Threat Assessment:  Bush Warns of “Real” Al-Qaeda Threat

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that the United States is facing genuine terrorist threats from the al-Qaeda terrorist network, warning that terrorists might attempt to hijack airplanes in a Sept. 11-style attack (see GSN, July 29).

“The threat is a real threat,” Bush said.  “We don’t know when, where, what.  But we do know a couple of things.  We know that al-Qaeda tends to use methodologies that worked in the past,” he added.

Washington recently issued a security advisory to airlines.

“We’re focusing on the airline industry right now, and we’ve got reason to do so,” Bush said.  “But I’m confident that we will thwart the attempts,” he added.

U.S. officials were not convinced, however, that the current threat is credible.

“If we were certain this was real, I think you’d see us raise the alert level, as we’ve done in the past,” a senior law enforcement official said.  “We’re not at that point yet.  This could be more disinformation,” the official added.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said that his department was putting extra resources toward safeguarding the nation’s airlines (Philip Shenon, New York Times, July 31).

The information that led to the airline warning came from Ali Abd al-Rahman al Faqasi al-Ghamdi, an al-Qaeda operative who planned suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and is currently being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, CNN.com reported (CNN.com, July 31).

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Iraq:  Captured Scientists Continue to Deny WMD Programs

Even after the fall of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime and the death of his two sons, captured Iraqi scientists continue to deny that Iraq was attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, July 30).

U.S. officials, under the direction of the CIA, have interviewed four senior Iraqi scientists and more than a dozen lower-level scientists, said senior Bush administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed on the subject.  While some scientists were arrested and others agreed to cooperate, all of them have denied that Hussein rebuilt a nuclear weapons program or developed and stockpiled biological and chemical weapons since U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 (Pincus/Sullivan, Washington Post, July 31).

The heads of the U.S. effort to hunt for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, head of the Iraq Survey Group, and CIA special adviser David Kay — briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee today in a closed hearing.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Kay said Iraqi scientists were actively cooperating with the survey team.  While Kay did not announce any new developments or discoveries, he expressed confidence that the team was making excellent progress.

“Every day we’re surprised by new advances we’re making,” Kay said.

Kay said the team would make no major announcements of WMD discoveries in Iraq unless they could be supported by three types of evidence:  multiple human sources, documentary evidence and physical evidence.

Dayton and Kay are expected to testify later today before a closed hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Greg Webb, GSN, July 31).

Rice Takes Responsibility for Africa Uranium Claim

Meanwhile, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice last night became the latest in a growing line of White House officials, including U.S. President George W. Bush, to take responsibility for the inclusion of the now-disputed claim that Iraq sought to obtain uranium in Africa.

While Rice took responsibility for the claim’s inclusion, she also said the claim should not detract from the “very strong case” made for war with Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

“I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode,” Rice said on PBS’ NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.  “What I feel most responsible for is that this is detracting from the very strong case the president has been making,” she said (Will Lester, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 31).

CIA Warned London Over 45-Minute Claim

The CIA warned the United Kingdom last year against including a claim in a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the Iraqi military could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so, according to the London Guardian.

The British Foreign Office yesterday said the CIA had been given a copy of a draft of the dossier in mid-September 2002, according to evidence presented to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.  The Foreign Office said the CIA made a number of comments on the dossier, but refused to provide details, the Guardian reported. 

While the United Kingdom included the 45-minute claim in the final version of the dossier, the CIA did not use it in any of its own reports on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (Norton-Taylor/Leigh, London Guardian, July 31).

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North Korea:  Pyongyang Agrees to Multilateral Talks

North Korea has agreed to multilateral talks — including as many as six nations — to help defuse the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, July 30).

Pyongyang’s ambassador to Moscow, Pak Ui Chun, delivered the news to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“On his leadership’s instructions, the ambassador said that North Korea supports holding six-nation talks with Russia’s participation to resolve the current difficult situation on the Korean Peninsula, and is taking active steps to organize (these talks),” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.  “Russia welcomed this constructive decision of Pyongyang,” it added.

North Korea had been insisting on direct talks with the United States to settle the crisis (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 31).

The announcement came after a top U.S. diplomat derided North Korean requests for direct, bilateral negotiations with Washington.  Pyongyang’s position is a “one-note piano concerto,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton.

Bolton also said that North Koreans live a “hellish nightmare” while “tyrannical dictator” Kim Jong Il lives like royalty, BBC News reported today (BBC News, July 31).

“The days of (North Korean) blackmail are over,” Bolton said while in Seoul.  “Kim Jong Il is dead wrong to think that developing nuclear weapons will improve his security,” he added (Martin Nesirky, Reuters, July 31).

Bolton held talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan, the Korea Herald reported.

“Bolton said he felt during his visit to China that negotiations for nuclear talks have slowed down but China is still cautiously optimistic,” a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said.

