Former top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix (left) and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan chat yesterday after Annan received a report from the Blix-led Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (Don Emmert/Getty Images). Blix Report Urges U.S. to Lead Arms Control Efforts By Marina Malenic Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Former top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday unveiled a report by a 13-member panel of weapons and security experts warning of a loss of momentum in arms control efforts and recommending 60 steps for reducing the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Jan. 26)...Full Story

World Powers Complete Incentive Package for Iran The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany yesterday finished a new package of incentives they hope will lead Iran to curb its controversial nuclear program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, June 1)...Full Story

U.S. Rejects North Korean Invitation The United States yesterday said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill would not visit North Korea for direct talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, Reuters reported (see GSN, June 1)...Full Story

	Friday, June 2, 2006

D.C. Considered Low Risk for Terrorism Among States Washington, D.C. officials, already smarting over a cutback in federal urban antiterrorism funding, have received more bad news regarding U.S. support for another preparedness grant program, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, June 1). The District of Columbia is due to receive $4.3 million in this fiscal year through the Homeland Security Department’s funding program for states and territories. The city received $9.2 million last year. Officials acknowledged that the entire program budget had been cut in half for fiscal 2006, but questioned the reasoning behind the reduced funding levels for the nation’s capital. “They said relative to the others states, the District is not high risk,” said Edward Reiskin, D.C. deputy mayor for public safety. “It was pretty surprising.” “Are you going to tell me Rhode Island should get more money than the District of Columbia?” said Police Chief Charles Ramsey, pointing out that the District’s grant is among the smallest nationwide. Washington was designated as a low risk for terrorist attacks or major disasters on the state and territory list, the Post reported. The District in this program competes against larger jurisdictions that possess far more “critical infrastructure” targets, said Tracy Henke, Homeland Security assistant secretary for grants and training. “When you look at the District of Columbia, you have to look at its scale,” she said. Funding factors include population, potential targets and threat intelligence, Henke said. “We’re looking at the most recent information,” she said, after being asked about plans to hit the Capitol or the White House during the Sept. 11 attacks. The national capital region — which includes Washington and nearby communities in Maryland and Virginia also saw its urban security funding drop from $77 million in fiscal 2005 to $46.5 million this year. New York City’s grant level is down from $207 million to $124 million. House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas Davis (R-Va.) said yesterday he would conduct a hearing on the grant funding. “We have to understand how this formula spit out numbers that give less money to the national capital region,” said Davis spokesman Robert White. “On the surface, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Lawmakers from the Washington area today plan to send a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff questioning the funding drop, the Post reported. New York and Washington received “a fair shake,” Chertoff said yesterday on PBS’s “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer.” The two cities have succeeded in protecting many vulnerable sites, and the department wants to “spread the money to other places.” The federal government has supplied more than $500 million in grants to New York City since Sept. 11, 2001, he said. More than $123 million in urban antiterrorism funds have gone to Washington. New York officials were not mollified, blasting the Homeland Security assessment that the city had no “national monuments and icons.” “Maybe the secretary will come meet us at the Empire State Building so we can show him the many national icons in New York,” said Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) (Sheridan/Eggen, Washington Post, June 2). Back to top

Blix Report Urges U.S. to Lead Arms Control Efforts By Marina Malenic Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Former top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday unveiled a report by a 13-member panel of weapons and security experts warning of a loss of momentum in arms control efforts and recommending 60 steps for reducing the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Jan. 26). Blix, who led the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, said bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force (see GSN, Feb. 23) and concluding a fissile material cutoff treaty (see GSN, May 18) could re-energize nonproliferation and disarmament efforts. The report says the United States must exercise “decisive leverage” on these two central issues. After two years of work, the Swedish-sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission concluded that “there has been a serious, and dangerous, loss of momentum and direction in disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.” The experts said this trend could be attributed to failure of the declared nuclear-weapon states — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — to abide by disarmament commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, Sept. 26, 2005). “Treaty-making and implementation have stalled, and, as a new wave of proliferation has threatened, unilateral enforcement action has been increasingly advocated,” the report says. The commission recommended 60 measures, ranging from nuclear-armed states abiding by “no-first-use” policies for nuclear weapons (see GSN, May 24) to all countries agreeing on limiting the spread of nuclear weapons-related technologies.  The report also urges countries to strengthen international agreements outlawing chemical and biological weapons and to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space. The commission said it “views all WMD as inherently dangerous, in anybody’s hands.”  “So long as any state has such weapons — especially nuclear weapons — others will want them,” the report says. “Weapons of mass destruction cannot be uninvented,” it says. “But they can be outlawed, as biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made unthinkable.” The Arms Control Association welcomed the report as a call to action for eliminating the world’s deadliest weapons. “We urge the Bush administration not only to act on commission recommendations aimed at curbing the spread of WMD, but also to show greater leadership by significantly reducing U.S. nuclear forces and missions,” Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball said in a press statement. Back to top       Cambodia to Create Counterproliferation Authority Cambodia plans to create a new national authority to combat the import or export of nuclear and chemical weapons, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported today (see GSN, July 26, 2005). Analysts said the move was intended to demonstrate Cambodia’s commitment to the fight against terrorism. Corruption, poverty and open borders have made the country a weak point in the war on terrorism, according to DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June 2). Back to top

