Pakistan:  Washington Still Wants Pakistani Nuclear Scientists

U.S. officials have renewed requests for Pakistan to turn over two Pakistani nuclear scientists to the United States, the Islamabad newspaper Khabrain reported Tuesday.  Pakistan, however, has refused to hand over the scientists — Sultan Bashiru-din Mehmood and Chaudry Abdul Majid, both of whom formerly worked for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission — citing the secrecy of Pakistan’s nuclear program (see GSN, March 4).

Pakistan first detained Mehmood and Majid on Oct. 23, 2001, because the United States had requested that authorities investigate them, according to Khabrain (see GSN, Oct. 26, 2001).  U.S. authorities were concerned that the scientists, who had also worked in Afghanistan through their nongovernmental organization called Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, had contacts with al-Qaeda, Khabrain reported.

Pakistani and FBI officials investigated the scientists in Pakistan, and Pakistani officials later released them after a month-long detention.  Pakistani authorities have established security measures at the scientists’ residences in Islamabad, sources told Khabrain (Aizaz Hussain Syed, Islamabad Khabrain, July 9 in FBIS-NES, July 10).

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U.S.-Russia:  Powell Says U.S. Plans to Reduce Arsenal to 4,600 Warheads

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States plans to reduce its strategic nuclear warhead holdings to roughly 4,600, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional committee yesterday. 

Such a level would mean the United States intends to keep at least 2,400 warheads in reserve above the deployed warhead numbers agreed to in May by U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin when they signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (see GSN, July 9).

That agreement, also called the Moscow Treaty, would require each party to remove all but 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads from operational service by December 31, 2012.  Powell defined “operationally deployed” warheads to mean re-entry vehicles on ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles plus weapons loaded on bombers or kept in storage facilities at bomber bases.

U.S. officials have not said exactly how many strategic nuclear warheads the United States currently has deployed and in reserve.  In what is considered the most authoritative nongovernmental estimate, the Natural Resources Defense Council puts the number at 6,480 plus 342 spare warheads.  It is not clear when the new level would be achieved and if the number quoted by Powell includes spares or warheads assigned to submarines in overhaul.

The treaty, which requires Senate approval before ratification, would not require dismantlement or destruction of any warheads or delivery vehicles.  Administration officials have said many of the downloaded warheads would be kept in reserve either as spares or as a hedge against some uncertain threat that may materialize.

Russian officials have not said whether they plan to destroy any of their offloaded weapons.

Until yesterday, administration officials had given no indication of how many warheads they plan to keep in the arsenal.

“The total number that I believe you will hear from Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, both deployed and in reserve, is somewhere around 4,600,” said Powell, during a question and answer period of a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Powell said he was offering the estimate “in a very tentative way, because I think Don Rumsfeld should really give you that definitively.”  Rumsfeld is expected to testify about the treaty July 17.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Don Sewell said today the Pentagon could not confirm the number, as a final decision involving discussions with the State Department has not yet been made.

“I’ve already spoken to the forces policy folks … no definitive number that can be released yet,” he said.

Powell’s announcement received brief praise from Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), who chairs the committee.

“You’ve just told me something I find very encouraging,” he said.

“Well, good.  When Secretary Rumsfeld does that, that means if we stick to that, we are clearly going to destroy at least a thousand of these warheads, you know, up to 1,200, and maybe more,” Biden said.

Explaining the New Levels

During the hearing, several senators including Biden criticized the Moscow Treaty for, among other things, not requiring destruction of any Russian or U.S. warheads and for not requiring that more warheads be taken out of operational service.  Citing Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and China, Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) said he could not imagine what kind of threat from any of those countries would require the United States to keep 1,700 operationally deployed warheads.

“Only by dismantling and destroying these devastating weapons can we truly achieve the goal of meaningful nuclear arms reduction,” he said.

Powell explained the administration’s rationale for selecting the 1,700 to 2,200 level.

“In this period of change, with new partnerships but with still a great number of unknowns out there … the Defense Department made a judgment that we could safely, in their view, go down to a range of 1,7(00) to 2,200,” he said.

Powell said analysts determined that the United States would be safe with that number of operationally deployed forces no matter how Russia configured its weapons.

