By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — Despite having serious concerns over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s plan to understand Iran’s past nuclear activity, the United States and other Western nations today agreed grudgingly to allow the initiative a chance to succeed (see GSN, Sept. 10). The countries’ decision to reduce their criticism of agency head Mohamed ElBaradei might have been forced by a lack of support from other nations, but they could also be hoping that the plan fails and thus ratchets up pressure on Iran by early next year. Officials in Washington today announced plans to convene a meeting among the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany, to develop strategies for boosting that pressure, the Associated Press reported. The United States hopes the council will impose a third round of economic sanctions against Tehran to pressure Iranian leaders to freeze the nation’s nuclear activities. Iran has so far ignored earlier council resolutions. “We of course would have liked to have seen a new Security Council resolution drafted by now, but again this works on the timetable of the Security Council which isn't always our timetable," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said today. “We're confident we'll be able to move forward and get a new Security [Council] resolution.” ElBaradei’s plan, announced late last month, calls on Iran to answer agency questions about seven key aspects of the nation’s past nuclear research, including its development of two types of uranium enrichment centrifuges. Western nations have criticized the so-called “work plan” for seemingly limiting the scope of the agency’s investigation and for addressing the controversial issues in succession, creating concern that Iran could delay study of some nuclear activities by stalling the agency on others. ElBaradei’s InvestmentThe issue has simmered at this week’s meeting of the agency’s governing board, boiling over yesterday when ElBaradei left the board meeting during a European Union statement that he felt failed to adequately support his work plan, according to diplomats here. The statement lacked the usual courtesies afforded to ElBaradei and his staff, the diplomats said. The tone “seemed unnecessary,” said one Western diplomat. ElBaradei today publicly denied he was upset, but some officials knowledgeable of agency affairs confirmed otherwise. The IAEA chief began the meeting’s final day of closed meetings this morning by issuing a call for more backing from the board. “He told the board, ‘You can be firm in expressing your concerns, but you should support your Secretariat. We have no hidden agenda,’” said another diplomat. “ElBaradei has stuck his neck out,” the Western diplomat added. “He has invested a lot in persuading Iran to decouple its cooperation with the agency from other issues.” “He feels this is a crucial moment” in the nuclear crisis, the Western diplomat continued. “He feels these are war and peace times.” Western Nations RelentIn statements to the board today, the United States and the so-called EU-3 — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — expressed great distrust over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but agreed to give ElBaradei’s plan a chance to work. The three European nations have led Western efforts to persuade Iran to suspend its indigenous nuclear program in exchange for a package of economic and political incentives. “To be honest, the United States fears that Iran has no intention of coming clean to the IAEA but rather seeks to delay further U.N. Security Council action while forging ahead developing bomb-making capabilities,” said U.S. Ambassador Gregory Schulte. He also offered a conciliatory remark for ElBaradei. “The work plan reflects the earnest efforts of the [IAEA] Secretariat to implement the decisions of the board and the U.N. Security Council in regard to resolving outstanding safeguards issues,” he said. “Whether the work plan constitutes a significant step forward will depend solely on Iran,” added German Ambassador Peter Gottwald, speaking for the EU-3. “If Iran delays or evades the clarification of the outstanding issues, the work plan will be a failure.” Still, Gottwald expressed worry over the plan’s structure. “We are … concerned by the sequential nature of the work plan, as it may possibly be used to delay the clarification of outstanding questions,” he said. “We would have preferred an approach providing for parallel efforts on all those questions.” For his part, ElBaradei acknowledged publicly today that the plan is not perfect but said it was a good effort worth pursuing. “Some people have mentioned that this is sequential [and] it should have been simultaneous,” he told reporters. “That is also my view. It probably would have been good to have it all simultaneous.” However, “in diplomacy, it takes time and people need to understand we need to use all tools available to us to get results,” ElBaradei said. “If I can get the agency to resolve all the outstanding issues and move to the present with respect to Iran’s nuclear program in three months, I think that would be an excellent achievement,” he added. “The key to success is the implementation