World Powers Complete Incentive Package for Iran The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany yesterday finished a new package of incentives they hope will lead Iran to curb its controversial nuclear program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, June 1). “We are very satisfied by the results of today’s meetings here in Vienna,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. “We consider them a step forward in our quest to deny Iran nuclear weapons capability.” A prepared statement from foreign ministers from the six nations and the European Union did not address economic sanctions if Iran refuses, according to AP. U.S. officials said the powers agreed privately, however, that tough U.N. sanctions could be applied if Iran fails to end sensitive nuclear activities. “There are two paths ahead,” said British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. The statement also does not discuss the incentives in detail. The package is believed to offer economic benefits and assistance in construction of nuclear power plants, according to AP. “We are prepared to resume negotiations should Iran resume suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities,” Beckett said. If Iran returned to nuclear talks “we would also suspend action in the Security Council,” she said. U.S. President George W. Bush warned that the Security Council could take up the issue if Iran continues to uranium enrichment. “If they continue to say to the world, ‘We really don't care what your opinion is,’ then the world is going to act in concert,” Bush said (Jahn/Gearan, Associated Press I/ABC News, June 2). Aides to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said China and Russia have signed on to punish Iran if it remains defiant, the Washington Post reported today. Diplomats said a menu of possible sanctions includes an embargo on nuclear-related technology to Iran, the freezing of assets in any way connected to Iran’s nuclear program, and a suspension of technical cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Other measures include a freeze on bilateral contacts, a travel ban for senior Iranian officials, an arms embargo and termination of support for Iran’s bid to join the World Trade Organization. The package is expected to be presented to Iran in the “coming days” by some of the countries involved in the deal — though not the United States, the Post reported.  Tehran is expected to reply before the Group of Eight industrialized countries meet in St. Petersburg in mid-July, a U.S. official said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, June 2).  “Iran should grasp the hand extended to it and return to the negotiating table,” Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said in a statement (Associated Press II/EUPolitix.com, June 2). U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, meanwhile, said Iran could possess a nuclear arsenal by 2010, Agence France-Presse. “We don’t have a clear-cut knowledge but the estimate we have made is some time between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to have a nuclear weapon,” Negroponte said (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, June 2). Negroponte said U.S. intelligence agencies had learned from their mistaken assessments that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, AP reported. “I think we have learned a lot of the lessons from 9/11 as well as from some of the mistakes that were made in the run-up to the Iraq war with respect to weapons of mass destruction,” Negroponte told the BBC. “And I think we have improved the integrity of our analyses substantially. In other words, I think we have internalized some of these lessons,” he said. “I think we have a bit of a danger here of concentrating too much on the one or two failures, if you will, that might have occurred, as compared to the overall quality of our intelligence,” Negroponte added. “I believe it is very good.  I believe that our intelligence and our information has great credibility around the world with our partners” (Associated Press III, June 2). Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Iran is prepared to guarantee that it would not divert nuclear materials from civil to military applications, IRNA reported. Larijani told the Italian daily La Republica that Tehran rejects any preconditions for potential talks with Washington. “Iran is actively working for diplomatic means to leave behind the current crisis and understanding can only be reached by practical compliance with international laws and genuine talks without any pressure,” he said (IRNA, June 2). Another top Iranian official said yesterday that Tehran would not give up its nuclear fuel cycle development, AFP reported. “We are never going to negotiate the nuclear fuel cycle, which we were able to obtain through the efforts of our country’s scientists,” said Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh (Agence France-Presse II/Sydney Herald, June 1). Back to top       U.S. Rejects North Korean Invitation The United States yesterday