U.S.-Russia: U.S. Pledges to Reduce Arsenal

The United States will reduce its deployed strategic nuclear warheads to one-third of their current level in the next decade, President George W. Bush announced yesterday at a White House press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  The two leaders began a three-day summit yesterday.

"The current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities.  I have informed President Putin that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade, a level fully consistent with American security," Bush said.

Putin reciprocated by promising to "respond in kind" (Associated Press/New York Times, Nov. 14). 

"Russia declares and reiterates its readiness to make considerable reductions in strategic arms," Putin said last night.  "We no longer have to intimidate each other to reach agreements" (David Sanger, New York Times, Nov. 14).

Chances For a Treaty Unclear

Putin repeated his desire "to present all our agreements in a treaty form, including the issues of verification and control," but Bush said "we don't need arms control negotiations to reduce our weaponry."

"My attitude is, here's what we can live with, and so I've announced the level that we'll stick by.  And to me, that's how you approach a relationship that is changed and different," Bush said.

Bush indicated a willingness to sign some agreement, but did not elaborate. "I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, and if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that.  But that's what our government is going to do over the next 10 years" (AP/New York Times).

Putin told reporters after the press conference "the world is far from having international relations based solely on trust," adding "that is why it so important today to rely on the existing foundation of treaties and agreements in the arms control and disarmament areas" (Sanger, New York Times).

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov concurred.  "To make it more reliable, we need to put it down in a treaty," he said.  "It doesn't mean we distrust anyone.  Just the opposite.  It would consolidate and boost our relations" (Barry Schweid, AP/Yahoo! News, Nov. 14).

1993 Treaty Left Behind

The Bush announcement apparently leaves behind the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed in 1993 but never entered into force, that would have banned the deployment of land-based MIRVed ICBMs, missiles that carry multiple warheads.

"It means abandoning one of the most hard-fought gains for U.S. national security," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  "Multiple warhead missiles are dangerous weapons and will remain in the Russian arsenal long after Putin is gone."

The Bush move will also change the rules for counting nuclear warheads.  Under the START agreements, warheads deployed on submarines and bombers being overhauled still counted as deployed weapons, but the Bush administration will no longer count those weapons, according to the New York Times (Michael Gordon, New York Times, Nov. 14).

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CTBT: Conferees Criticize Absent U.S.

By Greg Seigle

Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS—A U.N. conference on the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ended yesterday with countries that support the accord calling on a moratorium on nuclear testing—a request that is likely to be ignored by key countries, including the United States.

The intention of the three-day conference was to push the treaty into force, but the meetings were hampered from the start because they were boycotted by nuclear powers essential to its success—the United States, India and Israel.

Officials said the pact, which aims to verify a ban on nuclear testing with stringent inspections, must have U.S. support in order to take effect. But U.S. President George W. Bush and the Republican half of the U.S. Senate does not support the treaty, claiming the inspections are too intrusive and that testing of the country’s 6,000 deployed nuclear warheads is needed to keep them operational.

One by one, high-level delegates from 104 countries, including 44 foreign ministers, chided the United States for refusing to back the treaty, which five years ago was signed by former President Bill Clinton but then rejected by the Senate in 1999.

“Countries should join together to urge [the United States] to change its erroneous position on the CTBT,” said Chinese U.N. Ambassador Shen Guofang.

Beijing has yet to ratify the treaty and says China’s move is unlikely unless Washington endorses it first. Pakistan, another country that has not approved the treaty but attended the conference, said it would not budge until India does.

The repeated demands by various nations for the United States to endorse the treaty are “a sign of close interest and a recognition that this is a very important treaty,” said Jayantha Dhanapala, the U.N.’s undersecretary general for disarmament affairs.

According to its charter the treaty cannot become law until it is signed and ratified by the 44 countries that, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, possess nuclear research and power reactors. Prior to this week’s meetings here, 13 of those countries had not ratified the treaty, including four countries with actual nuclear weapons: China, the United States, Israel and India.

By the end of the conference delegates from four of the 13 abstaining countries—Algeria, Indonesia, Colombia and Vietnam—said their legislative bodies are expected to soon ratify the treaty. Libya also expressed its intention to adhere to the CTBT, according to a U.N. release.

A total of 161 countries have signed the accord and 87 have ratified it, with Ecuador, Nauru and Singapore having done so the past week.

Representatives from some countries expressed dismay that the United States would snub the meetings at a time it is trying to build a global anti-terrorism coalition.

“The stand against terrorism should also include a stand against nuclear weapons,” Goran Svilanovic, the foreign minister of Yugoslavia, told conferees. “We must work to strengthen our stand against proliferation, particularly of weapons of mass destruction.”

