From Wednesday, July 27, 2005 issue.
European, Asian, African and Latin American foreign ministers yesterday called on all countries to sign on to the strengthened safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Financial Times reported (see GSN, May 1, 2003). The call was contained in draft language for the Millennium +5 Summit in New York this September. Chile, Indonesia, Australia, Romania, South Africa, Norway and the United Kingdom issued the draft, according to the Times. The draft language says that IAEA safeguards are “essential for effective verification.” The right to peaceful nuclear energy is emphasized and research into methods to control nuclear materials is urged, according to the Times. Action is recommended against countries that try to leave the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “A state remains liable for breaches of international obligations undertaken prior to withdrawal. Leaving the treaty must not be considered a viable or consequence-free option,” the draft language states. Finally, the language calls for a treaty banning production of fissile materials used in nuclear weapons, a stop to nuclear test explosions, and steps to prevent a space-based arms race. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen and U.N. General Assembly President Jean Ping are expected to discuss the proposed summit language next week, according to the Times. Rebecca Johnson, head of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy said the language is a step back from commitments made at the 2000 NPT review conference (Mark Turner, Financial Times, July 27).
From Thursday, July 28, 2005 issue.
The North Korean delegation to six-nation talks in Beijing yesterday officially rejected the 2004 U.S. proposal aimed at ending the nuclear standoff, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, July 27).
“The D.P.R.K. is a country that prides itself on being different, and this is certainly proving true in these negotiations,” said a senior U.S. official.
The June 2004 proposal offered aid and security guarantees in exchange for full dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program, according to the Post. The North Korean delegation objected to the proposal on the grounds that it was front-loaded with demands on Pyongyang, while any benefits would only accrue afterward, the U.S. official said. Negotiators from the six nations have thus far in talks mainly laid out their positions, the official said. The primary goal of the negotiations is to create a list of “agreed principles” that can be expanded later, he said. “Our concern in putting together this basket of principles is that the basket can be turned into an agreement,” he said. More complex issues, such as the sequencing of obligations and Pyongyang’s alleged uranium enrichment program, would be put off for later discussion, according to the Post (Edward Cody, Washington Post, July 28). The United States proposed in bilateral discussions with North Korean delegates today that inspections of Pyongyang’s nuclear facilities be conducted in September, Interfax reported. “The U.S. delegation has proposed reaching an agreement at the fourth round (of six-party talks) to conduct an international inspection of the North Korean nuclear facilities in September 2005,” a source was quoted as saying. “(They would) subsequently draft a plan of measures to attain the main target of the six-party negotiating process — to free the peninsula of nuclear weapons,” the source said. The U.S. Embassy could not confirm the report, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28). U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill also refused to confirm the Interfax report. “I have absolutely no idea,” Hill said when asked about its accuracy. The U.S. and North Korean delegations agreed today to continue bilateral negotiating sessions, Reuters reported. A third meeting was held today. “They agreed to continue holding consultations,” said Qin Gang, spokesman for the Chinese delegation (Lim/Beck, Reuters, July 28). The decision to hold one-on-one talks with North Korea is a significant shift in U.S. policy since the last round of negotiations, the Washington Post reported. “Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice has implemented a subtle but important shift in U.S. policy,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of nonproliferation policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Clearly, we are now in a period of give-and-take and genuine negotiations.” For example, Hill brokered a deal for the resumption of talks during a private three-hour dinner this month in Beijing with his North Korean counterpart, according to the Post, and has held several bilateral meetings with North Korean negotiators since then. The Bush administration, however, has rejected talk of a policy change. “This was not a negotiating session,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, referring to Monday’s breakout session between the North Korean and U.S. delegations at the talks. “We have in the past met with the North Koreans in the context of the six-party talks.” Experts said, however, that the administration’s approach is drastically different from that practiced in the first term. “If any of this had taken place under Bush I, people would have been lined up and shot,” said Charles Pritchard, who served as senior U.S. specialist for North Korean talks until resigning in August 2003. Undersecretary of State James Kelly, the top U.S. negotiator with North Korea during the first Bush term, had a delegation that included officials from other U.S. agencies who were dubious of the negotiations and was hampered by administration insistence that he call Washington repeatedly for instructions, the Post reported. “We were looking, at least to my mind, like something out of the old Soviet days, where there were watchers watching the watchers who were watching the principals,” former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told CNN this week (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, July 28). All parties today focused on creating the list of agreed principles, according to Reuters. “When we start drafting, we want to make sure that the drafting becomes the easy part and that there is already a consensus on how to proceed,” Hill said (Reuters, July 28). Pyongyang, meanwhile, has reportedly informed China that its announcement in February that it has nuclear bombs meant it had mastered technology for a nuclear detonator, a diplomatic source close to the talks told Interfax. In addition, North Korea said it has thus far avoided building up a nuclear arsenal, but that it would begin do so if the standoff with the United States was not resolved to its liking, according to the source (Stephanie Hoo, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 28). Washington yesterday said it remained convinced North Korea is pursuing a uranium enrichment program, AFP reported. “We’ve talked about this issue in the past in public, and our view is that North Korea would need to give up all of its nuclear programs. That would include plutonium, as well as highly enriched uranium. That still stands,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 27). Elsewhere, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and met today with his North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam Sun, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Laos, Reuters reported. It was the third ever meeting between the two men. “We are trying to make real progress in the six-party talks,” Paek said. Seoul was also awaiting a response on its energy aid offer to Pyongyang, Ban said yesterday (Jon Herskovitz, Reuters, July 28).
