Chemical munitions await destruction at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, where massive funding boosts might be needed to meet a 2017 disposal deadline (U.S. Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives photo). More Money Needed to Meet CW Disposal Deadline, Experts Say By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States must add hundreds of millions of dollars to the construction budgets of two Defense Department facilities in order to meet a new congressional deadline to eliminate the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile, an expert said last week (see GSN, Nov. 12, 2007). The fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill passed late last year requires the Pentagon to complete disposal of thousands of tons of deadly blister and nerve agents and their accompanying munitions by Dec. 30, 2017...Full Story

Statesmen Renew Call for Nuclear Abolition A bipartisan group of U.S. senior statesmen today renewed their call for the abolition of nuclear weapons, one year after their initial proposal reinvigorated interest in the recently dormant goal (see GSN, Jan. 4, 2007)...Full Story

ACLU Assails U.S. Pandemic Response Plans By Elaine M. Grossman Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday took the Bush administration to task for what it sees as insufficient preparation for a potential influenza pandemic and an overly intrusive approach to U.S. federal disease response planning (see GSN, Dec, 18, 2007)...Full Story

	Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Canada Relocates Defense Agency Mail Site The Canadian National Defense Department has relocated its mail sorting facility in order to protect workers at its headquarters from toxic powders or other parcel-borne threats, the Ottawa Citizen reported yesterday (see GSN, April 1, 2004). Courier deliveries now go through the National Printing Bureau building in the city of Gatineau for processing before being sent to department offices in nearby Ottawa. The building underwent roughly $150,000 in renovations, including installation of an X-ray machine and other security equipment. However, a union official said the mail site is now housed in a building that contains military testing facilities and equipment that feature potentially dangerous chemicals and radioactive substances. “There’s a hazardous chemical storage area about 40 feet from where they X-ray machine is,” said John MacLennan, national president of the Union of National Defense Employees.  “It’s pretty messy, pretty scary stuff.” Defense headquarters were found in 2005 to be a “medium risk” for an attack, while other agency sites in the Ottawa area were designated at “low risk,” the department said by e-mail. The union had no say in the relocation of the mail facility and the department has failed to address safety concerns, MacLennan said.  “DND doesn’t move too fast on anything when you raise it until something goes wrong,” he said. The National Defense Department said there is no cause for concern. “DND has significantly enhanced its mail and courier operations — including security — and is satisfied they are safe, secure and effective,” it stated (David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 14). Back to top

Statesmen Renew Call for Nuclear Abolition A bipartisan group of U.S. senior statesmen today renewed their call for the abolition of nuclear weapons, one year after their initial proposal reinvigorated interest in the recently dormant goal (see GSN, Jan. 4, 2007). “The accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point,” wrote former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn in a Wall Street Journal commentary.  “We face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands.” “The steps we are taking now to address these threats are not adequate to the danger.  With nuclear weapons more widely available, deterrence is decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous,” they added. “In some respects, the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain.  From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can't even see the top of the mountain, and it is tempting and easy to say we can't get there from here,” they wrote.  “But the risks from continuing to go down the mountain or standing pat are too real to ignore.  We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.” To aid progress toward the ultimate goal of nuclear abolition, the authors urged the United States and Russia to take a number of interim steps, including: — extending the verification provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, due to expire in late 2009 (see GSN, Dec. 12, 2007); — reducing the risk of accidental missile launches (see GSN, Nov. 2, 2007); — speeding security improvements to prevent the theft of nuclear weapons and materials (see GSN, Sept. 27, 2007); — exploring ways to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force (see GSN, Sept. 18, 2007); and — negotiating further strategic nuclear reductions (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2007). These and other steps would ease the path toward a nuclear-weapon-free world, the four wrote. “Progress must be facilitated by a clear statement of our ultimate goal.  Indeed, this is the only way to build the kind of international trust and broad cooperation that will be required to effectively address today's threats,” they wrote.  “Without the vision of moving toward zero, we will not find the essential cooperation required to stop our downward spiral” (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 15). [Editor’s Note: Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.  NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.] Back to top       Australia Restores Uranium Ban to India Australia’s newly elected leadership has opted to cancel a decision by the previous government to sell uranium to India, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Aug. 16, 2007). Former Prime Minister John Howard announced last year that Australia would exempt India from the nation’s nuclear nonproliferation rules and sell uranium to New Delhi if a similar deal with the United States advanced (see GSN, Jan. 14). The new leadership, however, has chosen to adhere to Australia’s long-standing policy of barring nuclear sales to nations outside the traditional nonproliferation regime. “It's a long-standing commitment of the Australian Labor Party that we don't authorize the export of uranium to countries who are not parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” said Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.  “India is a nation state that is not a party to the Nonproliferation Treaty.  I don't think there's any expectation in the international community that it will become a member.” Smith made the announcement after meeting with visiting Indian envoy Shyam Saran. Still, “the Australian government is very much looking forward to taking the relationship with India to an even better level,” he said. Meanwhile, India reached out this week for general nuclear support from China “India seeks international cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear energy, including with China,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during visit to China.  “The rapid growth of India and China will lead to expanding demand for energy.  We have no choice but to widen our options for energy availability and develop viable strategies for energy security” (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Jan. 15) Back to top       South Korea Seeks February Nuclear Talks The next round of six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program should occur by the middle of February, South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14). “With regard to the nuclear issue, related nations are in consultations,” Song, Seoul’s former top envoy to the six-party talks, said following a meeting with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi.  “I talked with him about the need for the six-way talks to be resumed in the near future.” Song said the session is needed to address Pyongyang’s delayed declaration of its nuclear activities, which was supposed to be submitted by the end of 2007, the Yonhap News Agency reported. The United States says North Korea missed the deadline set under the continuing denuclearization process, while the Stalinist state said it provided the mandated list in November. “I think differences among related nations can be narrowed,” Song said.  “The government’s position is to hold the six-way talks as early as possible and a few nations agree to it.” Song did not identify those nations, Yonhap reported (Yonhap News Agency, Jan. 15). Back to top       U.S. Penalizes Snoozing Guards at Nuclear Site Two security guards at Tennessee’s Y-12 nuclear weapons facility have been disciplined in past four years for sleeping on the job, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported today (see GSN, Jan. 4). The guards were employed by Wackenhut Services Inc., a former subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corp. The firm’s one-time parent company recently lost its contract to guard 10 nuclear power plants after guards were filmed sleeping while on duty at the Peach Bottom nuclear power station in Pennsylvania. One of the sleeping Y-12 guards was fired and the other was suspended without pay for 30 days, said plant spokesman Steven Wyatt. “As evidenced by these actions, we consider inattentiveness to duty as a very serious matter,” he said.  “However, when considering the large number of security police force personnel at Y-12, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, this represents an extremely small number of incidents.” The plant is home to stocks of weapon-grade uranium and is used for assembly and dismantlement of nuclear weapons (Frank Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, Jan. 15). Back to top       France Signs Nuclear Energy Deals With Qatar, UAE France this week signed nuclear energy deals with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 11, 2007). The deals came as French President Nicolas Sarkozy toured the Middle East.  They follow similar arrangements with Algeria and Libya. A subsidiary of the French nuclear power group Areva finalized an agreement with Qatar on Monday to install electricity-producing substations throughout the nation. Qatari officials also signed a memorandum of understanding with the energy firm Electricite de France to “discuss cooperation in the production of nuclear power and renewable — solar and wind — energies,” said a member of Sarkozy’s delegation. While in Saudi Arabia yesterday, Sarkozy repeated a standing offer to provide Muslim and Arab nations with technical assistance to build up their civilian nuclear energy capabilities. “It is in the name of justice that France believes that access to civilian nuclear power should be the right of all peoples,” Sarkozy told Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council (Nadege Puljak, Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Jan. 14). France and the United Arab Emirates today signed military and civilian nuclear energy cooperation agreements, AFP reported. The nuclear deal, finalized as Sarkozy visited Abu Dhabi, “outlines a cooperation framework for the assessment and possible use of nuclear energy for peaceful ends,” state media in the United Arab Emirates said (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Jan. 15). Back to top       Barbados Ratifies Nuclear Test Ban Treaty The island nation of Barbados yesterday signed and ratified the international treaty banning test explosions of nuclear weapons (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2007). Barbados is the 142nd nation to fully join the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  The pact will not enter into force until it is ratified by all 44 “Annex 2” nations — those states that possessed nuclear power or research reactors while the treaty was being negotiated in 1996. Ten of the 44 nations have yet to ratify the treaty — China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States (Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization release, Jan. 15). Back to top

