Iran:  Tehran’s IAEA Representative Calls for Additional Protocol

Iran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday that he wants his government to sign the Additional Protocol, which would allow intrusive inspections of Tehran’s nuclear facilities (see GSN, July 24).

The protocol was “not conceived just for Iran or Third World countries, and sooner or later all IAEA member states will have to sign up,” Ali Akbar Salehi said.

“I hope that we can overcome the problem by the next IAEA board of governors meeting in September through the measures that top officials are going to take in the coming month,” he added, noting that the Additional Protocol would ease international pressure on Iran (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 27).

Experts, however, are skeptical that Iran will sign the protocol by September, BBC.com reported (BBC.com, July 27).

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North Korea:  Talks Between Beijing, Pyongyang Progressing Slowly

Chinese efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula are not making much progress, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said today (see GSN, July 25).

“The negotiating process between North Korea and China is not speedy, but has slowed down a bit,” Yoon said.  “North Korea holds the key.  The ball now is in North Korea’s court,” he added.

China is currently attempting to arrange trilateral talks with North Korea and the United States.

“No one can tell for sure what the timing of the talks will be,” Yoon said.  “Since North Korea has yet to respond, we can’t predict the timing.  We need to wait,” he said (Kim Kyoung-wha, Reuters, July 28).

Yoon said he has lost his early optimism that talks could begin soon.

“At the beginning I believed it was possible to resume the talks at an early date,” Yoon said.  “But as time passes, the North Korean-Chinese consultation is slowing down, rather than speeding up.  We need to wait,” he added (Agence France-Presse, July 28).

John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, is in Beijing to discuss the nuclear standoff with Chinese officials, Agence France-Presse reported today.  Bolton is also scheduled to visit South Korea and Japan this week (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28).

At a press conference today in Beijing, Bolton said China has worked to resolve the crisis but the U.N. Security Council should address the issue.

“I am not sure that there’s anything else specifically that we can think of that the government here could do that they haven’t already tried,” he said.  “Those who say that the Security Council is not the appropriate place to go have to take into account the impact of their statements on the long-term significance of the potential role of the council in a variety of disputes,” Bolton added (John Ruwitch, Reuters/MSNBC.com, July 28).

Roh Says Nonaggression Treaty Unnecessary

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said yesterday that the United States does not need to sign an nonaggression treaty with Pyongyang, a move that North Korea has been calling for throughout the crisis.

“I don’t think we need to give this particular form of legal assurance to North Korea,” Roh said in a U.S. television interview.

He also dismissed reports that North Korea has made extensive progress in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods.

“Both of our governments think that North Korea’s claims are exaggerated.  Specifically, the argument that it has already completed reprocessing plutonium and that it is very close to developing a nuclear weapon.  I think these arguments are exaggerated,” Roh said.

Despite the reprocessing reports, “when we look at the analysis, even if they did reprocess the plutonium, it was done on a very small scale,” he added (Federal News Service transcript, July 27).

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Russia:  Moscow Purchases Soviet-Era ICBMs from Ukraine

Russia has purchased Soviet-era SS-19 ICBMs from Ukraine and has begun work on new advanced ballistic missile submarines, officials said Friday (see GSN, Oct. 10, 2002).

While Ukraine has dismantled most of its former Soviet arsenal, it decided in October to sell about 30 retained SS-19s to Russia, according to the Associated Press.  Interfax-Military News Agency reported Friday that the missile transfer has been completed.

Russia’s purchase of the ICBMs is an easy way for Moscow to increase its strategic capabilities, said Alexander Pikayev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow office.

“It will allow Russia to save funds that would have to be spent on building expensive new missiles,” he said.

In addition, a new nuclear submarine armed with advanced ICBMs is set to enter into service in 2006, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Friday (Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press/Boston Globe, July 27).

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Israel:  IAEA to Discuss Tel Aviv’s Nuclear Program

The International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to discuss Israel’s long-suspected nuclear weapons program during the agency’s next general conference, scheduled to be held in Vienna Sept. 15-19, Hi Pakistan reported today (see GSN, June 30).

