By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — For the first time in more than a decade, the U.S. Air Force is studying the option of adding significant new features to one of its aging atomic bombs, according to a senior service official (see GSN, Sept. 12). The proposed modifications to the B-61 gravity bomb — which service officials are dubbing the “B-61 Mod 12” — would exceed the extent of parts repair or replacement typically performed to increase a weapon’s service life. The new plans would infuse the bomb — originally designed and built in the 1960s — with state-of-the-art capabilities to reduce the risk of theft and prevent an accidental detonation, the senior Air Force official said in a Sept. 10 interview. The official asked not to be identified because of sensitivities associated with discussing the attributes of U.S. nuclear weapons. The initiative would also lend the weapons another 20 to 30 years of service life, a service spokesman said. Yet the inclusion of a large array of upgrades in the overhaul could raise hackles on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have strongly opposed anything that appears to be a “new” nuclear weapon. Beginning with an initial design investment of roughly $120 million over the next two years, the Mod 12 would eventually replace all but the very newest versions of the B-61, the official said. As many as 920 B-61 Mods 3, 4 and 7 could undergo the upgrades beginning as early as 2015, though the figures could decline if the arsenal shrinks in the coming years, the official said. An estimated 35 B-61 Mod 11s remaining in the force are modern enough that they would not have to undergo the refurbishment. The move comes in response to congressional rejection of Bush administration efforts to develop a new nuclear warhead to modernize the entire U.S. arsenal. For the second year in a row, Capitol Hill has zeroed funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, touted as offering increased reliability, maintainability, safety and security relative to today’s stockpile (see GSN, July 10). Lawmakers have demanded that the government show how such a new weapon would fit into its overarching nuclear strategy before they would consider funding. One key sticking point has been concern about building a new nuclear warhead at a time when the United States is spearheading efforts to discourage proliferation around the globe. Another worry is that the Energy Department might need to test the design through underground explosions, despite a U.S. moratorium in place for more than a decade. “It’s dead under this administration, that’s pretty clear,” the senior service official said of the Reliable Replacement Warhead. “Let’s see what happens in a new administration. But it’s not going to come out of this one.” Both presidential candidates have left open the possibility of developing a new nuclear warhead, while still expressing a degree of caution. Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has said he does not support “a premature decision to produce” the weapon, while Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has said he would support only a warhead “that is absolutely essential for the viability of our deterrent” and helps facilitate force reductions. A Demand for ‘Real Estate’Air Force interest in an expanded upgrade effort aligns with a new approach laid out recently by U.S. Strategic Command, under which some of the advanced technologies previously imagined for the Reliable Replacement Warhead might now be retrofitted into existing weapons as they undergo maintenance. The idea would be to fulfill as many RRW objectives as possible without a wholesale replacement of the warhead. The Energy Department’s semiautonomous nuclear weapons agency has said that short of building a new Reliable Replacement Warhead, it is already incorporating all the safety and security features it can into existing weapons in the stockpile via ongoing Life-Extension Programs. The National Nuclear Security Administration view reflects size and yield constraints on the current array of weapons in the U.S. stockpile, according to experts. However, if the Pentagon could either increase the size of a given weapon system or reduce its explosive yield, additional safety and security features imagined for the replacement warhead might instead be incorporated into existing hardware as it is overhauled, the Air Force official said. “It’s that sort of thing that really allows you to get into this design space, that gives you a little more margin, without testing,” Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview this week. While declining to describe specific safety and security upgrades under contemplation, the Air Force representative said they are modifications that “we know how to do, but they take ‘real estate’ [inside the weapon package]. They take volume. They take weight and mass.” The official explained that desired security features would improve on “permissive action links” that for years have served as “a lock on the door” of each nuclear warhead, the official said. Little public information is available about how such security devices work, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff describes them as mechanisms “in or attached to a nuclear weapon system to preclude arming and/or launching until the insertion of a prescribed discrete code or combination.” Amid growing concern about potential workarounds that might allow unauthorized access to a weapon, older permissive action links should be upgraded or replaced by the latest tools, the Air Force official argued. More modern devices