From Friday, July 29, 2005 issue.
Iranian front companies are importing extra-durable steel for Tehran’s nuclear program, an exiled Iranian opposition group said yesterday (see GSN, July 28). “At present, maraging steel is being smuggled to Iran illegally from other countries,” said Mohammed Mohaddessin, head of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He said some of the steel came from Malaysia through the United Arab Emirates. Maraging steel, which can withstand extreme temperatures and pressure, is used in uranium enrichment centrifuges, the Associated Press reported. International Atomic Energy Agency experts “will review the claims to see if there’s anything to them,” said agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. Secretly importing maraging steel — a product subject to nuclear export controls — would indicate that Iran “is still violating its treaty obligations, and that the nuclear black market is alive and well,” said Joseph Cirincione, nonproliferation director for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Sophie Nicholson, Associated Press/IranFocus.com, July 28). The United States yesterday warned Iran not to resume sensitive nuclear work, Reuters reported. “Iran made some commitments to suspend their uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. We expect them to abide by that commitment,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “If Iran is going to violate their agreements, then we would obviously be looking at discussing with (the) Europeans, who have also committed to doing so, looking at going to the (U.N.) Security Council,” McClellan said (Reuters, July 28). Meanwhile, U.S. officials have discovered no evidence that Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, as some of the former hostages have charged, the New York Times reported today. The conclusion was based on detailed photo analysis by the CIA, officials said. Evidence that Ahmadinejad was one of the crueler captors, as alleged, “would enormously complicate” diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with Tehran, a senior Bush administration official said. However, “it would be more than poor taste to contradict the hostages in public,” a State Department official said. “I think the administration wants this to go away; it’s an embarrassment,” said William Daugherty, one of the former hostages who made the allegations. “I have heard absolutely nothing from the administration, either through the media or personally, about this case,” Daugherty said. He and other former hostages were “surprised and disappointed,” he added (Joel Brinkley, New York Times, July 29). The White House yesterday announced that the investigation was continuing, AP reported. “I don’t think it should surprise anyone given the nature of the regime in Iran that he might have been involved in these kind of activities,” McClellan said. “We know he was a leader of the student movement that organized the attack on the embassy and the taking of the American hostages,” McClellan said. “However, we are still looking into whether or not he was actually one of the hostage-takers. That is something we continue to look in to” (Nedra Pickler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 28).
From Friday, July 29, 2005 issue.
A provision in the energy bill Congress is expected to approve today would ease export controls on weapon-grade uranium, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, July 25). An amendment sponsored by Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would end a 13-year U.S. ban on bomb-grade uranium exports to recipients that have not agreed to convert their reactors to use uranium enriched to a lower level. Supporters of the new measure have argued that eliminating the restriction would ensure a supply of medical isotopes used for treatments for cancer, heart disease, epilepsy and other diseases. Critics, on the other hand, warn that the move would send the wrong nuclear proliferation message at a time the United States is promoting efforts to remove weapon-grade uranium from other parts of the world. Moreover, because the Canadian company MDS Nordion is the world’s leading producer of those isotopes and would have to spend millions of dollars to convert its reactor to use low-enriched uranium, some have criticized the measure for indulging special interests at the expense of security. “To save one Canadian company some money, we’re willing to blow a hole in our nonproliferation policies,” said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.). The amendment applies only to exports to Canada and four European allies, according to the Post. Nordion produces isotopes for the U.S. market, so pushing the company to convert its reactor could create shortages in the United States of a medical product used to help 14 million Americans annually, said industry officials. “Our industry shares the concern about nonproliferation; we don’t have our heads in the sand,” said Roy Brown, federal affairs director for the Council on Radionuclides and Radiopharmaceuticals. “When the technology is there, we’ll all be willing to switch.” The provision, however, would eliminate the financial incentives to make the change, critics said. “To get something as outrageous as this, that’s skillful lobbying,” said Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists (Michael Grunwald, Washington Post, July 29).