ACLU Assails U.S. Pandemic Response Plans By Elaine M. Grossman Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday took the Bush administration to task for what it sees as insufficient preparation for a potential influenza pandemic and an overly intrusive approach to U.S. federal disease response planning (see GSN, Dec, 18, 2007). “Rather than focusing on well established measures for protecting the lives and health of Americans, policy-makers have recently embraced an approach that views public health policy through the prism of national security and law enforcement,” the organization said in a report.  Specifically, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department has focused its plans on “law enforcement and national security-oriented measures” to contain the spread of disease, such as setting up quarantines and restricting travel, according to report authors and advocates who appeared at a Monday press conference. The critics recommended instead that the federal government invest increased effort in advance of any crisis to build up vaccine stockpiles and ensure that hospitals acquire more beds and respirators.  They said a revised national policy should also emphasize voluntary cooperation in preventing and containing an avian flu outbreak rather than mandatory limits on interaction and movement.  Such involuntary restrictions might be required for only a small number of disease victims, the organization asserted. “Instead of helping individuals and communities through education and the provision of health care, today’s pandemic prevention focuses on taking aggressive, coercive actions against those who are sick,” according to “Pandemic Preparedness,” written by three legal scholars who specialize in public health issues.  “People, rather than the disease, become the enemy.” The Health and Human Services Department today countered that the American Civil Liberties Union had “mischaracterized” the U.S. pandemic response plan. “The ACLU seems to have confused our strategy for a ‘containment’ attempt at the beginning of a pandemic flu outbreak with our overall pandemic response once a virus has spread beyond our ability to stop it,” said HHS spokesman Bill Hall. “Contrary to the ACLU report, our pandemic plan clearly states that, except in a containment attempt, a strict and forced quarantine will not work in a full pandemic, and any sort of quarantine at a local or regional level will work best if [it] is voluntary,” he told Global Security Newswire.  “This was most recently demonstrated in the 2003 SARS outbreak, a recent public health emergency that was not included in the ACLU historical review of past public health emergencies.” The ACLU publication cites two measures put forth by the Bush administration as evidence of what the authors see as an overly Draconian approach. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supported a “Model State Emergency Health Powers Act” that “used fear to justify methods better suited to quelling riots than protecting public health,” according to the new report.  Recommendations contained in the model legislation included criminal culpability for individuals refusing to submit to vaccination, medical examination, isolation or quarantine, the report states. “As a result, although some states now have new laws that more precisely specify their power to isolate or quarantine people during an emergency, they are less capable than ever of actually helping people or controlling an epidemic,” the publication asserts. The civil liberties group also noted with concern an Oct. 17, 2007, policy directive issued by President George W. Bush that includes a potentially prominent role for the Defense Department in undertaking a pandemic disease response. The report outlines an alternative approach that would emphasize community awareness and voluntary action to contain a pandemic.  Self-quarantine at home rather than at communal facilities, for instance, would not only be less restrictive but also arguably more effective at stopping disease, said co-author Wendy Parmet, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law.  To encourage voluntary home confinement, the government should consider offering compliant patients support for lost income, as well as the delivery of food and medicine, she said. What types of civil rights limits might be necessary to impose in response to bioterrorism incidents remains under debate.  In one scenario contemplated by homeland security experts, unidentified perpetrators who carry a disease might intentionally spread it, taking advantage of a permissive environment in which their movement remains unrestricted. Asked whether a stricter regime might be necessary in cases where bioterrorism is suspected and perpetrators remain at large, Parmet said she and her collaborators do not challenge the important role of law enforcement. However, in such instances patients must be regarded as victims of a bioterror attack and not “treated like suspects,” said Parmet, who directs her law school’s joint law-public health degree program with the Tufts University School of Medicine. “Influenza, when it spreads pandemically, is believed [to affect] millions,” she said.  “We can’t come to public health [matters] with a ‘what if’ sort of … scenario which, God forbid, may happen.  