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CTBT: U.S. Senate Has Power to Act, Aide Says

By Greg Seigle

Global Security Newswire

Despite common belief in Washington and elsewhere, the U.S. Senate does not need the White House to re-submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in order to vote on it again, according to current and former congressional officials.

Although recent reports including one in Monday’s Washington Post indicated that the Senate could not take up the 1996 treaty without an initiative by President George W. Bush, the Democrat-controlled legislature can call the accord for a vote when it sees fit, current and former congressional officials told GSN yesterday.

“President Bush can’t even get it back from the Senate even if he wants it,” said a senior aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees the fledgling pact signed by former President Bill Clinton five years ago. “It is available for action anytime.”

Once the Senate votes on a treaty—as it did with the test ban agreement two years ago, defeating it by 19 votes—the treaty can be voted on countless times, no matter how often it fails to garner the 67 votes needed to take effect, the officials said. The treaty can reach the floor either through the committee or if requested by the Senate as a whole, they said.

“We will continue holding onto it even if it were defeated 90-10 unless there is a provision in [such a] resolution that says it goes back to the White House,” the Senate aide said.

Because Democrats hold a 50-49-1 majority in the Senate—they’ve clung to the narrow edge since last year when Senator Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) left the Republican Party and registered as an independent—they control the destiny of any future Senate votes on the CTBT while Democrats.

But the Senate is unlikely to vote on the treaty again until it has more support, officials said. While there are some Republicans who may break party lines on this issue—Senator Lincoln Chaffee (R-R.I.) has been mentioned as a potential convert—the fact remains that many Republicans loathe the CTBT and appear unlikely to budge. Treaty supporters do not want to vote on the measure until it has a chance of passing.

“It would be feckless to proceed at this point,” the Senate aide conceded.

Even though Clinton culled international support for the accord, which calls for stringent outside monitoring of the 44 countries with active nuclear programs, Republican lawmakers have long opposed the pact—and successfully stalled its ratification. In October 1999 the then-Republican-held Senate rejected the treaty 51-48.

“We’re going to need about 17 [more] votes,” said Randy Rydell, a senior official with the U.N. Department for Disarmament Affairs who was a longtime aide to former Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio).

U.S. President George W. Bush, like many Republican Senators, does not support the accord. Administration officials believe that the on-site inspections are too intrusive, and they say the ban on nuclear testing called for in the treaty would harm maintenance of the current U.S. arsenal of about 6,000 nuclear warheads.

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U.S.-Russia:  Set Reductions Needed, Say Experts

U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin should take full advantage of their good relations to lock in large-scale reductions in both countries’ nuclear arsenals, wrote Joseph Cirincione and Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (see GSN, Nov. 8). In a column in Arms Control Today, the authors reflected on international security strategies relevant to this week’s summit in Crawford, Texas (see GSN, Nov. 13).

The Bush administration’s claim that a new framework is needed for U.S.-Russian relations—a framework based on “informal or political understandings,” rather than formal arms control agreements—does not take into account a worst-case scenario, according to Cirincione and Wolfsthal.  “It is simply prudent to take account of worst-case scenarios when … planning nuclear policy,” they wrote.

If the current situation did change, Russia could revert to more competitive and confrontational policies, according to the authors.  Although Russia could not rebuild its forces to Soviet levels, “it could greatly increase the number of weapons it otherwise would likely deploy at the end of the decade and take other steps to complicate U.S. national security objectives,” Cirincione and Wolfsthal wrote.

The Bush administration may argue that Russia and the United States are no longer enemies, the authors wrote, and that U.S. nuclear forces should be deployed as necessary without consideration of what Russia does with its arsenal. “In reality, however, the nuclear arsenals of both countries do affect one another,” they said.  U.S. deployments of nuclear weapons will be a major factor in Russia’s decisions on how to size its own force, Cirincione and Wolfsthal wrote.

The security concerns of Russia’s nuclear weapons and materials are another reason for locking in reductions on both sides (see GSN, Nov. 13), according to the authors.  If Russia did revert to a more confrontational policy and deployed more nuclear weapons it would be forced to maintain more reserve warheads and materials, which would further increase security concerns, Cirincione and Wolfsthal wrote.  “Only dismantling and permanently disposing of the materials will eliminate this threat” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis, Nov. 13).  

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Germany: Nuclear Waste Arrives in Gorleben

Six containers of nuclear waste arrived at a storage site at Gorleben, Germany, amid protests from the country’s anti-nuclear lobby today (see GSN, Nov. 8).  The containers were moved by rail from Dannenberg, Germany, today, completing a journey from a reprocessing plant in northwestern France. 

