U.S. Response:  U.S., Industry Representatives Meet to Discuss Chemical Plant Security

More than 400 U.S. and industry chemical and transportation security experts met yesterday in Philadelphia for the start of a three-day “summit” on improving security at U.S. chemical plants, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (see GSN, May 13).

“Let me be very, very clear.  If we do not talk about the actions we are taking, and publicly illustrate our commitment, then we will allow our detractors to attack this industry and erode the effectiveness of our efforts,” Greg Lebedev, chief of the American Chemistry Council, said during his keynote address.

Representatives from the U.S. Homeland Security Department urged chemical companies to make plant security improvements a higher priority.

“You and your employees must understand what’s at stake,” said Sally Canfield, a Homeland Security policy director.  “That’s half the battle.  Too many companies believe security is a low priority, if it’s a priority to them at all,” Canfield said.

During the first day of the summit, many chemical industry executives agreed that many of the largest — and potentially most dangerous — chemical plants lacked intensive security measures, such as armed guards, the Tribune-Review reported.  Industry executives said, however, that they have made some improvements in protecting both plant workers and area residents.

“The chemical industry recognizes it has a responsibility,” said Joseph Acker, president of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association.  “We know we have to act quickly and we’ve come a long way,” Acker said (Carl Prine, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 18).

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Iraq:  London Urges Washington to Exchange Leniency for Information

The United Kingdom is urging the United States to offer captured senior Iraqi officials leniency if they provide information that aids the coalition’s search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the London Times reported today (see GSN, June 17).

London wants to offer the captured officials — 32 out of the 55 U.S. most-wanted — the assurance that their assistance would be taken into account if they appear before a war crimes tribunal.  If an official offered particularly useful information, he or she could be granted immunity and a new life in another country, according to the Times.

The United States, however, is divided over the British proposal, officials said.  Some U.S. Defense Department officials oppose any agreement that could lower the officials’ possible sentences if they are convicted of war crimes.

“We have been trying for ages to persuade the Americans but they have come up with all kinds of legal arguments,” a British official said (Michael Evans, London Times, June 18).

Meanwhile, another coalition search tactic, the use of the massive Iraq Survey Group of weapons teams and intelligence analysts, bears many resemblances to the U.N. weapons inspection regime that U.S. officials criticized prior to the war, according to senior military and intelligence officials in Iraq.

The group will not be fully operational for several more weeks, officials said.  When it is up and running, its 1,400 members will live in mobile trailers and work at a facility that will be constructed within one of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s palaces near the Baghdad airport, according to the Los Angeles Times.  The group will also operate two satellite bases in the northern and southern sections of Iraq.

Advance survey group teams have already been assigned to find and interview certain Iraqis, with other teams assigned to translating and analyzing recovered documents and computer data, the Times reported.  In addition, some group teams have been given the task of investigating Iraq’s former covert procurement efforts.

“This is truly going to be looking for all the clues,” a Pentagon official said.  “We haven’t done that before,” the official said.

Brig. Gen. Steve Meekin, the senior Australian officer in the group, said the new effort “absolutely” resembles the U.N. inspection regime because it will focus on collecting information and not just site searches.

The Iraq Survey Group has several advantages, however, over the previous U.N. effort, the Times reported.  For example, the group will rely heavily on U.S. and British intelligence operatives who have been dubbed “secret squirrels” by U.S. commanders.  The group will also have what one commander called “unfettered access to Iraqis at all levels.”

“We have a full deck of cards,” the commander said.  “The U.N. had about 35,” the commander added (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 18).

Bush Defends WMD Claims

In the past two days, U.S. President George W. Bush has twice attacked the growing criticism coming from some in the U.S. Congress, as well as overseas, that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

“I know there’s a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain:  He [Hussein] is no longer a threat to the Free World, and the people of Iraq are free,” Bush said yesterday (Mike Allen, Washington Post, June 18).

Bush and his aides believe that Americans’ relief over the fall of Hussein will counter any questions over the case the White House built to justify going to war, Bush administration officials and Republican strategists said.

“We see a very similar pattern to the commentary around the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq — the premature drawing of conclusions, based on a picture that is still incomplete,” said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.  “Americans are patient.  They are willing to wait and see what we find,” he said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed that Bush is likely to experience little fallout over the lack of a discovery of weapons of mass destruction.  “The president is 99 percent safe on this one,” he said.

