By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A diverse range of official policies and statements over the past year indicate that the Bush administration is implementing a fundamentally new U.S. international security strategy, sparking debate over whether the new approach can be effective.
Administration actions implementing the strategy include but are not limited to: declaring Iran, Iraq and North Korea to be an “axis of evil” (see GSN, Jan. 30, 2002), calling for an expanded justification for pre-emptive war (see GSN, July 15, 2002), abandoning of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pursuing national missile defenses (see GSN, June 13, 2002), opposing ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (see GSN, July 31, 2002), and interest in possibly developing and using new nuclear weapons (see GSN, Feb. 19).
Various elements of the Bush WMD nonproliferation strategy — which experts generally agree prioritizes the prospect of military solutions over traditional instruments of arms control and nonproliferation — were publicly disclosed last year in several administration policy documents, as well as in policy statements by President George W. Bush.
A debate among experts is now growing about the strategy’s wisdom, as it is put to the test with escalating crises in Iraq and North Korea. Critics charge the new approach to combating proliferation is self-defeating, potentially hastening the very behavior it is intended to curb.
“Even if U.S. forces succeed quickly in separating [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] from his weapons of mass destruction, the war could accelerate proliferation,” wrote Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington in a recent article. Other states may feel threatened by the potential use of force against them as a disarmament tool and conclude that weapons of mass destruction are an effective deterrent, Krepon wrote.
Administration officials and supporters, on the other hand, have argued Iraq must be disarmed by the prospect of force if necessary before it acquires nuclear capability or shares its most dangerous weapons with terrorists. They have asserted, further, that success in Iraq would discourage other potential proliferators by making clear that the United States will not tolerate WMD proliferation.
“In the post-Cold War era, otherwise insignificant nations, or even terrorist groups, can vault onto the world stage with readily available technology. That’s why in today’s ugly world the United States needs to be prepared with a tough, effective array of military options — including nuclear options — and plans for their employment to deter, if possible, or to defeat, if necessary,” wrote David Smith, an analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy, in a recent opinion piece.
Emphasis on Force
The Bush administration strategy has numerous aspects, including an increasing priority placed on “counterproliferation” — the threat and use of U.S. military capabilities to address WMD proliferation — relative to diplomatic, economic, and political tools.
While previous administrations have always kept the option of employing preventive war potential enemies, the Bush administration has elevated that tool into a core element of U.S. security strategy and its approach toward Iraq.
“Our enemies are seeking weapons of mass destruction. America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed,” said the administration’s September 2002 National Security Strategy.
Specific counterproliferation tools could include developing and using nuclear weapons to deter other countries from acquiring or using chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and to strike such enemy weapons buried deeply underground.
Another facet of counterproliferation includes developing missile defenses, not just for defense, but also to “preserve U.S. freedom of action, and strengthen the credibility of U.S. alliance commitments,” according to the administration’s January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.
As the role of military solutions is enhanced, traditional U.S. nonproliferation strategies have been downgraded, including arms control agreements, and application of the concepts of strategic containment and mutually assured destruction. The Bush administration over the past year has controversially sought to remove, weaken, or prevent arms control pacts that might compromise U.S. counterproliferation capabilities. The United States, for example, withdrew from the ABM Treaty in June and refuses to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty.
Bush emphasized his approach in a major policy speech at West Point last June.
“We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. We must ensure that key capabilities — detection, active and passive defenses, and counterforce capabilities — are integrated into our defense transformation and our homeland security systems.
Approach Called Self Defeating
Critics have charged the strategy’s various components may transform the international security system in many negative ways. The strategy could, they say, loosen international standards for using force, undermine the authority of the United Nations in deciding when force is acceptable, weaken the international taboo against renouncing international treaty commitments, and undermine norms prohibiting the development and use of nuclear weapons.
North Korea has been cited as an example of the Bush administration’s strategy possibly backfiring. Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty earlier this year and is apparently accelerating its nuclear weapons development activities while citing a growing threat from the United States.
“The way they’re committing counterproliferation is actually a stimulus to proliferation,” says Martin Butcher, an analyst with Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Nonproliferation “has suffered severe setbacks over the past decade,” wrote the Stimson Center’s Krepon.
“The Bush administration inherited this mess, and promptly made it worse by denigrating treaties, deterrence, export controls and multilateral diplomacy,” he wrote.
