U.S. Response:  Senator Introduces Chemical, Nuclear Plant Security Bills

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — In an effort to improve security at U.S. nuclear power and chemical plants, U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has introduced two alternatives to Democratic proposals (see GSN, April 8).

Last week, Inhofe introduced the Chemical Facilities Security Act of 2003.  Under the bill, the Homeland Security Department would have one year after the enactment of the bill to create regulations requiring chemical plant operators to conduct vulnerability assessments and to prepare site security plans.

To aid in the preparation of vulnerability assessments and security plans, the department would also provide chemical plant operators with relevant terrorist threat information.  Chemical plant operators would be able to petition Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to endorse security standards developed by the chemical industry if they are “substantially equivalent” to the requirements of the act. 

The bill would also give the Homeland Security Department the authority to review a plant’s vulnerability assessment and security plan, and to order revisions if they are found to be inadequate.  In addition, the department would also be required to conduct routine oversight of chemical plants to ensure compliance with the law, according to an Inhofe press statement.  Chemical plants found to be in violation of the act could face civil penalties of up to $50,000 per day for each day a violation occurs, and administrative penalties of up to $250,000.  In addition, Ridge could also petition for injunctive relief, which could result in the temporary closing of a facility, according to the Inhofe statement.

“Let me be very clear,” Inhofe said in his statement.  “No one gets a free pass under this bill, no one is exempt.  Chemical facilities must abide by the legislation's security requirements and any rules, procedures or standards developed by the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.

The American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry trade organization, praised Inhofe’s chemical plant security bill.

“The legislation introduced today by Senator James Inhofe … is an important step to secure America’s chemical facilities — part of our nation’s critical infrastructure — against the threat of terrorist attack,” the group said in a statement.

Nuclear Act Introduced

Complementing the chemical plant measure, Inhofe yesterday introduced the Nuclear Infrastructure Security Act of 2003, which seeks to improve security at nuclear power plants.  The bill would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in coordination with Ridge, to examine the security, preparedness and response plans for nuclear facilities.  Such an examination would include an assessment of federal, state, local or plant operator responsibility to defend against various threats, as well as a review of hiring and training standards for nuclear plant security forces.

After such a commission review, it would have three months to revise the design basis threat — the type of terrorist attack a nuclear facility must be able to defend against.  Nuclear facilities would then have a one-year deadline to revise their security plans based on the new design basis threat and submit them to the commission for review.  The bill sets a 21-month deadline for the NRC to review the nuclear plants’ emergency response plans.

In addition to facility security, Inhofe’s bill also seeks to improve employee security.  The bill calls for the commission to review employee access and training standards and to establish new security procedures — in addition to the current criminal background checks and fingerprinting — to ensure that no one who could pose a threat to national security is employed at nuclear facilities.  In addition, nuclear facilities would be required to fingerprint anyone who has unescorted access to the facility or to a radioactive material storage site.

The bill also calls for the creation of a federal program to improve the training of National Guard units and state and local law enforcement agencies to respond to terrorist threats against nuclear facilities.  In addition, the bill would also require the NRC to assign regional federal security coordinators who would be responsible for threat-information sharing and for ensuring that nuclear facilities in their region maintain the appropriate level of security for the known threat level.

Inhofe’s bills are alternatives to legislation offered by several Democratic senators in the past year to improve chemical and nuclear plant security (see GSN, Jan. 23).  Several Democratic senators last year sponsored the Nuclear Security Act, which sought to improve security at U.S. nuclear facilities.  While the Senate environment committee unanimously supported the bill last year, the full Senate failed to act before the congressional session ended.

In March, during debate on the Price-Anderson Act — a nuclear industry liability and indemnification bill — Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered the Nuclear Security Act as an amendment.  In a similar gesture, Inhofe offered his own amendment with language similar to that of the Nuclear Security Act, according to a Senate aide familiar with the issue.

Reid agreed to support the amendment in exchange for a markup hearing to be held on Inhofe’s language, the aide said, noting that Inhofe’s introduction of his nuclear plant security bill was mainly a procedural gesture to fulfill the markup pledge.  Once Inhofe’s bill moves out of committee, there will be an attempt to replace his amendment to the Price-Anderson Act with final language of the Nuclear Security Act, the aide told Global Security Newswire today.

A Reid spokeswoman said today that the senator was “pleased” that Inhofe’s bill adopted most of the language in the Nuclear Security Act.