From Friday, July 29, 2005 issue.
The United States has for the first time presented North Korea with specific evidence to support its accusations that Pyongyang is pursuing a clandestine uranium enrichment program in addition to its disclosed plutonium reprocessing program, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 28). The U.S. delegation to six-nation nuclear talks in Beijing put forth documentation that Pyongyang obtained technology from the underground network of former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. A U.S. official said that, when presented with the evidence, which includes Khan’s testimony, the North Korean officials “argue with us about it.” Today was the fourth day of negotiations. The top U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said he hoped the parties would soon begin drafting a joint statement of agreed principles. The first two principles should be a commitment to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and a promise by Pyongyang not to transfer nuclear technology to a third party, a U.S. official in Washington told the Times. The U.S. and North Korean negotiators found some “common understanding” during yesterday’s meeting, Hill said, but “a lot of differences” remained. “I want to caution people not to think we are coming to the end of this,” he said. This week’s negotiations have been focused on diplomatic matters such as achieving a definition of denuclearization. “We’re pretty close on that,” Hill said (Sanger/Yardley, New York Times, July 29). “The clear definition of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula we are talking about is unconditionally dismantling nuclear weapons and banning the import of all nuclear materials,” said North Korean Foreign Ministry Director Chung Song Il (Yonhap/BBC Monitoring, July 29). All six top negotiators agreed to meet again tomorrow, said Cho Tae-yong, the second-ranking South Korean delegate. Despite the seeming lack of concrete progress, Cho said today’s meetings “were not lower than my expectation.” Hill today met directly with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan for about 90 minutes, a South Korean official told the Associated Press. The Xinhua news agency reported that Hill and Kim were scheduled to meet again tomorrow. “We’ll just keep at it just as long as it’s useful to keep at it. I’ve got plenty of patience,” Hill said. “We had some of their ideas which we did not feel were usable, but we had some of their ideas that very much correspond to some of the ideas we have,” Hill said of the discussions with the North thus far. “We’ll have to wait and see how it goes” (Bo-Mi Lim, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 29). The United States is “prepared to roll up our sleeves and work for as long as necessary to make progress,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Rice told the Public Broadcasting System’s “NewsHour” yesterday (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28). Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev said he plans to leave Beijing tomorrow, indicating that talks may be winding down, AP reported (Associated Press, July 29). Meanwhile, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States was unwilling to enter into a bilateral agreement with North Korea. “That approach was tried and it failed,” McClellan said, referring to the Agreed Framework negotiated with Pyongyang by the Clinton administration (Ueno/ Beck, Reuters, July 29). China is preparing bilateral talks between Japan and North Korea in Beijing today, Reuters reported (Reuters/Yahoo!News, July 28). Elsewhere, North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun yesterday praised South Korea’s energy aid offer and said Pyongyang was studying the proposal, AFP reported. “Mr. Paek said that he appreciates the efforts of South Korea and he hoped to develop the proposal further between both sides,” said a South Korean official (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, July 28).
From Monday, July 25, 2005 issue.
Australia and Canada are considering uranium sales to China that, while legal under international law, could pose proliferation dangers, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday (see GSN, July 22). Australia restricts nuclear exports to nations that pledge not to use the uranium for weapons or to export the material to another country, said Ian MacFarlane, Australian resources minister. Canberra now plans to add China to the list of 36 nations that have signed the bilateral agreement, the Telegraph reported. Canada, meanwhile, has a long-standing nuclear cooperation agreement with China, according to the Telegraph. Critics have said Beijing could divert the material to its nuclear weapons program, or even transfer it to North Korea. “There will be people in Washington who will be very upset about this, just as they were when the Israeli government was negotiating to sell arms to China,” said Tom Grunfeld, a China specialist at Empire State College in New York. The State Department has not publicly criticized the potential sales, but officials have said privately that they would watch to make certain that the appropriate controls are in place, according to the Telegraph (Peter Goff, Daily Telegraph, July 24).
From Wednesday, July 27, 2005 issue.