The IAEA agreed to discuss Israel’s nuclear program at the request of Arab members, according to Hi Pakistan.  A number of Arab states have compiled a fact sheet on Israel’s nuclear program to be sent to IAEA members before the September meeting.  Some experts believe that Israel possesses between 200 to 300 nuclear warheads, Hi Pakistan reported (Hi Pakistan, July 28).

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United States:  Quality Issues Delay Minuteman Upgrades

U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman will be late in delivering rebuilt rocket motors for U.S. nuclear missiles because of problems at a subcontractor’s facility, Bloomberg.com reported yesterday (see GSN, June 11).

The deliveries are behind schedule because of “systemic quality problems” at a United Technologies Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion plant.  Delivery of the rocket motors, which are being rebuilt for the Minuteman III ICBM arsenal, will not be back on schedule until August 2005, according to Air Force documents.

The discovery of the problems has highlighted “the systemic quality problem that exists at Pratt & Whitney,” said Air Force Major Heidi Fier, program manager for the Minuteman III Propulsion Replacement program, in an April 25 report.

Northrop Grumman runs the $6 billion, 15-year effort to modernize the Minuteman III missile fleet (Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg.com, July 27).

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U.S.-Russia:  Washington Allows Plutonium Disposition Agreement to Lapse

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — As expected, a 1998 U.S.-Russian agreement on plutonium disposition was allowed to expire this week because of U.S. concerns that the agreement had insufficient liability protections for U.S. officials and contractors, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed today.

Known as the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, the measure provides for scientific and technical cooperation between the United States and Russia on the withdrawal of plutonium from nuclear military programs.

“I cannot understand why the administration would let key aspects of the program to get rid of so much weapons-grade plutonium lapse.  Keeping fissile material out of the hands of terrorists seems a critical step in the war on terrorism,” U.S. Representative Ellen Tauscher, who has been a vocal proponent of maintaining such programs, said today.

The expiration follows the announcement Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Department that another 1998 threat-reduction measure, the Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement, will be allowed to expire in September unless Russia agrees to changes in liability provisions.  Tauscher and five other Democrats wrote the Bush administration this week to protest the move (see GSN, July 23).

The source of U.S. insistence on the liability language changes is the State Department, according to NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes.

“We just want to proceed with our programs, essentially, and we don’t want to get bogged down in these legal issues, but … the State Department is insisting on some legal changes on the liability issues,” Wilkes said.

Wilkes said no new projects could be started under the plutonium agreement now that it has lapsed, but he added that “there’s a lot that’s already in the pipeline that’s been planned.” 

“This should have no short-term effect, because we fully support the program, and we have not stopped. … We are continuing work,” he added.

In any case, he added, “We anticipate this issue is going to be resolved.”

The Washington director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Leonard Spector, called it “unfortunate that there is this perturbation in the plutonium disposition program” but added that it “appears that, in this particular case, the impact of the agreement lapsing will not have a significant impact overall.”

The Energy Department indicated Tuesday that it expects to reinstate the NCI agreement once the liability concerns are resolved, and Wilkes said the same sequence of events is possible in the case of the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement.

Some aspects of the plutonium agreement are also covered by the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement, and experts have said activities carried out under the auspices of the 1998 agreement could conceivably continue under the 2000 text.  Wilkes said today, “There’s maneuverability room, I guess, between the two agreements.”

A liability protocol to the 2000 agreement has yet to be negotiated.  The Bush administration has been seeking a single liability standard for all threat reduction programs that would be similar to the one established in the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction “umbrella agreement.” The provisions in that agreement assign Russia near-total liability for damages and injuries that occur in the context of activities carried out under the agreement.

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CTBT:  Diplomats Push for Nuclear Test Ban Amid Setbacks

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — With mixed success, a number of nations have recently intensified efforts to persuade a dozen key countries, including the United States, to ratify the treaty banning all nuclear weapons test explosions.