“If they had said, ‘Okay, you’re going from 1,700 to 2,200; we’re going to stay at 6,000, the START I level, or the START II level,’ President Bush would have said, ‘Fine.  I’m safe with 1,700 to 2,200.  So do what you think you have to do,’” he said.

Prior to Powell’s announcement, Biden questioned the need to maintain a reserve of thousands of warheads.

“My concern is it’s not that we’re going to 1,700 or 2,200, but we’ve maintained the capacity to go back to 5,700 to 6,200, and what the rest of the world reads from that and what everybody else thinks their requirements are.”

New Thinking on MIRVs

Senators also criticized the new treaty for not eliminating ICBMs with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles.  The unratified START II Treaty, which was abandoned by the administration in favor of the Moscow Treaty, had required elimination of MIRVs.

“Multiple-warhead ICBMs are a cheap way to maximize Russian forces, but they are vulnerable because an attack there can destroy those warheads with only one or two of its own.  Russia, therefore, is likely to keep those missiles on hair trigger,” said Biden.

He said U.S. officials told the Russians, “We see you as a partner.  So you can do whatever you think you have to do for your security.  You can MIRV your missiles.  You can keep more.  You can go lower.  Do what you think you need.”

“If the Russians want to keep all of them on land-based ICBM’s and they want to MIRV them, fine” Powell said. 

That appeared to represent a change in thinking for Powell.

During former President George H. W. Bush’s administration, the view on MIRVs was different.  That administration negotiated and signed START II, the highlight of which was the agreement to eliminate multiple-warhead ICBMs such as the Russian SS-18 and U.S. MX missiles.

“Elimination of heavy ICBMs and the effective elimination of all other multiple-warhead ICBMs will put an end to the most dangerous weapons of the Cold War,” Bush wrote Jan. 12, 1993, in a letter submitting the treaty to the Senate for its approval. 

In a July 1993 hearing defending the treaty, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Powell called multiple-warhead ICBMs “the most destabilizing weapons in our inventories.”

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India-Pakistan:  Powell Plans Visit to South Asia

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to visit Pakistan and India this month in an attempt to further reduce tensions in the region, he said yesterday (see GSN, July 2).

“We are anxious to get through this crisis and see a dialogue begin between the two sides so that they can start to move forward to find a solution to the problem in Kashmir ultimately,” Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  He plans to visit the two nuclear-armed rivals on his way to a meeting of Asian countries in Brunei that begins July 31, a senior State Department official said.

Tensions surged between India and Pakistan in December 2001 when militants attacked the Indian Parliament and in May when others raided an Indian Army camp.  The two countries began to back away from the brink of war last month after visits by high-level U.S. officials and a promise from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to crack down on militant infiltration (see GSN, June 25).

U.S. officials believe militant infiltration into India’s portion of the disputed Kashmir territory has decreased significantly, but they want Musharraf to continue to crack down, a U.S. official said.

“We do want to keep the ball rolling in reducing the tension further,” the official said.  “We know Musharraf has made a commitment, and we want to make sure he keeps it.”

Powell said he has “spent an enormous amount of time” talking to both leaders on the telephone and wants both countries to “understand that the United States is interested in them beyond this crisis” (Elaine Monaghan, Reuters/Boston Globe, June 10).

As long as the dispute over Kashmir remains unresolved, there will be more crises and pressures for arms competition between the two countries, Lee Feinstein, former deputy director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, wrote in the current issue of Arms Control Today (see GSN, June 10).

“Sustained American diplomatic engagement needs to supplant crisis diplomacy as Washington’s main tool for reducing the risk of war between these two nuclear nations,” Feinstein wrote (Lee Feinstein, Arms Control Today, July/August).

For further information, see:

Stimson Center Background on Kashmir

Pakistani Government

Indian Government

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U.S.-Russia:  Senators Take on Moscow Treaty With Powell

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today offered a bipartisan mixture of praise and harsh criticism of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty signed in May.  The committee heard testimony from Secretary of State Colin Powell in the first of a series of treaty hearings.

The treaty, which needs Senate approval before U.S. President George W. Bush can ratify it, is “a very important step” in improving U.S.-Russian relations, said committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.). 