“The literary class that dislikes Bush and dislikes American activism is thrilled, whether in Europe or in the U.S., to have this question to raise,” Gingrich said.  “But in the United States at least, given the mass graves, given the level of torture and brutality by the Baath Party regime, you’re asking the American people to side with the apologists for replacing Saddam.  Does even the most left-wing Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world would be better off with Saddam in power?” he added.

Some Republicans are concerned, however, that the growing criticism British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing over the lack of success in finding weapons of mass destruction could have an influence in Washington, according to the New York Times.

“After all, we were all working off the same shared evidence,” said a senior coalition diplomat.  “If it was wrong for one, it was wrong for all,” the diplomat said (Sanger/Hulse, New York Times, June 18).

DIA Doubted Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons

U.S. intelligence analysts told the Bush administration last year that while Iraq had begun to deploy chemical weapons, it would not use them unless the fall of Hussein’s regime was imminent, U.S. officials said yesterday.

In a November 2002 report, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said it was unlikely that Iraq would resort to using weapons of mass destruction as long as U.N. sanctions were in place.  Hussein would use such weapons only “in extreme circumstances,” the report said, “because their use would confirm Iraq’s evasion of U.N. restrictions,” according to the report, portions of which were read to a reporter by an intelligence official (James Risen, New York Times, June 18).

U.S. Intelligence Review

U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees are expected to begin hearings today on the prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq, according to Reuters.

The House committee is set to hold a closed hearing today to interview intelligence analysts about the compilation of National Intelligence Estimate reports on Iraqi WMD programs, with a focus on the last such report, produced in October 2002.  Committee members plan to ask analysts how the report was prepared, how the report was used and how it differed from other intelligence reports, congressional aides said.  The committee is expected to hold a second closed hearing tomorrow on the current search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to meet today to discuss procedures for future hearings.  The committee is then expected to hold a closed hearing tomorrow on Iraq-related intelligence reports (Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters/Yahoo!News, June 18).

The House International Affairs Committee voted 23-15 along party lines yesterday to unfavorably report a resolution calling on Bush to release all Iraq-related documents within 14 days of the measure’s adoption (Sara Steines, CongressDaily, June 18).

British Intelligence Review

Former British International Development Secretary Claire Short yesterday accused Blair of “honorable deception” in drawing the United Kingdom into war.

“I believe that the prime minister must have concluded that it was honorable and desirable to back the U.S. in going for military action in Iraq, and therefore it was honorable for him to persuade us through various ruses and ways to get us there — so for him I think it was an honorable deception,” Short said before the British Parliament’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which is examining the case Blair made for going to war (Ben Russell, London Independent, June 18).

Australia Senate to Conduct Inquiry

The Australian Senate has decided to conduct an inquiry into Australia’s prewar intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs, the Sydney Morning Herald reported today (Sydney Morning Herald, June 18).

A spokesman for the opposition Labor Party today accused Australian Prime Minister John Howard of seeking to deter intelligence officials from answering questions during the inquiry.

“Mr. Howard may have a grand political strategy in mind about how to create a public political environment which makes life difficult for those agencies if they cooperate,” opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said (Sydney Morning Herald II, June 18).

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U.S. Response:  Threatened Force Fails More Than It Succeeds, Study Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. experience in the 1990s suggests the threat of force to obtain objectives short of war tends to fail more often than it succeeds, according to a new book.

Furthermore, it says when such threats fail they tend to produce either of two outcomes:  all-out war or a credibility- and power-risking political retreat.

“Coercive diplomacy” should therefore be undertaken cautiously and only when leaders are willing to go to war over the objective, according to The United States and Coercive Diplomacy, which was published by the United States Institute of Peace and released yesterday.

“Coercive diplomacy is difficult and has a relatively low success rate,” the book says, advising to “never resort to coercive diplomacy unless you are prepared to go to war should it fail, or unless you have devised a suitable political escape hatch if war is not acceptable.”

Assessing the circumstances in which coercive diplomacy was used by the United States during the 1990s, and the likelihood that the country will remain the sole global superpower for years to come, the book predicts that coercive diplomacy will remain a common tool of U.S. strategy in the future.