Smith says proliferation occurred even when the United States did not play that role and cannot be pinned on Bush’s approach to dealing with it.
“Why are we having this discussion? Because the nonproliferation regime has been undermined. … Then poor George Bush comes to office and hears, ‘Look what you’ve done with your new doctrine here.’ I think it’s just disingenuous. He’s got to do absolutely nothing with it. He’s looking at the situation as it is and trying to deal with it,” Smith said.Application of the strategy places the United States in the role of a global hegemon, wrote Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis last year, in an article praising the policy.
“Pre-emption in turn requires hegemony,” he wrote, and cited the administration’s National Security Strategy goal of having U.S. forces “strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”
Krepon contends hegemony, though perhaps intended to discourage proliferation, actually encourages it.
“I think the counter to a hegemon is proliferation, and we’re seeing that happen,” he said.
Gaddis and others say the international community has generally accepted U.S. hegemony, viewing it as “relatively benign.”
Krepon says the pre-emption policy, however, has precipitated reactions abroad and at home that are undermining U.S. efforts to gain international support.
“This is not something that has gone down very well internationally and it is not something that the American public feels terribly good about. It’s very hard in a democracy to get consensual agreement on waging a preventive war, even after 9/11. And it’s 15 times harder to do this in the U.N. Security Council,” he said.
“The controversy in this area stems in part from the way in which the possibility of pre-emptive or preventative attack outside the confines of war undermines traditional notions of international sovereignty,” says Butcher.
Smith acknowledges the dissatisfaction but contends the alternative is to continue to pursue strategies that have been proven ineffective.
“What’s being tested here, the Bush doctrine or the United Nations? The real issue here is the people who have been criticizing us don’t take responsibility for their own words,” he said.
New Era Requires New Strategy
Advocates of the Bush strategy contend changes in the international system since the Cold War have brought new types of security challenges that warrant a new approach to international security. Administration officials have made a key assertion that unlike the former Soviet Union, some countries — particularly Iran, Iraq and North Korea — cannot be deterred by the massive U.S. nuclear and conventional superiority from attempting, or perhaps from cooperating with terrorists, to destroy the United States.
“Some states” in the international community seek weapons of mass destruction not for deterrence, but “as tools of coercion and intimidation,” said the administration’s December 2002 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.
“For them, these are not weapons of last resort, but militarily useful weapons of choice intended to overcome our nation’s advantages in conventional forces and to deter us from responding to aggression against our friends and allies in regions of vital interest,” it said.
Critics of the administration’s strategy disagree that countries such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea cannot be deterred, arguing that Iraq was successfully deterred from using weapons of mass destruction during the 1991 Gulf War.
They contend, furthermore, that threatening such countries with a pre-emptive, regime-ending attack, will encourage the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. A new approach to nonproliferation is therefore required to match the times.
We need a new strategy to deal with proliferation and terrorism “that is not dominated by military strategy, but rather by what [Harvard University international security expert] Joseph Nye has described as ‘soft power,’ that is built around the economic and diplomatic strength of the United States and our allies,” Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, said recently.
It is doubtful, however, that the Bush administration would adopt such a strategy. “There is no such soft power strategy in evidence so far that really could compete persuasively in a coherent way with the military strategy that’s been promoted as the solution to proliferation and terrorism,” Blair said.
U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix will probably present a negative report on Iraq’s cooperation with inspections when he briefs the U.N. Security Council Friday, a senior U.N. official said yesterday (see GSN, March 4).
During his report to the council, Blix is expected to say that Iraq typically increases its cooperation with inspectors only when pressured by the Security Council, the senior U.N. official said. As such pressure later decreases, so does Iraqi cooperation, the official said.
“They are still not open,” the senior U.N. official said. “There is always an element of trying to bargain down,” the official added (Suzanne Goldenberg, London Guardian, March 5).
Blix’s briefing is also expected to note that Iraq has begun to destroy its arsenal of al-Samoud 2 ballistic missiles, according to United Press International. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the Iraqi action a “positive development” (see related GSN story, today).
“I think Blix has indicated a positive development,” Annan said. “He has indicated there is much more to be done, but this is a positive development,” he added.
Iraq’s decision to abide by the U.N. order to destroy the missiles will not be the only aspect of Iraqi cooperation that the Security Council members will consider as they decide whether to authorize military action, Annan said.
