More Tests Demanded of New U.S. Anthrax Vaccine

VaxGen Inc. said yesterday that U.S. government demands that the California biotechnology firm conduct additional human tests on its new anthrax vaccine could leave it unable to fill the contract, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 10).

The Bush administration does not plan to pay for the additional work, nor will it pay the company until delivery of the vaccine begins. Initial delivery of the 75-million-dose order is now scheduled to begin in late 2008, two years beyond the original schedule under the 2004 contract.

Concern has arisen that the financially strapped company might use up all funding before the vaccine could be delivered, AP reported.

“Financing an increased scope of work and delays imposed without compensation is the greatest challenge we have faced,” VaxGen Chief Executive Lance Gordon said in a press release.

VaxGen is asking the Health and Human Services to rethink the new request and is “pursuing legal remedies” to recover expenses from the required testing, Gordon said (Paul Elias, Associated Press/Reno Gazette-Journal, May 10).

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Australia Helps Philippines Strengthen WMD Defenses

Australia is hosting a three-day workshop in Manila to offer strategies on screening for weapons of mass destruction with officials from Philippine trade, agriculture, security and law enforcement agencies, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, March 13).

“We are trying to enforce tighter export control regimes to help countries develop their own systems so that terrorists’ use and access to weapons of mass destruction is cut down,” Pablo Kang, deputy head of mission of the Australian Embassy in Manila, told Reuters.

“We really have to harden our government, our systems and our regulations to prevent, control and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction,” said Florencio Fianza, a retired police general and special envoy on transnational crime.

Fianza said that the Philippines has created a list of some 4,000 controlled substances, equipment and materials, such as carbon fibers and dry freeze, which could be used to produce unconventional weapons.

“The dry freeze equipment for making instant coffee could be easily used to preserve bacteria for a major biological attack,” he said (Manny Mogato, Reuters, May 10).

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U.S. Agrees to Wait While EU Nations Craft New Offer for Iran

Foreign ministers from France, Germany and the United Kingdom are scheduled to meet Monday in Brussels to formulate an incentives package aimed at persuading Iran to halt uranium enrichment activities, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, May 10).

The package should be completed “over the next 10 days,” said a Western diplomat in Vienna. The officials also plan to prepare possible sanctions for the event that Iran fails to comply.

Political directors from the European powers are expected to present the plan on March 19 to their Chinese, Russian and U.S. counterparts in London, a European diplomat told AFP.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that Washington could wait “a couple of weeks” on the European plan before pressing ahead with efforts to pass a tough U.N. resolution on the issue (Agence France-Presse I/IranMania.com, May 10).

“We agreed that we will continue to seek a Security Council resolution, but that we would wait for a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear that they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear program,” Rice told ABC News.

She told NBC News that Tehran would be given two options: defiance and isolation or “a path to a civil nuclear program that is acceptable to the international community” (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, May 11).

Iran in August 2005 rejected a European incentives package backed by Washington, AFP reported.

“The challenge is this: The revised incentives have to be good enough to persuade Russia and China that Iran has to accept them but not too good to scare off the United States from endorsing them,” the Western diplomat said. Meanwhile, “the sanctions package has to be severe enough to satisfy the United States that it is serious but not so scary as to have Russia and China reject it,” the diplomat said.

“We must take the August offer and wrap it fresh,” the European diplomat said. He added, however, “I can’t see that anything has changed with regards to the offer” (Agence France-Presse I, May 10).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today that he was open to talks on the nuclear standoff, Reuters reported.

Ahmadinejad said Iran’s nuclear program “has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, or military purposes.”

He said it was “ridiculous” for nuclear weapons states to object to Iran’s peaceful atomic effort (Tomi Soetjipto, Reuters/Yahoo!News, May 11).

U.S. President George W. Bush said the letter he received this week from Ahmadinejad does not answer the question, “When will you get rid of your nuclear program?” (Associated Press/USA Today, May 10).

Rice said yesterday that “the absence of communication is not a problem with the Iranians” because proposals have been advanced through European and Russian channels, the Washington Post reported.

