U.S. Response:  Antiterrorism Efforts to Top U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda

Now that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has cooled down, the Bush administration plans to restore its foreign policy focus to combating terrorism and countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, according to the Boston Globe.

U.S. officials will again pressure rogue nations to hand over suspected terrorists and stamp out terrorist training camps, as well as press for arms nonproliferation.  During the past 10 days, the Bush administration has sent pointed messages to Syria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon urging them to do just that, the Globe reported.

“The war in Iraq has made many other countries nervous, and the administration hopes to capitalize on that in the coming weeks and months,” a State Department official said.  “Maybe it will work in some cases, but in the case of North Korea, they seem to have us over a barrel as much as we do them,” the official added (see related GSN story, today).

Some critics have charged the Bush administration with not using a principled approach to fighting WMD proliferation.  “They are viewing proliferation selectively,” said Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Jon Wolfthal, “By the administration’s own words, it’s not proliferation that’s the threat, it’s proliferation with the bad guys.  It’s OK if India has nuclear weapons, but not OK if North Korea has them.”

On the terrorism front, aside from al-Qaeda, the administration’s main targets are Hezbollah, formed in the 1970s to combat Israel’s incursion into Lebanon, and Hamas, the Palestinian organization that has stationed some of its offices in Syria.

“The administration is clearly putting the word out, ‘We’re taking down these terrorist organizations; you better step aside and not support them anymore,’” said Jay Farrar, a former senior U.S. military official.  “Hezbollah has been around for 25 years.  They make al-Qaeda look like a bunch of rookies in some ways.  After this administration goes after Hezbollah and Hamas, then they will tell the Israelis … it’s time to accommodate the Palestinians,” he added (John Donnelly, Boston Globe, April 23).

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Iraq:  WMD Hunt Shifts to Finding Program Personnel, Away From Actual Weapons

France surprised the U.N. Security Council yesterday by calling for the immediate suspension of sanctions against Iraq, and the Security Council is now debating not only how quickly sanctions should be lifted but also the future of the oil-for-food program, which supplies much of the Iraqi population with vital goods (see GSN, April 22).

The United States wants all restrictions placed on the government of Saddam Hussein lifted immediately to increase the flow of aid to the country while many council members fear such a step would be too disruptive and thus favor a more gradual approach.  However, council resolutions say sanctions can only be ended or suspended when U.N. inspectors have declared Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction.

French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said yesterday the council ‘should immediately suspend … all the civilian sanctions” on Iraq and start “phasing out” the oil-for-food program that governs the export of oil and purchases of humanitarian goods.  Completely ending sanctions depends on the return of inspectors and their verification that there are no weapons of mass destruction left, he said.

France has not yet put its ideas into the form of a draft resolution for the council to consider so council members this morning made no comments on the specifics of the French plan.  Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov said he had not seen a draft but added that the French proposal “is fully in line with resolutions, it depends on how you formulate in specific terms. Conceptually, it’s in line with existing resolutions, which is fine by us.”

The U.S. position is that sanctions should be lifted quickly.  The lifting of sanctions would also eliminate justification for the oil-for-food program since it was instituted to provide humanitarian relief for Iraqi civilians while maintaining pressure on the government.  ‘sanctions need to be lifted as soon as possible, so we now need to work with France and other countries to see how best that can be achieved and how quickly,” U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said yesterday.  He said he would not comment “on the specific tactics at the moment.”

Yesterday, before the French announcement, Lavrov said, “We are not at all opposed to the lifting of sanctions.  What we are insisting on is that Security Council resolutions must be implemented.  We all want to know that there are no [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq and the only way to verify it is to have inspectors in Iraq … and to report back to the Security Council.  As soon as they deliver the report, sanctions could be lifted.”

However, the United States is not allowing the inspectors to return.  “The coalition has assumed the responsibility for the disarming of Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction,” Negroponte said.  “For the foreseeable future we visualize that as being a coalition activity.”

Hans Blix, director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, told the council that while it is “entirely natural” for the United States to place a priority on “finding and neutralizing” Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, finding these weapons “is an interest that is not limited to the governments that have pursued the war but is one which is shared by the whole international community,” he said.

In a statement read to the council, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei was more direct.  “The IAEA should resume its work in Iraq as soon as possible,” he said.  “The IAEA continues to be the sole organization with legal powers — derived from both the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and successive Security Council resolutions — to verify Iraq’s nuclear disarmament” (Jim Wurst, Global Security Newswire, April 23).

