U.S. Response I:  Heavy Lobbying Forecast for Homeland Security Funds

U.S. state and local governments and U.S. industries are expected to begin fierce lobbying for fiscal 2004 homeland security spending soon, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today (see GSN, March 26).

The Homeland Security Department is expected to receive at least $36 billion for fiscal 2004, and the department still needs to determine which U.S. targets are the most vulnerable to a terrorist attack and should receive funding, the Inquirer reported.  State and local officials and private industry have already begun pleading their cases.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has warned lawmakers that a terrorist attack on the bridges and tunnels connecting Detroit to Canada could result in a $1.4 billion loss in daily trade. 

“Our police department has been providing national security since 9/11 — $11 million in overtime for police alone on the border — from 9/11 to January of this year,” Kilpatrick said.

Association of American Railroads spokesman Tom White said railroad personnel expected Washington to help with the costs of expanded inspections and increased hazardous material shipment monitoring.  The trucking industry wants Washington to fund a 24-hour highway watch operations center to report missing or late equipment.

“We’re looking for $20 million for the ops center, an information-sharing center and to speed up the amount of training for truckers,” American Trucking Associations spokesman Mike Russell said (Sumana Chatterjee, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31).

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U.S. Response II:  NRC Increases Reactor Fee to Cover Security Costs

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week said it would increase the annual reactor fee levied on nuclear power plants by almost $430,000 to help cover the costs of improving security at the plants (see GSN, March 20).

The annual reactor fee will now be $3.28 million, up from the current $2.85 million, the commission said.  Last year’s fee increased by only $96,000 (Reuters/Planet Ark, March 31).

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U.S. Response: Iraqi War Will Settle Debate on Bush Worldview, Pentagon Official Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The outcome of the U.S.-led war on Iraq will settle a global debate over whether the Bush administration’s approach of threatening and possibly using force to counter WMD proliferation is appropriate and whether it will become standard, according to a senior administration official.

The war on Iraq signals a “historical moment” that could decide how the United States conducts its foreign policy and could determine its future role in the world, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Peter Rodman said in a speech Friday at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“There is a lot at stake in this present war, a lot at stake for the future of American foreign policy.  And a lot at stake for the future of the international order … A lot at stake for the future of America’s role in the order,” he said.

“When the war is over, I think some of these opinions, some of the opinions of people in the debate will be vindicated, and other opinions may be discredited by how the war comes out,” he said.

Rodman laid out Bush administration reasoning for its approach, commonly known as the Bush Doctrine.  He cited a forecasted threat — that has been used to justify U.S. action in Iraq and more generally the Bush Doctrine — that certain countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction might one day share them with terrorists.

Rodman questioned whether traditional international approaches to combating WMD proliferation, through arms control and nonproliferation diplomacy, have run their course.

“The world has tried for 40 years to address or manage the problem of proliferation of these weapons, and there are diplomatic means that all of us have supported, from the Nonproliferation Treaty to the Missile Technology Control Regime, and a whole variety of institutions for chemical weapons and so forth,” he said.

“It may be that these traditional, comfortable means of diplomacy have brought us as far as we can go,” he said. 

Rodman noted Iraq’s suspected unwillingness to fully disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“What happens when 17 resolutions are ignored and a rogue state is acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and brutalizing its own people?  Is the world capable of acting against it?” he said.

“The failure of the Security Council to enforce 17 resolutions is a display of escapism, and evasion of a responsibility; it’s a flight from seriousness,” he said.

Bush Approach Called Self-Defeating, Unjustified

Critics of the Bush administration approach to countering WMD proliferation, including how it has been implemented in Iraq, say it could prove counterproductive by damaging international institutions and standards restricting the use of force and by encouraging countries to hasten efforts to obtain such weapons for defense against a possible U.S. attack.

In addition, they question the administration’s underlying rationale for its doctrine, arguing there has been scant evidence of any nation sharing weapons of mass destruction with terrorists and that such transactions would be unlikely because detection would risk globally sanctioned annihilation.

“There’s no historical evidence to support this theory,” said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a recent interview.

“That doesn’t mean such an even may never occur.  But, there’s not history of it ever occurring.  There’s no plausible scenario describing the motivation for a state doing anything like this, and there is a lot of history, and theory and motivation analysis indicating this is not in the interest of any state having these weapons,” he said.

