From Friday, June 17, 2005 issue.
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — The U.N. nuclear oversight agency today established a special committee to examine ways to bolster the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. Coming on the final day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s quarterly board meeting, the decision would lead to a labored negotiation in which the United States would push for rigorous new agency powers, observers said (see GSN, June 14). The decision echoed a similar move in 1996 to give the agency more investigative authority after it was embarrassed to discover a massive Iraqi nuclear weapons program that had gone undetected until after the 1991 Gulf War. This time, the step was spurred by revelations over the past two years of a widespread nuclear smuggling network that has supplied Iran, Libya and possibly North Korea with nuclear technology. Led by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the black market ring operated freely in several nations. The advisory committee on safeguards and verification established today was given a two-year mandate “to consider ways and means to strengthen the safeguards system,” according the proposal unanimously approved by the board. After the initial two years, the board would consider whether to extend its term. Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei praised the committee’s creation today. “This is a reality check,” he said. “It’s about time to revisit the whole safeguards system to see whether it’s still adequate and effective to meet emerging challenges: illicit trafficking of nuclear materials and facilities, the increasing threat of nuclear terrorism, the discovery of more clandestine programs by a number of countries. These are serious challenges and we need to be sure the system is adequate and effective to deal with these issues.” In his opening statement to the board Monday, ElBaradei described some additional tools that he would like the committee to recommend for the agency. “Areas that could be addressed should, in my view, include more information sharing, the use of new emerging technologies, enhancing the agency’s independent analytical capabilities, and ensuring that the agency has an adequate and uniform legal authority to conduct credible verification,” he said. The United States led the push for the new committee and U.S. delegation leader Ambassador Jackie Sanders praised the board’s decision this morning. “The proliferation challenges of today, including noncompliance by North Korea and Iran and the revelation of [black market] nuclear procurement networks calls for more evolution. This new committee should play a key role in helping us meet those challenges,” she told reporters. President George W. Bush proposed creating the committee in a major nonproliferation policy speech delivered at the National Defense University in February 2004 (see GSN, Feb. 12, 2004). Establishing the committee was only a first step and the agency’s board members would face difficult talks on agreeing to actual new measures, a Western diplomat familiar with the agency told Global Security Newswire earlier this week. ElBaradei’s vision for new measures, for example, has been at odds with some U.S. plans, the diplomat said. The United States had sought a committee with more clout than an advisory body, one that could create a group to assess nations’ nuclear capabilities, according to the diplomat. ElBaradei would oppose efforts to create any parallel body that could second-guess his reports to the board that periodically assess global nuclear developments, according to the diplomat. In addition, many nations in the Nonaligned Movement were concerned that the United States would seek overly strong measures, and some Western nations feared the same, the diplomat said.
From Tuesday, June 14, 2005 issue.
North Korea wants to resume six-nation talks on its nuclear program, a senior State Department official said yesterday, but Washington is unwilling to use specific language demanded by Pyongyang if it is to resume negotiations (see GSN, May 20). U.S. officials have declined to say they have no “hostile intent” for North Korea, or that they promise a “peaceful coexistence” with the communist nation, the Los Angeles Times reported. “We don’t want to be reduced to sort of a circus animal doing an act, being told to jump through various hoops at the behest of the North Koreans. We have told them really all they need to know” about U.S. policy, the official told the Times. In addition, Pyongyang announced in March that it would discuss only mutual nuclear disarmament with Washington. However, “we don’t have nuclear weapons on the [Korean] Peninsula, so it’s not clear, really, what they have in mind,” the official said (Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, June 14). Former Secretary of State Colin Powell today expressed optimism about an eventual negotiated settlement to the standoff, Reuters reported. “I believe the six-party talks will eventually bear fruit,” Powell said. “I am not concerned that North Korea will threaten or use their nuclear weapon. They’re not suicidal. They’re clever. The only thing they have is their nuclear weapons program. They will use it to get more in return,” he said. “We want to help them make a better life,” Powell added. “But we will not be blackmailed.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday in response to a question on the MSNBC program Hardball with Chris Matthews about whether she believed North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to be sane: “I don’t know. I’ve never met the man.” Analysts have noted that Pyongyang is sensitive to remarks about its leader (Reuters, June 14). China said today that another round of six-nation talks has still not been scheduled, the Associated Press reported. “We don’t have a specific time,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. “But all parties are working toward a restart of the talks” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 14). Elsewhere, Kim Suk, director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American Affairs Bureau, said incentives for Pyongyang resuming negotiations — alluded to after a summit Friday in Washington between U.S. and South Korean leaders — includes normalized U.S.-North Korean relations, Chungang Ilbo reported today. “If the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved based on Washington’s proposal at the third round of the six-party talks, the two countries will move towards normal relations,” said Kim (Chungang Ilbo/MonstersandCritics.com, June 14).