Diplomats from Austria, Finland and Japan have been pressing their counterparts around the globe to support the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by providing their full dues payments or by signing and ratifying the treaty.

Last month, the European Union also said it would make demarches to national governments urging them to sign and ratify the pact.  Three U.N. disarmament promotion centers stationed in Latin America, Africa and Asia also have received funding from Austria to advocate treaty ratification.

The efforts are being made in anticipation of a Vienna conference scheduled for early September to promote the treaty’s entry into force.  To take effect, the treaty requires 44 specific countries to ratify the accord, but only 32 have done so.  Holdout nations include China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Vietnam and the United States, which signed the treaty in 1996.

In a breakthrough, Algeria deposited its instruments of ratification last week (see GSN, July 17).

“We are hopeful that some of the remaining 12 will do it still even before the meeting takes place,” said Tom Groenberg, Finland’s ambassador to the organization responsible for implementing the treaty.

India Will Be Absent

Despite the recent efforts to promote the treaty, signs suggest that entry into force will not occur soon.  In particular, India has indicated that it will not participate in the September conference, Groenberg said.

India has previously opposed the treaty, arguing that a nuclear testing ban that was not unaccompanied by progress toward global nuclear disarmament would unfairly help preserve a nuclear weapons advantage for some states.  India and Pakistan each conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and are the only nations to conduct such tests since the treaty was opened for signature in 1996.

U.S. officials also have indicated they will not send a representative to the conference, saying they should not participate in encouraging other countries to ratify in light of the Bush administration’s expressed opposition to U.S. ratification, Global Security Newswire reported this month (see GSN, July 9).

The administration has said the United States might someday need to resume testing to address potential problems with its nuclear warheads stockpile or possibly to test new weapons.

Perhaps of greatest concern is North Korea, which is not expected to attend, and which experts suspect might in the coming months attempt a nuclear weapons test explosion to prove it has developed a nuclear weapons capability.

“I think there is an urgency today, which is as high today as when the treaty was negotiated in the middle 1990s,” Groenberg said.

A North Korean test, he said, “would certainly be a blow and is going to weaken the understanding which has emerged [that] … there is, after all, a moratorium,” he said.

Realistically, Groenberg said, the treaty would not likely enter into force in the next three years.

Prospects for Additional Successes Seen

Still, he and Austrian Ambassador Thomas Stelzer, the current six-month chairman of the treaty’s preparatory commission, see additional areas for near-term success.

Some of the remaining holdouts have not ratified simply for technical reasons or “minor issues,” Stelzer said.

“There is a very clear technical obstacle in the case of Colombia.  It is an internal issue that is about to be resolved,” he said.  “Also, in the case of Indonesia, I hear they are also very close to ratifying,” Stelzer added.

Other countries, though, may not be as close.

“It’s very difficult to believe China would ratify before the United States had ratified,” Stelzer said.

According to Groenberg, representatives from Austria, Finland and Japan have approached the Bush administration on the matter.

“The administration has made it clear that they are not going to support ratification of the treaty,” Stelzer noted.

Israel and Egypt would be likely to follow the U.S. lead on the matter, he said, adding that Iran “has been a little more cautious about ratification until specific neighbors in the region have ratified.”

The country stopped sending monitoring station data back to Vienna last year, citing the treaty’s nonratified status, and has not resumed the flow (see GSN, March 8, 2002).  

With respect to the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Stelzer said, “my judgment would be it is just a matter of organization.  There are different priorities right now.”

Pakistan, meanwhile, has indicated it would ratify the treaty as soon as India does, he said.

Most critical, Stelzer said, is U.S. ratification.  “It’s my own personal view that if the United States ratified, all of the others would ratify,” he said.

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North Korea I:  Biden Wants Peace Pact, Aide Says

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wants the White House to agree to a nonaggression pact with North Korea if Pyongyang agrees to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, a congressional aide said yesterday (see GSN, July 24).

Negotiations will not resolve the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula “if either side feels they are negotiating under the gun,” said Frank Jannuzi, an aide to Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.).