Critics, however, have said that diplomacy been ineffective because Iran has little incentive to compromise if the United States is not involved. Some also said Washington’s refusal to negotiate with Iran is heightening suspicions that the Bush administration ultimately intends military intervention.

“Allies of the U.S. will support tough action against Iran only if they are confident America is serious about achieving a negotiated, diplomatic solution,” U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote this week in the Financial Times. “The continued unwillingness of the U.S. to engage Iran will make other states hesitate to support, and possibly oppose, these tougher measures” (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, May 11).

Many experts believe that the possibility of a direct meeting between Tehran and Washington are slim, the Associated Press reported today.

“Both the United States and Iran regard each other as a hostile country,” Shen Dingli, director of the Institute of American Studies at Fudan University in China, said yesterday.

“They don’t believe the nuclear issue can be resolved through negotiation. Iran believes it must acquire nuclear weapons to ensure state security,” he said. “The United States does not want to have direct talks with Iran just like it does not want to talk with North Korea.”

A summit between the Bush and Ahmadinejad is not likely to occur because Tehran “has not been willing to accept the norms and rules of conduct of the 21st century,” said Shahin Gobadi, spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exile group based in Paris.

“This regime is built on the concept of medieval religious tyranny. It’s not compatible with dialogue,” he told AP. “Either you try to export your revolution to other countries or you deal like a normal government” (William Kole, Associated Press/China Post, May 11).

Meanwhile, Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, arrived yesterday in Moscow, AFP reported.

“The construction of the nuclear power plant at Bushehr will be at the center of discussions” with officials from Russia’s atomic energy agency, a Russian diplomat said (Agence France-Presse III, May 10).

Elsewhere, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick warned yesterday that China’s relationship with the United States hinges on how it deals with Iran’s nuclear program, the Financial Times reported.

Zoellick said Beijing’s next decision on Iran would be “Exhibit A” and “critical” in its relationship with Washington (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, May 11).

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State Department Official Says China Should Put More Pressure on “Illegal” North Korean Regime

China is reluctant to use its economic and political influence to force North Korea to resume six-nation nuclear talks, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said yesterday (see GSN, May 10).

Beijing is concerned that the government in Pyongyang would collapse under excessive amounts of pressure. Refugees from North Korea might then flood into neighboring China, Zoellick told the U.S. House International Relations Committee, the Associated Press reported.

Zoellick said Beijing’s belief that the “status quo can hold” in North Korea is incorrect, “in part because you’ve got an illegal regime (in Pyongyang) that is living off of counterfeiting and narcotics” and other illicit activities (Foster Klug, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, May 11).

Beijing responded to Zoellick’s comments today by saying its goal was to maintain stability, AP reported.

“China has a solemn position to ensure a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and will continue to work toward this. On the other hand, China hopes to see a prosperous and stable North Korea,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (Associated Press II/Pravda, May 11).

The Chinese Foreign Ministry also announced today that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is scheduled to visit Beijing next week to discuss the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Annan is expected to meet with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and other officials, Liu said (Associated Press II/China Post, May 11).

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun pledged Tuesday to “grant plenty of concessions to North Korea,” the Yonhap News Agency reported.

“I will provide institutional and material aid (to North Korea) without conditions, with the exception of making concessions on fundamental issues,” he said.

Roh added that he is willing to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

“The president’s remarks are understood to express the government’s will to play a more active role in making progress, which is necessary for the current deadlock (in efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis),” said Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok (Yonhap News Agency, May 11).

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Australia Could Sell Uranium to India, Paper Says

A recent round of high-level government talks has sparked speculation again that Australia could lift a ban on uranium sales to India, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, March 7).

The Australian newspaper reported that Australian and Indian officials in New Delhi last week discussed changes to Canberra’s policy preventing uranium sales to nations that remain outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Any change to Australian policy would require “suitable reciprocal movement” from India, The Australian reported. That would include allowing international inspections of Indian nuclear sites

An Australian Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed that the meeting occurred but provided little detail.

“We did meet with our Indian counterparts in New Delhi on May 2-3. It was a fact-finding exercise to learn more about the U.S.-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement,” the spokesman said. “As both the prime minister (John Howard) and [Foreign Minister Alexander] Downer have made clear, there are no current intentions to change Australia’s long-standing policy of only selling uranium to countries that are party to the NPT and with which we have bilateral safeguard agreements.”