During the talks, Bolton reportedly said that the “ball is North Korea’s court” (Seo Hyun-jin, Korea Herald, July 31).

Yoon and Bolton reportedly agreed “that the North Korean issue should be handled in the U.N. Security Council, but what’s important is the timing on when the council deals with the issue,” said Oh Joon, a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official.  “Our view is that we should wait a little bit more since international efforts are focused on finding a way to resume multilateral talks,” Oh added (Sang-hun Choe, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, July 31).

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that he had spoken with Chinese President Hu Jintao about the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula.

“I told President Hu that it is very important for us to get Japan and South Korea and Russia involved as well,” Bush said.  “We are actually beginning to make serious progress about sharing responsibility on this issue, in such a way that I believe will lead to an attitudinal change by Kim Jong Il,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 31).

The construction of light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea, meanwhile, will most likely be suspended in August, Yonhap News Agency reported.  The United States and its regional allies are continuing to build the reactors under the 1994 Agreed Framework under which North Korea agreed to halt all nuclear activities in exchange for the reactors.  Washington reportedly told South Korea and Japan that it would not allow technology transfers to the North (Yonhap News Agence/BBC Monitoring, July 31).

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China:  Pentagon Says Chinese May Be Reconsidering No-First-Use Policy

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Chinese strategists may be modifying the conditions they believe would justify Chinese use of theater nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in East Asia, possibly in the context of a war over Taiwan, the U.S. Defense Department said yesterday in an annual report to Congress.

The Pentagon said the review may be taking place despite China’s standing promise not to be the first side in a conflict to use nuclear weapons.

“As China improves its strategic forces, despite Beijing’s ‘no-first-use’ pledge, there are indications that some strategists are reconsidering the conditions under which Beijing would employ theater nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in the region,” the report reads.

The sentence is a rare addition to the content of last year’s version of the report, much of which is reproduced identically this year.

The Defense Department said China also continues to acquire more ballistic missiles and long-range strike aircraft as it seeks to prepare itself for a potential war over Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province and the United States has committed to supporting militarily (see GSN, Sept. 10, 2002).

The report says China is modernizing its military to “diversify its options for use of force” against targets including Taiwan “and to complicate United States intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict.”

Besides the warning on China’s no-first-use policy, the report also includes new items that bear on Beijing’s missile capabilities.

After putting the number of China’s short-range ballistic missiles at approximately 350 last year, the department said China now has approximately 450 of the missiles, and that the number is likely to increase by about 75 per year over the near term.

“The accuracy and lethality of this force also are increasing,” the report reads.

In a related development, China is said to be developing variants of its CSS-6 short-range ballistic missile that could reach Taiwan or U.S. installations in Okinawa, Japan, depending on where they were deployed. In addition, the report says, the Chinese navy has “fully integrated” its first two Russian-made Sovremennyy-class guided missile destroyers and has contracted with Russia for two more of the destroyers.

Experts within and outside the Defense Department said China seems more interested in seeking tools with which to coerce Taiwan and possibly the United States than in preparing any military offensive.

In other highlights, the report indicates that China views the United States as its chief potential adversary in the region; that Beijing’s military spending may be as much as $65 billion a year, despite China’s announced spending of $20 billion (see GSN, March 5); and that China continues to rely heavily on Russia for military acquisitions, spending approximately $2 billion yearly — or twice as much as during the 1990s — on advanced Russian weapons systems.

Experts Blast, Praise Report

Critics of the Bush administration’s China policy called the report an exaggeration of Beijing’s military capabilities, while supporters said the administration is correcting a longstanding aversion in Washington to contemplating the gravity of the Chinese threat.

“This is part of the here-come-the-Chinese contingent that’s trying to do with the Chinese what we did with the Soviet Union for many years, and that’s sort of magnify the Chinese threat,” said Ralph Cossa, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum.

Cossa said the Pentagon’s China reports are less convincing, though, than its past demonstrations of Soviet power, which contained many graphics comparing Soviet and U.S. capabilities.

“When you [create] a chart that shows [the difference between] American strategic bombers and Chinese strategic bombers, it’s laughable,” he said, adding that China relies on “antiquated equipment.”

“There are certainly people in the Pentagon who are looking to justify another major threat,” Cossa said.

“My guess,” he said of the report’s claim that China is reconsidering conditions for the use of theater nuclear weapons, “is that this is a very self-serving comment on the part of the Pentagon, which is itself looking for enhanced ways in which to make nuclear weapons useful.”

Larry Wortzel, the Heritage Foundation’s vice president for foreign policy and defense studies, took a different view.

“The Department of Defense is being very realistic in assessing just where the Chinese military is improving and the critical places where the Chinese military [indicates] the United States as its target, not Taiwan,” said Wortzel, who participated in a U.S. Congress-directed commission that assessed CIA intelligence on China.

“It is no longer politically incorrect to say realistic things about the Chinese military,” Wortzel said.