The shipment’s journey to Gorleben was accompanied by three days of protests.  About 15,000 German police sealed off roads, guarded the shipment and removed the remaining few hundred demonstrators today.  Germany has been re-examining the safety of transporting nuclear material since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.  Police said they had detained about 300 people, and about 93 received treatment for injuries resulting from conflict with the police.  The number of protesters was less than expected, according to police and protesters.

Shipments to Gorleben have been marked by confrontation between protesters and police in the past.  A shipment last March cost about $22.5 million to protect, and police estimated the cost for today’s shipment would be similar (Philip Blenkinsop, Reuters, Nov. 14).

“There were no notable incidents on the final stretch.  It all went as we had planned,” said German police spokesman Thomas Kuhn.

Today’s shipment was the fifth to Gorleben of nuclear waste that Germany sent to reprocessing plants in France or Britain.  Shipments were halted in 1997 for four years due to radioactive leaks.  Opponents said the containers holding the nuclear waste and the old salt mine above which the containers are held were unsafe (Stephen Graham, Associated Press, Nov. 14). 

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South Africa: Developing Nuclear Reactors

South Africa is working to develop miniature nuclear reactors to expand its nuclear technology capacity, South African Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said yesterday at an International Atomic Energy Agency conference. 

Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned electric utility, is developing 110-megawatt pebble bed modular nuclear reactors in cooperation with British Nuclear Fuels and the U.S. company Exelon.  South Africa expects construction of the first reactor to begin next year.  Selling the reactors to other countries could earn South Africa over $1.9 billion a year; the United States, Britain, China, Indonesia, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia are all interested in the reactors, according to today’s Financial Times.

Meanwhile, Victor Motha, a technician at a Nuclear Corporation of South Africa laboratory, died this week after inhaling a poisonous gas, according to the Times.

South Africa developed its nuclear capacity during its apartheid era and has since dismantled its nuclear weapons production program (James Lamont, Financial Times, Nov. 14).

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Russia:  Destroys Last Warhead from Ukraine

Russia destroyed the last of 1,500 nuclear warheads from Soviet-era Ukraine in October, according to an announcement yesterday from Russian President Vladimir Putin (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 13).

Putin said that the destruction fulfilled certain provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, observed one of the basic provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and finalized Ukraine’s decision to be free of nuclear weapons.  “I would like to specially point out that the absolute safety of nuclear warheads was ensured on all stages of the operation, unprecedented by its scope and complexity,” he said (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 13).

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CTBT: China Urges U.S. to Embrace Treaty

By Greg Seigle

Global Security Newswire

China’s U.N. ambassador yesterday urged the United States to support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in an attempt to foster more trust between the two nuclear powers, neither of which has ratified the 1996 pact.

Addressing a conference on ways to enable the treaty’s entry into force (see GSN, Nov. 12), Shen Guofang warned that a U.S. failure to take the lead in the nuclear treaty could “disrupt the existing balance” of power and spark a new nuclear arms race.

“An international environment favorable for countries to trust and support the CTBT should be created,” Guofang told high-level conferees from 104 countries, including 44 foreign ministers. “The most effective way is to establish a new security concept centering on mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation.”

Using the strongest language of dozens of speakers, Guofang said the United States should abandon its “Cold War mentality and power politics, renounce nuclear deterrent strategy based on the first use of nuclear weapons and address disputes through dialogue… [or] a fresh round of nuclear arms race will be on the verge of breaking out.”

U.S. representatives were not on hand to refute Guofang’s remarks because the Bush administration is officially boycotting the meetings. This morning, however, a U.S. official based in New York City said the administration has some concerns about trusting the Chinese.

“We don’t believe” China will engage in an arms race with the United States, the official said. “We have some problems with respect to the treaty. One is verification and the other is to ensure the reliability of our nuclear weapons, and that takes regular testing. We can do simulations and the like but we need regular testing.”

CTBT verification processes, the U.S. official added, “are fairly intrusive.”

Although the treaty has garnered support worldwide—161 countries have signed the treaty and 85 of their legislatures have ratified it—it cannot become international law without U.S. support.

By its charter the agreement cannot take effect until 44 countries that operate nuclear programs endorse it. Five of the eight countries with actual nuclear weapons—China, the United States, India, Pakistan and Israel—have not ratified the pact and seem unlikely to do so.

A high-level Russian envoy indicated Sunday his country would be willing to open up to stringent outside inspections if that would bring the United States into the fold.