“The need to back U.S. diplomacy with force will not go away; consequently, political-military coercion short of all-out war will remain a highly attractive option to U.S. leaders,” wrote the book’s editor, Brandeis University professor Robert Art.

“I expect to see a lot more instances of coercive diplomacy.  We have just seen the most recent failure of coercive diplomacy in the second Gulf War,” Art said at a panel here accompanying the release of the book yesterday, referring to the U.S. military takeover of Iraq.

Art said the extent of global U.S. military commitments, particularly in occupied Iraq, might inhibit the application of coercive diplomacy.

25 Percent Success Rate Seen

Providing eight case studies of instances in which the United States threatened or used limited force to compel action by other governments during the last decade, the book concludes that in only two instances, or 25 percent of the time, was coercive diplomacy clearly successful — once in 1994 to compel regime change in Haiti, and a rollback in Serb aggression and end to the war in Bosnia in 1995.

Some failures, the book says, include efforts to compel:

*         North Korea in 1994 to freeze its nuclear weapons program;

*         the Yugoslav government in 1999 to end repression of Kosovo;

*         Somali clans from 1992 to 1994 to disarm to allow for creation of a civil reconstruction program, a new government and strengthening of peacekeeping and civilian reconstruction efforts;

*         changes in Iraqi government behavior from 1990 to 1998, which, while producing some successes, was deemed overall to be a failure; and

*         al-Qaeda to stop terrorism by bombing sites in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998.

It described as “ambiguous” the U.S. response to Chinese coercive diplomacy against Taiwan in 1996, finding the U.S. response was as much about deterrence than coercion — or preventing action rather than changing it. 

The book concluded the United Sates and Taiwan were arguably successfully coerced in that incident, as both altered their behavior to some degree after the encounter in response to Chinese pressure.

On North Korea

The studies were performed by American academics, think-tank analysts and a senior Bush administration official from the Agency for International Development.  Art summarized them in an introduction and conclusion.

Two panelists yesterday not associated with the book — Arnold Kanter, a senior fellow at the Forum for International Policy, and former Ambassador Robert Gallucci, who was a principal player in the 1994 North Korea episode — praised its conclusions.

However, Gallucci disagreed that coercive diplomacy failed in that case, contending that the implied threat of force through a noticeable military buildup probably helped bring North Korea to the negotiating table.

Also in attendance was the author of the case study, William Drennan, who said former President Jimmy Carter was the primary instrument of the solution and the avoidance of war, and that the United States appeared to be successfully coerced by North Korea during that period.

There is “a lot more evidence that North Korea … actually did the coercing, and the United States did the reacting,” said Drennan, the deputy director of the USIP’s Research and Studies Program.

“The argument that for a brief moment Carter hijacked our foreign policy is not an unreasonable argument,” said Gallucci, but added that he was not sure Carter was essential to eventually concluding an agreement.

Regarding the Bush Administration

Drawing from the case studies, the book offered additional lessons on the application of coercive diplomacy.  For instance, it concluded that success is difficult to predict regardless of the situation, that military superiority does not guarantee success and that the probability of success appeared to have no correlation to the objective.

Art said coercive diplomacy often produces a “game of chicken.”

“The dynamics of the game of chicken are such that usually a crisis escalates before it de-escalates, because crises, after all, being games of chicken, are tests of wills.  Part of the problem with games of chicken, or in coercive diplomatic encounters, is it’s very difficult to estimate whose resolve is stronger before you have this crisis or this test,” he said.

“In most of the cases we looked at, the target cared very strongly about what it was trying to do, what it was trying to achieve, and therefore it was not willing to bow to U.S. threats to use force or very limited use of force,” he added.

The book said offering carrots, as well as the stick of threatened force, can increase the probability of success, but is more likely to do so if incentives are offered prior to threats and not after.

Threatened leaders, Art said, often would prefer to stand up to a threat rather than back down and lose power and credibility, thereby escalating tensions and bringing the situation closer to war.

“Coercive diplomacy asks a very difficult thing of the target, it asks that it sacrifice some of its credibility, willingness to stand firm … or to diminish its power,” he said.