The WMD Hunt

The recent claims made by an Iraqi scientist that Iraq destroyed biological and chemical weapons and related equipment prior to the war has led to a greater emphasis on finding scientists and technicians who worked in WMD programs and less emphasis on finding stockpiles of actual banned weapons, the New York Times reported today.

Based on the Iraqi scientist’s claims, military experts said they now believed that it was unlikely that large WMD stockpiles would be discovered, at least not within Iraq (see GSN, April 21).  Instead, there will be a greater reliance on recovered documents and information provided by Iraqis to help develop an overall picture of Iraq’s WMD efforts, they said.

Members of Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha (MET Alpha), which located the Iraqi scientist, have now joined other coalition forces in searching Baghdad for scientists and military officers who might have been involved in WMD programs, according to the Times.  They are also re-examining lists of dual-use items found at previously visited sites.

“The paradigm has shifted,” said a MET Alpha member.  “We’ve had a conceptual jump in how we think about, and what we look for in Iraq’s program.  We must look at the infrastructure, not just for the weapons,” the officer said (Judith Miller, New York Times, April 23).

In an interview with PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who has traveled with MET Alpha, illustrated how the change in focus is helping the U.S. military develop a better picture of Iraq’s WMD efforts.  For example, the team spent a week at the Karbala Ammunitions Production and Filling Station, where they found quantities of dual-use biological equipment, Miller said.  The discovery was considered unusual at the time, however, because it was unclear why such equipment would be at an ammunitions storage site, she said.

“Well, now it becomes rather clearer, I think, that what the Iraqis were intending was to kind of distribute dual-use equipment at various ammunition and weapons storage places throughout the country, so that no inspector or even soldier would ever be able to find that smoking gun,” Miller said.  “You could find a little bit of the program.  You would find a program very much, these days, in the research and development stages,” she said (Ray Suarez, PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, April 22).

In addition, six Iraqi scientists who worked at various Baghdad research institutes have said they were ordered to destroy some bacteria samples and equipment, as well as hide other samples and equipment in their homes, before visits by U.N. inspectors.

All six scientists have said they worked in civilian research programs and that none of them knew of any WMD programs, according to the Associated Press.  It is unknown why their materials, which appeared to be for civilian research, were ordered to be destroyed.

The assistant dean of Saddam University, where at least one of the six scientists worked, has denied having ordered any materials to be destroyed and said U.N. inspectors visited the university three times.

“The inspectors never found anything because there wasn’t anything to find,” said Ameer Abbas Ameer.  “They were even joking about it when they were here.  They were never serious.  You don’t search for weapons of mass destruction under the carpet,” he said (Niko Price, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 23).

U.N. Role (Or Lack Thereof)

Meanwhile, the Bush administration said yesterday that coalition forces in Iraq, and not U.N. inspectors, will be responsible for finding evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts.

“Make no mistake about it:  The United States and the coalition have taken on the responsibility for dismantling Iraq’s (weapons of mass destruction),” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said.  “We have a coalition that is working on the ground to dismantle Iraq’s WMD programs, and we think that’s going to be effective.  We think it will get the job done,” he said (Joseph Curl, Washington Times, April 23).

The coalition effort, however, is not likely to reach full speed until U.S. and British forces have full control over Iraq, which could take at least another two weeks, intelligence officials said yesterday.  Military planners have established May 10 as the date by which they expect to have full control of the country.  Once that is accomplished, then a systematic WMD search would begin, the officials said (Mark Huband, Financial Times, April 23).

The United States also plans to establish by early June a Baghdad headquarters for the Iraq Survey Group — a 1,000-member team of intelligence officials and scientists who will search suspect biological and chemical sites, according to Bloomberg.com.  The team will be headed by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who currently heads the Defense Intelligence Agency’s directorate for human intelligence, defense officials said (Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg.com, April 22).

The U.S. WMD hunt, which has so far found no conclusive proof of Iraqi WMD, has begun to come under intense international criticism, according to the Dallas Morning News.

“The goal of this war — to disarm Iraq — has not been achieved,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has also been highly critical of the U.S. search.