might effectively neutralize the weapon upon any intrusion, this and other defense officials have said. Moving to ‘Plan B’The service has received initial indications that Capitol Hill might be amenable to altering the B-61’s size to allow for RRW-like improvements. However, legislators still might find it difficult to accept that the initiative remains within the bounds of a traditional Life-Extension Program, the official acknowledged. “If you can put it in a bigger case, some people in the past thought that was not an LEP,” the official said. It is even less clear whether lawmakers would allow a change in yield, the official said. “We are in discussions with staffers on the Hill on that, [having] talked to some of the people on the authorization committees very recently,” said the senior official. The service also planned to consult with the House and Senate appropriations committees “in the very near future,” the official added. “Initial feedback” has been that lawmakers might “allow some exploration in more volume [or to] change the shape” of the B-61, if that would open up space for additional safety and security features, the official said. However, in keeping with congressional mandates against creating a new atomic weapon, legislators want to preserve “the same military capabilities” that the B-61 currently has, the official said. The Energy Department’s nuclear weapons arm is wrapping up a limited life-extension effort for two variants of the B-61 — the Mod 7 and Mod 11 — that can be delivered by strategic bomber aircraft. John Broehm, an NNSA spokesman, said his organization would complete the refurbishment by the end of fiscal 2009. The Air Force told the National Nuclear Security Administration “about a year ago” that it wanted to study expanding the scope of the B-61 life extension effort, given early congressional resistance to the replacement warhead idea, the service official said. The study is scheduled to begin as of the new fiscal year next month. Depending on its results, the Air Force might offer the nuclear agency more detailed guidance on how much new room would be available on the bomb to include additional features. “Say we can still meet the same mission … and we get agreement from the Hill that [we can] grow the case by, say — just to pull a number — an inch in diameter, and could add, say, 500 pounds of weight to the bomb,” the Air Force official said. “[If] we show them it’s the same mission set, and that’s still a B-61 Mod 12, then they can do so much more.” The Air Force defines a “mod” as a change to a weapon that reflects new or different performance standards, such as explosive power or destructive capability against reinforced targets. Smaller changes, called “alterations,” replace a part or subsystem but do not involve a change in performance. Life-extension efforts typically constitute only an alteration. The first weapon the RRW program was to replace was the Navy’s W-76 warhead. The initial concept for the B-61 Mod 12 grew out of plans for an RRW-2 weapon – a provenance that might not sit well with lawmakers who have opposed the replacement warhead. The RRW-2 variant was to replace not only the B-61s but all air-delivered nuclear warheads, including cruise missiles, the official said. “Remember, this is the second year in a row” that Congress has cut the replacement warhead from the administration’s budget, the official told GSN. “[The] B-61’s getting kind of long in the tooth. So a Mod 12 was always our backup if RRW did not go forward.” When House and Senate appropriators opted this year to deny funding again, “that was not a surprise,” said the official. For the Air Force, “it was, ‘OK, Plan B: Mod 12.’” An Initial LookWhile a boost in the B-61’s casing might be more politically palatable, the upcoming life-extension study is also expected to assess how a decrease in yield might be traded for additional safety and security features, the senior service official said. The service must assess whether a B-61 with less of an explosive punch would remain capable enough to reliably destroy the same targets as it could today, the official said. Would the Air Force be able to “hold the same targets at risk?” asked the official, in describing performance alternatives the design study would consider. “What’s the same? What can be allowed to change?” The roughly $120 million required for the two-year assessment would likely come from an $80.4 million catch-all line item for “B-61 Stockpile Systems” in the fiscal 2009 NNSA budget, along with a projected $111.3 million for B-61 efforts in fiscal 2010. Between 2010 and 2013, NNSA officials, “in coordination with the DOD, will initiate a new LEP for the B-61 while researching, developing, and producing required weapon upgrades/modifications,” according to budget documents the nuclear organization provided to Congress this year. The cost to actually undertake the B-61 life extension is unknown at this point, and “really depends upon what you put in,” said the Air Force official. Cost estimates also vary depending on how many bombs would be upgraded. A Nuclear Posture Review that the incoming presidential administration is expected to launch next year could lead to changes in the size of the U.S. arsenal. In turn, that could affect the quantity of B-61s undergoing life extension, the official said. “The beauty of the timing here, though, is the engineering study needs to go on no matter whether you build 10 or 300 or 500,” the official said. “So while the NPR’s going on and we’re deciding that path forward for the next administration, we still do that [B-61 design] work in parallel.” Ultimately