Australia presently sells uranium to 11 countries, and in April signed a deal to supply the material for power plants in China (Agence France-Presse I, Yahoo!News, May 11).

Downer also personally denied any shift in policy.

“Our position hasn’t changed,” he said. “I’ve checked that out with the officials, because the newspaper report surprised me, and the officials have assured me that that’s not correct” (Agence France-Presse II, Yahoo!News, May 11).

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Russia to Develop New Nuclear Weapons, Putin Says

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday his nation would develop new nuclear and high-precision weapons in order to preserve a strategic balance with the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, April 12).

Putin likened the United States to a wolf. He appeared to address the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent comments that Russia “unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people” and used oil and gas reserves as “tools of intimidation of blackmail.”

“As they say, ‘Comrade Wolf knows whom to swallow,’” Putin said during his annual address before parliament. “He swallows without listening to anyone. Nor does he intend to listen to anyone by all appearances.”

In the next five years, Moscow plans to “substantially increase the provision of strategic nuclear forces with long-range planes, submarines and launchers,” Putin said. “Along with the means of overcoming the systems of antimissile defense, which we already have, new types of weapons enable us to preserve what is undoubtedly one of the most important guarantees of lasting peace — namely, the strategic balance of forces.”

Russia is also preparing “unique high-precision weapons” and missiles “whose trajectory is unpredictable for the potential enemy.”

The United States quickly responded to the speech, the Times reported.

“We are disappointed that it did not address the concerns that many people have raised about Russia’s commitment to democracy and its use of economic pressure against its neighbors,” a White House statement said.

“The U.S. continues to work together with Russia on a number of important security and economic issues, even as we raise these concerns,” it added (David Holley, Los Angeles Times, May 11).

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NATO Sees Growing Missile Attack Threat

A four-year NATO study has concluded that alliance member countries face an increased danger of being targets of long-range missiles, a top NATO official announced yesterday (see GSN, May 5).

“There is a growing threat of long-range missile attack on NATO territory. It is timely to examine ways and means of addressing that threat,” said Marshall Billingslea, NATO assistant secretary general for defense investment.

Billingslea declined to specify the threat level, origins or possible attack scenarios, according to Reuters.

He also said the 10,000-page report, which remains classified, concluded that a missile defense system could be created for Europe.

“It is now up to NATO nations to decide on the desirability of such a defense,” he said (Reuters, May 10).

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Missile Defense Testing Delayed Again

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department has further delayed major testing of its developmental national missile defense system, a senior official said yesterday (see GSN, April 19).

The Missile Defense Agency had planned three flight tests of its Ground-based Midcourse Defense system from spring to fall of this year. The series now is not expected to finish until next year, agency director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee yesterday.

The first test, which was expected to occur late this month or in early June, will be delayed to mid-to-late July. A second test scheduled for late summer has been pushed into the fall, while the final flight is expected to be shift from late fall to early 2007, Obering said.

In all three tests, Obering said, a kill vehicle launched by a booster rocket will attempt to strike a target warhead, though only in the latter two tests would interception be the primary objective of the mission. The primary mission of the first would be to test the system’s command and control and a key tracking radar, according to Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner.

Lehner confirmed the schedule shift today by e-mail, but said it amounted to “no real change.” When asked, he said there was no specific cause for the delay.

“Schedule is really just a guesstimate to give folks a timetable to work to.  If you didn’t have that folks would always keep pushing tests back because there is always something they want to continue to check or inspect or redesign,” he said.

A former senior Pentagon official, however, criticized the delay.

“Once again, Lt. Gen. Obering has failed to deliver on his commitments. It’s another example of broken promises by the Missile Defense Agency,” said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information. “As a result, Congress has no way of knowing whether a test will take place in 2006, or 2007, or 2008, or never.”