“In order to strengthen the confidence-building measures,” said Russian representative Igor Sergeev, reading a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We are prepared to suggest, to the United States in the first place, considering the possibility to develop additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges going far beyond the treaty provisions,” Putin said

Such openness, Sergeev added, “could include the exchange of geological data and results of certain experiments, installation of additional sensors, and other measures.”

U.S. officials, however, bristle at talk of openness by Russia, which violated the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, and by China, which “obtained by espionage classified nuclear weapons information,” according to the April 1999 Intelligence Community Damage Assessment report.

The United States must overcome its “fear of Third World cheating,” observed Edward Levine, an aide to U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.).

The CTBT conference—which attracted delegates from nine countries that have yet to sign the agreement, including Pakistan, the newest nuclear weapon power—concludes today with little hope of achieving its goal of improving the prospects for bringing the treaty into force. The conference has been skipped not only by the United States, but also by other key countries such as India, Israel and North Korea.

The Clinton administration promoted the treaty five years ago but the U.S. Senate voted the pact down in October 1999, a rejection analysts believe sapped any momentum the treaty held.

Officials from various nations say the treaty has many merits and remain optimistic that it will not crumble.

Senate aide Levine urged the treaty parties not to give up hope that the U.S. Senate and other national legislatures will approve the treaty.  “Don’t throw us out,” he said.

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Nuclear Material: Russia May Be Easy Source

Nuclear facilities in Russia have amassed dozens of security violations in the last year, according to reports from senior officials of Western governments and the International Atomic Energy Agency in yesterday’s New York Times.  Even though there have been significant improvements in Russian nuclear security over the last decade, the officials said, up to half of ex-Soviet civilian and military nuclear stockpiles with weapons-grade material are poorly protected.

Less than two weeks ago, Yuri Volodin, chief of safeguards for the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, said there had been dozens of violations of Russian regulations for securing and accounting for nuclear material in the last year.  One loss of nuclear materials was of the “highest consequence,” Volodin said.  Twice this year, Russian soldiers discovered stakeouts by terrorists of a secret nuclear storage facility, said Col. Gen. Igor Volynkin, head of nuclear security for the Russian military.

Last month, Russian Security Council official Raisa Vdovichenko said Taliban representatives from Afghanistan had asked a worker at “an institution related to nuclear technologies to go to their country to work there in this field.”

The Times reported that there have been several incidents of nuclear material trafficking that have caused concern among officials.  In April 2000, Georgian police seized several hundred fast-reactor fuel pellets, weighing nearly a kilogram, made of highly enriched uranium.  At the airport in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September, police seized half a gram of plutonium, according to the Times.  Russian authorities two years ago stopped a criminal gang from stealing more than 40 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a military facility in the Ural Mountains, the Times reported.

The IAEA has created a database tracking incidents of nuclear trafficking since 1993 that counts only incidents confirmed by the states involved.  Out of the 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear materials and 201 cases involving medical and industrial radioactive materials, only about 18 cases involved the fissionable material needed for a nuclear bomb, according to the Times. 

All together, nearly one pound of plutonium and more than 26 pounds of uranium have been seized, IAEA officials said.  Some officials, however, wondered how accurate the IAEA database was, according to the Times.  “Are we seeing half of the iceberg or only the tip,” one official said (Steven Erlanger, New York Times, Nov. 12).   

Some Reports “Should be Met With Much Skepticism”

Russia’s stockpiles of biological weapons “were always in the Soviet Union—and are now in Russia—well guarded,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.  Reports of the sale of Russian nuclear secrets were unproven “legends,” Putin said. 

Other officials agreed that claims of nuclear weapons and materials being smuggled out of Russia may be overestimated.  Reports that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network possesses 20 nuclear “suitcase bombs,” or that the Taliban has been offered tactical nuclear weapons from the Russian arsenal, “should be met with much skepticism,” said Morten Bremer, a nuclear terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Matthew Bunn, a member of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, said he has monitored many “anecdotal” incidents in the last several years.  “We don’t have confirmed evidence [of theft],” Bunn said.  “But the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence” (Jack/Cookson, Financial Times, Nov. 11).

Candidate vs. President

As a candidate, U.S. President George W. Bush seemed to approve of U.S. programs to help improve the security of Russian nuclear material and information, according to the Los Angeles Times.  At a Nov. 1999 event, Bush said “I will ask the Congress to increase substantially our insistence to dismantle as many of Russia’s weapons as possible as quickly as possible.”

“We not only ought to spend that money, we ought to increase that amount of money in the budget to make the world safer,” Bush said Nov. 21, 1999, in a call for more funding for the U.S. Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program, known as the Nunn-Lugar program.

