to harm international nonproliferation work and warned against withdrawals from the treaty, AFP reported.

“We do not expect nations to withdraw from the NPT. Any move to withdraw from the NPT would clearly signal a nation’s intent to pursue nuclear weapons and would result in the loss of access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes,” according to the statement.

Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) was not convinced by the document.

“Whether we intend to aid India’s weapons programs or not, the practical effect of this agreement is to help India get the fuel it needs to build more weapons,” he said in a prepared statement.

“The rest of the world is ready to exploit what it perceives to be a double standard,” he said. “Iran will use this against us.  North Korea will use this against us. We have empowered all the bad actors in the world, and we have given all the good actors a reason to question our credibility or steadfastness” (Agence France Presse/Yahoo!News, March 8).

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Japan Denies Official Made Pro-Nuke Comments

Japan today denied reports that a top official has expressed the need for Tokyo to develop a nuclear program to counter the threat from North Korea, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Feb. 13).

“It is not true,” Senior Vice Foreign Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda said of the remarks attributed to Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

The Shukan Bunshun magazine today quoted Aso as saying on Dec. 2 in Washington, “India and Pakistan also have them and so does North Korea. If North Korea continues its nuclear development, even Japan would need to arm itself with nuclear weapons.” 

Aso was meeting with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney at the time, AFP reported. The remark stunned U.S. and Japanese officials in the room, according to Shukan Bunshun.

Aso reportedly made similar remarks at a meeting the next day with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Japan should have nuclear weapons “if China and North Korea become security threats,” he was quoted as saying (Agence France-Presse, March 9).

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North Korea Proposes Joint Task Force With U.S. to Examine Counterfeiting Concerns

North Korean representatives at a meeting with U.S. officials this week in New York set several conditions for Pyongyang’s return to the six-party talks on its nuclear program, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 8).

Ri Gun, the head of North Korea’s delegation at Tuesday’s meeting, requested that Washington remove “financial sanctions”; form a joint U.S.-North Korean task force to study the counterfeiting issue; allow North Korea access to the U.S. banking system; and provide Pyongyang with technical assistance on identifying counterfeit currency, according to a U.S. official familiar with the meeting.

“We cannot go into the six-party talks with this hat over our head,” the official quoted Ri as saying.

A senior Republican lawmaker, meanwhile, urged Washington to hold direct talks with Pyongyang.

“The six-party process is beginning to appear moribund,” said Representative Jim Leach (R-Iowa), chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. “It’s time for the United States to lead” rather than “indebting us to the diplomacy of countries that may have different interests.”

Leach said there is a strong argument for allowing the U.S. point man on the North Korea nuclear standoff, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, to visit Pyongyang “to test the boundaries — and push for implementation — of the joint statement. He also called for consideration of having the United States and North Korea open liaison offices in each other’s capitals.

Hill said yesterday that the United States is prepared to go back to multilateral nuclear talks “without conditions” (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, March 9).

Ri said the United States at the meeting failed to prove allegations of North Korean financial misconduct, Agence France-Presse reported today.

“There was no evidence,” Ri told the Seoul-based newspaper Hankyoreh.

“There were neither comments nor discussions on them,” he said in response to a question about alleged currency counterfeiting by North Korean entities (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 9).

Elsewhere, South Korean nuclear negotiator Chun Young-woo departed today for Beijing, where is he expected to discuss the nuclear talks, the Associated Press reported.

Chun said he hoped to “frankly exchange views on how to cooperate to move the talks forward when they resume” when he meets his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, the Yonhap News Agency reported (Associated Press, March 9).

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Umatilla Contractor Fined for Two Violations

The state of Oregon last week levied fines against the contractor at the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility for two hazardous waste permit violations, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 7, 2005).

Washington Demilitarization Co. owes $8,800 for operating incinerators for 16 minutes in September while an automatic air monitoring system was not working, and for operating a waste unit for 14 hours the previous month without correctly monitoring emissions, the Oregon Environmental Quality Department said in a press release.

Company documents show there was no weapons agent in the emissions at the time of both incidents, according to Dan Duso, agency senior hazardous waste compliance officer.

The company reported both incidents in September. The deadline for appealing the fines is March 23 (Associated Press/Oregonian, March 8).

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North Korea Missile Tests Raise Alarm

The United States yesterday called North Korea’s missile program a threat to the world and called upon the country to abide by a testing moratorium after Pyongyang reportedly test-fired two missiles, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 8).

“As we have continued to point out, North Korea’s missile program and activities are a threat not only to the region, but the international community at large,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The United States calls “upon North Korea to abide by the moratorium concerning missile tests,” he said. McCormack added that Washington was “working with our friends and allies in the region on deployment of active missile defenses.”

Pyongyang test-fired the short-range, ground-to-ground missiles early yesterday, Japan’s Nippon Television Network quoted Japanese Defense Agency and public security authorities as saying. They are believed to have landed in North Korean territory.

The tests could be Pyongyang’s answer to Tuesday’s warning about North Korea’s missile buildup from a top U.S. military commander, as well as the ongoing nuclear standoff, said Strategic Forecasting Inc., a private U.S. intelligence firm.

“Given the current political climate — stalled six-party talks, discussions over sanctions and counterfeiting and U.S. warnings of a North Korean missile buildup — the timing fits with Pyongyang’s previous ploys,” Strategic Forecasting said in a report.

McCormack said the United States remains committed to the six-party talks as the best forum for addressing North Korea’s nuclear program.

“It is also a forum in which issues of missile proliferation and missile technology can also be addressed,” he said (Agence France-Presse/DNAIndia.com, March 9).

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Japan, U.S. Conduct Missile Defense Test

The United States and Japan yesterday completed a successful test of a Standard Missile 3 interceptor off the Hawaiian island of Kauai, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 7).

There was no live target for the exercise. The USS Lake Erie guided-missile cruiser fired the interceptor missile at a simulated target inserted into Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program computers, according to a U.S. Missile Defense Agency press statement.

The exercise was the first to test the ability of a Japanese-designed clamshell nose cone to separate from a U.S.-designed missile, AP reported. This was the first use of Japanese technology in a U.S. missile defense test, part of the two country’s ongoing cooperation in the program.

The Japanese nose cone enables the interceptor warhead to find an incoming missile at a faster pace, reducing the shoot down time.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed satisfaction with the exercise.

“The success shows how much our technological capability has been enhanced,” Koizumi said. “I hope that Japan and the United States will further advance their research” (Associated Press/Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Feb. 9).

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