Washington wants Pyongyang to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but North Korea has said that it needs to develop nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. attack.  U.S. President George W. Bush has said he wants to resolve the situation peacefully, but he has pointedly refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes against North Korean nuclear or military sites.

Jannuzi spoke at the Korea Peace Forum in Washington, where speakers from a variety of South Korean and Korean American organizations called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

“Our diplomacy must be resolute but creative,” Jannuzi said of the nonaggression pact, adding that, “we don’t know yet exactly what form this … might take.”

Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is also seeking a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, according to Keith Luce, one of Lugar’s top aides.

“Senator Lugar supports the president in his statements that he has no intentions to attack North Korea,” Luce said.

While the forum focused on a diplomatic settlement to end the crisis, Jannuzi said that the history of animosity on the peninsula could stand in the way of peace.

“The fundamental problem here is the complete lack of trust,” he said.

Another forum participant said she would not be surprised if war breaks out, sooner rather than later.

“The bubble is going to burst,” she said.

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North Korea II:  Pyongyang Threatens to Build Small Nuclear Weapons

North Korea has threatened to build tactical nuclear weapons in response to U.S. efforts to develop low-yield nuclear weapons, CNN.com reported (see GSN, July 24).

“The D.P.R.K. will consider the ultra-modern weapons the new conservatives of the U.S. try to use as tactical nuclear weapons, which compels the D.P.R.K. to make as powerful weapons as them,” North Korean officials said yesterday.

North Korea accused the United States of shunning direct negotiations and “trying to complicate the issue” (CNN.com, July 25).

U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to discuss the crisis, the Korea Herald reported.

“The two leaders exchanged opinions about multilateral nuclear talks and expressed firm belief that (they) will be able to find a key to resolving the North’s nuclear issue peacefully through multilateral talks,” the South Korean administration said (Korea Herald, July 25).

The Pyongyang International Tribunal on U.S. Crimes in Korea, meanwhile, has charged every U.S. president from Harry Truman to Bush with war crimes (Korean Central News Agency, July 25).

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North Korea:  Pyongyang Might Declare Nuclear Capabilities by Sept. 9

If the United States does not move forward with negotiations by Sept. 9, North Korea will declare itself a nuclear weapons state, the Singapore Straits Times reported (see GSN, July 22).

“North Korea will move on to possess nuclear weapons and declare itself a nuclear state if the U.S. fails to respond to its proposals before Sept. 9,” the 55th anniversary of the country’s creation, said a diplomatic source in Tokyo.

China is currently attempting to revive talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

“If the U.S. refuses to strike a deal in one way or another, North Korea could go nuclear,” said another diplomatic official in Tokyo.  “This is what China worries about the most, and China as a mediator will lose face,” the official added.

An official linked to North Korea, however, dismissed the Sept. 9 deadline.

“Our country, for its part, has vowed to have a deterrent force unless the U.S. changes its attitude … our country will go ahead with its schedule, irrespective of Sept. 9,” the official said (Singapore Straits Times, July 24).

North Korea claimed that it is doing its best to avoid a conflict.

“The D.P.R.K. has made unremitting efforts to prevent the outbreak of war and safeguard peace on the Korean Peninsula,” said Yang Hyong Sop, a senior North Korean lawmaker.  “But the United States has turned down the D.P.R.K. proposal for signing a nonaggression treaty,” he added (News24.com, July 24).

The United States also played down the Sept. 9 cutoff.

“I’ve just seen press reports on that.  It’s purely speculative at this point,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, July 24).

U.S. officials are also expecting that another round of talks with China and North Korea would make progress in the standoff.

James Kelly, assistant U.S. secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific, “will read the same talking points he read in Beijing in April; the North Koreans will do the same and that will be it,” said a senior U.S. official (Nicholas Kralev, Singapore Straits Times, July 24).

Japan, meanwhile, might resume normalization talks with North Korea if Pyongyang accepts multilateral talks to defuse the nuclear crisis, Yonhap News Agency reported (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring II, July 24).