said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill would not visit North Korea for direct talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, Reuters reported (see GSN, June 1). “The United States is not going to engage in bilateral negotiations with the government of North Korea,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow. North Korea invited Hill to explain whether the United States has a “true political intention” to implement a September agreement among the six countries involved in stalled negotiations on a nuclear disarmament deal. “The United States sticks by its position, which is North Korea has to return to the six-party talks,” Snow said (Reuters, June 1). Meanwhile, U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kathleen Stephens said plans for a joint economic zone operated by North and South Korea would be difficult to complete unless North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons program, the Associated Press reported today. “Without overall progress in terms of the kinds of goals set out in the statement of principles the six parties agreed to last September, it’s frankly difficult for me to see the big vision of Kaesong being accomplished,” she said (Burt Herman, Associated Press/China Post, June 2). Back to top       Experts Raise Concerns Over U.S.-China Arms Race Recent signals from China and the United States have raised experts’ concerns about the potential for the two nations to enter into a nuclear arms race, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, May 24). While Beijing and Washington are not “at that point right now,” according to Heritage Foundation defense analyst Peter Brookes, the Pentagon has expressed concerns regarding the “pace and scope of [China’s nuclear] strategic forces modernization.” Chinese experts note that the United States has 10,000 strategic and tactical warheads in its arsenal, compared to some 400 in China’s stockpile. “I do not know why they should feel surprised. Why do they assume that China should have weaker nuclear forces?” said Shen Dingli, an expert on international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai. The Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military, released last week, says the country plans to add mobile ICBMs to its current arsenal of about 20 silo-based missiles that could reach the United States. Beijing is concerned by the Pentagon’s emphasis on long-range, precision conventional weapons, according to the Times, because those weapons could be used to launch a pre-emptive strike. Because of the pre-emptive threat, China may be reconsidering its “no-first-use” policy on nuclear weapons to prepare for the possibility of a conventional attack on China’s nuclear forces, Shen said. He also warned that the U.S. missile defense program would spur China to deploy more missiles or warheads to have a greater chance at penetrating the shield. “We must hold America effectively hostage, because we are being effectively held hostage by America, and we need to strike a balance — even if it is asymmetrical,” Shen said. However, Larry Wortzel, chairman of the U.S.-China Commission and a former military attach‚ in Beijing, said China was bolstering its nuclear capability long before Washington began developing a missile defense system in earnest (Dickie/Sevastopulo, Financial Times, June 2). Back to top       U.S. Submarine Nuclear Warhead Refurbishment Program Faces Delays, Budget Overruns, DOE Says The U.S. effort to refurbish submarine-launched W-76 nuclear warheads faces delays and increased costs caused by poor management, the Energy Department said in a report released Wednesday (see GSN, July 13, 2005). Seven nuclear weapons facilities, including the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico, are involved in renewal work on the warheads produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Maintenance would allow roughly 3,000 warheads to remain in serve past 2030, the Albuquerque Journal reported.  The first batch is due to undergo refurbishment next year, but the Energy Department’s Inspector General’s Office questioned the likelihood of that schedule. Testing and development of W-76 components began eight years ago, but there was no encompassing plan in the first five years for what and when work should be conducted, or for the budget for the project, investigators said. Not all testing is expected to be finished before refurbishment begins — four of seven tests at the Y-12 plant in Tennessee would be completed by that point. Delays could force refurbishment to begin after 2007, the Journal reported. Meanwhile, the cost of the work is expected to rise by $639 million to more than $2 billion upon the project’s anticipated completion in 2022. Federal officials noted problems with the project, but said they believe that work would begin as scheduled next year. “We’re very confident that we can achieve this goal,” said National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Anson Franklin (John Fleck, Albuquerque Journal, June 1). Back to top