As president, however, Bush has cut funding for nuclear material safety programs, according to the Times.  Bush’s first budget proposed spending close to 10 percent less on the Nunn-Lugar program, reducing the funding by more than $40 million.  The Bush administration is also not using any of the initial $20 billion antiterrorism funding to better secure Russian nuclear materials, the Times reported.

“This is a scandal,” said John Holden, chair of the arms control panel of the National Academy of Sciences.  “It is far cheaper and more efficient to protect both the knowledge and the material at their source than to try to figure out how to intercept them once they’ve been turned into a nuclear bomb somewhere” (Willman/Miller, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 11).

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Bin Laden: Nukes Available, Says Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden said nuclear weapons are available on the black market in Central Asia for $10 million to $20 million, according to Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. Mir spoke yesterday on CNN’s Larry King Live about the interview that he conducted last week with bin Laden, the primary suspect for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States (see GSN, Nov. 12).

Mir said bin Laden and his aide “gave me some indication that you can—if you have $10 million, $20 million—you can get these kind of weapons from the underworld mafia of the Central Asian states and some disgruntled Russian scientists.”

Although bin Laden claims he possesses nuclear weapons, the claim is most likely false, said several senior U.S. officials (CNN Larry King Live, Nov. 12).

(Click here to read Mir’s interview with bin Laden in the Pakistani newspaper DAWN.)

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India: Nuclear Arsenal Safe, Says Key Scientist

India’s nuclear arsenal is “absolutely safe” and under better safety standards than arsenals in many other countries, Indian missile expert Abdul Kalam said Sunday. Kalam was the architect of India’s ballistic missile program and, until yesterday, the principal scientific adviser to the Indian government (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 12). 

India should base decisions about developing longer-range missiles on what type of enemy India faces in the next decade, Kalam said. The nation’s current long-range missile, the Agni-II, reaches targets about 2,200 kilometers away.

Kalam was expected to step down from office yesterday and pursue working with high school students and other young people to promote science, the Statesman reported.  R. Chidambaram, former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, was planned to replace Kalam (India Statesman, Nov. 12).

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India-Russia: Kudankulam Equipment Delivery in 2002

Russia plans to start supplying equipment for India’s Kudankulam nuclear power plant at the beginning of 2002, said Viktor Kozlov, a Russian official involved with atomic exports (see GSN, Nov. 8).  “A Russian reactor will be delivered for Kudankulam in three years,” he added.  Construction is expected to last six to eight years.  About 300 Russian companies would produce supplies for the plant, Kozlov said. (Moscow Interfax, Nov. 8 in FBIS-SOV, Nov. 9).

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Pakistan: Nuclear Weapons Were Moved

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ordered Pakistan’s military to move its nuclear arsenal to at least six new secret locations within two days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, senior Pakistani officials told the Washington Post.  The order stemmed from concern that foreign countries could try to strike the arsenal. Musharraf also wanted to move the weapons out of military locations from which the United States might attack Afghanistan.

In addition to moving the nuclear arsenal, Musharraf reorganized how the military controls the weapons, including the previously unreported creation of a new Strategic Planning Division within the nuclear program directed by a three-star general, according to the Post.  The move was part of a broader reorganization of top military leaders to weed out officers sympathetic to Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime immediately prior to the beginning of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan on Oct. 7.  The new division’s creation followed the establishment of the National Command Authority in February 2000 to supervise the nuclear program.

The operational security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is now the responsibility of General Khalid Kidwai.  Kidwai has increased troops and anti-aircraft batteries guarding nuclear installations and supervised the relocation of elements of the arsenal, Pakistani military officials said.

Several Pakistani officials have allegedly expressed concern that India, the United States or Israel could attempt to neutralize its nuclear arsenal if they feared radical hostile forces hostile could obtain control of a nuclear weapon (see GSN, Oct. 30).  In 1999, Pakistan contacted the Taliban about the possibility of moving some nuclear weapons or components to Afghanistan to guard against a possible attack from India after Pakistani-supported guerillas invaded Indian territory, according to a recently retired Pakistani officer, who added, “The Taliban accepted the requests with open arms.”  The talks were only exploratory, and no nuclear devices were moved to Afghanistan, the officer said.

Nuclear Arsenal Secure, Musharraf Says

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure, Musharraf told the U.N. General Assembly Saturday.  “Pakistan is fully alive to the responsibilities of its nuclear status.  Let me assure you all that our strategic assets are well guarded and in safe hands,” he said (Moore/Khan, Washington Post, Nov. 11).