Cirincione said the administration’s approach of threatening or using force, even when there is no evidence of an imminent attack, will probably further destabilize the international system and perhaps cause increased proliferation.

“This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  By wrecking international institutions, they are creating the international anarchy that they fear.  By demolishing the rules of the road, they turn the world into a no-holds-barred fighting match, where you can do anything you want, as long as it works.  Where, invading another country on the suspicion that country may do you harm some day becomes an acceptable rationale for war.  All you have to do is imagine what the world would be like if all other countries adopted that norm,” he said.

The lesson of the current war, he said, is “you better get a nuclear weapon now, if you want to defend yourself, if you want to be a player with the United States in control of the world.”

Senior administration officials have asserted that rogue countries cannot be relied upon to obey the norms and institutions intended to promote global security.

For instance, Bush in a speech early this month said, “Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations — and responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide.”

Speaking at the SAIS conference, Columbia University political scientist Kenneth Waltz said the U.S. assumption of the role of global hegemon, enforcing its will on others, was inevitable in light of a post-Soviet power vacuum.

Lacking another nation to balance U.S. power, “it behaves as it chooses to and it is free to follow its fancy and free to act on its whims,” he said.

He did not endorse the administration’s course, but rather, suggested it might be wrong.

“Countries with good intentions often produce unfortunate results,” Waltz said, citing British historian A.J.P. Taylor’s aphorism that “Bismarck fought ‘necessary’ wars and killed thousands; the idealists of the 20th century fight ‘just’ wars and kill millions.”

“That thought is worth thinking about,” Waltz added, “I shudder every time a country talks about action for the sake of justice, because it’s of course always justice by its definition and its sense of justice.”

He said he believed the world might be better off were there a power to balance the United States, and he said other countries would seek to balance U.S. power in various ways.

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Iraq:  U.S., British Troops Seek to Tighten Control of Three Cities

U.S. and British troops battled with paramilitary forces in three key Iraqi cities yesterday, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Meanwhile, U.S. aircraft continued to strike Baghdad today as well as elite Republican Guard units deployed in the city’s defense (see GSN, March 28; Zucchino/Mohan, Los Angeles Times, March 31).

U.S. B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers attacked command and control targets in Baghdad today, according to the Associated Press.  It is the first time in history the three types of bombers have conducted simultaneous attacks on the same location, the U.S. Central Command said (Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 31).

Perhaps indicating a new level of fighting, an Iraqi soldier in driving a taxi conducted the first suicide attack of the war Saturday, killing four U.S. soldiers near Najaf.

The attack occurred Saturday morning, when the taxi stopped near a U.S.-manned roadblock, U.S. military officials said.  The driver waved for help, and when U.S. troops approached the vehicle, it exploded, they said.  While U.S. officials have condemned the bombing as an act of terrorism, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said such attacks would become “routine military policy” (Chandrasekaran/Branigin, Washington Post, March 30).

The Plan for Baghdad

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that the United States would wait for optimal conditions before sending ground troops to Baghdad.

While an attack on the Iraqi capital is a key component of the U.S. war plan, it will also be difficult and will not happen until U.S. troops are ready, Rumsfeld and Myers said yesterday. 

“There are difficult days ahead,” Rumsfeld said yesterday.  “Baghdad is not going to be easy,” he added.

U.S. troops outside of Baghdad are currently in “an operational pause in a macro sense,” Myers said, adding that U.S. troops would continue to probe the Republican Guard units deployed in defense of the city.  It would be inaccurate, however, to describe the U.S. strategy as a “siege,” Myers said.

“We can afford to be patient,” Myers said.  “We’re not going to commit our sons and daughters to battle until the odds are distinctly in our favor and at a time and place of our choosing.  Then we’ll take the fight to the enemy,” he added (Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 31).

Rumsfeld, Myers Defend U.S. Plan

Rumsfeld and Myers also defended the U.S. plan for the war in Iraq, denying charges made by current and retired military officials that recommendations for a larger ground force were ignored.

Rumsfeld has received increasing criticism for deploying an initial military force seen by some as being too small.  He and Myers said yesterday, however, that the plan for the war, created by the Central Command, was supported at all levels of the military and the White House.  U.S. commanders in the field in Iraq have received all of the combat and support troops they had requested, Rumsfeld and Myers said.