all of the Air Force and Navy nuclear warheads would undergo life extension, absent a warhead-replacement program, a senior Strategic Command official said in an interview last month. After initiating the B-61 bomb project, the weapon next up for Air Force life extension would be the Minuteman 3 ICBM’s W-78 warhead. To improve that weapon’s safety and security components, the Air Force would have fewer options compared to the gravity bomb. Warheads customized for ballistic or cruise missiles cannot grow in size to accommodate additional features because they must continue to fit on their delivery platforms, the Air Force official noted. There is more latitude to change the size or shape of a gravity bomb, which is delivered from bomber or attack aircraft. “You can gain some [room] with modern electronics. They’re more compact than what we used in the ’70s,” the service official said. “And if that’s not enough [for the W-78 modernization], then you need to get a smaller physics package, which makes a smaller yield.” The “physics package” includes all the explosive components of the warhead, so reducing its size to allow for the addition of other features would result in a less powerful weapon. Along with the Energy Department, the Air Force is drafting a “Joint Life Extension Study” to lay out when each warhead in its stockpile should be modernized. The organizations launched the study over the past year and expect to complete it in fiscal 2009, the official said. What Constitutes ‘New’?For the near term, as the Air Force crafts a more ambitious life-extension effort for the gravity bomb, it could run afoul of congressional efforts to block a new nuclear weapon, according to Jeffrey Lewis, head of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation. However, Lewis said he would “not necessarily [be] opposed to an LEP approach” if it could offer safety or security benefits, short of building a new warhead. “We don’t know how far you can press the LEP program,” said Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. “Can you press it so far that it constitutes a new weapon?” The Air Force official said that while the proposed changes would exceed a typical life extension, they would not require building a new “pit,” the atomic core of a weapon. By contrast, officials planned on a new pit for the Reliable Replacement Warhead. That distinction, combined with the widely supported objective of increasing nuclear weapons safety and security, might ultimately garner congressional support for the effort, according to several Washington insiders. “If you can combine the best features of an RRW program” with a refurbishment of the existing stockpile, “then you’ve potentially got a more marketable product” on Capitol Hill, a House aide said last week. To the extent that a B-61 Life-Extension Program “can incorporate more safety and security functions … that would be a good idea,” Kristensen said. “Nobody is against that.” He added, though, that Capitol Hill should ensure that safety and security risks to U.S. nuclear warheads are assessed realistically so that the cost to modify the weapons remains reasonable. “The question is: Who sets the requirement for how much safety is necessary?” said Kristensen, who directs his organization’s Nuclear Information Project. Similarly, without rigorous oversight, escalating concerns about the potential for nuclear terrorism could mean that virtually “anyone who comes around with new security features will get the go-ahead” to produce such components, he said. Other thorny issues that first arose with the replacement warhead could also dog the new administration next year if it embraces the life-extension concept, several analysts noted. Among the questions raised would be whether warheads undergoing an expanded life extension could continue to be certified as reliable without explosive testing, the House aide said. Hecker, the former Los Alamos lab director, advocates undertaking detailed studies and prototypes prior to any ambitious LEP overhauls, to prove the designs would be dependable without underground tests. “If you can’t do it without testing, you can’t do it,” said Hecker, now a scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Expanded life-extension efforts “take you through as many questions as you had” with the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a program he supported, he said. The Strategic Command official interviewed last month voiced confidence that additional life-extension measures could be implemented without a need to break a U.S. test moratorium in place since the early 1990s. “I can test the fuses, I can test the high explosives that are in there, I can test a lot of the pieces. I can test all those both independently and [integrated] all the way to short of a [nuclear explosive] test,” the senior command official said. “So I can tell you everything in the weapon short of nuclear explosion happens in the way we predict it to happen. We do that still today with the current weapons.” Another lingering uncertainty, even after an expanded life-extension effort is complete, is whether today’s sizable stockpile of backup warheads would still be needed as a “hedge” against potential technical failures, the House aide noted. The administration this week reaffirmed that, absent an RRW program, an unspecified number of warheads above a future 2,200 limit on operationally deployed weapons must be retained, in part to mitigate the risk of discovering any malfunctions in the aging arsenal (see GSN, Sept. 24). It is unclear if the emerging plans for life extension might alter that calculus.