No Decision on Reactors

South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jae-sup said today that no decision had been made on continuing the construction of two nuclear reactors in North Korea.  The construction has been delayed by the nuclear standoff (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring III, July 24).

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U.S.-Russia:  No Verification Measures Planned For Moscow Treaty

The Bush administration plans to rely on START and the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to verify Russian compliance with the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty, Assistant Secretary of State Paula DeSutter said this week (see GSN, June 5).

The Bush administration sees the treaty as a complete document, and therefore no additional verification measures are needed, said DeSutter, head of the State Department’s Verification and Compliance Bureau. 

The bureau plans to examine what measures START and the CTR program will provide over the next two years, but “we are basically satisfied,” said Karin Look, DeSutter’s deputy who was involved in the treaty negotiations.  If the bureau had been concerned about a lack of verification measures, “we would have pressed in the context of the negotiations and the ratification hearings to have something more in the treaty,” Look said (Thomas Duffy, Inside the Pentagon, July 24).

At the time the treaty was signed in May 2002, Bush administration officials indicated that the United States and Russia would negotiate follow-on measures to the treaty (see GSN, May 24, 2002).

“The verification stuff, all of that is going to go into the implementation agreement.  These are essentially the details, the nitty-gritty and it’s being worked on, but it’s not done.  It may take a little while,” National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton said when the treaty was signed (Greg Webb, GSN, July 24).

The treaty calls for the creation of a Bilateral Implementation Commission, which may meet for the first time by the end of summer, according to Inside the Pentagon.  Currently, the commission is not expected to do more than keep Washington and Moscow informed about the pace of each other’s disarmament, DeSutter said.

“At the end of the day the MT [Moscow Treaty] has two obligations, one is to have the BIC meet and the other is to have both sides down to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads by 2012,” Look said.

Look also said, however, that other U.S. agencies, as well as Russia itself, may still press for additional verification measures for the treaty.

“Now will the Russians agree with us?  I don’t know,” Look said.  “Will there be other parts of the U.S. government that thinks there is something needed?  I don’t know,” she said (Duffy, Inside the Pentagon).

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Iran:  Tehran Dismisses European Union Threats

Iranian officials have dismissed European threats of trade penalties if Tehran refuses to allow intrusive inspections of its nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported this week (see GSN, July 22).

“Imposing preconditions or using threatening language is totally unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Tuesday (Associated Press/Newsday, July 22).

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami cancelled a visit to Belgium, possibly in response to the demands from the European Union (Agence France-Presse, July 24).

Iran Holds Al-Qaeda Leaders

Iran said yesterday that it is has senior al-Qaeda leaders in custody, the Washington Times reported.

“The statements would appear to confirm what we and others believe to be a significant al-Qaeda presence in Iran, to include members of its senior leadership,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday.

U.S. officials demanded that Iran transfer the prisoners to U.S. custody (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, July 24).

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Russia:  Moscow Destroys SS-18 ICBM Silo

Russia has destroyed an SS-18 ICBM silo at the Kartaly missile base in the Chelyabinsk region, ITAR-Tass reported Tuesday (see GSN, May 29). 

Six of the missiles were removed from the silo and taken away for destruction as called for under START, according to ITAR-Tass.  All six of the base’s missile silos are scheduled to be destroyed by the end of the year (ITAR-Tass, July 22 in FBIS-SOV, July 22).

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Correction

In a story yesterday on a legal dispute threatening two U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreements, Global Security Newswire mischaracterized the views of Kenneth Luongo, executive director of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council.  In that story, some critics charged the Bush administration with using a dispute over liability protections in the U.S.-Russian agreements as an excuse to end the cooperative programs.  That view should not have been ascribed to Luongo.

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U.S.-Russia:  Legal Issues Threaten Nonproliferation Programs

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A U.S.-Russian legal dispute is threatening to end two nonproliferation agreements intended to help convert Russian nuclear weapons materials and facilities into peaceful uses.  U.S. officials say the dispute centers around protecting U.S. personnel working in Russia, but critics say the Bush administration policy could end these and other cooperative programs.