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Threat Assessment:  MI5 Director Says WMD Attack “Only a Matter of Time”

The head of Britain’s MI5 said it is “only a matter of time” before terrorists strike a Western city using nuclear, chemical, biological or radiological materials, the London Independent reported yesterday.

“Renegade scientists” — most likely from Pakistan — have given Islamic extremists information to create weapons of mass destruction, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of the security service, said in her first public remarks since she became head of the service in October.

“We are faced with a realistic possibility of a form of unconventional attack that could include chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN),” Manningham-Buller said.  “It is only a matter of time before a crude version of a CBRN is launched on a Western city, and it is only a matter of time before the crude version becomes more sophisticated,” she added (Jason Bennetto, London Independent, June 17).

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Romania:  Bucharest to Adopt New Export Transparency Measures

Romania plans to implement new transparency measures soon that would be based on information-exchange procedures approved earlier this month by the Australia Group, a group of 33 countries that coordinate export controls on dual-use items that could be used to create biological or chemical weapons, the Rompres news agency reported yesterday (see GSN, June 11).

The planned Romanian transparency measures are intended to help prevent the diversion of biological and chemical products to weapons use.  During a plenary meeting of the Australia Group held earlier this month in Paris, group members also approved a Romanian proposal on the distribution of an electronic collection of members’ export control systems to aid in licensing and implementation activities (Rompres/BBC Monitoring, June 17).

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North Korea I:  Chaos Could Follow North Korean Regime Change, U.N. Envoy Says

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A successful effort to topple North Korea’s hard-line communist regime could result in a chaotic aftermath, the U.N. envoy to the Korean Peninsula said yesterday.

In Washington to meet with U.S. officials, Maurice Strong spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about his efforts to mediate the North Korean nuclear crisis (see GSN, March 24).  He urged a negotiated solution to the standoff and warned that a confrontation — economic or military — could have dire consequences.

Some U.S. officials have been pushing for an embargo to pressure and possibly bring down the North Korean leadership of Kim Jong Il (see related GSN story, today).  U.S. President George W. Bush has also refused to rule out the use of military force in the crisis, despite the pleas of his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-hyun.  No one has a plan, however, for developing North Korea in Kim’s wake, according to Strong.

“What does it collapse to?” asked Strong, “what is the alternative?”

He questioned the potential of a U.S. occupation of North Korea, in the style of present-day Iraq.

“If you want regime change, change to what?” he asked. Strong also said that those who were looking for the collapse of the North Korean economy might be late to the party.

“One could contend that that has already happened,” Strong said, but “they still survive.”

Economic Solution

After North Korea is assured its security and the international community feels confident that Pyongyang’s nuclear capability has been dismantled, a settlement to the crisis must include an economic component, according to Strong.

The North Korean leadership knows it has to open its economy and “they want to join the Asian economy,” he said.

Strong said, however, that strong U.S. leadership in the standoff could provide the most lasting solution since the end of the Korean War.  Bush could “place his stamp” as a peacemaker if he settles the nuclear crisis, according to Strong. The situation needed to bring about a lasting peace has “never been more opportune than it is now,” he said.

Strong also praised a 10-point plan, recently developed by Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), which includes the dismantling of North Korean nuclear facilities in return for concessions from the United States.  Weldon formulated and proposed the plan — which Strong labeled as “very promising” and “ambitious but achievable” — during a recent visit to Pyongyang (see GSN, June 13).

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Iran:  United Kingdom Calls For Two-Month European Deadline for Iranian Compliance

The United Kingdom has begun calling on other European countries to issue Iran a two-month deadline to either comply with demands to address nuclear weapons concerns or face the loss of a trade deal with the European Union, the London Telegraph reported today (see GSN, June 17).

The British Foreign Office is concerned that the United States and Europe could come to a clash over differing approaches to Iran, with the United States favoring a more confrontational approach and European countries preferring engagement, according to the Telegraph.  In a message to diplomatic posts and some government departments, the office said that ministers had decided to implement a compromise approach that would “ratchet up European Union pressure on Iran” and issue a private warning to Tehran that the EU would end trade talks if Iran did not take action on several issues within “a clear short deadline (e.g. two months).”