A pending civilian nuclear cooperation deal between the United States and India was held up in the U.S. Senate today after one or more lawmakers anonymously blocked its implementing legislation, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 25). The pact would allow India to purchase U.S. nuclear fuel and technology if New Delhi accepted inspections of its civilian nuclear facilities. However, the deal could be put off for a future U.S. president to consider if Congress does not approve it before adjourning in coming days ahead of the November election (Associated Press I/Jerusalem Post, Sept. 26). U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke in favor of the deal’s passage at a meeting yesterday in Washington. "It has taken a lot of work on both our parts, a lot of courage on your part," Bush said. "Of course we want the agreement to satisfy you. We have to get it out of our Congress. We are working hard to get it passed as quickly as possible" (Robert Burns, Associated Press II/ABC News, Sept. 25). Singh added: "I sincerely hope that this agreement, which is now before the U.S. Congress, will be approved in a manner which will be satisfactory from the point of view of both our countries," Agence France-Presse reported. The House of Representatives was set to discuss and vote on the deal today, House Foreign Affairs Committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil said (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Sept. 26). Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) yesterday introduced implementing legislation that matches its Senate counterpart, a move that would eliminate the need to agree on a compromise bill if both houses of Congress approve the agreement, Reuters reported. Berman sponsored the bill after speaking by telephone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Weil said. The new legislation could make the agreement’s approval more likely, said Sharon Squassoni, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Arshad Mohammed, Reuters, Sept. 25). Still, India said it could conduct nuclear trade with other countries if the U.S.-Indian agreement is not ratified, AP reported. "If a deal with Congress doesn't happen, we will have business with other countries. So simple," Indian Atomic Energy Department spokesman S.K. Malhotra said (Associated Press III/Google News, Sept. 26).
U.S. President George W. Bush rejected an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year and he is not expected to support a strike for the remainder of his term in office, the London Guardian reported today (see GSN, Sept. 25). The United States and Israel are concerned that Iran’s nuclear program involves weapons development, an allegation Tehran has steadfastly denied. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed the attack to Bush in May during a private discussion in Jerusalem, according to high-level European diplomatic officials. Olmert accepted that Bush’s refusal to support a strike was “where they were at the moment, and that the U.S. position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office,” one source said. Bush said he would not support military action against Iran because an attack was unlikely to destroy all of the country’s nuclear sites and Tehran has promised to retaliate against U.S. military targets and oil trade in response to such an assault. Israel would face major obstacles if it attempted to attack Iran without U.S. backing, one official said, noting that Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility “lies across Iraq and the U.S. has total control of Iraqi airspace.” Olmert spokesman Mark Regev played down the Guardian report. "The need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is raised at every meeting between the prime minister and foreign leaders. Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to this issue but all options must remain on the table,” he said (Jonathan Steele, London Guardian, Sept. 25). Russia and the United States have agreed on a new resolution regarding Iran’s nuclear program to be put forward at the U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported. The resolution would propose no new sanctions but would reaffirm the last three rounds of penalties to illustrate that the council would pursue its demand for Iran to halt uranium enrichment activities (John Heilprin, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Sept. 26). Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran must produce its nuclear power plant fuel indigenously because it could not count on other nations to provide it with a steady supply, the Associated Press reported. Iran’s uranium enrichment program could produce nuclear power plant fuel but also highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. "What guarantee do we have that they would give (the nuclear fuel) to us?" Ahmadinejad told journalists during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. He said Western firms had backed out of major contracts with Iran following its 1979 Islamic revolution: "Iran paid billions (and) Western countries pulled out … Who do we take our complaints to?" Ahmadinejad added that he is not worried that the United States could strike Iran’s nuclear sites. "We're not concerned at all that a confrontation will occur," he said. "What (factors) demand a war?" (Brian Murphy, Associated Press II/Google News, Sept. 26). International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei has called on the United States to pursue direct dialogue with Iran in order to defuse the nuclear standoff, Agence France-Presse reported today. In handling nuclear diplomacy with Iran, "it is not Europe who is in charge, but the United States," ElBaradei told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview published today. "The faster there are direct negotiations, the better are the chances of reaching a solution," he said. "If the United States sits down at a table with North Korea, a regime that is not considered democratic and which also possesses nuclear arms, I don't understand why they can't negotiate with Iran” (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Sept. 26).