One agreement is set to expire tomorrow, and the other will probably run out in September unless Moscow grants sweeping liability protections to U.S. workers and companies operating in Russia.

The Energy Department announced yesterday that it will not renew the 1998 Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement unless Russia accepts changes to the agreement, which is due to expire Sept. 22.  Under the program, the United States has supported scaling back activities in Russia’s nuclear weapon research and production sites and converting some remaining facilities to peaceful purposes.  According to the Energy Department’s Web site, the initiative “is the only U.S. government program whose primary aim is to help downsize the Russian nuclear weapons complex.”

Yesterday’s announcement, however, said that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has informed his Russian counterpart, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev, that the NCI agreement will not be renewed “until the Russian government approves legal provisions intended to protect American workers and companies working on projects in Russia.”

Abraham expressed hope that Russia will accept new liability language in time for the agreement to be renewed in September, but he said that if the agreement lapses, the two countries should nevertheless be able to continue existing projects.  In such a case, Abraham said, “We look forward to reinstating the NCI agreement once broader issues of liability protection have been settled.”

The announcement came only one day after U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes said the NCI program “is not being canceled; it is not being stopped.”

“We fully support the program. … The secretary is not canceling the program,” Wilkes said Monday.

Plutonium Science and Technology Agreement Runs Out Tomorrow

The Energy Department’s announcement yesterday may signal not only that the NCI program is in jeopardy, but also that other threat reduction efforts are threatened, as the Bush administration makes a priority of obtaining broad liability protections in all such agreements, according to congressional and nongovernmental organization observers.

Immediately threatened is another 1998 U.S.-Russian initiative, known as the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, that is set to expire tomorrow.  The agreement provides for U.S.-Russian scientific and technical collaboration related to the withdrawal of plutonium from nuclear military programs.

Aspects of the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement are also covered by the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement, and activities carried out under the auspices of the 1998 agreement could conceivably continue under the 2000 text, according to Leonard Spector, who directs the Washington office of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

A planned liability protocol to the 2000 agreement has yet to be negotiated, while the language of the older plutonium agreement contains liability language similar to that of the NCI agreement — language that the Bush administration has consistently sought to replace with provisions such as those in the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction “umbrella agreement,” Spector said.

Among other differences, the 1998 texts would exempt Russia from liability in cases of “premeditated” actions causing damage or injury, while the 1992 language contains no such references, leaving it entirely up to Russia to deal with all liability issues arising under activities governed by the agreement.

House Members Write Bush

Writing ahead of the Energy Department’s announcement on the NCI agreement, six Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday to express “deep concern that the United States is contemplating the possible nonrenewal of two key U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreements that provide the legal basis for important cooperative threat reduction efforts with Russia.”

Referring to the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, the representatives — Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), John Spratt (D-S.C.), Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Chet Edwards (D-Texas) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) — said they “understand that the administration may be prepared to allow” the agreement to lapse tomorrow.

“Beyond the national security and nonproliferation concerns of allowing the plutonium disposition program in Russia to stall or terminate,” the six lawmakers added, “there might also be significant negative domestic impacts on the activities associated with the plutonium disposition activities in the U.S.  The U.S. plutonium disposition effort is a multibillion-dollar program that is designed to operate in tandem with the Russian plutonium disposal activities, and support for the effort could falter if the Russian program stalls.”

Duma Endorsement Sought for Broad Liability Provisions

Spector said the Bush administration is consistently championing what it sees as the “tried-and-true, clean approach of the CTR agreement.”

“Whether or not that is the good approach is not the issue any longer.  The government has decided that that is the approach that they want,” he said.

According to Spector, the U.S. Defense Department views the liability language in the 1992 text as “perfection.”  The Russian Duma, however, has never ratified the 1992 agreement or a later extension of the agreement, and it has been applied only provisionally.  Meanwhile, some agreements signed in recent years — including bilateral arrangements between Germany and Russia and the 12-country Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program for Russia (see GSN, May 22) — do not match the 1992 umbrella agreement’s broad liability provisions.