“I think the council’s decision will be based on the totality of the presentation by the inspectors and the information they have in front of them,” Annan said. “Let’s not forget that in accordance with Resolution 1441 (unanimously approved Nov. 8, 2002) the council has the right to declare further material breach at any time based on the reports of the inspectors and then move on to ‘serious consequences,’” he added, referring to the resolution that established the current inspections regime.
Both France and Germany announced yesterday that their foreign ministers would attend Friday’s Security Council briefing. Other council members said they were still awaiting notice from their respective governments as to whether their foreign ministers would also attend (William Reilly, United Press International, March 4).
Shuttle Diplomacy
Meanwhile, leaders from Security Council nations have continued to meet amongst themselves to seek a solution to the Iraq crisis, according to reports.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair met today with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to dissuade Russia from vetoing the latest draft resolution on Iraq, according to CNN.com.
Ivanov said yesterday that Russia would not abstain on a future vote over the draft resolution, but he did not indicate whether Moscow would support or veto it.
“The Iraq question is precisely that sort of question when permanent members of the Security Council should not abstain,” Ivanov said (CNN.com, March 5).
Ivanov, along with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin are expected to convene a quickly scheduled meeting today in Paris, a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said. The three officials are expected to discuss international developments at the meeting, the spokesman said, refusing to provide more details (John Leicester, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 5).
Elsewhere, the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference met in Qatar today to discuss the Iraq situation. Muslim officials at the meeting could discuss several proposals put forward by various Islamic countries to avert a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
One such proposal, created by United Arab Emirates President Zayid bin Sultan al-Nuhayyan, calls for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to voluntarily step down from power and go into exile, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Feb. 12). During the meeting, Kuwait offered support for the UAE proposal.
“Kuwait ... calls on the Iraqi leadership to think in depth about offering the ultimate sacrifices,” Kuwaiti Foreign Affairs Minister Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said during the conference’s opening session.
Iran has also made a proposal, calling on both Hussein and Iraqi opposition groups to participate in U.N.-sponsored elections. An Iranian diplomat at the meeting did not say today whether the proposal would be discussed.
“We believe that the initiative has a good chance to succeed because it is different from the U.A.E. initiative as it allows the regime to stay in power, but with national reconciliation,” the Iranian diplomat said.
The conference got off to an inauspicious start with a vitriolic exchange between Iraqi and Kuwaiti officials, according to AP. During a speech by Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, criticizing al-Sabah for supporting the United States, the Kuwaiti official interrupted with an inaudible remark.
At that point, al-Douri responded with “Shut up you monkey! Curse be upon your moustache (honor), you traitor!”
The exchange escalated when Kuwaiti Information Minister Ahmad Fahd al-Ahmad rose to his feet and began waving a small Kuwaiti flag that had been on the desk, AP reported. “The Iraqis always behave like this,” he later said.
Iraqi officials briefly stormed out of the meeting, but returned within an hour after mediation by Qatari delegates (Salah Nasrawi, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 5).
The Bush administration rejected yesterday an argument put forth by Pope John Paul II that there is no moral justification for pre-emptive action against Iraq. The pope has called such a pre-emptive war a “defeat for humanity.”
U.S. President George W. Bush, however, does see the use of military action as a “matter of legality” and respects the opinions of those who might differ from him, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday.
“The president thinks the most immoral act of all would be if Saddam Hussein would somehow transfer his weapons to terrorists who could use them against us,” Fleischer said. “And so, the president does view the use of force as a matter of legality, as a matter of morality and as a matter of protecting the American people,” he added (Associated Press/Boston Globe, March 5).
War and Post-War Plans
A new U.S.-led attack on Iraq would have little in common with the 1991 Gulf War — the last time the two countries faced off on the battlefield, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 21). While in 1991 U.S. forces conducted a prolonged bombing campaign followed by a relatively short ground operation, a new attack places a high priority on speed and the massive and early use of precision-guided weapons, Myers said.
“The template of Desert Storm will not fit very well,” Myers said. “What you would like to do is have it be a short conflict ... The best way to do that is to have such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on that the end is inevitable,” he added.
The purpose of any potential attack on Iraq, however, is not to seek regime change, Myers said. “The ultimate objective is not Saddam Hussein,” but instead, to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, he said (Ann Scott Tyson, Christian Science Monitor, March 5).