Not that we don’t plan for that, but that can’t be the hat we put on when we do day-to-day public health.” “This is not an episode of ‘24,’ which is sometimes the way it is getting treated,” added Barry Steinhardt, who directs the civil liberty group’s Technology and Liberty Project, referring to the Fox television hit series about a hard-hitting counterterrorism agent (see GSN, March 7, 2005).  “The causes of public health emergencies are generally not those that emanate from terrorists or criminals.  They are naturally occurring.” If federal officials focus on “what are the most elaborate, coercive measures that law enforcement or national security can take, [they] ignore the hard work and planning that needs to take place in preparation for what’s much more likely,” he said. Hall, the Health and Human Services spokesman, said this, too, misconstrues Bush administration efforts. “Our planning is based on a variety of scenarios and past pandemics, not just a worst-case scenario, as the ACLU claims,” he said.  “Our community mitigation strategy, for example, is based on a pandemic severity index.” Michael Greenberger, a law professor who directs the University of Maryland’s Center for Health and Homeland Security, alleged at yesterday’s press conference that the federal government has shifted to state and local governments the burden of responsibility for handling pandemics but has provided “very little money.” The health and human services secretary, Greenberger said, has held a series of “summits” with state and local leaders, essentially telling them that “if people get sick and you weren’t ready … you are going to be blamed, not us.” He called the pandemic flu preparations in the United States “a tragedy.” “When you don’t have any money and you don’t have any vaccines and you don’t have any antivirals and you don’t have any ventilators and your public health system can’t care for a patient population, what do you do to appear to be doing something?” Greenberger asked.  “You talk about quarantine, you talk about isolation, you talk about travel restrictions, because [then] you appear to be doing something.” Hall took exception to this assertion, as well. “We have spent considerable time coordinating planning efforts at all levels of government, and have made it clear that pandemic planning is a shared responsibility among government, communities and individuals,” said the agency spokesman.  “Planning should not, and cannot, rest solely on the shoulders of government.” The Health and Human Services Department’s “Pandemic Influenza Plan” includes the “stockpiling of antivirals and vaccines and working with industry to expand capacity for production of these medical countermeasures,” according to a November 2005 fact sheet posted on the agency’s Web site.  Another facet of the plan is “creating a seamless network of federal, state and local preparedness, including health care surge capacity,” the document says. Health and Human Service deems it “critical” to “provide vaccine for the entire U.S. population,” but acknowledges that vaccine “will initially be in short supply” at the outset of a pandemic.  Available stocks “will be procured and distributed to state and local health departments for immunization of predetermined priority groups,” according to the fact sheet. Back to top       Farmers Protest Livestock Tracking Initiative A U.S. plan to guard against the spread of disease by registering and tracking all domestic livestock is facing significant opposition among small farmers, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 21, 2007). The National Animal Identification System aims to track natural or bioterrorism-related disease outbreaks within 48 hours by cataloging the movement of all U.S. livestock from the point of birth to the place of death, including county fair trips and veterinary checkups.  It would also maintain information on all farms, ranches and stables. Two of three stages of the plan are already under way. Some small farmers have attacked the program as an attempt by the federal government to give large agribusiness an advantage over family farms. Critics have noted that major industrial farming operations would be permitted to track herds of livestock as a single unit while small farmers must report the movements of individual animals.  Privacy advocates said the extensive database the program would create would encroach on the privacy of farmers. “It’s totally ridiculous,” said Joaquin Contente, a dairy farmer in Hanford, Calif.  “We already have a good paper trail.  It will be more of a burden for the small-to-average producer.” The Amish and other religious farming communities are also alarmed.  Mary-Louise Zanoni, an attorney who volunteers to represent the farmers, said they are concerned about the “Mark of the Beast” prediction in the Bible’s Book of Revelation that an evil entity such as a government or another outside force would require a numbering system for the purchase or sale of items. “We feel the [the plan] is an act of the Antichrist,” a group of Old Order Amish farmers told Wisconsin agriculture officials in a letter (Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 14). Back to top