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were not ready to be fired, Musharraf added, indicating the warheads were separate from the delivery mechanisms, according to the Australian.  “I know there are apprehensions around the world, but I’m extremely sure … they are in very secure hands,” he said in an interview with ABC (Ian MacKinnon, Australian, Nov. 12).

Musharraf called reports that Pakistan could send nuclear weapons to China for safekeeping “ridiculous” (see GSN, Nov. 6).  “I don’t think China would allow this, nor are we interested in taking our strategic assets to another country,” he said in an interview with the Washington Post (Lally Weymouth, Washington Post, Nov. 11).

No Country Could Find Pakistan’s Nukes, Pakistani Experts Say

No country, including the United States, could find the locations of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, senior Pakistani nuclear experts told the Islamabad News.  Satellites are often unable to detect such weapons, according to one expert, adding, “There are wrong perceptions about [the] developed world’s capability of seeing everything through their satellites.” 

One expert said claims that Osama bin Laden, who the United States suspects of masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, or the Taliban could use a nuclear device were “hilarious” (Ansar Abbasi, Islamabad News, Nov. 8 in FBIS-NES, Nov. 9).

India and Pakistan Say Open to Nuclear Weapons Discussion

Pakistan is aware of its responsibility as a nuclear power and is ready to discuss how Pakistan and India can “create a stable South Asian security mechanism,” Musharraf said in his address to the United Nations Saturday.  “We are ready to discuss nuclear and missile restraints, as well as nuclear risk-reduction measures with India in a structured, comprehensive and integrated dialogue,” he said. 

Musharraf noted that Pakistan has declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing and was not the first country to initiate nuclear tests in the region.  “We are ready to formalize a bilateral treaty with India for [a] mutual test ban,” he said (Federal News Service transcript, Nov. 10).

India also follows a unilateral moratorium on nuclear test explosions, said Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a written response to Washington Post questions.  India has expressed serious concern about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal for years, he said.  India has twice suggested a set of nuclear confidence-building measures between the two countries, but Pakistan has expressed no interest, Vajpayee said (Washington Post, Nov. 9).

U.S. Offers Aid to Pakistan

During a meeting with the Pakistani president Saturday, U.S. President George W. Bush promised a new aid package (see GSN, Oct. 31) of about $900 million to help support the Musharraf regime in the face of increasing dissent in Pakistan as the United States bombs Afghanistan.  U.S. assistance would allow more than $1 billion in aid to Pakistan since sanctions against the country have been lifted (see GSN, Oct. 30).  The aid package would include funds to alleviate poverty, assist the refugee influx to Pakistan, enhance border security and anti-terrorism efforts and provide U.S. support for development projects through U.S. agencies, the International Monetary Fund and the Paris Club. 

“Pakistan’s efforts against terror are benefitting the entire world and linking Pakistan more closely with the world.  The United States wants to build these linkages,” Bush said.  Pakistan has asked for economic assistance, saying the war in Afghanistan would cost the country at least $2.5 billion in lost trade and tourism and the cost of caring for hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. 

In his speech to the United Nations, Musharraf called on the United States to continue support for Pakistan beyond the conflict with the Taliban and bin Laden, rather than abandon Pakistan as in the past.  “The people of Pakistan still suffer from the sense of abandonment after the Soviet withdrawal.  Pakistan hopes the mistakes of the past will not be forgotten,” Musharraf said (Wright/Orme, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 11).

Regarding the threat to global stability posed by proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, Bush and Musharraf agreed on the “need for a comprehensive approach to counter threats, including enhanced nonproliferation measures at the global and regional level,” according a joint statement released after their meeting (Krishnaswami, Hindu, Nov. 12).

No F-16s to Pakistan

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday the United States would not transfer F-16 fighter jets Pakistan bought in the 1980s, despite the new cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.  Powell said the United States has already compensated Pakistan for the purchase.  The transfer was blocked when the United States imposed an arms embargo on Pakistan for pursuing its nuclear weapons development program.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the aid package to Pakistan included “some military spare parts … but the bulk of this package is aimed at helping the Pakistani people” (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 11).

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Bin Laden: Got Nukes? Leaders Don’t Think So

Osama bin Laden claims he has nuclear weapons, according to an interview published by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn on Saturday (see GSN, Nov. 7). Bin Laden is suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

“I wish to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as deterrent,” he said.

Bin Laden did not acknowledge a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, but he said he believed that the deaths of innocent Muslims in the attacks were justified (Hamid Mir, Dawn, Nov. 10).