Officials said earlier this year they hoped that a successful intercept of a mock warhead would demonstrate that the system could be effective again a realistic ICBM attack. Originally, they had hoped to do that in 2004. The U.S. missile defense program, though, has had several high-profile testing failures since late 2002. The Bush administration has not activated the system for regular use as it has yet to demonstrate the system’s effectiveness by flight testing against a realistic threat.

About a dozen long-range interceptors have been fielded in Alaska and California. The agency has indicated plans to deploy a total of 50, including at least 10 in Europe, following on an initial deployment order by President George W. Bush in December 2002. 

Critics have said that deploying the developmental system was premature and ultimately could waste of billions of dollars if the technology cannot be made to work effectively. 

The agency last reported successfully intercepting a mock warhead with the system in October 2002. That test used a prototype interceptor, whereas the testing scheduled for this year are set use the type of interceptors that the agency is actually deploying.

The agency delayed scheduled flight testing for much of 2005, after two interceptors reportedly failed to leave their silos during two such tests. The agency attributed the failures to poor quality control of equipment, which Obering said yesterday had been addressed.

Obering yesterday sounded optimistic about the system. “Comprehensive reviews and our recent successes indicate that we should continue interceptor deployment,” he said, noting two successful flight tests in recent months that did not involve attacking targets.

He told the committee that “especially” good progress had been made toward developing and fielding the long-range system.

Army Lt. Gen. Larry Dodgen, who heads the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, which is responsible for operating much of the system, said that “currently the system is not alert. However, we do have some capability that we can reach and put at the nation’s disposal, if called.”

Several amendments to the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill, which is up for consideration by the House of Representatives, have been proposed that would significantly scale back the missile defense program. The most extreme proposal, from Democratic Representatives John Tierney (Mass.) and Rush Holt (N.J.), would block further Ground-based Missile Defense interceptor deployments and cut the agency’s planned $9.3 billion budget in half.

Analysts have charged that the system’s fatal weakness is that it could easily be fooled by simple countermeasures. 

In response to a question yesterday, Obering said the system being fielded “does not have a robust capability against very complex countermeasures.” Still, he said recent technological developments including sensors “get us very far down that path to be able to meet that very complex threat.”

Critics have said they do not believe some of those developments would make a difference, as warheads could be concealed among decoy balloons. An Army Missile and Space Command online fact sheet makes the same point for another developmental technology, multiple kill vehicles.

“A priori knowledge of threat signatures [what an enemy warhead looks like] will likely be inadequate for reliable discrimination even with good measurements,” it says.

Obering pointed to miniature kill vehicles, many of which could be launched at one time from a single interceptor against multiple objects, as a potential solution to the countermeasures problem.

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Space-Based Missile Defense Funding Planned for FY07

The U.S. Defense Department is seeking $45 million in fiscal 2007 to begin production of a space-based missile defense “test bed,” Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, April 28).

The initial plan calls for a complex carrying possibly carrying no more than two interceptors that could destroy ballistic missiles fired at the United States.

“I’m supportive of creating a test bed,” Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition Kenneth Krieg told Reuters. “And then we’ll see what we do with it afterwards.”

“I think increasing the number of [missile defense] options we have to choose from is generally a good idea,” he said.

Placing U.S. interceptors in space could push China and Russia to deploy additional long-range missiles “to make sure that our defense did not work against them,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.

“The concern is that you’re going to wind up spending a lot of money and all that’s going to happen is you’re going to have more nuclear weapons aimed at American cities,” he said (Jim Wolf, Reuters, May 10).

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Boeing Tests Modified Missile Defense Components

Boeing announced yesterday that it has completed tests of a modified underground silo and launch system for the U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptor, United Press International reported (see GSN, May 5).

The components are now cleared to participate in a missile interceptor flight test scheduled for this summer, the contractor said in a statement (see related GSN story, today).

“This ground test milestone demonstrates reliability and repeatability of a ‘test-as-you-fly’ integrated system,” said Scott Fancher, Boeing GMD vice president and program director. “The incremental and deliberate testing of each component as it is integrated into the system will ensure success when the system is called on to perform.”

Silo modifications included changes to the three “arms” that stabilize the interceptor inside the silo and the opening of the silo closure mechanism, or clamshell doors, according to UPI (United Press International, May 10).

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