“I think you’ll find that if you ask anyone who has been involved in the process from the Central Command that every single thing they’ve requested has in fact happened,” Rumsfeld said.  “The people who are talking about it really are people who haven’t seen” the military plan, he added (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, March 31).

Rumsfeld also denied that he delayed the deployment of some U.S. heavy combat units to the Persian Gulf region.  Current and retired U.S. military officials who supported the idea of using a larger invasion force said Rumsfeld attempted to influence the force’s deployment to further his efforts to move the U.S. military toward using more precision-strike weapons and smaller, more mobile forces instead of using large mechanized and armored divisions (Thom Shanker, New York Times, March 31).

Some experts have said that second-guessing by some U.S. military officers should be expected.

“There is unavoidably an element of professional military planners thinking that war is too important to be left to politicians,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.  “This is the beginning of it.  People are still fighting Gettysburg,” he added (Bender, Boston Globe).

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North Korea:  Seoul Suggests Gas Pipeline in Exchange for Peace

On the eve of a diplomatic mission to Russia and China, a senior South Korean official has proposed a new plan to end North Korea’s nuclear activities by offering Pyongyang a gas pipeline from Russia, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, March 28).

Ra Jong-yil, South Korea’s national security adviser, said the United States and private interests could cover the cost of the pipeline in exchange for the verifiable dismantling of nuclear facilities.  The multibillion-dollar pipeline could also be extended to South Korea, Ra said.

“Gas could be drawn from either Irkutsk (Siberia) or Sakhalin (east Russia),” he said.

The proposal is not yet fully developed, Ra said, acknowledging that neither North Korea nor Seoul’s allies have been consulted yet.

Ra said the gas pipeline could supply Pyongyang with much-needed energy and allow North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his nuclear program, which North Korean officials insist is needed to produce electricity.  U.S. officials have alleged that the nuclear program is a front to develop nuclear weapons (Andrew Ward, Financial Times, March 31).

Ra is scheduled to travel to Moscow and Beijing this week to push a peaceful resolution to the nuclear crisis.

“The national security adviser plans to exchange opinions with both countries on the North Korean nuclear problem and political issues regarding the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia,” according to a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun’s office (Samuel Len, Reuters, March 30).

Powell Meets Yoon

Meanwhile at a meeting Friday in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed ways to establish a common strategy to find a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, officials said.

“We offered suggestions on an item-by-item basis for pursuing multilateral talks, and I think our views will be reflected,” Yoon said.

Powell said Yoon offered “an interesting approach which we will be examining” (Seo Hyun-jin, Korea Herald, March 30).

Pyongyang, meanwhile, criticized the current U.S. conflict with Iraq.  North Korean officials have questioned whether their country will soon be engaged in military conflict with the United States, Reuters reported.

“The arrogant and outrageous behavior of the U.S. that adopted it as its national policy to kill the state leader of another country is typical state terrorism that can never be tolerated,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said (Len, Reuters).

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U.S.-Russia:  Washington Backs Venture to Employ Russian Nuclear Scientists

The United States will provide up to $25 million in insurance for a California company that plans to hire former Russian nuclear weapons experts to build medical equipment, Energy Daily reported today (see GSN, March 13).

The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation last week said it would provide risk insurance to Numotech for its business venture with Spektr Conversiya, which employs former Russian weapons technicians.  The business initiative could create 433 jobs in Russia and provide a boost to U.S. Energy Department nonproliferation efforts, Energy Daily reported.

The project is part of the Energy Department’s Russian Transition Initiatives program (Energy Daily, March 31).

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Iraq:  United States Searches Northern Camp for Biological Weapons

U.S. military forces are looking for evidence of biological or chemical weapons at a suspected terrorist compound in northern Iraq, defense officials announced yesterday (see GSN, March 24).

Coalition aircraft and personnel attacked the Ansar al-Islam base and killed at least 120 militants, according to U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.  He referred to the base as “a massive terrorist facility.”

“We think that’s probably where the ricin that was found in London” came from, said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Appearing on CNN’s Late Edition, Myers linked the base to the discovery of a ricin lab that was found during a January raid on a London apartment.  “At least the operatives and maybe some of the formulas came from this site,” he added (see GSN, see Jan. 21).