More Money Needed to Meet CW Disposal Deadline, Experts Say By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States must add hundreds of millions of dollars to the construction budgets of two Defense Department facilities in order to meet a new congressional deadline to eliminate the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile, an expert said last week (see GSN, Nov. 12, 2007). The fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill passed late last year requires the Pentagon to complete disposal of thousands of tons of deadly blister and nerve agents and their accompanying munitions by Dec. 30, 2017. All destruction sites now in operation are expected to finish off stockpiles at five storage depots at varying times before that date.  That puts the onus on the two plants that are not yet built — chemical agent neutralization facilities at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. Funding for construction at the two sites in this fiscal year is slightly more than $104 million.  That amount will have to be tripled or quadrupled for several years in order to complete weapons disposal by 2017, rather than the anticipated end date of 2023, said Paul Walker, director of the Legacy Program at the environmental organization Global Green USA. The former head of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, which manages disposal programs at Blue Grass and Pueblo, said in a March 2007 memo that his agency would need a total budget of up to $500 million this year to begin accelerating work.  It received nearly $100 million less. Rapid progress at these sites would serve to boost U.S. security and the nation’s standing in the international community, Walker argued. “It’s very important that we move forward and eliminate these stockpiles,” he said.  “It’s important from a terrorist and homeland security perspective.  It’s also important from an accident perspective.  These stockpiles are getting older and older all the time.” The Pueblo Chemical Depot stores 2,611 tons of mustard agent in mortars and artillery shells, while its counterpart in Kentucky holds 523 tons of mustard and VX and sarin nerve agents in rockets and projectiles.  Combined, they represent around 10 percent of the decades-old U.S. stockpile, which the government began destroying in 1990. Following the Sept. 11 attacks it appeared that extra funding would be directed toward more quickly eliminating the arsenals at Blue Grass and Pueblo, but that effort stalled as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed tens of billions of dollars, Walker said.  Observers have been frustrated in recent years by funding levels and by what environmental activist Craig Williams called “fits and starts” in the program, including the Pentagon’s decision to have the plants redesigned in order to save money.  The disposal agency responds that it has balanced schedule and cost as best possible amid “the many competing requirements of national defense.” Funding for the agency has oscillated wildly in recent years, from $52 million in fiscal 2006 to nearly $350 million the next year as lawmakers from Colorado and Kentucky demanded that the projects move forward. Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives received $407 million in the budget year that began Oct. 1.  However, the majority of funding is directed toward research and development of disposal technology and the construction budget this year dropped by nearly $27 million. While significant preparatory construction is under way at both sites, work on the actual disposal plants is not scheduled to begin until this spring.   The present plan calls for disposal operations to begin at Pueblo in 2015 and finish five years later.  The Blue Grass facility would open in 2017 and close in 2023. Given the unlikelihood at this point of revamping the design of the plants to increase their capacity, the best option to speed the process is to shorten the construction period, Walker said.  Anything less than $1 billion is “small change” at the Pentagon, so if the will exists in the congressional or executive branches the money is there to make that happen, he said. “It’s just a matter of hiring more people, getting them on board and speeding up construction,” Walker said.  “I think it will (happen).  I’m optimistic.” Williams, executive director of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, sounded a slightly less optimistic note during an interview.  “I believe it can happen.  Do I believe it will happen?  That’s going to depend on a number of factors that are out of my control.” He argued, though, that additional funding could speed the entire process at the plants, from construction to weapons disposal — for example, by allowing for continuous operations rather than the planned four-day-a-week schedule. Pentagon officials are scheduled to meet with lawmakers by next summer to discuss strategies for meeting the deadline. “ACWA staff are currently looking at numerous options for accelerating the program and will be narrowing down those that would be most effective in the coming months,” an agency spokeswoman said by e-mail.  “It would be premature at this time to comment on options that may or may not even be viable, as there are many variables that need to be examined such as new funding levels or revised permitting requirements.” The spokeswoman said she could also not discuss budget details for the next funding year or beyond.  The Bush administration is scheduled to issue its proposed fiscal 2009 spending plan in February. Failure to quicken the pace of weapons disposal could have ramifications in the United States and abroad, Walker and Williams said. The longer the weapons remain in existence, the longer they could be targets for terrorists looking to steal them or cause an on-site release of lethal materials, Walker said. Chemical agent leaks and potential accidents are another concern (see GSN, Dec. 7, 2007).  The Army had fears a decade ago that chemical munitions — some of which still contain explosives and propellant — might begin exploding in their storage bunkers within a few years, Walker said.  That has not happened yet but each passing year increases the risk of retaining aging weapons, observers said. “Both of these communities are sitting on weapons of mass destruction that aren’t getting any younger,” Williams said. Stretching out the disposal schedule could add more than $3 billion to the total price tag for Blue Grass and Pueblo, bringing the cumulative cost to $8 billion, according to a June 2007 newspaper report (see GSN, June 14, 2007). Even eliminating the weapons in 2017 would put the United States five years beyond its obligation under the Chemical Weapons Convention.  Delaying completion of chemical disarmament another six years would further undermine Washington’s authority before the treaty’s protocol agency in pressing Russia and other nations to eliminate their stockpiles and trying to bring additional nations into the fold, Walker said. “Right now where we are sort of muddling through chemical demilitarization and stretching out our schedule over a decade beyond where it should be, we have very little influence to tell others to get rid of their stockpiles as quickly as possible,” Walker said. Back to top