of the work plan,” he continued. “I call on Iran, I call on the international community to do their best, to try to help us to find a credible solution through verification, a peaceful resolution. I don’t think we can afford to fail.” While diplomats danced delicately around their dispute over the work plan, one Vienna diplomat vigorously defended the agency’s approach in remarks to Global Security Newswire. Earlier criticism of the plan from Western nations showed “a lack of professionalism,” the diplomat said. “These guys have never understood” the plan, the diplomat added. “They read it too literally.” Such a reading fails “to capture everything in the negotiating history” in which Iranian officials understood that the agency would be allowed to pursue new avenues of investigation if its inspectors made new discoveries, the diplomat said. Although the language of the plan appears to limit the scope and quantity of questions the agency can ask, Iran understands that it would need to provide additional information if new questions are created by the agency’s investigation. “If there is a new issue that comes up, we’ll be free to pursue it,” the diplomat said. Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh concurred today. “We are determined to clarify all issues, to remove ambiguities,” he said in a press conference. “Therefore if there are questions, we would be happy and well-prepared to answer the questions.” The language of the plan was necessary, however, to give Iran a sense that it would someday emerge from the microscope, according to the diplomat. “We can’t be in a position to be chasing everything with no end,” the diplomat said. “There has to be balancing point, you can’t leave the door open.” The work plan, in any case, only addresses Iran’s past nuclear activities, and Tehran will need to cooperate fully with the agency into the future as inspectors review current operations. The Western response, the diplomat said, was spurred by its frustration that Iran has ignored the Security Council sanctions imposed to pressure Tehran to suspend its nuclear activities. “The Western strategy of suspension has failed,” the diplomat said. Bushehr TalksMeanwhile in Moscow, Iran’s foreign minister was scheduled to meet today with Russia’s nuclear energy agency head to discuss plans to complete a Russian-built nuclear plant in Iran, Reuters reported. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was due to meet Russian nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko to try to break an impasse that has persisted despite recent reports to the contrary (see GSN, Sept. 7).
By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. Defense Department official said late last week the Pentagon must consider the ramifications of potential wars against nuclear-armed adversaries (see GSN, Feb. 22). Among the possible conflicts in which the United States might someday find itself, “the number of plausible scenarios where it wouldn’t be a nuclear power [is] diminishing,” Assistant Defense Secretary Michael Vickers told reporters at a Sept. 7 round-table discussion at the Pentagon. “Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll go to war with a nuclear power, it just means you have to think about it.” Issues to be assessed include the prospect of using conventional weapons to attack enemy troops armed with both conventional and nuclear weapons, said Vickers, who in July became assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities. Another question under deliberation is how to bring this brand of irregular warfare to a close, after one or more nuclear weapons have been detonated, he said. Military war-planners perpetually develop and update plans for virtually any significant conflict that might occur. Vickers’ comments suggest that nuclear weapons inject distinct uncertainties into the calculus as top U.S. officials contemplate potential future wars against nations such as North Korea, Iran or China. Despite recent diplomatic breakthroughs that might bring North Korea’s nuclear weapons program to an end, that nation is believed to already have a small arsenal and is still regarded as an enemy of the United States (see GSN, Sept. 10). Iran is widely thought to be pursuing a nuclear weapons capability but the Persian Gulf nation is not yet believed to have attained that objective (see GSN, Sept. 10). Nuclear war-fighting issues were first pondered during the Cold War, when the United States and its NATO allies imagined conflict against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact converging on the intra-German border. “Today’s problem — pick some regional nuclear state — wouldn’t have the muscle of the old Soviet Union,” Vickers said. “But you still could get hurt if you then found yourself in conflict with them. So you need to make sure you’ve got the concepts and capabilities to do what you need to do on that battlefield.” During the 1950s, the U.S. Army developed a concept for a “pentomic division” with self-contained battle groups that could continue fighting in the chaos of a tactical nuclear battlefield with minimal direction from headquarters, Vickers noted. Technological advances might plausibly enable today’s U.S. troops to