Officials in several governments said there is no evidence that bin Laden has nuclear weapons, but affirmed he might have low-tech weapons of mass destruction.

“I think it’s unlikely [bin Laden] has a nuclear weapon,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “It is certainly reasonable to assume he might very well have chemical or biological and possibly even radiation weapons” (Defense Department release, Nov. 11).

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said “There is no way [bin Laden] has nuclear weapons” (Patrick Moser, Agence France-Presse, Nov. 12).

Pakistan’s former army chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg dismissed bin Laden’s statement as a bluff, Dawn reported. He reassured potential skeptics that no foreigner ever had access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, and added that it was not likely that Afghanistan could amass the number of scientists, engineers and infrastruce necessary to build nuclear weapons (Dawn, Nov. 11).

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Reuters he thought it was “unlikely” that bin Laden had weapons of mass destruction. “At any rate, these weapons cannot be Russian or Soviet. I am confident of this,” he said (Reuters/New York Times, Nov. 10).

Israeli arms experts also dismissed bin Laden’s claims, but said that he might have material for radiological weapons (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 11).

When a reporter asked U.S. President George W. Bush whether bin Laden’s claim was believable, the President replied that “The only thing I know for certain about him is that he is evil” (Federal New Service transcript, Nov. 10).

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CTBT: United States Boycotts U.N. Conference

The United States yesterday refused to attend the U.N. Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, Nov. 12).

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, however, termed the treaty "a crucial element in the nonproliferation regime, " in conference opening remarks.

"We have a precious but fleeting opportunity to render this troubled world a safer place, free of the threat of nuclear weapons.  We must not let it pass," he said (U.N. release, Nov. 11).

The United States had been invited as a conference observer, but will not go, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Eliza Koch said.  "The purpose of this conference is to promote ratifications of the treaty, and the administration has made clear that it has no plans to ask the Senate to reconsider its 1999 vote on this issue," Koch said, referring to the administration under U.S. President George W. Bush.

Rebecca Johnson of the Institute for Disarmament and Diplomacy, however, said the boycott reveals "U.S. contempt for its allies just one day after President Bush said he wanted the world to work together to stop terrorists getting these deadly weapons" (Gerald Nadler, Associated Press, Nov. 11).

"Certainly they are welcome to attend, but so far they have chosen not to," U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said on the U.S. decision (Greg Seigle, Global Security Newswire, Nov. 12).

The State Department had originally favored sending a small delegation to the conference to help avoid conflict, according to the Washington Post.  The U.S. Defense Department, however, hoped that a U.S. absence would help bring about the end of the treaty, according to the Post. 

Russia Offers New Measures

Meanwhile, Igor Sergeev, a special assistant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, today proposed that the United States consider new negotiations aimed at improving verifications of treaty violations (Lynch, Washington Post).   

"In order to strengthen confidence-building measures after the entry into force" of the treaty, Russia was ready to consider developing "additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges going far beyond the treaty obligations," Sergeev said.  These measures would include exchanges of geological data and the results of experiments and the installation of additional sensors, according to Sergeev (Robert Halloway, Agence France-Presse, Nov. 11). 

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U.S.-Russia: Nuclear Reductions Just the Start

The United States and Russia were likely to reach an agreement on nuclear reductions, missile defense testing and a variety of other issues at the summit beginning tomorrow between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Nov. 9).

The agreement would not have traditional arms control features, such as parity and rigorous verification, according to Bush administration officials.  Strategic nuclear reductions would be verified by the inspection systems already existing under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, officials said.

The two sides would also work to develop a joint early-warning system outside Moscow and a joint radar satellite program, according to a senior official.

Russia has also proposed a new program under which Russian personnel would participate in dismantling U.S. ICBMs, much like U.S. technicians assist Russian missile dismantlement programs, according to the Post.

“Those discussions are ongoing, and I think they are quite promising for the future,” said a senior U.S. official.  “The whole notion is one of cooperation, not of confrontation.”

The agreement would also call for increased cooperation in the military, proliferation and counterterrorism fields, according to U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Nov. 11).

U.S. officials said the United States was seeking “significant proliferation element” as part of the new strategic framework, an apparent reference to Moscow’s continuing involvement in Iran’s nuclear program, according to the New York Times (Patrick Tyler, New York Times, Nov. 12).

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U.S.-Russia: Scientists Urge New Action at Summit

By Greg Webb

Global Security Newswire

Tomorrow’s summit between the United States and Russia offers the two nations an opportunity to take action on securing nuclear materials, strengthening nonproliferation agreements and solving problems with missile defense, according to a panel of scientists speaking Thursday at a meeting organized by the Federation of the American Scientists.