The United Nations has begun drafting plans for a post-Hussein Iraq — a move that could be in violation of the international body’s own charter, according to the London Times.
The plan, ordered by Annan’s deputy Louise Frechette and created by a six-member preplanning group, calls for the United Nations to establish a new government in Iraq about three months after the end of conflict, with an ultimate goal of steering the country to self-government, the Times reported.
The plan also warns the United Nations against establishing a full-scale administration and against taking full control of the country’s oil supply. Instead, the plan proposes that a U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) be created to help set up a new government, according to the Times.
The U.N. planning for a post-Hussein Iraq is a controversial gesture, according to the Times. The U.N. charter forbids the international body from interfering in a member’s internal affairs (James Bone, London Times, March 5).
Inspections
U.N. inspectors visited at least three suspect Iraqi sites today, according to the Associated Press. Inspectors traveled to al-Taji to continue to observe the destruction of prohibited al-Samoud 2 missiles. They also traveled to al- Mutasim, where al-Samoud 2 engines and casting chambers have been destroyed. Inspectors traveled to al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range, where Iraqi workers have excavated bombs filled with biological agents (Associated Press/MSNBC.com, March 5).
Yesterday, inspectors traveled to at least six Iraqi sites, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency press release.
Missile experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission observed the destruction of al-Samoud 2 missiles at al-Taji. They also observed the destruction of a second casting chamber at al-Mutasim.
UNMOVIC biological inspectors visited the Ibn Fernas Center in northern Baghdad. UNMOVIC chemical inspectors visited al-Basil Nawaran. Inspectors also conducted an aerial inspection of a North Oil Company-owned oilfield in the northern city of Kirkuk.
Inspectors based in the northern city of Mosul visited the Northern Region Customs (IAEA release, March 4).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
IAEA Iraq Action Team
U.N. Resolution 1441
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A senior Bush administration official yesterday acknowledged recently detailed problems with implementation of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program in Russia, but argued support for it should be sustained (see GSN, March 4).
The U.S. taxpayer funded program helps fund efforts to safeguard Russian WMD stockpiles and materials.
Assistant Secretary of Defense J.D. Crouch, appearing before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, was responding to information disclosed by its chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) that two major projects spent a total of at least $185 million for neutralizing Russian strategic rocket fuel that produced no results.
In one instance, the $100 million was spent to construct a facility at Krasnoyarsk for neutralizing the fuel, heptyl, but then Russian government officials informed that the fuel had been transferred to their space program.
In another instance, according to Hunter, about $84 million provided for site development for a facility at another site in Votkinsk was “wasted” because the local planning authority never issued a permit for the site.
“These are remarkable stories of massive waste of American taxpayer dollars,” said Hunter.
A Pentagon Inspector General’s office investigation found that the U.S. agreements with Russia “did not require Russia to provide the heptyl and amyl for conversion, including remedies for nonperformance, and did not provide the department with adequate access rights to where the heptyl and amyl were stored,” said an official testifying from that office.
The General Accounting Office also yesterday released a report saying the program continues to be hindered by bureaucratic obstacles in both Moscow and Washington.
“U.S. threat reduction and nonproliferation programs have consistently faced two critical challenges,” said a GAO official, adding, “the Russian government has not always paid its agreed-upon share of program costs” and “Russian ministries have often denied U.S. officials access to key nuclear and biological sites.”
Wake-up Call
Crouch acknowledged the incidents.
“The year since the last time I testified to Congress on CTR has been a difficult one for the program,” he said.
He told Hunter his description of the Krasnoyarsk incident was “on the mark.”
The waste, he said, was “inexcusable. This was a major wake-up call for us.”
He said the agency is implementing now semi-annual reviews with Russia to re-evaluate project plans, assumptions and schedules.
Defending the program, he said, “The U.S., I think, does have a continuing interest in speeding the destruction of Russia’s mobile ICBM’s, and that interest remains.”
He also said the administration was requesting a presidential authority to use up to $50 million of threat reduction funding for use to address “critical” proliferation threats outside the former Soviet Union.
Concerns About Russian Treaty Violations
Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance Paula DeSutter, also at the hearing, said her office remained concerned Russia that might be violating its 1972 Biological Weapons Convention commitment to eliminate its biological weapons programs and early its 1990s commitment to eliminate chemical weapons stocks and programs.