fight more effectively amid weapons of mass destruction strikes than their Cold War predecessors, he suggested. During the 20th century, “we didn’t have the [advanced] technology — communications, mobility” and other tools that might now allow U.S. forces to disperse more and thereby reduce their vulnerability, Vickers said. Today “it’s a different environment” as well in the sense that contemporary foes would field far fewer tactical nuclear weapons than did the Soviet Union, he said. “And so some things that weren’t feasible then — either because technology has advanced and our ability to operate dispersed [has matured] or because the problem is smaller scale — might lend [themselves] to some [war-fighting] concepts,” Vickers said. He would not elaborate on specific concepts. At the same time, Vickers made it clear he does not take the idea of nuclear conflict lightly. “Weapons of mass destruction are weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “They impose constraints on whether you go to war [and] everything else.” As Vickers mulls the war-fighting challenges posed by a potential future conflict with a rising China, he sees a “very powerful country with continental-size strategic depth” — and roughly 200 nuclear weapons. Preparing for such a challenge might prompt the Pentagon “to continue to shift toward longer range, airborne platforms in the Air Force; to make sure that we retain our capabilities in undersea warfare;” and to explore how space warfare might play out, Vickers said. However, the most plausible nuclear foe the United States might face is probably North Korea, noted Ashton Carter, a former assistant defense secretary for international security policy during the Clinton administration. He blames President George W. Bush for allowing the North Korean atomic capability to grow to such an extent that the Pentagon must now plan for a possible nuclear engagement. “We now have, as a result of the failures of the last five years with North Korea, an avowed nuclear opponent for the first time since the Cold War ended,” said Carter, now at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, in a Sept. 11 interview. Still, he said, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il could not hope to prevail over the superior conventional capability of the United States and South Korea, even if the dictator unleashed his nuclear weapons. Down the road, even if Iran attains its own arsenal, “a handful of nuclear weapons doesn’t change the equation for anyone who takes on the United States,” Carter said.
By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The former vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission called yesterday for a U.S. nuclear nonproliferation czar who can “knock heads together” on the threat of nuclear terrorism (see GSN, Aug. 6). “There is nothing that comes anywhere close to this threat, and therefore it should be the absolute priority,” said Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic representative from Indiana. He was appearing at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center here with the former commission chairman Thomas Kean on the sixth anniversary of the terror attacks. Both men called for more urgent attention to the threat of nuclear weapons falling into terrorists’ hands. “We think the president needs a special person who is in charge of this issue,” Hamilton told reporters. Several U.S. agencies share the job of securing former Soviet nuclear material and tracking trafficking of such material, “but nobody is putting it all together and nobody is able to knock heads together and get things done,” he said. “And that’s what you have to have.” A top-level coordinator would have to be positioned at the White House level, Hamilton said. Kean and Hamilton called the threat of a terrorist nuclear weapon detonating in the United States the most frightening threat the nation faces today. “It may not be the most likely event, but it’s certainly the scariest,” said Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey. Kean called for U.S. officials to “redouble” their efforts to secure nuclear material globally and decried the decrease in so-called Nunn-Lugar programs to lock down poorly guarded fissile material in the former Soviet Union (see GSN, Aug. 24). “We think the president should be knocking heads right now to make sure that’s the top priority,” he said. “It’s just doing whatever is necessary to prevent a potential terrorist getting hold of a nuclear device.” While the effect of the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. government and lives has been profound, Hamilton reminded reporters that the loss of life was small compared to the devastation a nuclear weapon would wreak in Manhattan. “The impact of that would be absolutely unfathomable,” he said. “We just cannot imagine what the impact of that would be on the United States in every aspect of our life.” Six years after Sept. 11 and the U.S. government still does not have an detection device to adequately detect shielded nuclear material that could fuel a nuclear bomb. “Now that is a very frustrating matter,” Hamilton said. “A lot of money has been put into it and a lot of effort made but we have not done it.”