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan warned today that the multilateral diplomatic effort to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear program is close to collapse, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 25). “We are at a difficult situation where we may be going back to square one,” Yu told reporters in Seoul. North Korea last year signed a denuclearization agreement with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. It subsequently made several moves in that direction, including halting operations at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, moving to disable its plutonium-producing reactor and other key facilities and issuing a declaration of its atomic holdings and activities. The regime, though, has reversed course since August, apparently in frustration that it had not yet been taken off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism due to the Bush administration demand that Pyongyang first accept a protocol for verification of its nuclear work. North Korea has removed equipment from storage at Yongbyon and plans to resume plutonium production operations within a week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. Yu said that Pyongyang and Washington had an informal understanding that the protocol would precede delisting. “It is possible that the North's decision to go back on the disablement steps is a strategy associated with the U.S. presidential election,” he said. He said, however, that Pyongyang must understand “that it is impossible, as long as it tries to be a nuclear state, to get the help of international financial institutions and trade with other countries and get investment.” The Bush administration yesterday continued to demand the verification protocol. "What we're asking for is basically a standard verification package,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. “It's not something onerous, it's not something that hasn't been done in the past” (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Sept. 26). “We’re trying to use all points of leverage here and encouraging the other members to use all the leverage that they have to get North Korea to reverse this, I guess, microtrend that we’ve seen evolve over the past several weeks,” said agency spokesman Sean McCormack. It remains unclear to what degree North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s health troubles — he is reported to have suffered a stroke — are connected to the recent nuclear stand in Pyongyang, the spokesman said. “The decision-making process in North Korea is a bit of a black box, I think, to anybody, even those countries that are closest to North Korea,” McCormack said. “I can’t definitively draw A-to-B conclusions for you about that” (Yonhap News Agency, Sept. 26). The U.S.-drafted verification protocol submitted in July involves “full access to all materials” from any nuclear-related facility in North Korea, along with “full access to any site, facility or location” of relevance, according to a copy acquired by the Washington Post. The agreement would allow inspectors to visit sites repeatedly and at length, to use cameras and video equipment and to take samples. China, Russia and other nations warned that the North Koreans, highly distrustful of outsiders, would not accept the proposal. That turned out to be the case. The verification protocol proved contentious within the Bush administration. Some officials believed it was a way to determine whether Pyongyang was actually committed to nuclear dismantlement. “It's possible North Korea always intended to say no, but they never had to until now," said one official, arguing that the proposal would help determine whether diplomats were being "led down the primrose path." The North Koreans believe the United States violated the terms of the “action for action” denuclearization agreement by failing to remove the regime from the terrorism list after it submitted the nuclear declaration. A North Korean plan for verification cuts two important components from the U.S. proposal — collection of samples and inspections of sites not on the list of 15 facilities included in the declaration. "Those are basic principles of verification," said one U.S. official. "I don't know what we could have done except say to the North Koreans, 'I believe you.' You can't just kick this can down the street” (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Sept. 26). A former CIA official today claimed that North Korea might already be able to place nuclear warheads on its missiles, AFP reported. “The fact that they have a warhead that's fittable to the Rodong (ballistic missile) is pretty much given," Arthur Brown, former national intelligence officer for East Asia, told reporters in Tokyo. “We (the United States) went from nothing to missile capable in seven years. The Russians went from their first test to missile capable in six. ... Why do we think the North Koreans can't have that kind of technology?" However, Brown said the size of North Korea’s plutonium stockpile remains in question, as does the amount of material required for each bomb. "If we knew these two numbers then we could run the maths and say how many weapons they actually have," he said (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Sept. 26).