The United States has accused Ansar al-Islam of being allied with al-Qaeda and producing weapons of mass destruction.  Allied aircraft attacked the site before ground forces moved in.

“Some of the bodies that have been recovered … are not Iraqi, they’re not Iranians.  We don’t know for sure, but they’re most likely al-Qaeda,” Myers said (USA Today, March 31).

The United States has not yet discovered any chemical or biological weapons at the site, but personnel are searching extensive underground tunnels and bunkers, according to Myers.

“We’re not certain what we’ll find but we should know more in the next three days — three or four days,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on the Fox News Sunday television show (Meek/Rose, New York Daily News, March 31).

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Smallpox:  CDC Panel Recommends Further Immunization Restrictions

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A top U.S. medical advisory committee Friday recommended that officials restrict participation in the struggling smallpox immunization program after heart problems surfaced in seven volunteers, including two women who suffered fatal heart attacks (see GSN, March 28).

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices urged U.S. health officials to exclude medical workers who have three or more heart disease risk factors from the program.  Risk factors include smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

The committee, which provides guidance to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is characterizing the move as a temporary measure to give officials time to investigate a possible link between the smallpox vaccine and heart problems.  Last week, two immunized health workers died of heart attacks and at least five other vaccine recipients have experienced a variety of heart problems, including myocarditis, pericarditis and angina.  Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscle, pericarditis is the inflammation of the sac around the heart and angina is painful spasms caused by a lack of blood flow.

Heart problems appear to be surfacing four or five days after the vaccine is administered, according to Kathy Neuzil, a member of the committee and a physician at the University of Washington’s medical school.

Guardsman Dies After Immunization

A recently immunized 55-year-old National Guardsman died Wednesday of a heart attack, but autopsy results and a pre-existing heart condition indicated the vaccine “was unlikely to be the cause of his death,” according to a statement from William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.  The Pentagon has immunized more than 350,000 Defense Department employees and military health officials have detected 10 cases of heart inflammation.  The number of inflammation cases is higher than expected from 350,000 people, according to U.S. Army Col. John Grabenstein, head of the Pentagon’s immunization program.

Committee Rejects Age Limit

The advisory committee debated — and rejected — a more stringent limit that would have kept volunteers over the age of 50 out of the civilian program.  Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspended immunizations for volunteers who know they suffer from heart disease.

“We are looking for the greatest safety.  There is no actual disease out there,” said committee member Dennis Brooks, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and one of the few supporters of an age limit.

More than 40 percent of volunteers, however, are older than 50, and the committee decided that the age cutoff could represent a significant hurdle for the besieged immunization effort.  During the two-hour meeting Friday, committee members discussed their mandate to protect the public and the need to keep the vaccination program moving forward.

The age restriction “would signal a major disruption if not the complete disruption” of the program, said committee Chairman John Modlin, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School.

The CDC said that almost 300,000 vaccine doses have been sent to state and local health departments and more than 25,000 health workers have been immunized.  About 500,000 health workers, however, were expected to have received the vaccine by this point.

Experts said it is unclear whether the heart attacks and complications are linked to the vaccine, but they were also not willing to rule anything out.

“We need some time to take a much closer look at it,” Modlin said.

Committee member Paul Offit, chief of the infectious diseases section of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, unsuccessfully argued temporarily suspending the entire program.

“The risks of this vaccine may temporarily outweigh the benefits,” Offit said.

In its decision, the committee attempted to balance safety and “practicality,” according to some members.

“No screening criteria is going to be perfect,” said committee member Guthrie Birkhead, director of the Center for Community Health at the New York state Health Department.  He described the current screening process as “complex and laborious.”

Several experts who took part in the meeting discouraged the CDC from issuing blanket recommendations for concerned vaccine recipients.

“The more we make of it, the more alarmed people will be,” said one cardiologist.

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Threat Assessment:  Crop Dusting Techniques Could Spread Biological Agents, Study Says

University of Victoria researchers in Canada have determined that terrorists could use cropdusting techniques to conduct biological weapons attacks, the Vancouver Sun reported today (see GSN, March 25).

In a study published in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism:  Biodefense Strategy, Practice and Science, the researchers examined a spray program used to kill gypsy moths in the city of Victoria four years ago, and found that the same techniques could also be used to spread biological agents.