The 1«-page agreement would require each country to reduce its deployed strategic nuclear warheads from an estimated 6,000 today to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012, according to Powell.  U.S. officials have said they will comply by reducing the number of operationally deployed strategic warheads, mostly by removing warheads from delivery vehicles.

Biden expressed concern that the treaty lacks a schedule for making its reductions, has no verification provisions, does not require either side to eliminate any warheads or delivery platforms and does not prevent Russia from deploying its multiple-warhead SS-18 ICBMs.  He also questioned why the treaty does not address tactical nuclear warheads.

“I have some concerns … about the nature of the treaty and what it means and what it doesn’t,” he said.

Ranking committee member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said the treaty “marks an important step toward a safer world.”

He questioned, however, whether current U.S.-Russian cooperation to secure nuclear materials across Russia would be sufficient to safeguard the warheads Russia would remove from its delivery vehicles in accordance with the terms of the treaty.

“I share some of the concerns and fears expressed by the critics,” he said.

Lugar said the treaty “is really in jeopardy” — as are the Bush administration’s military efforts against terrorists — if money cannot be channeled into new Cooperative Threat Reduction programs designed to protect nuclear and other WMD materials.

In April, the administration announced that Bush was unable to certify, as required by law, that Russia was meeting certain nonproliferation commitments, preventing the release of some CTR funds.  A joint House-Senate conference is currently considering legislation to allow waiving the certification requirement.

Lugar said the failure to certify is holding up several CTR activities.

Strong Support

Powell offered strong support for the treaty — which was negotiated by the State Department’s Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton — stressing it would maintain U.S. flexibility.

“The treaty codifies each country’s commitment to make deep strategic nuclear weapons reductions in a flexible and legally binding manner,” Powell said.  He said the reductions would result in the “lowest levels possible consistent with our military requirements, alliance obligations, and reflecting the new nature of our strategic relations.”

In his prepared testimony, Powell acknowledged limitations to the treaty.

“There are things that [the treaty] did not do,” he said.  “For example, it did not specifically eliminate warheads.”

He also said the treaty allows Russia to keep multiple warheads on its ICBMs — negating a provision of the now-defunct START II Treaty (see GSN, June 14) — but added that in light of the emerging U.S. relationship with Russia, the United States would not consider that a problem.

U.S. officials have told their Russian counterparts, “You can MIRV your missiles.  Do what you think you need,” Powell said.

Further Skepticism

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) offered the most comprehensive criticism, challenging several of the administration’s fundamental explanations for what the treaty would accomplish.

“It seems to be that the goal of accountability, verifiability, mutual destruction of weapons and ultimately moving to a more stable regime without the [Russian] SS-18 out there is completely neutered simply to arrive at some agreement that says we are going to have in 10 years less warheads on missiles, but not necessarily unavailable for future use,” he said.

Questioning the need to retain as many warheads as the treaty would allow given the administration’s view of a new relationship with Russia, Kerry suggested the levels are unnecessarily high for addressing other likely threats such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and possibly China.

“Why can’t you go below 1,700?  What is the rationale for 1,700?” he said.

“This treaty leaves in place what START II would have destroyed, which is the ability of the Russians to have an SS-18 with 10 warheads on it.  It was always a goal of ours to try to reduce because that is perceived as a more destabilizing weapon because of the ‘use or lose’ theory,” he said.

Kerry further criticized the treaty for relying on the START I mechanism for verification, which was not designed to verify warhead numbers.  Powell said U.S. officials have seven years to negotiate a verification mechanism for the new treaty.

Clearer Definition

Kerry also criticized repeated assertions by administration officials that the treaty would reduce the size of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads, arguing that many of the warheads would not necessarily go away but could be stored for future use.

“I’m told that in addition to the 2,200 limit in the deployed strategic nuclear warheads, if you add in the substantial number of nondeployed inactive and active reserve warheads, and the substantial number of tactical nuclear weapons, we would have numbers way in excess of the 2,200 warheads.  So there is a certain fiction here in addition.”

Biden expressed concern about the undismantled warheads.  “My concern is it is not that we are going down to 1,700 to 2,200, but it is that we could quickly go back up to 5,700, and what that says to the rest of the world,” he said.

Powell in his testimony indicated that the phrase “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads” — the target of the reductions — was in fact very specifically defined to exclude weapons in storage or on reserve.