Wortzel supported the report’s finding that China’s development of greater short-range ballistic missile capabilities is meant in part to disrupt potential U.S. involvement in a conflict over Taiwan.

“We’re not looking for a fight,” he said of the United States, “but if we have to get in one because they attack Taiwan, it’s going to cause us to be a little bit more careful.”

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Iran:  Bush Wants Europeans to Pressure Tehran

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that the European Union should put pressure on Iran to abandon alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, the Financial Times reported (see GSN, July 30).

Asked about possible military action against Iran, Bush said that he wants a peaceful solution but “all options remain on the table.”

“I believe the best way to deal with the Iranians at this point in time is to convince others to join us in a clear declaration that the development of nuclear weapons is not in their interests,” he said (Edward Alden, Financial Times, July 31).

“It’s going to require more than one voice saying that, however.  It’s going to require a collective effort of the Europeans, for example, to recognize the true threat of an armed Iran to achieving peace in the Middle East,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 31).

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Russia:  Moscow to Destroy 18 SS-18 ICBMs by End of Year

A Russian military official has said that Moscow plans to dismantle 18 SS-18 ICBMs by the end of the year, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, July 24).  The missiles’ silos will also be destroyed, the official said (Associated Press/Russia Journal, July 31).

“Under the schedule of SMF [strategic missile force] reductions, six silo launchers for RS-20 [SS-18] missiles have been blown up.  Another 12 launchers will be destroyed before the end of the year.  As planned, three regiments equipped with missile systems whose service life has expired will be decommissioned in 2003,” a Russian Defense Ministry official said (Gateway Russia, July 31).

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U.S. Response:  Report Says Laboratories Unprepared for Chemical Attack

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. laboratories are not prepared to analyze or respond to a chemical weapons attack, the Association of Public Health Laboratories announced today.

If terrorists attacked using dangerous chemical agents, laboratories would not be prepared to test environmental samples and provide crucial information on contaminated areas, according to an APHL report.  While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has taken steps to test victims in a chemical attack, environmental testing has lagged, the association says.

“State public health laboratories will be left in the lurch if the homeland were attacked today,” according to the report.

“Suppose a terrorist attacks an arena in Phoenix with a chemical weapon,” APHL Executive Director Scott Becker said, “doctors and patients’ families are clamoring for rapid identification of the agent, but the laboratory director has to send samples to a high-security laboratory on the other side of the country.  It’s the best he can do.”

Last month, the Trust for America’s Health released a similar report that said the U.S. public health system was “woefully unprepared” to deal with a terrorist attack.  That report faulted the analytical capacity of U.S. laboratories (see GSN, June 4).

Safety Concerns, Personnel Shortages

The APHL report also noted that laboratory employees could be subjected to unsafe working conditions.

“Those who weathered the anthrax attacks [of 2001] understand the consequences of accepting samples that are meant to harm … At this time, public health laboratories are being asked to evaluate chemical terrorism threats, but are not equipped to do so safely,” the report says.

Echoing a common complaint, the association said the nation’s public health infrastructure is underfunded and that an attack would stretch already scarce resources.

“There is simply no reserve workforce available to help states cope with chemical testing in the aftermath of a terrorist attack,” according to the report.

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U.S. Response:  Army Is Ready to License Chemical Decontaminant

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has decided to allow private companies to license the patents for a biological process to decontaminate items affected by chemical weapons agents, according to a notice published earlier this week in the Federal Register (see GSN, June 2).

Army scientists have developed a process to produce, in genetically engineered micro-organisms, two types of enzymes that are able to break down organophosphorus compounds that are found in nerve agents, John Biffoni, an intellectual property attorney with the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, told Global Security Newswire yesterday.  The enzymes can then be made into a dry powder and mixed with water to create a decontamination spray that is less corrosive and more “environmentally friendly” than decontaminants currently in use, Biffoni said.

Monday’s announcement in the Federal Register is required to be available for 60 days before the Army can make a decision on granting a patent license, Biffoni said.  He said the Army is close to negotiating an exclusive license for the process with a company, but refused to provide further details citing confidentiality.  At the end of the 60-day period, the Army is likely to publish a 15-day announcement in the Federal Register announcing the intent to issue an exclusive license, Biffoni said.

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Food Safety:  Federal, State Officials Discuss Agriculture Security

U.S. and Mississippi officials met yesterday to discuss ways to prevent a terrorist attack on the state’s agricultural industry, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, June 12).

Mississippi could be an attractive target for terrorists seeking to attack the U.S. food supply because agriculture is the state’s largest industry, said state Agriculture Commissioner Lester Spell.  In addition, terrorists could attempt to steal cropdusting aircraft for use in bioterrorist attacks, he said.

Steve Gains of the U.S. Agriculture Department said the department is working to educate farmers on how to protect themselves against terrorist attacks.  “Terrorist groups are interested in agricultural commodities,” he said (Deborah Bulkeley, Associated Press/Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 31).

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