Japan Tests Potential Missile Defense Sites Japan has completed its first tests of sites that could house Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missile defenses in Tokyo, Japanese Defense Ministry officials said today (see GSN, Dec. 21). PAC-3 units were deployed without interceptors overnight to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden and the Ichigaya military base.  Their task was to determine if local physical features and electronic noise would allow interceptor missiles to be fired accurately from the sites, the Associated Press reported.  The Defense Ministry would not discuss the findings. The sites are both within miles of Japan’s governmental hub, the country’s Imperial Palace and Tokyo’s largest business and entertainment districts. While the military has already placed two PAC-3 units to the east and west of the city, their interceptors do not have the range to reach a ballistic missile headed toward central Tokyo. Japan is expected to place PAC-3 missile defense units at nine additional bases by March 2011 (Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Jan. 15). Back to top       NATO, Russia to Hold Theater Missile Defense Drill NATO and Russia plan to carry out a fourth theater missile defense exercise beginning tomorrow in Germany, the Xinhua News Agency reported (see GSN, April 15, 2005). The Jan. 16-25 drill is expected to focus on planning procedures for deploying missile defense forces effectively, NATO said Monday in a statement.  The drill would follow past exercises that concentrated on coordinating command and control elements and managing a joint operations theater. The exercise is expected to involve more than 60 officials from Russia and 11 NATO members, the statement said (Xinhua News Agency/People’s Daily, Jan. 14). Back to top       U.S. Pacific Commander Seeks Chinese Transparency A senior U.S. military official called on China today to open up about its military policies and plans, including Beijing’s goals regarding antisatellite technology, Reuters reported (see GSN, Jan. 11). “Increased transparency can lead to greater trust that reduces the potential for misunderstanding,” said U.S. Pacific Command chief Adm. Timothy Keating during a visit to Beijing.  “Misunderstanding can lead to conflict or crisis and that is very much not in our interest.” Keating said that areas of concern include Chinese plans to develop long-range cruise missiles and antisatellite weapons, one of which China tested about one year ago (see GSN, Jan. 19, 2007). Chinese officials told him that Beijing’s goals were purely defensive, Keating said. “The Chinese military officials with whom I had discussions emphasized their desire to protect those things that they think are theirs and nothing more,” he told reporters, seemingly referring to Taiwan (see GSN, Jan. 2).  “They (the Chinese) specifically have no hegemonic intentions, they do not have any expansion strategy, they advocate a peaceful rise” (Lindsay Beck, Reuters/Washington Post, Jan. 15). Back to top

U.S. to Boost Security for Nuclear Shipments The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to increase security measures for transporting radioactive materials terrorists could use in a radiological “dirty bomb,” USA Today reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2006). The new security regulations could include requiring advance notice of radioactive material shipments, using the Global Positioning System to track sensitive materials, imposing new shipment information safeguards and putting measures in place to recover lost materials, the commission said. U.S. lawmakers, security analysts and environmental experts have argued for years that the commission has not sufficiently secured hazardous nuclear materials used in medicine and industry. “It has taken far too long for the NRC to take action,” said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee.  “For years we've seen reports of radiation leaks from FedEx packages, successful attempts to smuggle radioactive materials into the United States and incidents where these materials go missing for months.” Officials have expressed special concern that terrorists could seize a truck holding one of 16 radioactive materials often used in cancer treatments and various devices. Vayl Oxford, head of the Homeland Security Department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, said that makeshift regulations in some states require armed escorts to accompany radioactive material shipments while other states require no such guards.  “There is a vulnerability there,” he said. Oxford said FedEx “can tell you where a package is” at any point during its shipment.  “We ought to be able to do the same,” he said. The first of three hearings on the proposed measures is scheduled for today.  Once the three hearings are complete, the commission can begin to prepare draft regulations that would be ready next year, said Adelaide Giantelli, head of the NRC transportation security team.  The final rules could enter into force by 2010, Giantelli said. Oxford said that some Homeland Security officials are “not happy with the timeline” for putting new rules into effect, but acknowledged that the commission must deal with a time-consuming implementation process (Mimi Hall, USA Today, Jan. 15). Back to top

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