Loose Nukes

The scientists urged U.S. President George W. Bush to increase U.S. support of measures that would improve the security of nuclear materials in Russia.  Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin should “set up a joint commission to focus on how we’re going to get this job done and prevent the Osama bin Ladens of the world from gaining weapons of mass destruction,” said Frank von Hippel of Princeton University and former national security specialist in the Clinton White House.

Although the United States spends about $800 million a year to secure its nuclear weapon facilities, the Bush administration has reduced or eliminated many important programs to secure plutonium in Russia, von Hippel said.  According to von Hippel, the administration sought only $170 million for fiscal 2002 to support similar programs in Russia (see GSN, Oct. 31), despite cautions from some Republicans that Russian fissile materials were the biggest threat to U.S. security.

Russia deserved some of the blame as well for the slow pace of these programs, von Hippel said, noting that Russian security services, which were growing in stature in Russia, were “resistant” to transparency and monitoring measures.

“This would be a good time for the two presidents to actually focus on this problem,” von Hippel said.

Although unsecured plutonium poses great risks, terrorists would also like to acquire highly-enriched uranium (HEU), according to von Hippel.  “Unfortunately, that’s what is in greatest abundance in Russia,” he said.  HEU is attractive because it could be crafted into a nuclear weapon relatively easily, von Hippel said.

The United States should consider accelerating the U.S.-Russian HEU Deal under which the U.S. Enrichment Corp. purchases uranium that Russia has removed from retired nuclear warheads (see GSN, Sept. 27), von Hippel said.

Treaties or Handshakes?

Noting that Bush administration officials have recently expressed reluctance at entering into formal arms control agreements (see GSN, Nov. 9), the scientists urged the Bush administration to seek binding agreements with Russia on any nuclear weapon reductions it seeks. 

In 1991, U.S. President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev undertook reciprocal unilateral actions to withdraw tactical nuclear weapons to their territories, said former nuclear weapon scientist Richard Garwin, but such moves “don’t have the permanence” of formal agreements.

Whether to seek binding agreements “depends on whether you care what the other side does,” said former U.S. State Department arms control negotiator Robert Sherman.  “If you care, sooner or later, you’re going to regret it if you haven’t dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s.”

Missile Defense

Garwin predicted that U.S. missile defense plans “really won’t work,” even against the rogue nations against which the defenses are designed to protect.  Countermeasures are relatively easy to deploy against missile defense systems, even for an upstart ballistic missile program, Garwin said.

In addition, China would likely respond to a U.S. missile defense by adding countermeasures to its missile forces and by constructing even more missiles to ensure that China could strike the United States, Garwin said.

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Pakistan: Scientists Had Contact With Bin Laden

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and al-Qaeda, the network led by Osama bin Laden and the primary suspect organization for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, asked at least 10 of Pakistan’s top nuclear scientists for assistance developing a nuclear weapons program in Afghanistan within the last two years, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials said according to an article in today’s USA Today issue.  Several of the scientists agreed to help, although they told officials they would only work in Afghanistan with Pakistani government permission. 

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) last month detained 10 scientists involved in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program after receiving information from the FBI and CIA.  The ISI said the Taliban and al-Qaeda offers to the scientists were in the “early stages.”

The ISI said only one of the scientists had traveled to Afghanistan since receiving an offer, according to USA Today (Jack Kelley, USA Today, Nov. 12).  The Associated Press reported, however, that two of the scientists detained, Sultan Bashiru-din Mehmood (see GSN, Nov. 5) and Abdul Majid, said they met bin Laden at least twice during visits to Afghanistan related to the construction of a flour mill through their development organization.

The information heightens U.S. officials’ concern that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been seeking and could have weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Nov. 7).  Bin Laden claimed to possess nuclear weapons (see GSN, today) in an interview published Saturday in a Pakistani newspaper (Associated Press/Miami Herald, Nov. 12).

Pakistani nuclear scientists who had entered Afghanistan to discuss building a bomb were working with al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, according to a British official.  “It’s not the Taliban.  They wouldn’t know what to do with this.  The only people there who have the education and intelligence are in al-Qaeda,” the official said, adding, “We’re certain that there is direct contact” (DAWN, Nov. 12).

“I think it’s unlikely that [al-Qaeda has] a nuclear weapon, but on the other hand, with the determination they have, they may very well,” U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday.  U.S. officials have said the organization could have nuclear material for a “dirty bomb,” a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material (see GSN, Nov. 2). 

Pakistan has insisted its nuclear technology and material are secure (see GSN, today) (Kelley, USA Today, Nov. 12).

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