From Thursday, June 16, 2005 issue.
Saudi Arabia signed an agreement today that limits the scope of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the nation’s nuclear facilities, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, June 15). The United States, European Union and Australia had opposed Saudi Arabia adopting the Small Quantities Protocol, a 1971 agreement that limits inspections in countries with small nuclear programs. The protocol allows Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty member states to forgo reporting possession of up to 10 tons of natural uranium and 2.2 pounds of plutonium. The rule also allows new nuclear facilities to be kept secret until six months prior to operation. Ten tons of natural uranium can be converted into highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon, according to AFP. One Western diplomat said the board did not consider Saudi Arabia to be a nuclear proliferation threat. “The problem regarding the SQP is philosophical and is no way related to any concerns regarding Saudi nuclear activities,” the diplomat told reporters here today (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, June 16). Delegates at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna were debating today whether to keep the protocol in effect, although no action is expected to be taken on the agreement at this board session (Agence France-Presse, June 16).
From Thursday, June 16, 2005 issue.
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee voted this week to halt construction on a multibillion dollar nuclear weapons research facility, called the National Ignition Facility (see GSN, April 15, 2004). The Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee approved $314 million for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facility in California for fiscal 2006, $146 million less than requested by the administration, which would allow the continuation of experiments using elements of the facility already built. However, “No funds are provided to continue construction,” the committee said Tuesday in a press release on the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. The planned Rose Bowl-size facility is intended to demonstrate by 2010 unprecedented nuclear fusion ignition through the simultaneous concentration of 192 laser beams. It also could help keep aging U.S. nuclear weapons safe and reliable, and be used for nuclear energy, astrophysics, and other scientific research, according to the Energy Department. Construction has experienced delays attributed to management problems. At an April hearing, subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) called it a “monster program in terms of dollars” and said the administration’s fiscal 2006 budget “cuts a lot of relevant [nuclear stockpile] stewardship research while [the National Nuclear Security Administration] wages this — what I consider almost a crusade to move on with NIF.” At a hearing last year, he vowed to “do everything in my power to ensure that program managers deal with most pressing technical issues before we allow the program to continue.” He then questioned whether the department was constructing elements of the facility well in advance of what is necessary to make it difficult for Congress to kill the program. “As the chairman of this committee, I don’t like to get hoodwinked and I don’t like the way the laboratory which will house NIF has proceeded to spend the money, buy all the parts and everything that goes in it ahead of time and have them all there,” he said. The House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee this year excused the delays and voted to fund in full the administration’s $142 million request for construction. “The committee supports the department’s response to the congressional concern expressed last year regarding the fiscal year 2005 budget request proposed schedule [delay] to the program goal of ignition demonstration in 2010 for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The committee continues to view ignition demonstration as the primary benchmark for success in this program,” it said in a report. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council in June 2000 questioned the scientific and technical basis of attempting fusion ignition and whether the program would help much in maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. “This project should never have gone forward,” the report’s author, Christopher Paine, said in an interview today. The University of California’s attitude should have been, he said, “It may be a great idea, but [it] needed a lot more work before taking it to the construction stage.” Work on the facility began in the late 1990s. The Government Accountability Office has estimated it will cost as much as $4 billion to build an ignition-ready facility. NNSA chief Linton Brooks told the Senate subcommittee at the April hearing that the facility “continues to be an essential component of the Stockpile Stewardship Program.” To meet the goal of fully commissioning 192 laser beams and fusion ignition by 2010, however, he said the agency has “had to accept additional risks and reduce some other inertial confinement fusion work at other sites.” Paine said he does not believe Domenici intends this year to see construction halted, but rather hopes to “take the program hostage” in order to increase his bargaining leverage in conference for programs that are important to him. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the full Senate Appropriations Committee today.
From Friday, June 17, 2005 issue.
