U.S.-Russia:  Nuclear Talks to Start in January

Russia and the United States will meet formally in January to discuss major cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced yesterday.  The two officials are in Brussels for NATO talks that start today.

U.S. President George W. Bush announced last month that the United States would cut its nuclear arsenal by about two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads (see GSN, Nov. 14), and Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed last week that the two countries reduce their stockpiles to between 1,500 and 2,200 warheads (see GSN, Dec. 17).

After meeting with Rumsfeld for about two hours, Ivanov said in a joint press conference that Russia’s top priority at the talks in January would be to hammer out an agreement between both countries on the cuts, including “levels of reductions and the time frame for those reductions ... [and] the issues of verification and transparency” (Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, Dec. 18).

The two countries would limit negotiations to the aggregate limits of deployed warheads and would not include the structure of the nuclear forces. Ivanov predicted the two countries would likely reach an agreement on the cuts by June (Pavel Koryashkin, ITAR-Tass, Dec. 18).

“One way to characterize what’s happened in the United States-Russian relationship is the way President Bush did—that we’re moving from mutual assured destruction to mutual assured cooperation,” Rumsfeld said (Loeb, Washington Post, Dec. 18).

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Russia:  Keep ICBMs Only, Arbatov Says

Russia should consolidate its strategic nuclear forces by integrating them back into the general armed forces and deploying only land-based ICBMs, said Duma Defense Committee Deputy Chairman Alexei Arbatov yesterday.

“When you have little money, you concentrate all your resources on what is best and strongest,” Arbatov said in a wide-ranging Moscow press conference on nuclear arms policy.  “You do not spread your resources thin, especially on areas where you have always been far behind and will stay this way forever.”

“All our limited resources should be focused on that single component which is really organic to Russia, in which Russia is ahead of everyone, and which suits Russia most of all, and that is, of course, our land-based missiles,” Arbatov said.

The two remaining legs of the Russian nuclear triad—bombers and submarines—should be maintained until their service lives are over, Arbatov said.  “These triads and diads are relics of the Cold War,” he said.

All of Russia’s strategic forces should be incorporated under the command of the armed services to conserve resources and maximize coordination, Arbatov said, suggesting that the forces to be incorporated include offensive strategic weapons, the Moscow missile defense system (see related GSN story, today), early-warning systems and space-based military systems.

Russian Deterrence in Doubt

Arbatov was concerned that the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would affect Russian security (see GSN, Dec. 13), contrary to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public statements (see GSN, Dec. 17).

After the recently announced nuclear reductions are completed, Russia would have about 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads, Arbatov said, plenty to overcome a limited U.S. missile defense.  Russian deterrence, however, needs to be considered from the perspective of Russia’s ability to retaliate after suffering an enemy’s first strike.

From that perspective, “I very much doubt that we will be able to penetrate [a U.S. national missile defense] under any and all circumstances,” Arbatov said.

“This is the hitch because in the first strike there may be 1,500 warheads in their silos.  In a retaliatory strike, depending on circumstances, there may be 15,” Arbatov said.

The Need for a Treaty

The U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions need to be codified by a treaty, Arbatov said (see related GSN story, today).  It could be a treaty with minimal verification provisions, but an agreement based on unilateral declarations “does not suit us,” he said.

“We have some unpleasant experience in terms of unilateral declarations connected with tactical nuclear weapons,” Arbatov said.  “[Former Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev and [former U.S. President George] Bush Sr., then [former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and Bush Sr. made declarations and nobody can sort out what is happening—that’s unilateral declarations for you.”

“It’s a complete mess, nobody knows who has destroyed what and who has withdrawn what and from where.  So, we don’t want the same to be repeated in the field of strategic weapons,” Arbatov said.

Chinese Implications

China would probably respond to the U.S. ABM Treaty withdrawal by expanding its strategic nuclear forces, Arbatov said.  “China has more than enough money for that,” he said.  “If we speak about strategic missiles, they [currently] have 20 missiles.  In ten years they may have 500 or perhaps 1,000.”

“To Russia, this is entirely bad news,” he said.