The spray program used a bacterium similar to anthrax that is rarely contagious in mammals to eradicate gypsy moths, according to the Sun.  Testing conducted in 1999 found that the bacteria spores were contained in spray droplets small enough to enter into both buildings and human respiratory systems.

“That basically points out that anthrax could be applied as a bioweapon from an aircraft,” said David Levin, an associate biology professor at the University of Victoria.

The study contradicts some experts who have said anthrax powder would have to be refined to a state where the particles were small enough to enter the lungs before it could be used as a weapon, the researchers said. 

“These data provide evidence that it is technologically feasible to disseminate biological agents from aircraft (or backpack sprayers, or truck-mounted foggers),” the researchers write.  “Forest protection personnel, mosquito control personnel and farmers have been doing so for over two decades,” they add (Lindsay Kines, Vancouver Sun, March 31).

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Iraq:  British Troops Find WMD Training Gear, Banned Weapons Still Not Found

British troops have found a facility located near the captured Iraqi port of Umm Qasr filled with WMD training equipment, the New York Post reported today.  U.S. and British forces operating in Iraq, however, have still found no actual chemical or biological weapons (see GSN, March 28).

The facility contained equipment such as Geiger counters, nerve gas simulators, protective gear and a schematic of a mushroom cloud, the Post reported.  British forces at the facility also discovered a document that appears to outline directions on sarin and other nerve agents (Deborah Orin, New York Post, March 31).  

As the war in Iraq enters its second week, U.S. troops have so far searched 10 top-priority suspected WMD sites, but have discovered nothing, according to the Washington Post.

Out of the 10 top sites, U.S. troops searched four on the first day of the conflict, and investigated the other six since then, the Post reported.  While there are about 300 suspect Iraqi WMD sites in the top section of a large list created by the Defense Intelligence Agency prior to the start of the war, the 10 already-searched sites were considered to be the most urgent because they could have posed a threat to U.S. forces if they had actually contained WMD, officials said.

“All the searches have turned up negative,” said a Joint Staff officer who is following field reports.  “The munitions that have been found have all been conventional,” the officer said.

Planners have predicted that the “near term” of the WMD hunt in Iraq could last at least eight months, according to the Post.  One factor that could improve the search is the cooperation of Iraqi WMD scientists and facility managers.  Some U.S. officials have warned, however, that Iraqi WMD personnel could try to exaggerate what they know in order to obtain lenient treatment, while others could attempt to conceal their knowledge to sell it later.  There are also concerns that a post-Hussein government in Iraq, while friendlier to the United States, could also attempt to maintain a WMD capability.

“The same conditions that led [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] to proliferate are going to apply to whoever’s in power, in terms of Iran holding (similar) weapons, and Israel,” a State Department official said.

The Bush administration has decided that the two U.N. agencies previously involved in the inspections process — the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency — will not be involved in the WMD search, said two disarmament planners.  Instead, White House officials have begun negotiating contracts with private companies to handle some of the work.  One such company is KBR, formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which was formerly chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The White House has also begun to recruit U.N. weapons inspectors, urging them to end their contracts with UNMOVIC and join the U.S. operation, Bush administration officials said.

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, while remaining neutral on the issue of inspectors ending their contracts to go work for the United States directly, said they would not be able to take along any of the work they did for the United Nations.

“They are free individuals,” Blix said.  “If they want to terminate their contracts, anyone can do that, including myself. … But they would not be allowed to reveal anything that they have done here, because that is part of their contract. They cannot take with them their files,” he added (Barton Gellman, Washington Post, March 30).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that U.S. and British forces would find Iraqi chemical and biological weapons as they move closer to Baghdad.

“The bulk of (Saddam’s terror weapons) are in the area south of Baghdad down near Karbala … and north of Baghdad, up near Tikrit,” Rumsfeld said on FOX News Sunday.  “We aren’t there.  That’s the area we haven’t arrived in yet,” he added (James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News, March 31).

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U.S. Response:  FDA Approves New Decontamination Lotion

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Friday announced approval of a new skin lotion to protect against chemical warfare burns (see GSN, Sept. 19, 2002).

The Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion is intended to remove or neutralize chemical weapons agents and T-2 fungal toxin when applied to the skin, the FDA said.  The lotion must be applied as soon as possible after exposure, the agency said.  It was approved for use after the U.S. Army conducted human safety and animal efficacy tests (U.S. Food and Drug Administration release, March 28).