Senator Jon Corzine (D-N.J) also saw the Senate environment committee unanimously approve his chemical plant security bill last year, but the full Senate again failed to act before the congressional session ended (see GSN, Jan. 16). 

After Inhofe released a draft of his chemical plant security bill late last month, Corzine responded with criticism.

“Unfortunately, the bill does very little to secure Americans who work and live around these facilities,” Corzine said in a press statement.  “The bill may provide an illusion of security, but it’s little more than a fig leaf that would leave chemical plants highly vulnerable to terrorism,” he said.

Corzine particularly criticized the provision in Inhofe’s bill allowing chemical plant operators to petition Ridge to endorse industry-created standards.

“The government should set basic standards and hold industry accountable for meeting them,” Corzine said.  “We shouldn’t just pass the buck to industry to set public safety standards,” he added.

Corzine reintroduced his bill in January, but the committee does not plan to schedule hearings on it, committee majority spokesman Mike Catanzaro said today.  “As far as the committee is concerned,” it will now work to move both of Inhofe’s bills to the Senate floor, he said.  A markup hearing on both bills has been scheduled for Thursday.

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Iraq:  U.S. Troops Find Second Suspect Mobile Biological Laboratory

U.S. troops last week found a second suspected mobile biological laboratory outside the Iraqi city of Mosul, U.S. Defense Department officials said yesterday (see GSN, May 12).

The recovered trailer — found either Friday night or Saturday morning — is similar to one captured last month that is also suspected of being a mobile biological facility, two officials said (see GSN, May 8).  It is unknown if the two trailers are connected, but they appear to have similar components, the officials said.  They noted that U.S. experts are examining the second trailer in Mosul before shipping it to the Baghdad airport, where the first recovered trailer is being stored (Matt Kelley, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 12).

A White House official yesterday said Iraq had developed a “just-in-time delivery of WMD” capability prior to the war, citing the existence of the suspected mobile biological weapons laboratories.

Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had developed the capability “to produce banned items just before the time you may need them,” the official said (Harding/Turner, Financial Times, May 13).

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Threat Assessment:  U.S. War Game Sees Enemy Forces Use WMD

A recently concluded U.S. military war game found that enemy forces would strike early in a conflict and would use weapons of mass destruction to counter an overwhelming U.S. conventional force, Defense News reported yesterday.

The exercise, Unified Quest 2003, was held April 27-May 1 and was the first major war game conducted since the end of the war in Iraq.  The exercise scenarios, which were set in 2015, had U.S. forces facing a nuclear-armed Middle Eastern nation and a militant group threatening an allied Southeast Asian government.  In each scenario, enemy forces (Red) attacked pre-emptively and used weapons of mass destruction against U.S. forces (Blue) and civilian populations, according to Defense News.

For example, in the Southeast Asian scenario, Red insurgent forces detonated a propane tanker in New York harbor in response to U.S. and Australian promises to aid the Southeast Asian nation, Defense News reported.  Red forces also released ricin in their capital city, causing both military and civilian casualties and helping to sap civilian support for Blue forces.

In each of three different versions of the Middle East scenario, Red forces used nuclear weapons when defeat became imminent, according to Defense News.  One scenario saw Red forces detonate a nuclear weapon near a U.S. stronghold in the country while a second Red team placed a nuclear weapon in its country’s oilfields to force international support.  A third Red force smuggled a nuclear weapon into a neighboring U.S. ally to force it to end its support of the United States.  Once that country complied, the Red team tried a similar tactic by shipping the weapon to Paris, where it was captured by French authorities.

The exercise saw only one Red team attempt to use a nuclear weapon to cause large numbers of casualties, according to Defense News.

“There may be an apocalyptic leader out there who wants to kill a lot of Blue in a last-gasp measure.  But that’s not what we did, and I don’t subscribe to that notion,” said retired Army officer Richard Hart Sinnreich, who commanded one of the Red forces during the exercise.  “What we did was use weapons of mass destruction materially to improve our position,” he said (Frank Tiboni, Defense News, May 12).

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North Korea:  Pyongyang Says Inter-Korean Nuclear Agreement is “Dead

North Korea declared a 1991 inter-Korean nuclear agreement to be “a dead document,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said yesterday (see GSN, May 12).

Complaining of U.S. aggression, a KCNA statement said “The inter-Korean declaration on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was thus reduced to a dead document due to U.S. vicious hostile policy to stifle the D.P.R.K. with nukes.”