“A sharp shock now, reasonably early, might act as a salutary warning to the Iranians that, as we must listen to them, they must take our concerns seriously,” the British Foreign Office message said (Anton La Guardia, London Telegraph, June 18).

IAEA to Discuss Iran’s Failure to Comply With Safeguards Agreement

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors is scheduled continue discussions today on Iran’s failure to abide by its agency safeguards agreement.  The board “might not reach a decision on issuing a resolution of concern or merely a statement” from Director General Mohamed ElBaradei until the end of the week, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said (RFE/RL Newsline, June 18).

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North Korea II:  Powell Seeks Asian Support For Cargo Interdiction Effort

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected today to seek Asian support for a planned U.S.-led effort to interdict suspect North Korean ships that could be carrying illicit cargo (see GSN, June 17).

Speaking before an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting, Powell said yesterday that he would discuss the effort, the Proliferation Security Initiative, with foreign ministers from the 10 ASEAN members during the meeting today in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  U.S. President George W. Bush first proposed the initiative, which would seek to block illegal cargo shipments of WMD-related materials, during a visit to Poland earlier this month (see GSN, June 12).

“As you look at what happens on the high seas with respect to piracy, drug running, shipment of weapons of mass destruction, you can see that there could be a broader agenda for discussing maritime security,” Powell said yesterday.  “Whether these efforts will blend together at some point, it’s too early to say,” he said (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, June 18).

North Korea today said it would attack the United States if Washington attempted to impose a blockade.

North Korea “will take an immediate physical retaliatory step against the United States” if a blockade is established, said the state-run Rodong Shinmun daily newspaper.  War “will immediately spill over to Japan,” the newspaper said (Doug Struck, Washington Post, June 18).

While the Korean Peninsula should remain denuclearized, North Korea’s security concerns must be taken into account, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said today.

“The D.P.R.K. security concerns should be appropriately addressed,” Li said.  “This is good for all sides.  This is good for world peace and stability and this is the general consensus of the international community,” he said.

Meanwhile, North Korea today also lashed out at the idea of holding multilateral talks to resolve concerns over its relaunched nuclear program.  The United States has insisted that China, Japan and South Korea all be involved in a round of planned talks.

“We can no longer expect anything from multilateral talks that the United States is proposing,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said (Cindy Sui, Agence France-Presse, June 18).

U.S. officials have predicted that the five-party talks will be scheduled within a month or two (Struck, Washington Post).

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China:  Defense Ministry Planning June Strategic Missile Tests

China plans to conduct three ballistic missile flight tests this month, ITAR-Tass reported Monday.

The Chinese Defense Ministry notified Russia that it would test a DF-31 ICBM, a DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile and a Julang 2 submarine-launched ballistic missile, all from a land-based firing range (see GSN, Feb.1, 2002).  The missiles would be launched toward a target range at Lobnor Lake, more than 2,500 kilometers from their launch point (Vladislav Kuznetsov, ITAR-Tass, June 16 in FBIS-SOV, June 16).

A Natural Resources Defense Council fact sheet describes the DF-31 as a three-stage, solid-fueled, mobile ballistic missile with a range of 8,000 kilometers.  The missile is in the developmental stage and is expected to be deployed between 2005 and 2010.

The Julang 2 is believed to be a variant of the DF-31, intended to be deployed on future Chinese strategic missile submarines which are years away from completion, according to the fact sheet (Nuclear Notebook, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2001).

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United States:  Kirtland Air Force Base to Receive $10 Million For Additional Security

A bomb storage area at Kirtland Air Force Base is set to beef up security with $10 million in improvements, the Associated Press reported today.

New fencing, perimeter lights and an upgraded power system and concrete cap will be installed soon at the base in New Mexico, which is believed to be one of the Air Force’s primary nuclear weapon storage areas, according to AP.  Funding for the project was earmarked in the fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill, which was signed by U.S. President George W. Bush in December (see GSN, Dec. 3, 2002).

The concrete cap will serve to protect the thousands of nuclear weapons stored on the base from a potential terrorist attack using an aircraft.

“This is a facility that is quite near a runway, and thus it wouldn’t take much to put a plane down on top of that,” said Robert Norris, one of the authors of a 1998 Natural Resources Defense Council report that estimated that as many as 2,450 nuclear weapons may be stored at the base (Associated Press, June 18).