U.S. President George W. Bush could meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il next year if Pyongyang carries out its pledge to eliminate its nuclear program, a senior U.S. official said today (see GSN, Sept. 11). “I think that it (a summit) might be possible before the end of President Bush’s term if North Korea makes the right decisions and is ready to go all the way, not just disablement but full denuclearization,” said U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow. The two countries have never conducted a meeting of their leaders, Reuters reported. Vershbow warned, though, that international aid and diplomatic benefits are contingent upon North Korea carrying out the full terms of a February denuclearization agreement. The Stalinist state has already halted operations at its Yongbyon nuclear complex under international supervision. The next step would be to fully declare the scope of its atomic activities and to shutter them past the point of resumption of operations. The Bush administration hopes to see that occur this year. The nations in the six-party talks would then move to clear North Korea of its nuclear materials and weapons, Vershbow said (Jack Kim, Reuters I/Washington Post, Sept. 11). Nuclear experts from the United States today had full access to a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon complex, Reuters reported. The U.S. team and experts from China and Russia are in North Korea to consider strategies for disabling facilities at the site. The officials plan to inspect other Yongbyon facilities tomorrow and then meet with North Korean officials Friday in Pyongyang to discuss “how you might go about actually disabling the reactor,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. The experts are expected to report their findings to the next full round of six-party talks (Reuters/Yahoo!News, Sept. 12). That session is scheduled to begin Sept. 19 in Beijing, Kyodo News reported. Diplomats are expected to try to produce a plan to have North Korean nuclear disablement occur this year. Foreign ministers from the six nations — China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and North and South Korea — are expected to meet in late October, sources said (Kyodo News, Sept. 11). The leaders of North and South Korea do not plan to discuss denuclearization during their Oct. 2-4 summit, the Financial Times reported. “The declaration of the end of the Korean War and a peace regime of the Korean Peninsula are the core agenda items of the inter-Korean summit talks,” said South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, according to the Yonhap News Agency (Anna Fifield, Financial Times, Sept. 11).
The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed 275 cases of illicit possession and connected activities involving nuclear materials and radioactive sources from 1993 to 2006, according to a report issued yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 7). Fourteen incidents of “unauthorized possession and related criminal activities” were confirmed as having occurred in 2006, according to the agency’s Illicit Trafficking Database. “Incidents included in this category can be described as ‘illicit trafficking.’ They contain common ‘illicit trafficking’ elements such as illegal possession, movement, or attempts to illegally trade in these materials,” the agency said in a press release. Fifty-five percent of these incidents between January 1993 and December 2006 involved nuclear materials and the rest radioactive sources. In 15 cases, authorities seized highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Nations reported a total of 252 incidents reported to the agency in 2006, 150 of which occurred that year and the rest in previous years. Over 14 years, there were 332 incidents of theft or loss of radioactive or nuclear materials — 85 of which happened in 2006. The agency received another 398 reports of unauthorized disposal of materials and other unauthorized activities, 51 of which came last year (International Atomic Energy Agency release I, Sept. 11). In a related report released last month, the agency warned that thefts of nuclear material pose a major international security threat. “The threat of nuclear terrorism has not diminished over the past year,” says the report from agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei. “As the number of nuclear and other facilities containing radioactive material continues to rise, and the quantities of material that may be in international transport increases, so will the need for effective security measures to prevent malicious acts.” “The fissile and radioactive materials that are the basis for peaceful nuclear applications also have the potential to be used in malicious acts,” the report adds. “The greatest threat remains the potential terrorist use of an improvised nuclear explosive device, not because it is the most likely event, but because the immediate destructive consequences for life and property as well as the economic, psychological and political consequences would be enormous” (International Atomic Energy Agency release II, Aug. 15).