By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The security manager for five U.S. Energy Department sites housing weapon-grade nuclear material yesterday questioned the hypothetical threat used to determine the level and nature of security needed at the facilities (see GSN, Jan. 20). The agency’s design-basis threat — a classified security guideline that was made more stringent in October 2004 for the second time since the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks — may not be appropriate to the actual threat environment, Energy, Science and Environment Security Manager Robert Walsh said at a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing. “I’m not 100 percent certain at this time that the fundamental intelligence that supports … the design-basis threat … supports the level that we currently have as what I consider to be the most representative threat,” Walsh told the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. Energy’s Office of the Undersecretary for Energy, Science and Environment oversees five sites with weapon-grade nuclear materials: the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory-West in Idaho and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The National Nuclear Security Administration manages the department’s six other sites housing special nuclear materials. The Government Accountability Office said yesterday in a report on security at the Energy, Science and Environment sites that the design-basis threat is “the key component of DOE’s approach to security.” “The DBT has been traditionally based on a classified, multiagency intelligence-community assessment of potential terrorist threats known as the postulated threat. The threat from terrorist groups is generally the most demanding threat contained in the DBT,” the report says. Questioned by subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) about the new design-basis threat, Walsh would not say whether actual threats that face the five Energy, Science and Environment facilities demand a higher or lower level of security than that called for by the current postulated threat. A “more complete” review of intelligence is needed, Walsh said. The security manager’s comments follow scattered calls for more attention to the costs that would be incurred in seeking compliance with the new, more stringent design-basis threat. Members of Congress called in a Defense Department authorization bill this year for a cost-benefit review of implementing the new security standard. “There’s some movement to claim that DOE’s going too far,” Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear-materials specialist Edwin Lyman said yesterday in an interview. “I haven’t heard too many people inside the government say the new design-basis threat isn’t adequate.” On the other hand, Lyman said, “It’s hard to argue that it would be too stringent for [the Energy, Science and Environment sites]. There are enormous amounts of plutonium and highly enriched uranium at Savannah River and Oak Ridge.” The GAO report indicates that protection forces at the Energy, Science and Environment sites “generally meet” current department requirements in such areas as firearms proficiency and equipment standardization but that changes are needed to meet the new design-basis threat. GAO officials reviewed documents and interviewed protection officers to determine what actions would be needed to defend against the threat identified in the October 2004 design-basis threat in time for the October 2008 deadline for complying with the new standard. The auditors concluded that Energy, Science and Environment should convert the existing protection force into an “‘elite force’ — modeled on U.S. Special Forces,” deploy new security technology, consolidate and eliminate nuclear materials and improve security coordination across the five sites. “Because these initiatives, particularly an elite force, are in early stages of development and will require significant commitment of resources and coordination across DOE and ESE, their completion by the 2008 October DBT implementation deadline is uncertain,” the office said. The auditors’ caution about prospects for the “elite force” effort follows a flurry of criticism of security contractor Wackenhut in recent years over its performance at Energy Department sites. In one incident, the department’s inspector general found last year that Wackenhut had improperly obtained advance notice of a surprise security drill at Oak Ridge. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) yesterday questioned Energy Department officials about what he called their “tolerance” for Wackenhut’s deficiencies. Walsh replied that the company’s performance was improving: During recent departmental tests and reviews at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, he said, the Wackenhut force “far exceeded” its performance at any time in the past six years. Despite the auditors’ view that meeting the 2008 deadline could prove difficult to meet, Shays pressed department officials on why the Energy Department could not comply earlier with the new standard. “Why does it have to take three years to protect ourselves?” Shays asked. Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman said that although “the ideal is to have a virtually instantaneous defense for the threat that has been postulated,” care must be taken to ensure limited resources are expended wisely. He added that some required steps unavoidably take a long time, particularly the consolidation of nuclear materials. Energy Security and Safety Performance Assurance Director Glenn Podonsky concurred. “The nuclear material-consolidation piece is, in fact, probably the most daunting challenge,” Podonsky said. Lyman said it is difficult to know whether the Energy Department could be proceeding faster in efforts to comply with the new standard, especially given the opacity of the design-basis threat. “It’s easy to criticize,” he said, “and just knowing how long it takes DOE to do anything, even things they want to do, it probably could be expedited, but I’m just not in a position to say whether or not [Shays’ criticism is] justified.” “The fact is everyone was caught with their pants down Sept. 11,” he said, “and it’s unrealistic to expect that you can just change your design-basis threat twice and be able to upgrade security overnight — but it has been three years already.”
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