Jar of Ricin Found in Tennessee Shed Law enforcement officers searching the home of a Nashville, Tenn., man on Wednesday found a jar containing ricin and pipe bombs in a shed, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 2). A tip from the estranged wife of William Matthews led authorities to his shed, where they found a baby food jar containing the toxin derived from castor beans, along with ricin residue in a bowl, five gun silencers, pipe bombs and bomb-making materials. The jar was sealed and posed no danger to nearby residents, according to a joint release from the Nashville police and health departments, the FBI and the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau. Hazardous materials personnel from the FBI are scheduled today to continue scanning the property for additional dangers, AP reported. Matthews, 55, is serving nine months in jail for violating protective orders filed by his wife. He has not been charged in relation to the weapons found at his home, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office is considering the matter, according to AP (Associated Press/San Diego Union-Tribune, June 2). Back to top

Better Information Needed on U.S.-Funded Chemical Weapons Disposal Site in Russia, GAO Says The United States lacks a reliable system for tracking the progress of construction of a chemical weapons disposal facility being built in Russia with U.S. funds, the Government Accountability Office said in a reported released yesterday (see GSN, May 5). The Defense Department in two years has made “visible progress” on construction of the weapons processor at Shchuchye, the report states. However, the Pentagon faces a number of problems that could place the project behind schedule and over budget. Troubles with Russian subcontractors have delayed completion of key buildings at the complex. “Such delays have been costing DOD more than $3 million per month since October 2005 and will continue until the award of a crucial subcontract, possibly in June 2006,” according to the report. Other concerns include questionable Russian construction, regulatory demands by Moscow, and facility testing and other technical matters. The Pentagon needs a sound earned-value management system to “record, predict and monitor the project’s progress,” the report states. The Pentagon paid $6.7 million for development of a new system to replace an existing system that contains “flawed and unreliable data” for assessing the schedule and cost for the project, auditors said (U.S. Government Accountability Office report, June 1). Back to top       U.N. Releases Report on Iraq CW Program The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission yesterday released a detailed report on Iraq’s history of production and use of chemical weapons, according to a U.N. release (see GSN, April 4). The document indicates that Baghdad started exploring chemical weapons in 1971 and established a “large-scale chemical weapons program” in 1981.  The program produced roughly 3,850 tons of mustard, tabun, sarin and VX agents between 1981 and 1991 and “made a significant impact on the outcome of the Iran-Iraq war.” Baghdad weaponized some 3,300 tons of agents, producing 130,000 munitions. Of these, more than 101,000 were used in combat between 1981 and 1988, according to the report. Iraq in January 1991 declared that its stockpile contained about 28,500 chemical munitions. Coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War eliminated 5,500 weapons, and Iraq unilaterally declared destroying another 500. “These last two figures were partially verified by United Nations inspectors,” the report says. Most destruction of the remaining 22,000 munitions occurred under the supervision of U.N. inspectors between 1991 and 1994. During the collection of those weapons, Iraq was unable to locate some 500 munitions. “Although a number of issues relating to the Iraqi chemical weapon program remain unresolved, the United Nations inspectors were able to identify the major parameters of the program, its scope and the results achieved,” the report says (U.N. News Service, June 1). Back to top

Criteria Needed for U.S. Missile Defense System to Be Declared Operational, GAO Says The U.S. Defense Department needs to prepare criteria to determine when its ballistic missile defense system can be declared operational, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, April 19). “DOD has not established formal criteria for declaring that limited defensive operations or subsequent blocks of capability are operational or completed planning for security, training and personnel,” the report states. “DOD has not done this because it is developing BMDS in a unique way and BMDS is exempted from traditional requirements guidance.” However, lack of such a system would leave the defense secretary without the ability to fairly assess preparations for missile defense operations and without the “transparent basis for declaring BMDS operational,” according to the report. “Without adequate planning, clear criteria, and identification of responsibility for ensuring necessary actions have been completed, it may be difficult for DOD to identify and prioritize actions, assure itself or Congress that the necessary pieces are in place before declaring the system operational, and determine whether the return on its significant development investment in BMDS can be realized,” it states. The Pentagon said it “concurred or partially concurred” with the GAO findings, but made no pledge of corrective action, the report states. The Government Accountability Office recommended that Congress require the Defense Department to develop a comprehensive plan for the program that includes operational criteria (U.S. Government Accountability Office release, June 1). Back to top

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