North Korea also announced that the goal of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula was “completely derailed” (Korean Central News Agency, May 13).

The Joint Declaration for a Non-Nuclear Korean Peninsula mandated that North and South Korea “will not test, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.”

The pact also dictated that Pyongyang and Seoul only use nuclear power for peaceful purposes and promise not to possess facilities for reprocessing or enriching nuclear material (David McGlinchey, Global Security Newswire, May 13).

The United States, meanwhile, refused a request from South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to forgo the possibility of a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea.

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Washington would keep “all options open,” although the White House claims it has maintained its commitment to a multilateral solution.

“We, of course, seek a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the issues involving North Korea,” National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday.  “While not taking any options off the table, we’re working very hard toward that goal — a multilateral solution,” he added (Joseph Curl, Washington Times, May 13).

Nuclear Weapon Devices Seized in Hong Kong

Meanwhile, Japanese officials are investigating a business run by a Korean resident of Japan for allegedly attempting to export devices to develop nuclear weapons, Asahi Shimbun reported.  The devices — en route to North Korea — were seized in Hong Kong.

Japanese trade ministry officials filed a criminal complaint April 24 against the company, known as Meishin, for allegedly attempting to export the industrial transformers that could be used to enrich uranium.  The Japanese government must sanction the export of such devices, and officials reportedly blocked Meishin’s attempt to export the same devices in November (Asahi Shimbun, May 9).

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NPT:  Commitments Against the Use of Nuclear Weapons Still a Distant Goal

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

GENEVA — The goal of nations that have renounced nuclear weapons to be secure in the commitment that they will not be threatened with nuclear weapons appears to be even more elusive because of policy changes in the nuclear powers that make the use of these weapons more possible and because of the looming proliferation crises in various parts of the world.

This issue was one of the key concerns during the annual meeting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which ended here on Friday (see GSN, May 9).

The treaty is regularly described as a bargain in which the non-nuclear states promise to forgo the nuclear option and the nuclear states promise to work towards nuclear disarmament.  Implicit in the idea of renouncing nuclear weapons is the desire by these states for an unequivocal, legally binding commitment by the nuclear powers not to be threatened or attacked with nuclear weapons.  In other words, protection can be found in the treaty, not in possessing nuclear weapons.

Such commitments are called negative security assurances since the promise is not to do something.  Positive security assurances are the commitments to come to the assistance of an attacked victim.

At the Geneva meeting, New Zealand’s Ambassador Tim Caughley said unequivocal negative security assurances “would surely be an incentive to all non-nuclear weapon states to avoid taking the option of developing a nuclear weapons program.”  Such assurances “would be a concrete advantage to non-nuclear weapon states to have this assurance provided by the nuclear weapons states,” he added. 

Caughley spoke for the New Agenda Coalition of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden.  The coalition is an ad hoc group working to persuade the nuclear powers to embark on a series of steps leading to nuclear disarmament.

Historically, achieving negative security assurances has been difficult because four of the five nuclear weapons states that belong to the NPT — the United States, Russia, United Kingdom and France — have always attached conditions to assurances, such as retaining the right to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state aligned with a nuclear power. China is the only country to give an unequivocal commitment not to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.  The three other nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and Israel — are not parties to the treaty.

The Nonaligned Movement and the New Agenda Coalition have lobbied for years for legally binding negative security assurances.  The New Agenda submitted a working paper to this year’s meeting that includes a draft protocol on security assurances that could be added to the NPT.

If the world had such commitments, “it would narrow down hugely the potential dangers of a larger range of countries developing nuclear weapons,” Caughley said in an interview with Global Security Newswire last week.  “We see this as a way of addressing both nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation issues.  It is a tool open to us that we believe is capable of delivering that very same objective,” he added.

However, events are moving in the opposite direction with new strains developing over North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT and charges, leveled largely by the United States, that Iran is illegally developing a nuclear weapons program.  How these questions are resolved will have an effect on the security assurances debate.  In addition, new U.S. policies, including the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, that envisions numerous scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons, is moving Washington even further away from the non-nuclear states’goal of an unequivocal commitment.

The current standoff over North Korea presents a special dilemma.  North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT and is threatening to resume a program that can produce nuclear weapons.  The committee sidestepped the issue last week, not wishing to be seen as interfering with the talks between the United States and North Korea.