“For the purposes of this treaty, the United States considered operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to be reentry vehicles on intercontinental nuclear missiles in their launchers, reentry vehicles on submarine-launched ballistic missiles in their launchers on board submarines and nuclear armaments loaded on heavy bombers or stored in the weapon storage areas of heavy bomber bases,” he said.

Powell said that spare nuclear warheads stored at bomber bases also would not count toward the treaty targets.  Officials also have said warheads assigned to submarines in overhaul also would not be counted.

Some of the downloaded warheads would be stored and some destroyed, Powell said, without offering precise numbers.  The administration has not said precisely how many warheads it may choose to destroy.

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Russia:  Strategic Nuclear Forces Declining

Russia has removed more than 600 strategic nuclear warheads from service over the last year and has reduced 200 nonstrategic nuclear weapons, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported this month.  Russia continues to have 8,400 operational nuclear warheads as of mid-2002, according to the Bulletin.

Officials are expected to reduce the stockpile of operationally deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012 — in accordance with a U.S.-Russian agreement signed in May — or earlier, because the country is shifting resources to emphasize conventional forces, according to the Bulletin (see GSN, June 21).

In parallel to its nuclear reductions, Russia has also significantly decreased ballistic missile submarine patrols due to a smaller submarine fleet, budget constraints and safety concerns in the wake of the August 2000 sinking of the Kursk submarine (see GSN, June 28).  Russia conducted 37 patrols in 1991 and only one in 2001, according to the U.S. Navy.  The Bulletin noted, however, that some ballistic missile submarines could launch ballistic missiles while in port.

Russia was expected to eliminate all of its nonstrategic ground forces nuclear weapons before the end of 2001, but officials announced in April this year that they are still in the process of scrapping nuclear warheads for tactical missiles, nuclear artillery shells and nuclear mines.  They reaffirmed that they are no longer producing those warheads, and that the country will eliminate all such weapons by 2004 as long as there are sufficient funds, the Bulletin reported.

Some Increases in Delivery Systems

Russia is increasing arsenals in some areas, the Bulletin reported.  Officials deployed five new SS-27 ICBMs in 2001, bringing the total number of SS-27s to 29.  The country might deploy six more this year and will probably have 50 to 60 SS-27s deployed by the end of 2005, but that number is lower than the 160 to 220 previously expected.

Three more Tu-160 Blackjack bombers also are under construction, and the air force might receive one late this year or in early 2003, the Bulletin reported (see GSN, Jan. 14).  There are also plans to modernize and extend the lives of older Tu-160s, allowing them to carry “new types of missiles with conventional and nuclear warheads,” according to Air Force Commander in Chief Vladimir Mikhaylov (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August).

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North Korea:  High-Level Talks Possible at ASEAN Forum

The United States and North Korea are considering resuming high-level talks on July 31 during a Brunei meeting for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, according to Brunei foreign affairs officials.  U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun are scheduled to attend the forum.

The United States last week withdrew an offer for July 10 meetings partly due to a brief naval battle between North Korea and South Korea (see GSN, July 3).  Powell said today that the clash had been a “deliberate provocation” by North Korea.

Brunei foreign affairs officials said there are indications from both countries that a U.S.-North Korean meeting is still important and that the regional forum would be “a convenient time to hold such talks,” the Borneo Bulletin reported Friday, according to Agence France-Presse.  The Foreign Affairs Ministry, however, said it had not received any official notice that talks would occur during the forum.

North Korea might also use the forum to hold talks with Japanese and South Korean officials, diplomatic sources said.  North Korea said Thursday that it would continue to pursue dialogue with South Korea, despite the naval clash.

The ASEAN Regional Forum, the main security umbrella body for the Asia-Pacific region, includes 22 countries and the European Union, according to Agence France-Presse (Bandar Seri Begawan, Agence France-Presse, July 5).

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Ukraine:  Kiev Completes SS-24 Dismantlement

Ukraine has dismantled the last of its former Soviet SS-24 ICBMs, ITAR-Tass reported last week (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2001).  The solid fuel from the missiles has been taken to a chemical plant near Pavlohrad for disposal, which is expected to be completed by 2007 (ITAR-Tass, July 3 in FBIS-SOV, July 3).

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