While elements of its biological programs have been dismantled, she said, “We … believe that some key components of the former program may remain intact.”
“Of particular concern is the possibility that some facilities, in addition to being engaged in legitimate activity, may be maintaining the capability to produce biological weapons and agents,” she said.
She said the Untied States requires “greater access to and implementation of elimination of the biological weapons program.”
Despite recent steps to strengthen its chemical weapons destruction program, she said, “progress has been slow, however, and Russia has had to request extensions on it chemical weapons destruction deadlines.”
Russia also, so far, has only allowed U.S. visits to sites of declared stocks, and it continues to change its assessment of total nerve agent stocks, she said.
Experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have conducted hundreds of inspections in Iraq since resuming the post-Gulf War inspection regime Nov. 27, 2002. About 100 inspectors are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ recently reported activities.
| Date | Site | Activity | | March 5 | Al-Taji | UNMOVIC missile inspectors supervised the destruction of al-Samoud 2 missiles (see GSN, March 5). | | Al-Mutasim | See GSN, March 5. | | Al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range | | March 4 | Al-Taji | UNMOVIC missile inspectors supervised the destruction of al-Samoud 2 missiles and missile engines (see GSN, March 5). | | Al-Mutasim | UNMOVIC missile inspectors observed the destruction of a second casting chamber for al-Samoud 2 components (see GSN, March 5). | | Ibn Fernas Center in northern Baghdad | See GSN, March 5. | | Al-Basil Nawaran | | North Oil Company-owned oilfield in the northern city of Kirkuk | Inspectors conducted an aerial inspection (see GSN, March 5). | | Northern Region Customs | See GSN, March 5. | | March 3 | Al-Muthanna | UNMOVIC chemical inspectors observed the destruction of 14 empty 155 mm artillery shells, 10 of which had once been filled with mustard gas agent (see GSN, March 4). | | Mesopotamia State Company for Seeds in Baghdad | See GSN, March 4. | | Biology Department at the College of Science at Mosul University | | Al-Taji | UNMOVIC missile inspectors supervised the destruction of six al-Samoud 2 missiles (see GSN, March 4). | | Al-Mutasim | UNMOVIC missile inspectors completed the destruction of a casting chamber and began the destruction of a second casting chamber (see GSN, March 4). | | Al-Furat State Company | See GSN, March 4. | | Anti-aircraft missile component storage facility outside of Baghdad | | Construction agency related to spray irrigation systems | | Area north of Baghdad, near the town of Tarmya | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey (see GSN, March 4). | | Chemical and explosives plant | See GSN, March 3. | | Rocket factory | | Al-Aziziya | | State-owned trading company in the Sadoon district of Baghdad | IAEA release, March 3. | | Private trading company in the Mansoor district of Baghdad | | National Chemical Plastics Industries plant in Baghdad | | March 2 | Al-Taji | UNMOVIC missile inspectors supervised the destruction of six al-Samoud 2 missiles (IAEA release, March 2). | | Al-Mutasim | UNMOVIC missile inspectors supervised the destruction of a casting chamber (IAEA release, March 2). | | Al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range | UNMOVIC biological inspectors took samples from R-400 bombs at the site reported to have been filled with biological agents (IAEA release, March 2). | | Fallujah 2 | IAEA release, March 2. | | SA-2 missile support facility near Kadhimiya, Baghdad | | Private trading company in central Baghdad | | Area north of Baghdad | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey (IAEA release, March 2). | | Feb. 21-28 | See GSN, Feb. 28. | |
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The White House is prepared to accept that it cannot stop North Korea from becoming a nuclear state and is now seeking ways to contain Pyongyang’s potential nuclear stockpile, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, March 4).
The Bush administration is “preparing people up here for a de facto, if not declared, North Korean nuclear state and saying that this is something we can deal with through isolation, sanctions, deterrence and national missile defense,” said a Senate staff member familiar with White House briefings on Capitol Hill.
Administration officials, the staff member said, “are trying to prevent Congress from leaping in alarm and either calling for pre-emptive military actions, which they don’t think offers them good options, or criticizing them for being surprised by the North becoming a nuclear power on their watch.”
A senior Bush administration official denied that the White House has accepted a nuclear Pyongyang as an inevitable outcome.
“Resigned? Throwing up our hands? Working our how to accept them as a nuclear power? No, that’s not what we’re doing,” the official said.