The U.S. Air Force and Army yesterday announced punishments for 17 ranking officers involved in the accidental shipment of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan in 2006, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 25). The 15 Air Force and two Army officers have received disciplinary communications that range from letters of counsel, which are relatively lenient, to memorandums of concern, letters of admonishment and reprimands, the most damning letters. Interim Air Force Secretary Michael Donley announced the disciplinary measures affecting nine colonels and six generals for the nuclear arsenal management errors, which he described as “breaches of trust that occurred on their watch." Some of the Air Force officers have seen their careers evaporate in the wake of the incident. However, two major generals in the group are expected to retain their positions because they possess vital skills for overseeing the service’s nuclear inventory, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz. Still, he said, "they certainly are on notice that there is no room for error here and that, should they abuse this trust, it won't take but about a millisecond to react." Schwartz, who spoke with the generals individually, said “they did not do enough to carry out their leadership responsibilities for nuclear oversight. For that they must be held accountable." The two Army officers disciplined were brigadier generals at the Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees the Defense Department’s 26 delivery sites. The officers failed to completely address problems with the transfer system noted in previous investigations, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said (Lolita Baldor, Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 25). The Air Force has dealt with a number of nuclear-weapon incidents in recent years, CNN reported. On July 12, three officers were found sleeping at a launch facility near Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota (see GSN, Aug. 8). A truck transporting a Minuteman 3 ballistic missile rocket booster tipped over on July 31 on its way to a launch site near the same base (see GSN, Aug. 12). In August 2007, the service mistakenly sent a B-52 bomber carrying six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from Minot to a base in Louisiana. The incidents led to the dismissal of the former heads of the Air Force and to calls for overhauling the service’s handling of its nuclear mission (see GSN, Aug 18; Mike Mount, CNN, Sept. 25).
A new high-powered nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament commission is scheduled to hold its first meeting next month in Australia, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Sept. 2). Australia and Japan organized the 15-member International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, which will work to set the agenda for the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference. Former foreign ministers from the two nations are leading the panel, which also includes disarmament analysts, military experts, and former heads of state and senior diplomats. The treaty, while a crucial component to international disarmament efforts, “is facing increased pressure and strain from the actions of countries such as North Korea and Iran,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in unveiling the commission at the United Nations in New York. The commission is scheduled to meet Oct. 19 to 21 in Sydney. New Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, in New York with Rudd, expressed hope that the members would conduct “active” talks aimed at producing “meaningful” ideas to strengthen the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament systems (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Sept. 25). “The commission’s two-year mandate is to reinvigorate the global debate on the need to prevent further spread of nuclear weapons and for nuclear disarmament,” according to Rudd. This meeting next month would be the first conference of its kind to include representatives from India and Pakistan, the Associated Press reported. Both nations possess nuclear arsenals but have not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “Somehow you have to bring them into a regime of restraint,” said nuclear nonproliferation expert Ron Huisken, of the Australian National University. “If they’re going to reverse a pretty serious erosion of the whole nonproliferation drive, they do need to get all the players, both incipient and actual, into the exercise.” Only five nations — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — are recognized as nuclear powers by the 190-member treaty. Any other nation that joined would be required to eliminate its nuclear arsenal (Rod McGuirk, Associated Press/CBS News, Sept. 26).
Russia yesterday said it could provide nuclear power services to Venezuela, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 18). "We are ready to consider a possibility of cooperation in using nuclear energy," Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said. He said that Moscow was looking at "development of our ties in all spheres," including "new possibilities in energy, high-tech, machine construction and chemicals.” Russia this month conducted military exercises in Venezuela, whose leader, Hugo Chavez, is an outspoken critic of U.S. policy. Russian warships are also heading to Venezuela. Putin’s announcement came during a visit by Chavez to Russia, which has seen its relations with the United States and other nations strained by the August military conflict with Georgia. "I am ready to discuss our cooperation in military and technical sphere," the former Russian president said. "Latin America has become an important chain-link in creating a multipolar world, and we will pay more attention to this vector" (Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 25).
| 
Back to top