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Setting the stage for a congressional showdown later this year, a key Senate committee yesterday approved $4 million requested by the Bush administration to test the feasibility of developing a new earth-penetrating nuclear weapon (see GSN, June 15). The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the money for the Air Force to conduct the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study as part of the fiscal 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. In report language accompanying the bill, it said that while the Air Force would be responsible for the study, actual field-testing should be conducted at an Energy Department National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory. “The NNSA-DOD teams will conduct B83 impact studies and analyze test data. Sandia National [Laboratories] is the site of the RNEP tests and the laboratory possesses a unique set of capabilities to conduct the test on a qualified test track where they are able to design and produce necessary instrumentation,” the Senate committee report says. The language proposes to bypass an effort by certain House legislators to block for the second year in a row funding for the Energy Department study, this year by allowing only for study of conventional penetrator options by the Air Force. The House Appropriations Committee, in a report last month accompanying its fiscal 2006 Energy and Water Appropriation bill, urged there be no funding for the RNEP study or for earth-penetration testing by an Energy Department national laboratory. “It is the understanding of the committee that, instead of conducting an RNEP study at a DOE national laboratory, the Department of Defense will conduct a non-nuclear penetrator study at a Department of Defense facility,” it said. The House so far has not approved appropriations for the nuclear study either by the Energy Department or the Air Force. However, an attempted amendment to add the money to the House fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill could happen next week and that bill could be quickly approved. Meanwhile, the House’s fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill authorizes the Air Force to resume the study while the Senate version authorizes the Energy Department to restart work. Battle over Weapons PersistsCongress last year omitted all funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, following the lead of Representative Dave Hobson (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee. Critics have charged the program undermines U.S. efforts to halt international nuclear proliferation and that the battlefield weapon would not be usable because of inevitably large surface destruction and radioactive fallout. The Bush administration has argued the proposed new capability could give it a more effective weapon for destroying deeply buried facilities. This year, Hobson and House Armed Services Committee Democrats negotiated with that committee’s Republicans a deal to provide $4 million to the Air Force for earth penetration evaluation, which would to allow a key field test to occur. Democrats have insisted that the so-called “sled test,” which involves slamming the penetrator’s hard metal shell into a huge block of concrete, not be used to determine the feasibility of a nuclear penetrator. Transferring responsibility for the test to the Air Force, they reasoned, would accomplish that because the Air Force has no expertise in developing nuclear weapons (see GSN, May 23). Republicans, on the other hand, insisted the deal would allow resumed study of the nuclear option. The Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday argued the nuclear earth penetrator testing should resume, and do so at Sandia. “There are no other facilities aside from Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where the test data can be readily used to validate computer models that require terra-scale computers to model the data,” it said. The field test would cost twice as much were it to occur at another facility, the committee said. “The committee urges the [Energy] Department to quickly complete the testing and opposes the department moving this test to any other facility, as it would be a waste of taxpayer resources,” it said. “The congressional committees are deeply divided on whether to continue to pursue feasibility testing of RNEP,” said Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball. “I think this means that [Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee Chairman Pete] Domenici (R-N.M.) and Hobson are on a collision course in conference,” he said, referring to the meeting where House and Senate leaders resolve bill differences. Were the anticipated new earth penetration capability determined feasible, the Bush administration by law would need the approval of Congress to begin advanced development and production of the weapon.
From Monday, June 13, 2005 issue.