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North Korea:  Missile Transfer to Pakistan Prompts U.S. Sanctions

The United States is preparing to impose sanctions on North Korean and Pakistani companies over the alleged sale of North Korean Nodong ballistic missiles, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 5).

The sanctions, set to be imposed under the Arms Control Export Act, will prohibit the Pakistan’s Khan Research Laboratories from doing business with the United States for two years.  The firm is alleged to have purchased the North Korean Nodong missiles over a span ending in August and to have used U.S.-built C-130 aircraft to deliver them, U.S. officials said.

“This is a very serious matter,” a senior Bush administration official said.  “We are not talking about missile technology or components but full-fledged Nodong missiles that can deliver nuclear weapons — and they used aircraft we gave them to bring the missiles home,” the official added.

The United States has also decided to sanction the North Korean state-owned company Changgwang Sinyong Corp. for its role in the alleged transfer, an official said. 

“That has no huge practical impact because there is no trade between the United States and North Korea, but it’s an important symbolic act that shows our focus on the North’s proliferation behavior and also tells the buyers how serious we are about this,” the official said (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, March 31).     

A spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington yesterday denied that any Pakistani entity purchased Nodong missiles, saying the sanctions are “misplaced and discriminatory.”

“We beg to differ,” the spokesman said.  “Whatever missile technology we have is indigenous,” he added.

A U.S. official said there was debate within the White House over sanctioning Islamabad while it was assisting the United States in the war on terrorism.  The Bush administration ultimately decided to only sanction the Pakistani company, and not the government.

“Everybody agreed that, in terms of the penalties you impose, none of the penalties should have an impact on Operation Enduring Freedom,” a Bush administration official said, referring to the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.  “That was a no-brainer,” the official added (Peter Slevin, Washington Post, March 31).

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International Response:  More Than 100 Countries Have Subscribed to Hague Code of Conduct

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation now has more than 100 subscribers, with its most recent member, Mozambique, joining March 14 (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2002).

In total, 102 countries subscribe to the code, which calls on members to exercise “maximum possible restraint” in developing and deploying ballistic missiles and to not aid ballistic missile programs of any countries that might be developing weapons of mass destruction.  To increase transparency, the code calls on members to implement several confidence-building measures, such as making an annual declaration outlining their ballistic missile policies. 

The code was formally launched at a ceremony held in November at The Hague (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2002).  Since the signing ceremony, nine additional countries have joined the code, including Niger, Guinea-Bissau and Vanuatu.  A number of countries the United States believes are acquiring or proliferating ballistic missiles, such as China, North Korea, India and Pakistan, however, have refused to join the code for various reasons (see GSN, Nov. 20, 2002).  For example, a spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington told Global Security Newswire in November, prior to the launching of the code, that his country opposed the agreement, in part, because it fails to adequately address complementary delivery systems such as cruise missiles. 

In a speech in early November before a nonproliferation conference sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Liu Jieyi, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Arms Control and Disarmament Department, said his country opposed the code because it believed the agreement’s confidence-building measures should have been voluntary (see GSN, Nov. 15, 2002).

The code’s members are tentatively scheduled to hold their first regular meeting this spring to consider further developments to the agreement.

For further information, see:

Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation

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United States:  Iraqi Missile Hits Kuwait Saturday Night, No Deaths

An Iraqi missile eluded detection by Patriot missile defense batteries Saturday and hit a pier and shopping mall in Kuwait in the middle of the night, the Baltimore Sun reported (see GSN, March 28).

The missile, most likely a Chinese-made Silkworm cruise missile, was flying to low evade detection by missile defenses, according to U.S. and Kuwaiti officials.  The missile struck the pier about 15 feet above sea level, according to Kuwaiti fire chief Jassim al-Mansouri.

The explosion damaged a mall, which was closed and empty, and blew out windows up to half a mile away.  The missile was not carrying chemical or biological weapons, the Sun reported (Todd Richissin, Baltimore Sun, March 29).

Two people were slightly injured in the attack, according to Kuwaiti health officials.

Silkworm missiles, which have a range of up to 125 miles, are being hidden in residential areas in southern Iraq, according to Kuwaiti Defense Ministry spokesman Yussif al-Mulla (Fiona MacDonald, Agence France-Presse/Philippines Daily News, March 29).

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