A statement from Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said that the reports, if accurate, are “disturbing.”
“I’m amazed that we would sit back and let North Korea become a plutonium factory churning out the world’s most dangerous material and possibly selling it to the highest bidder,” Biden said. “We need to treat this problem for what it is — a crisis — and listen to our allies who say we can still head it off if we just sit down and talk” to Pyongyang, Biden said (Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, March 5).
Several U.S. allies in the region have apparently reached the conclusion that a nuclear North Korea is inevitable, the Washington Post reported.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, sent a message to Washington that Seoul would prefer a nuclear North Korea to the disorder that would follow collapse of Kim Jong Il’s regime, according to the Post.
In Japan, some lawmakers agree that the nuclear process cannot be stopped.
“We need to be debating how to live with North Korea, with or without nuclear weapons,” said Taro Kono, a member of the ruling party (Struck/Kessler, Washington Post, March 5).
U.S. Sends Bombers
The Pentagon, meanwhile, announced yesterday it plans to send two dozen long-range bombers to Guam, putting them within easy striking distance of North Korea, the New York Times reported.
The order was issued before an encounter Saturday between a U.S. spy plane and four North Korean fighter jets (Sanger/Shanker, New York Times, March 5).
The Pentagon has currently suspended surveillance flights to the area where the incident occurred, USA Today reported today.
Defense officials are “reviewing what happened and deciding what to continue,” said a senior administration official (Barbara Slavin, USA Today, March 5).
Iran has reportedly said it will open a uranium processing plant in coming weeks, according to Reuters (see GSN, Feb. 27).
“Iran will start operating its nuclear facility in Isfahan early next (Iranian) year,” Hassan Rohani, secretary general of the National Supreme Security Council, was quoted in a number of newspapers as saying.
The Iranian calendar year begins March 21, according to Reuters.
Uranium from Iranian mines would be processed at the Isfahan plant and the resulting gas enriched at another site in Natanz, Rohani said.
Iranian officials say their nuclear effort is solely intended to generate energy. Washington has accused Iran of a clandestine nuclear weapons effort and U.S. officials have said Iran’s fossil fuel supply is enough to power the country.
“Having access to the technology is not translated into having access to an atomic bomb. It is scientific technology used for peaceful purposes,” Rohani said (Reuters/Planet Ark, March 5).
The United States has agreed to provide $1.5 million to Ukraine to help improve security at the Kharkiv-Physical Technical Institute, Carlos Pascual, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 11, 2002). The institute is estimated to store as much as 75 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (Tom Warner, Financial Times, March 5).
Ten Democratic U.S. senators have sent a letter to the White House protesting President George W. Bush’s nuclear policy, the Washington Times reported today (see related GSN story, today).
The 10 said recent newspaper reports have indicated that the Bush administration “considers nuclear weapons as a mere extension of the continuum of conventional weapons open to the United States, and that your administration may use nuclear weapons in the looming military conflict against Iraq,” according to the letter.
Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) led the group, the Washington Times reported.
Reports have indicated that the White House has been planning possible use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and a classified national security document was revealed that keeps the nuclear option open.
“The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force — including potentially nuclear weapons to the use of (weapons of mass destruction) — against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies,” according to last September’s National Security Presidential Directive 17 (see GSN, Jan. 31).
The letter decried this policy and noted that Iraq is not known to possess nuclear weapons and is still a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
“Abandoning our pledge under the NPT would be to turn our backs on all nuclear nonproliferation efforts, since the treaty serves as the hub for the entire nuclear arms control framework,” the senators wrote.
The senators said using a nuclear weapon would encourage other countries to develop nuclear weapons and open the door for existing nuclear powers to use their own weapons (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, March 5).
China will announce this week that it is increasing its military spending by more than 17 percent, and international analysts say the actual increase could be much larger, the South China Morning Post reported today.
Unpublicized money could be funding a new missile program, a program to equip missiles with multiple warheads or an effort to develop new nuclear weapons, said Larry Wortzel, vice president of the Heritage Foundation in Washington (see GSN, Feb. 11).
In an effort to combat terrorism and intimidate Taiwan, China will spend about $24 billion on defense, an increase of more than $4 billion from last year’s budget, according to the Morning Post. This will mark the 13th consecutive year that China has posted a double-digit percentage increase in its military spending, the Morning Post reported.