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United States I:  Chemical Leak Discovered at Pine Bluff Arsenal

A dangerous chemical leak was detected Monday at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas after a worker there suffered a minor burn, the Pine Bluff Commercial reported today (see GSN, May 21).

Preliminary reports indicated that a solution containing sodium hydroxide — a chemical commonly used in industrial applications to neutralize acids — leaked from a valve and into a local creek, according to Ann Gallegos, public affairs officer for the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

The material that leaked from the valve was a “diluted solution with an 18 percent concentration” of sodium hydroxide, the Commercial reported.  The worker was treated for the burn and returned to work yesterday.

“What they’re saying is that it was some type of leak or a discharge, but the source has been corrected,” Gallegos said, noting that amount of chemicals leaked was not sufficient enough to warrant a report to the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Loftis, Pine Bluff Commercial, June 18).

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United States II:  Pentagon Awards Chemical Weapon Destruction Contract

The U.S. Department of Defense last week selected two contractors to destroy the 524-ton chemical weapons stockpile at Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky (see GSN, Jan. 3).

The Pentagon awarded the project to a joint venture of two California firms, Bechtel National and Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group.  The task of building, operating and closing the weapon destruction facility is expected to last 10 years and cost $2 billion, according to the Lexington Herald Leader.

Bechtel currently holds the contracts for destroying chemical weapons at Aberdeen, Md. (see GSN, May 15) and Pueblo, Colo. (see GSN, July 25, 2002), while Parsons is responsible for eliminating the VX stockpile at Newport, Ind. (see GSN, Nov. 19, 2002).

The firms will eliminate stocks of mustard agent, VX and GB (sarin) using a neutralization process, in which warm water and caustic solutions break down the weapons agents.

The Army has already begun talks with state agencies to seek approval for the construction of nonweapons support facilities at the plant.  “If the regulatory authorities will allow that, which we think they are going to do, they could be pushing dirt over there by late summer or early fall,” said Craig Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a national group that promotes disposing of chemical weapons without incineration.

The design for the neutralization facility itself could be finished in a couple of months, Williams said (Greg Kocher, Lexington Herald Leader, June 17).

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Radiological Weapons I:  Thai Officials Believe Additional Cesium 137 Remains in Laos

Thai officials investigating a man who was recently arrested in Bangkok for trying to sell cesium 137 believe additional quantities of the material still remain in neighboring Laos, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, June 16).

Narong Penanam, who was arrested in the attempted cesium sale, has told interrogators that the material originated in Russia and was shipped to Thailand through Laos, a Thai spokesman said.  Thai officials believe two large caches of cesium still remain in Laos, along with at least one of Narong’s accomplices, according to the Journal.

“It’s still an open case,” said a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.  “The recent big bust is part of an ongoing investigation into where the material originated, who the potential buyers were and who else may have been involved,” the spokesman said.

Narong has also told authorities that he obtained the cesium from the aide of a deceased Thai Air Force marshal, the Journal reported.  The Thai Air Force has denied any involvement with the cesium and said it does not know how it was obtained.

The blocked cesium sale in Thailand has raised concerns that proliferation is beginning to pose a problem in a region where it has not previously been seen, the Journal reported.

“Historically the region has been just about completely free of any sort of proliferation threat,” said a Western diplomat based in Bangkok.  After the recent arrest though, “it appears anything is possible,” the diplomat said (Crispin/Fields, Wall Street Journal, June 18).

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Radiological Weapons II:  “Dirty Bomb” Materials Trafficked in Africa, IAEA Says

The International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday said the illegal trafficking of “dirty bomb” materials in Africa has become an alarming problem, the London Financial Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 19).

“Illicit trafficking in nuclear materials is an increasing problem for states in Africa,” according to an internal report presented to the agency’s board in Vienna.  Over the past year, the IAEA has sent special missions to some African countries to help them manage suspicious material seized from traffickers.

“What I am afraid of is that if an incident occurred in certain cities today, there would be a complete panic,” said Abel Julio Gonzalez, director of radiation and waste safety at the IAEA (Gillian Tett, London Financial Times, June 18).

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