Jean du Preez of the Monterey Institute of International Studies said, “There is an irony in the whole debate” on how to deal with North Korea. One of the reasons North Korea uses to justify a weapons program is “retaliation to the U.S. threatening it with nuclear weapons,” he said.  But if North Korea can be coaxed into giving up its nuclear ambitions, “the North Koreans are likely to get some kind of an assurance from the United States that it will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons as an incentive to halt or freeze its program,” said du Preez.  “The irony is that state parties to the treaty need to threaten to develop nuclear weapons in order to get security assurances” while states in compliance get no such guarantees. “There’s a message in that,” he added.

If the United States “is willing to do that to get the North Koreans back into the fold of the nonproliferation regime, they surely should be willing to give a legally binding commitment to those states that in full compliance with their treaty obligations,” said du Preez, a former South African diplomat.

A similar situation may be developing with Iran.  The United States has charged, including during this NPT meeting, that aspects of the Iranian nuclear program are more in keeping with a weapons program than an energy program.  Like North Korea, du Preez said, “The Iranians could also argue that they feel threatened by the United States.”  Together with Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran and North Korea were called the “axis of evil” by U.S. President George W. Bush.

The key difference from North Korea is that Iran is a member of the NPT and as such is regularly inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency.  “If they can prove to be in compliance with the treaty’s provisions” through IAEA inspections, du Preez said, “The Iranians also deserve the security such a protocol or legal instrument would provide. That would strengthen the treaty regime as a whole because that would show that a state has decided to prove to the international community that it does not want to pursue nuclear weapons … but as an incentive for that they deserve to get an assurance that it will not be threatened or that nuclear weapons will not be used against it.” 

The United States is insisting that Iran sign an IAEA protocol that allows the agency more latitude in conducting inspections.  In Vienna on May 6, Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh told the IAEA his government “has no difficulty accepting this protocol,” but “at the same time, it doesn’t intend to ratify and enforce the provisions of this protocol without any conditions.”  Because conditions cannot be imposed on protocol negotiations, this was interpreted to mean conditions reached with the United States.

If Iran agrees to tougher inspections, du Preez said, “The United States and others need to be encouraged to, once the IAEA has given it a clean bill of health, refrain from continuing to threaten Iranians.  It would be in the spirit of the treaty.” 

The New Agenda wants to see any negotiations to take place in the context of the NPT, rather than the Conference on Disarmament, the Geneva-based body mandated to negotiate arms control treaties.  Some nonaligned countries and Russia have suggested placing the issue on the CD’s agenda.

Caughley told the NPT meeting that negotiations within the NPT “would provide a significant benefit to the treaty parties and would be seen as an incentive to those who remain outside the NPT.  Security assurances rightfully belong to those who have given up the nuclear weapon option as opposed to those who are still keeping their options open.”

Du Preez said CD negotiations, where India, Pakistan, and Israel are members, “would give these states the recognition they do not deserve as nuclear weapon states” thus “you would lose the incentive that the treaty provides. Why would you need to join the treaty if you could negotiate issues of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation outside of the treaty?”  Beside, he said, the CD has been deadlocked for several years; adding security assurances to the agenda would only add to the deadlock.

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South Asia:  India Readies “Road Map” for Bilateral Talks

India has prepared a “road map” for possible talks with Pakistan to reduce tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals, Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said yesterday (see GSN, May 12).

“Every step is clear in our mind,” Sinha said.  “There is no confusion and we will proceed according to the plan,” he said.

India and Pakistan will use the planned talks to build a framework for a possible future summit, Sinha said.

“The thawing has already begun but there will be no dramatic gestures,” Sinha said.  “The general approach is to begin with official-level talks leading up to a political summit,” he said.

Pakistani Information Minister Rashid Ahmed said talks could begin as early as June.  “I am not giving any date or confirmation,” he added (United Press International, May 12).

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U.S.-Russia:  Duma Schedules Moscow Treaty Discussion Tomorrow

The Russian State Duma will resume efforts tomorrow to consider approving the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 7).

The Duma made the decision today to take up the treaty, which is also known as the Moscow Treaty, according to lawmaker Andrei Kokoshin.  The discussion of the treaty — which outlines plans for the two countries to cut their deployed nuclear arsenals by two-thirds by 2012 — has been delayed because of Russian objections to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The ratification discussion will take place the same day that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg (Associated Press, May 13).