“It is conspicuous that so far they have not stumbled upon anything, (any) evidence,” Blix said yesterday (Jackson/Whittle, Dallas Morning News, April 23).

Blix said he suspected the United States and the United Kingdom of exaggerating their intelligence that claimed to offer proof of Iraqi WMD efforts.

“I think it’s been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been shaky,” Blix said. 

Blix also said he believed the United States sought to discredit U.N. inspectors in order to gain support within the U.N. Security Council for military action.  Some critics outside the White House have said Blix’s team deliberately suppressed information in its prewar Iraqi WMD report such as evidence of an unmanned drone plane, a charge Blix has denied.

“At that time, the U.S. was very eager to sway the votes of the Security Council, and they felt that stories about these things would be useful to have and they let it out,” Blix said.  “Thereby, they tried to hurt us a bit and say we’d suppressed this,” he said (Curl, Washington Times).

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North Korea:  Day One of Nuclear Talks Finished in Beijing

U.S., North Korean and Chinese officials began three days of talks today in Beijing to begin to resolve tensions over North Korea’s relaunched nuclear program, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, April 22).

The U.S. envoy to the talks, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, refused to comment following the first day.  “No words today, thank you,” he said.

North Korea is represented at the meeting by Ri Gun, deputy director of U.S. affairs at the North Korean Foreign Ministry.  China is represented by Fu Ying, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Asian Affairs Department (Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press/News!Yahoo, April 23).

Experts doubt the talks will have immediate results, in part because of the vast differences between the U.S. and North Korean goals, according to the Wall Street Journal.

One issue preventing major progress in this week’s meeting is the differing ranks of the U.S. and North Korean envoys, the Journal reported.  Some observers have said North Korea’s decision to send Ri, a midlevel Foreign Ministry official, was meant as an insult to the United States and that he is too junior of an official to make any decisions without first consulting with Pyongyang.

“He can’t cross the street without instructions,” a Western diplomat said.

For his part, Kelly is disliked by North Korea for his role in the crisis, experts said.  It was Kelly’s visit to North Korea last year — when he confronted North Korean officials with U.S. evidence of a North Korean secret uranium enrichment program — that began the latest crisis.

“Kelly is not well-received by North Korea,” said Zhang Liangui, a senior North Korea strategist at a top Communist Party training academy in Beijing.

The United States and North Korea are also pursuing vastly different policy goals, which could make it difficult to craft a compromise, observers said.  The United States has said North Korea must first verifiably end all of its nuclear efforts before other issues can be addressed.

“We are not prepared to offer any inducements to North Korea to try to achieve that,” U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday.

North Korea, however, is suffering such economic hardships that it believes it cannot give up its nuclear activities without first achieving its goals of economic assistance and a guarantee that the United States will not attack, diplomats said.

“The U.S.’s demands and North Korea’s terms are so far apart, it’s hard to see how these talks can get off to a smooth start,” Zhang said (Hutzler/Solomon, Wall Street Journal, April 23).

South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said today that it could take years of negotiations to resolve the conflict over North Korea’s nuclear program.

“We don’t know how long it will take.  It may take two or three years,” Yoon said.  “Dialogue has just started.  This is only the beginning of a long process,” he added (Associated Press, April 23).

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United States:  Los Alamos Makes First Plutonium Pit Meeting New Standards

Following a 14-year U.S. hiatus in producing plutonium “pits” — the cores of nuclear weapons — the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory has manufactured a pit that meets all modernized production standards, a first step toward reconstituting a nuclear warhead production program (see GSN, March 10).

Pits are hollow spheres of plutonium that initiate the fission that leads to a nuclear explosion.

The laboratory plans to certify the performance of the pit through a variety of experiments that will include subcritical testing at the Nevada Test Site (see GSN, Sept. 27, 2002).  That process is expected to be completed by 2007.

To date, Los Alamos has spent $350 million to modernize the pit production process that had been suspended since 1989, and the laboratory expects to spend a total of $1.5 billion by the time it completes the certification process.  At that time, Los Alamos plans to be able to manufacture 10 pits per year that could be added to the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile.

Officials intend to sustain that production capacity until a larger pit production facility can be built at a still-undetermined site by 2018 (Los Alamos release, April 22).

The latest development “is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing,” said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert (Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, April 23).