The actual figure could be as much as three to four times the official amount, Wortzel said (Fong Tak-ho, South China Morning Post, March 5).
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The effort to decontaminate Washington’s Brentwood Road postal facility of anthrax, following the autumn 2001 anthrax attacks, appears to be a success, U.S. Postal Service officials said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2002).
Thousands of air and surface samples taken from the facility all came back negative for anthrax spores, officials said. While the results of the tests still need to be reviewed by an expert committee, the preliminary findings prompted postal officials to say the facility could be reopened to postal workers by summer, according to the Washington Post.
“We are very confident that we have a building that is anthrax-free,” said Thomas Day, Postal Service vice president for engineering.
The Environmental Clearance Committee, consisting of 15 academic, government and private-industry experts, is now reviewing the results of the air and surface samples, the Post reported. Committee members plan to enter the Brentwood facility today without wearing protective equipment, and they are expected to confirm the successful decontamination in a report to be released in the next few days, officials said.
Some Brentwood employees, however, still have lingering fears (see GSN, Jan. 8).
“The majority of workers have anxieties about going back,” said Dena Briscoe, who worked as a clerk in the facility and is now president of Brentwood Exposed, a support group of former and current workers. “That’s really our building, as workers. We would love for that building to be ours again, but it’s going to take time to adjust,” she said (Manny Fernandez, Washington Post, March 5).
For further information, see:
CDC Frequently Asked Questions About Anthrax
FBI Amerithrax Investigation
Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Anthrax
GSN Anthrax Attack Chronology (Dec. 12, 2001)
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Russia’s sole chemical weapons disposal facility, located in Gorny, will continue to operate, despite an recent order calling for operations to stop to address environmental issues, Russian disarmament officials said yesterday (see GSN, March 4).
The Gorny plant is operating normally and the order, issued by the Russian Natural Resources Ministry, was simply the result of a bureaucratic dispute, said Sergei Kiriyenko, chairman of the state commission on chemical disarmament. Zinovy Pak, head of the Russian Munitions Agency, also said the facility would remain in operation, adding that the order was only a warning and that the plant’s documentation would be brought in line with the law.
“The ministry will go beyond warning in its sanctions if order is not established in this sphere,” Pak was quoted by Interfax as saying. “The decision may be made to suspend operation, which nobody wants to allow to happen,” he added (Mara Bellaby, Associated Press/Environmental News Network, March 5).
Germany to Provide Funding
Meanwhile, Germany has agreed to provide more than $6.5 million to the Gorny plant, Sergei Lisovsky, Russian regional industry, science and technology minister, said Monday. Russian and German officials are currently discussing whether the funding will go toward improving the plant’s capacity or to construct residential and social facilities, he said (Rosbalt news, March 4).
Andorra ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention and deposited its instrument of ratification with the United Nations Feb. 27 (see GSN, Feb. 19). When Andorra’s accession takes effect March 29, it will become 151st party to the treaty (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons release, March 5).
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Iraq plans to destroy an additional nine banned al-Samoud 2 missiles today, according to Uday al-Ta'ae, a senior Iraqi Information Ministry official (see GSN, March 4; Reuters, March 5).
Iraq yesterday destroyed three al-Samoud 2 missiles, bringing the total to date to 19, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency press release. Iraqi technicians also destroyed an al-Samoud 2 missile launcher, five missile engines and completed the destruction of a second casting chamber for al-Samoud 2 components (IAEA release, March 4).
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U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit to block the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, decided in mid-January to not appeal the dismissal of his lawsuit, Arms Control Today reported this month (see GSN, Jan. 9).
Kucinich, along with the 31 other representatives listed as co-plaintiffs in the suit, decided against appealing the dismissal because of what they considered to be positive aspects of the judge’s ruling, according to one of their lawyers. In his ruling, Judge John Bates indicated that a court might need to address at some point whether congressional approval is needed before the United States withdraws from a treaty.
The representatives also considered in their decision that a higher court might issue a more negative decision and that a higher court would be less likely to take up the issue now that more time has passed since the United States withdrew from the treaty (see GSN, June 13, 2002; Arms Control Today, March 2003).
For further information, see:
ABM Treaty Text and Associated Documents (U.S. Defense Department)
U.S. Fact Sheet on Withdrawal from ABM Treaty
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2002 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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