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U.S. Response:  Customs Bureau Trains Canine Chemical Detectors

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is training dogs to detect chemical weapons, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Oct. 29, 2002).

The Homeland Security Department’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection — which began the program with a budget of $2 million — has reportedly encountered success with the program, which oversees the training of Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and Belgian Malinois.

“There had been some initial research that suggested that canines might be effective with chemicals,” said Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner.  Dogs provide “portability, and they also allow you to detect chemical weapons before they are released,” he added.

Dogs have often been used to detect explosives or narcotics, but the use of dogs in chemical weapons detection is groundbreaking, according to Jim Watson, secretary of the North American Police Work Dog Association.

“Dogs can detect compounds that the human nose could never pick up at the same concentration: the concentration can be a hundred- or a thousand-fold weaker,” said Charles Wysocki, a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

The dogs are being trained to detect nonlethal components of chemical weapons.  When a specially trained dog finds a suspected chemical weapon, it will be trained to give certain signals, such as snapping its head back or perking up its ears, according to the Times.

“The idea is this:  If I’m looking for a Big Mac and I know that Big Macs are deadly, I’m looking for the special sauce that is not lethal,” said Lee Titus, director of the Customs Bureau’s canine enforcement program (Philip Shenon, New York Times, May 13).

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CWC:  East Timor Ratifies Treaty

East Timor last week ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (see GSN, March 5).  When East Timor’s accession takes effect June 6, it will become the 152nd party to the treaty, which aims to eliminate chemical weapons by 2007 (Agence France-Presse, May 12).

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U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Would Have Gained Knowledge from Cancelled Test

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A high-profile national missile defense intercept test recently cancelled by the Bush administration could have provided new insight into the system’s effectiveness just prior to the system’s first scheduled deployment in September 2004, according to a congressional audit (see GSN, April 18).

The primary objective of the Integrated Flight Test-16 was similar to that of previous tests, General Accounting Office officials said in an analysis released yesterday.  The GAO produced the analysis in response to a request by Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

“The test was planned to assess the ability of GMD [Ground-based Midcourse Defense program] components to work together as an integrated element, capable of engaging and destroying a mock warhead,” GAO officials said.  The test, however, would have “provided an opportunity to assess the system’s capability under a number of new engagement conditions,” they noted.

The test also would have “increased the agency’s knowledge regarding the feasibility and effectiveness of GMD’s initial defensive capability, which DoD still plans to begin fielding in September 2004,” according to GAO officials.

Critics have charged the system has not yet received sufficient testing to be proven feasible and effective enough to be deployed, and claim the Missile Defense Agency has simplified and cancelled tests to bolster the test record prior to deployment.

Pentagon officials have asserted that the intercept record — five hits in eight attempts — shows the system could work, although they have acknowledged that elements of the tests were controlled and the system is not ready to be tested under operationally realistic conditions.  Officials have argued that a deployment of even a very limited capability is beneficial for addressing potential missile threats from North Korea.

Following reports of the cancellation of IFT-16 — which experts had dubbed the “dress rehearsal” for the deployment — there have been additional reports that three more tests scheduled for the coming years, IFT-25, -27 and –28, also have been cancelled, bringing the total number of cancelled tests disclosed this year to nine.

A Missile Defense Agency spokesman said last month that the cancellation of IFT-16 and a focus on a nonintercept test would better meet the program’s needs at that time.

New Conditions Would Have Been Introduced

GAO officials say the planned “conditions and components” of IFT-16 “differ from those in earlier tests.”

The analysis said the interception of the mock warhead would have been attempted at a location much closer to U.S. territory.  So far, previous intercept attempts have been over the mid-Pacific — much farther from the United States and much closer to the interceptor launch point, according to the analysis.  The first intercept in the new region will be attempted in IFT-17, which is scheduled for after the system’s deployment, GAO officials wrote.

The trial also would have been the first to flight test an upgraded early warning radar at Beale Air Force Base in California and a new version of the system’s battle-management software, according to GAO officials.

“Flight tests of both the battle-management software and the radar will be delayed until the radar certification flight — a nonintercept test denoted IFT-16A — which is scheduled for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2004,” the analysis noted.

With the cancellation of the test, the Missile Defense Agency plans to have a 13-month gap between the prior-scheduled intercept test, IFT-15, scheduled for January 2004, and IFT-17, scheduled for February 2005, GAO officials claimed

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