“Considering the cuts of Russian strategic forces which will continue anyway, the growth of Chinese forces creates additional problems for Russia because the Chinese nuclear potential has always been targeted on Russia,” Arbatov said.

In addition, “a Chinese buildup will prompt India to start building up its potential.  And that in turn will prompt Pakistan to start a buildup.  It may spur on the process of nuclear proliferation in threshold countries.  All these countries are close to Russia and all of them will be able to reach Russia with their carriers at an early stage.  So, to us it is bad news all round,” Arbatov said (Federal News Service transcript, Dec. 17.)

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U.S. Testing:  Officials Conduct Subcritical Nuclear Test

The United States conducted a successful subcritical nuclear experiment last week at its Nevada test site, according to the U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  The test, called Oboe 7, involved small amounts of nuclear material and was subcritical, meaning “no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurred,” an administration statement said.  Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California set off the experiment at 1 p.m. on Thursday.

The Oboe 7 was the 15^th such experiment the United States conducted since July 1997.  The experiments are designed to provide information about the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal without conducting full nuclear tests, which the United States froze indefinitely in 1992.  U.S. officials said they planned to conduct more experiments like the Oboe 7 in the future (Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dec. 14).

Anti-nuclear organizations have said the subcritical tests violate the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (Japan Economic Newswire, Dec. 13).  The United States signed the CTBT in 1996 but has not ratified it (Federation of American Scientists release, Dec. 18).

The Energy Department said the tests did not violate the treaty because no critical mass of fissile material was formed and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place during the experiments.

The test was originally scheduled for Wednesday but was delayed until Thursday due to operational support problems, the Energy Department said (Japan Economic Newswire).  A two-day strike by security guards was responsible for delaying the Oboe 7 test, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week (Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dec. 14).

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North Korea:  Nuclear Weapons Years Away, Says Report

North Korea has extracted sufficient plutonium to build one or two nuclear bombs but would need several years to build them, according to a South Korean Defense Ministry report published today. North Korea extracted 22 to 26 pounds of weapon-grade plutonium from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactors before 1994, the report said.  That year, North Korea struck a deal to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for newly designed nuclear reactors from a U.S.-led consortium (see GSN, Nov. 9).

According to the South Korean report, North Korea faced significant obstacles obtaining components to produce dependable nuclear devices.  Between 1983 and 1993, however, the country conducted at least 70 nuclear-related high-explosive tests, and it continued such tests until 1998.

“North Korea may have a capability of putting together a crude nuclear explosion device … but its technology is believed to be still in a rudimentary stage,” the report said.  “Even if it has manufactured an explosion device, it will be still low in dependability and it will take the North at least several years to turn the system into a weapon.”

North Korea Sunday repeated its refusal (see GSN, Dec. 10) to allow nuclear inspections (Sang-Hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 18).

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U.S.-Russia:  Putin Announces Nuclear Reductions

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to cut the Russian nuclear arsenal to a range of 1,500 to 2,200 warheads in response to a similar U.S. offer, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday.

“President Putin has now responded to [U.S. President George W. Bush’s] Washington-Crawford statement of reducing our strategic offensive inventory down to a range of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed warheads,” Powell said (Elaine Monaghan, Reuters/Yahoo.com, Dec. 13).

The announced U.S. reduction (see GSN, Nov. 14) is a “pretty firm number,” Powell said, but the United States welcomed discussion on the issue.  “We want to hear why [Russia] feels that particular number is appropriate,” Powell said.  “Obviously our range fits within their range.  So there’s a way to square this circle.  I don’t know that it’s a problem” (Federal News Service transcript, Dec. 13).

The United States and Russia will continue work on a new arms control framework in order to bring everything into “some legal form” that the two presidents could sign when Bush travels to Moscow next year, Powell said (see GSN, Dec. 11). 

Powell said that the recent U.S. decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty had not triggered a new arms race with Russia (see related GSN story, today).

“Quite the contrary,” he said.  “The Russians have said they don’t see this as a threat to their national security and secondly they are going to go ahead with very deep cuts in their strategic offensive forces” (Monaghan, Reuters/Yahoo.com).

Putin Wants Cuts Codified

Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Russia’s support for a legally binding treaty to codify the strategic nuclear reductions.