Los Alamos Management Woes

The Los Alamos facility has been under the direction of the University of California for more than 60 years, but the school’s financial management capabilities came under fire by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici yesterday after he announced his support for the Energy Department’s plan to seek bids for a new management contract for the laboratory, according to Energy Daily (see GSN, March 11).

“I have been proud of the University of California under whose management the laboratory has largely flourished for 60 years,” Domenici said.  “But, we all know that the present manner in which the laboratory is managed must change in ways that are inevitable, just as changes in other major institutions — from government to industry — in our nation occurred,” he continued (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, April 23).

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United States:  Postal Facility Reopens After Powder Scare

A Tacoma, Wash., mail distribution facility has reopened after a suspicious powder discovered there yesterday was determined to be nontoxic, the Tacoma News Tribune reported today (see GSN, April 22).

The facility reopened after its postage-due area, where the powder was discovered, was cleaned.  Tests are expected to continue today on the powder and samples have been sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for further review (Stacey Mulick, News Tribune, April 23).

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Smallpox:  U.S. Health Officials Prepare to Expand Vaccination Effort

U.S. public health officials are preparing to begin the second phase of the U.S. smallpox vaccination campaign, which calls for vaccinating of up to 10 million emergency responders, USA Today reported today (see GSN, April 22).

There are concerns, however, that the expanded vaccination effort will suffer the same low interest shown by U.S. health care workers in the first phase of the program, according to USA Today.  While public health officials initially thought that up to 500,000 health care workers would have volunteer to be vaccinated by early this year, so far only 32,644 have done so.

“Based on what we’ve seen from the health care community, at this point you would expect a tepid response from the first responders,” said Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County.  “We are prepared to proceed with the program but haven’t had a lot of inquiries from people asking us to get this done as soon as possible,” he said.

In addition to expanding the smallpox vaccination program, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department may issue new guidelines as early as today that would urge state and local health departments to increase their response capabilities for chemical and nuclear attacks.

The goal of the new guidelines is “to enhance the capacity to respond to public health threats posed by terrorist events,” said Michael Sage, deputy director of the CDC’s Office of Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response.  “It won’t happen overnight.  We’re just at the beginning of the preparedness efforts from a national level,” he said (Anita Manning, USA Today, April 23).

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Russia:  Chemical Weapons Disposal Running Ahead of Schedule

Russia is set to eliminate 1 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal one month ahead of schedule, ITAR-Tass reported Saturday (see GSN, March 5).

Russia’s sole chemical weapons disposal plant, located in Gorny, is on track to complete the destruction of 400 metric tons of mustard gas within a week, one month ahead of schedule, according to sources.  Russia is expected to begin disposing of lewesite stockpiles in the second quarter of this year after commissioning new upgrades for the Gorny plant (Rosa Magasumova, ITAR-Tass, April 19 in FBIS-SOV, April 19).

On Monday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov designated Col. Gen. Viktor Kholstov to become head of the Russian Munitions Agency, which oversees the chemical weapons disposal effort.  Former agency Director Zinovy Pak was replaced because he reached retirement age (Associated Press, April 23).

Meanwhile, Italy is set to provide Russia with more than $1 billion in aid for arms disposal efforts, Kasyanov said Saturday.  The aid will go toward helping Russia dispose of its chemical weapons stockpiles and to recycle decommissioned nuclear submarines (see GSN, April 18; Interfax, April 19 in FBIS-SOV, April 19).

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Pakistan:  OPCW Inspectors to Visit Industrial Plant

Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, will conduct their first visit of a Pakistani industrial site as part of inspections set to begin there by the end of the month, officials said (see GSN, April 23).

OPCW inspectors will visit the Fauji Jordan Fertilizer plant, Pakistan’s largest such facility, in Karachi on April 29, a senior Pakistani official said.

“They are more than welcome to inspect the Fauji Jordan Fertilizer site,” the official said.  “Pakistan does not have any chemical weapons,” the official added.

In addition to military sites, industrial sites that produce certain CWC-listed chemicals known as “scheduled chemicals,” which have a wide range of civilian uses, are also subject to “routine” inspections, the OPCW said.

“As a matter of routine and probability, the longer the convention is in operation, the higher the probability is that facilities that have been declared as producing ‘scheduled’ chemicals will be inspected,” organization spokesman Peter Kaisar said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 23).

For further information, see:

CWC Text

OPCW Main Page

CWC States Parties

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