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — Mohamed ElBaradei effectively won today a third term as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The consensus decision by the agency’s Board of Governors capped several months of controversy which only ended last week when the United States formally dropped its opposition to ElBaradei’s candidacy (see GSN, June 10). Technically, all the agency’s members must deliver ElBaradei’s reappointment at their annual meeting in September, but today’s board decision was the final practical hurdle he faced. The Bush administration had opposed having ElBaradei serve another four-year term, ostensibly based on the principle that heads of major international organizations should serve two terms at most. Behind the scenes, however, diplomats acknowledged that U.S. officials were unhappy with ElBaradei, believing him to be too passive in building pressure against Iraq before the war and more recently in investigating Iran’s nuclear activities. Finally conceding that it was alone in its opposition, the United States reversed course last week and agreed to support ElBaradei, who traveled to Washington Thursday to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and White House officials. Despite clearing that obstacle, ElBaradei’s re-election was not without minor drama today. Most of the board meeting was absorbed by a procedural conflict, during which Japan opposed moving the ElBaradei decision to the top of the agenda. Meeting Chairwoman Ingrid Hall of Canada had sought the change and all other nations on the 35-member board agreed. While Japan claimed it was unhappy with the procedural precedents that could be set by making last-minute agenda changes, few in the board room doubted there were other explanations, said one Western diplomat. The diplomat speculated that Japan was unhappy with the agenda fiasco at last month’s review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, May 31). At that meeting in New York, treaty parties could not agree on an agenda until nearly two weeks into the monthlong meeting. That agenda debate drew out because NPT meetings virtually require all decisions to be made by consensus, but the same rule does not apply here at the IAEA board meetings. Decisions by vote are possible, but Hall declined to hold a vote on the agenda switch, despite receiving pressure early in the day from 34 of the 35 board members to do so, said another diplomat who participates in the board meetings. “The chair is losing control of the meeting,” the diplomat said at midday, describing a frenzy of dissatisfaction within the board room. Hall ultimately won the day, by successfully obtaining consensus without a vote to move ElBaradei’s re-election to the top of the list. ElBaradei Looks Forward“I am humbled and awed by the unanimous support I received today,” ElBaradei said afterwards. He looked forward to addressing several nonproliferation challenges the agency faces and said he and Washington largely agreed on the issues. “We might once in a while disagree on tactics, but on many objectives, we share the same common view that we need to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we need to ensure the authority of the agency in terms of verification, we need to have better control over the sensitive fuel cycle and we need to have a more efficient compliance mechanism,” ElBaradei said. Iranian officials appeared to enjoy today’s procedural controversy, as they have been seen as the nation of difficulty at recent IAEA meetings. Senior nuclear negotiator Sirus Naseri atypically roamed the agency halls chatting easily with journalists and decrying the proceedings as “silly.” His lightheartedness could change later in the week, however, when the agency’s head of safeguards is expected to issue a stern report describing Iran’s compliance with agreements to allow the agency to monitor and review its nuclear activities (see related GSN story, today). The agency report is expected to say that Iran has complied with its deal to allow agency inspectors to confirm that it is not conducting any uranium enrichment, wire services reported today. However, the report is also expected to express frustration with Iran’s unwillingness to offer additional access or information. ElBaradei told reporters today that his own statement to the board would note positive and negative aspects of the agency’s effort to learn about Iran’s nuclear program. “I am going to report that Iran has facilitated access to nuclear materials, nuclear sites. I am going to report that Iran has respected its commitment with regard to the suspension of the fuel cycle activities. These are all positive. I am also going to report that we are making progress with regards to the contamination issue and we are getting good cooperation from Pakistan in that regard. “But I’m also going to say on the issue of the extent and nature of their centrifuge program, we still need additional information from Iran,” he said. This week’s meeting is scheduled to take on several other issues, including Saudi Arabia’s request to receive minimal nuclear oversight from the agency. ElBaradei is expected to address this and other issues in his formal statement to the board tomorrow morning.
From Wednesday, June 15, 2005 issue.
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — Perhaps seeking leverage in its negotiations with the European Union, Iran today cautioned that it could return to the nuclear black market if Western nations refuse to lift their ban on supplying technology to Tehran. “If any country needs to have access to technology [and] they cannot get it from the correct sources, they’re bound to respond to any other sources,” senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Sirus Naseri told reporters here at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has suspended efforts to develop uranium enrichment technology while it discusses a long-term deal with the three largest EU nations, France, Germany and the United Kingdom (see related GSN story, today). However, Iranian officials have insisted that they will someday develop the ability to enrich uranium to fuel nuclear power reactors both in Iran and abroad (see GSN, May 26). They have sought to trade assurances that Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful in exchange for tangible Western incentives, including nuclear technology. Iran’s current infrastructure, including partially completed uranium enrichment centrifuge facilities, was built by purchasing equipment through an illicit nuclear smuggling network over the past 20 years. “If the international community doesn’t want these sorts of clandestine networks to be there anymore, there has to be a free flow of technology, equipment and material,” Naseri said. “It is the lawful position of states to be able to have access to them.” Both the United States and the international nuclear agency, however, have been pushing initiatives that would limit the nuclear capabilities of developing nations. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has called for a freeze on building new fuel production facilities until a system is established to place nuclear fuel supplies under multilateral control (see GSN, Feb. 23). U.S. President George W. Bush has called for banning the sale of nuclear fuel facilities to nations that don’t yet have them (see GSN, Feb. 11, 2004). Iran, however, has insisted that it will build a self-sufficient nuclear power program with or without international support. For the past two years, international authorities have been closing down the smuggling network Iran once used to build its existing facilities, but there could be other suppliers, Naseri hinted. “The underground network will surface from somewhere else,” he said.