“I believe these agreements should have legal treaty form,” Putin said in an interview Thursday.  “I think without that, it could so happen that partners would have suspicions and misgivings about what was happening with the other party’s weapons—whether they had actually been reduced, what were the actual numbers, where the weapons were, had they been destroyed or had they just been dismantled and put in storage somewhere.  If they are stored they constitute so-called ‘reconstitution potential.’  In other words, the possibility would remain that those weapons could be put back on missiles,” Putin said.

“In other words, if we do have such a legal treaty, legal agreement, a transparent one with proper verification measures, the entire world could be safer and feel calmer,” Putin said.

Russian Nuclear Plans

Although Russia reserved the right to deploy more multiple-warhead ICBMs, Putin said Russia had no reason to do so at this time.  Russia’s deterrence capability would be secure even if the United States deployed a limited missile defense system, he said (Financial Times, Dec. 14).

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U.S.-China: High-Level Talks Will Not Be Negotiations

U.S.-Chinese discussions about strategic nuclear weapons would differ from U.S.-Russian discussions, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.  U.S. President George W. Bush had offered new, high-level talks to China (see GSN, Dec. 14) when he telephoned Chinese President Jiang Zemin to inform him of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see GSN, Dec. 13).

Boucher said the new talks will not be “a formal negotiation with the Chinese on missiles.  It’s not the same, say, as the kind of discussions we will have with the Russians about offensive cuts and bringing forward provisions of arms control.”

“Our discussions with the Chinese have been ongoing consultations and discussions about strategic issues, about our missile defense plans, seeking to gain their understanding, seeking to make sure that they knew what we were thinking, where we were going, and to hear back their views from them.  So that is a process that has been ongoing that we will continue,” Boucher said (U.S. State Department release, Dec. 14).

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North Korea:  Officials Visit South Korean Nuclear Facilities

A delegation of 20 North Korean officials arrived in South Korea yesterday to begin a two-week visit to observe South Korean nuclear power plants, South Korean officials said.  The group included officials involved in the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea (see GSN, Dec. 11).

“The North Koreans are scheduled to look at nuclear power stations which have light-water reactors and plants that are producing parts to be used in the North Korean reactor construction,” said an official for the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization.  KEDO is an international consortium that helps build the reactors in exchange for freezing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program (Korea Herald, Dec. 17).

The North Korean delegation is scheduled to visit nuclear power plants in Ulchin on the east coast and Kori on the southeast coast, and Doosan Heavy Industries Company on the south coast, where reactors for the North Korean plants are under construction, according to the Associated Press.

KEDO is responsible for training hundreds of North Koreans to operate the two reactors once they are installed in North Korea.  In addition to this month’s delegates, the organization expects to train 290 more North Koreans in South Korea by the end of next year (Associated Press/South China Morning Post, Dec. 17).

“It is the first time for North Korea to get access to the facilities,” said a senior KEDO official, according to Agence France-Presse (Jun Kwan-Woo, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 17).

North Korean officials visited nuclear power plants in Spain and Sweden last month (Korea Herald, Dec. 18).

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IAEA:  U.N. Urges Compliance With Agency Activities

The U.N. General Assembly Friday urged all member states to support International Atomic Energy Agency efforts to prevent terrorist attacks involving nuclear and other radioactive materials.  Assembly members adopted a resolution calling on states to strengthen the safety of their nuclear installations, to implement and enhance safeguard agreements on nuclear materials and to assist the IAEA’s work.  The resolution also urged states to work with the IAEA to strengthen technical assistance for developing countries.

The assembly called on North Korea to comply with its safeguard agreements and to allow the IAEA to verify the country's compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, Dec. 3).  The assembly said it could not conclude whether nuclear material had been diverted from North Korea.

The resolution also addressed nuclear issues in Middle Eastern states.  It requested that those states comply with IAEA safeguards on all nuclear activities, adhere to international nonproliferation regimes and establish a nuclear weapon-free zone.

The resolution received 150 votes in favor with only North Korea voting against it.  Cote d'Ivoire and Laos abstained (U.N. release, Dec. 14).

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