Communist lawmakers in India yesterday accused the administration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of violating a 2004 compromise pledge that put it in power by agreeing to a civilian nuclear trade deal with the United States, Reuters reported (see GSN, Sept. 11). A spokesman for the country’s largest communist party leveled the charge before discussions opened between communist leaders and senior government officials to review grievances over the nuclear agreement. “The government should comply with the Common Minimum Program, otherwise its legitimacy becomes nonexistent,” said Communist Party of India (Marxist) spokesman Nilotpal Basu. Indian communists said that by finalizing the nuclear agreement, Singh violated the program’s pledge to maintain an independent Indian foreign policy. They argued that the United States is trying to involve India in a U.S. strategic plan to contain Chinese power in Asia. A ruling party spokesman countered that the agreement “turns us from nuclear outcasts to mainstream decision-makers.” “India has been allowed to have its cake and eat it too,” said Congress Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi (Reuters/Yahoo!News, Sept. 11). Meanwhile, South Korean envoy Chun Young-woo said the U.S.-India nuclear agreement would set a precedent that North Korea could exploit, Agence France-Presse reported. “The United States has made an exception for India and I am afraid North Korea will come back and ask: Why not us?” said Chun, chief South Korean negotiator in six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program The deal would allow India to maintain nuclear weapons and purchase U.S. civilian nuclear equipment although New Delhi has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (Agence France-Presse/Times of India, Sept. 11). Meanwhile, a senior Indian scientist has confirmed that the Kalpakkam nuclear facility is developing a nuclear reactor for use in the first Indian-built nuclear-powered submarine, the London Guardian reported yesterday. After more than three decades of secret development, the nuclear submarine is expected to begin sea testing next year in preparation to join India’s navy in 2009. “Indian scientists and technologists are capable of making light-water reactors and we are already constructing an LWR at Kalpakkam in South India for the submarine,” said former India Atomic Energy Commission Chairman P.K. Iyengar. A light-water reactor would generate the submarine’s power by heating normal water, producing steam used to run turbines. The method is considered safe to use in submarines. Indian military strategists have placed high priority on developing a submarine to give their country a “second-strike capability,” enabling it to retaliate following a nuclear attack, the Guardian reported. “You need submarine-based arsenals to retain a second-strike capability, since all land-based arsenals can be detected through satellite surveillance in about eight years,” said nuclear strategist Raja Menon, a retired navy rear admiral. “If they’ve been detected, you have to assume that they can be targeted” (Maseeh Rahman, London Guardian, Sept. 11).
Israeli reconnaissance jets have photographed installations inside Syria that Israeli officials said could be equipped with North Korean nuclear materials, the New York Times reported a Bush administration official saying yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 13). “The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,” the Defense Department official said, adding that it was uncertain whether evidence for that claim might have been uncovered by Israeli air strikes last week in Syria (Mazzetti/Cooper, New York Times, Sept. 12).
A U.S. plan announced earlier this month to consolidate surplus plutonium at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has come under attack by activists critical of expected treatment methods, EnergyWashington Week reported today (see GSN, Sept. 6). Under the Energy Department plan, plutonium would be treated through the Savannah River Site’s H-Canyon facility, the mixed-oxide plant now under construction (see GSN, Aug. 2) and a planned plutonium vitrification capability. The Energy Department said in a press release, though, that it would “evaluate reducing and possibly eliminating the need for the vitrification capability, and instead disposing of all the surplus plutonium through the MOX facility and H-Canyon.” It added that its plan “ensures that surplus plutonium which will be consolidated at [the Savannah River Site] has an identified, clear disposition path out of South Carolina.” Antinuclear activists have pushed for wider use of vitrification, a treatment method in which the waste would be enclosed in glass. Advocates have argued that it would leave the plutonium unusable while mixed-oxide treatment would leave waste that could be reconverted into nuclear weapons material. “We believe consolidation is a good idea, but tying it to MOX won’t work,” said a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We believe MOX is a bad disposition strategy. Vitrification is a better strategy because it is safer and cheaper,” the source said, adding that the Energy Department “wants MOX and is prepared to pay.” “If you really want to get this stuff out of circulation, then immobilization is the only way,” the source said (EnergyWashington Week, Sept. 12).
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