From Thursday, June 16, 2005 issue.
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — Iran has conceded that it provided incorrect information to the U.N. nuclear organization about past experiments involving plutonium, according to a statement delivered today by the organization’s top nuclear safeguards official (see GSN, June 14). At issue was when Iran conducted experiments to separate minute amounts of plutonium from material irradiated in a Tehran facility. Plutonium is one of two materials that can be used to produce nuclear arms, though the amount extracted by Iran was far less than needed for a weapon. Recent tests of Iranian material supplied to the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that the experiments took place in both 1995 and 1998, but Iran had earlier reported that such research stopped in 1993. Pierre Goldschmidt, IAEA deputy director general for safeguards, reported the discrepancy to a quarterly meeting of the agency’s governing board. After receiving evidence of the inaccuracy, Iranian officials admitted late last month that the agency tests were correct. “Iran confirmed the agency’s understanding with regard to the chronology,” Goldschmidt told the board today, according to a text of the statement leaked to the media last night. News of the incorrect Iranian declaration drew criticism from nonproliferation experts who suspect Tehran has nuclear weapons ambitions. “They lied, they definitely lied,” Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington told Global Security Newswire yesterday, dismissing the possibility that Iran had unintentionally misstated the information in earlier declarations. She speculated that Iran had wished to conceal the extent of its interest in producing plutonium. Iranian officials have dismissed such allegations as groundless and belittled Goldschmidt’s statement. “What difference would it make for us to say these tests were made 13 years ago or 10 years ago?” senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Sirus Naseri told the New York Times. “It would make no difference at all, so there cannot be any motive of concealment.” “I’m sorry, it’s not a big story,” he said. Iran has persistently argued that its nuclear activities are strictly peaceful, intended only to create a nuclear power industry. However, plutonium is used far less commonly for nuclear energy than uranium, both of which can be used to construct nuclear weapons. Iranian officials have told that agency that the plutonium separation — also known as “reprocessing” — experiments “were carried out to learn about the nuclear fuel cycle, and to gain experience in reprocessing chemistry,” according to a November report to the board from agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. That explanation had little credibility with another U.S. critic of Iran’s nuclear program. “Some countries have considered recycling plutonium as a fuel for nuclear energy,” said Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department nonproliferation official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But that’s not why the Iranians are doing it. Presumably they’re looking into extracting plutonium for producing nuclear weapons.” Einhorn has repeatedly cautioned in recent months that Iran might continue to have a clandestine network of nuclear facilities despite its public announcements of transparency. U.S. officials here described Goldschmidt’s statement as a wide-ranging indictment of Iran’s nuclear intentions and reiterated calls for Iran to completely end its atomic activities. Iran must dismantle all of its nuclear fuel cycle activities, U.S. Ambassador Jackie Sanders told the board today, including “at a minimum, all uranium conversion, all uranium enrichment, all heavy water reactor-related activities and any plutonium reprocessing activities.” Goldschmidt’s statement also criticized Iran for failing to provide clarifying information for other parts of the agency’s investigation of the nation’s nuclear program. In particular, he said the agency needed more data to understand the history of Iran’s effort to build more advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges. Iran has told the agency that it did no work on the so-called P-2 centrifuges before 2002, but Goldschmidt told the board that Tehran has not provided “sufficient assurance that no related activities were carried during that period.” In addition, the agency has had difficulty understanding when Iran first received more basic centrifuges, called P-1s, from an illicit nuclear smuggling network once headed by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. A chronology offered recently by Iran was “not consistent with earlier information,” Goldschmidt said, and “no positive reply has been received thus far” to agency requests for additional detail. Taken together, Goldschmidt’s concerns were “another indication that it’s way too premature to assume that Iran has come back into compliance with its safeguards obligations,” Einhorn said. “This fits a pattern in which Iran is forced to admit to something it tried to conceal and then says, ‘That’s all of it,’ until more information is detected,” he said. “Iran must do more to come clean, but doesn’t seem to have done that,” he added.
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