In light of these developments, the desire to see the Duma ratify the liability provisions of the 1992 text is the key to U.S. insistence on similar language in the 1998 texts, according to Spector, who cited hopes the Russian legislature could ratify the umbrella agreement soon despite the fact that it is unlikely to sit for more than two months over the rest of this year.

“The Americans think that once the Duma acts” on the 1992 agreement, Spector said, “the Russian objections will die off.”  Even critics of the Bush administration’s approach, he said, agree that Duma action on the older text would “kind of cut the Gordian knot,” allowing the United States to hold up the 1992 agreement as a model of what the Duma is willing to ratify in the hope that such language can become the standard for agreements such as the plutonium disposition protocol.

Spector and the Fridtjof Nansen Institute’s Douglas Brubaker wrote an article in the Monterey Institute’s Nonproliferation Review supporting reform of liability provisions in nuclear nonproliferation assistance agreements with Russia.  Spector, a former assistant deputy administrator in the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said yesterday that he opposes terminating the NCI program but supports the principle of liability reform in the interest of facilitating future nonproliferation assistance to Russia.

“Whatever the next agreement is going to be, this is a humongously difficult headache every single agreement.  And if you could get one of them locked in and endorsed, it would really streamline all future work,” Spector said.

Spector and Brubaker argued in their article that none of the existing liability language models for cooperative threat reduction agreements sufficiently addresses the question of victim compensation.  While Russia may be fully liable under umbrella agreement-style provisions, they said, Moscow is unlikely to be in a position to actually pay out compensation.

The two researchers advocated two approaches to resolving the compensation problem.  In the first approach, Russia would be liable for a certain amount of compensation, the cost of which could be covered by insurance taken out by Moscow for the purpose, and donor countries involved in nonproliferation aid programs in Russia would pay the rest of the compensation under a pooling system.  The second approach envisions a bond issue in which bondholders would stand to make money on their investment unless a catastrophic accident occurred — in which case their money could be used to compensate victims.

In announcing its stance on the NCI liability language yesterday, the Energy Department cited agreements reached last year at the Group of Eight summit in Canada, where the world’s leading industrialized countries and Russia launched the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.  The department indicated it would seek the same liability protections in a wide variety of other agreements.

Critics Assail Focus on Liability Language

Critics said the administration’s liability focus could lead to a broader series of moves to shrink or end threat reduction programs.

“It’s entirely possible this is going to be a chain reaction over these issues of liability,” Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council Executive Director Kenneth Luongo said.

Luongo, who initially wrote top Bush administration officials July 2 to plead in favor of keeping both programs, said yesterday in a statement, “Allowing these agreements to expire is wrong and unnecessary at this time.  It sends a terrible signal about the importance of securing the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on Earth as rapidly as possible.”

“This issue has been debated in the dark, without any public involvement,” he said, adding that an “impression is being left that arguments will be used to kill programs and not debate them publicly.”

“At a time when the president is running around the country talking about the intersection of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism,” Luongo said, terminating NCI activities “doesn’t make any sense.”

“The point is, this is a terrible decision from a policy perspective,” Luongo said.  “If this was a new agreement … that’s a separate issue than, ‘These agreements have been in operation for five years and, in some cases, 10 years, and now we think the liability provisions are inadequate.’  Well, you have to show why they’re inadequate,” he added.

Rose Gottemoeller, senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said allowing NCI to lapse not only would concern the U.S. Energy Department and the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry, but also could damage U.S.-Russian relations more broadly at a crucial moment.

“It is a bigger issue than a DOE-Minatom issue,” Gottemoeller said.

For further information, see:

Nuclear Cities Initiative Web site

NTI history of Russian plutonium disposition efforts

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United States:  Los Alamos Director Pledges to “Drain the Swamp”

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Pete Nanos yesterday said he would “drain the swamp” at the facility to address security and management concerns, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, July 22).

After a number of reviews investigating mismanagement and security concerns, Nanos said that only “several bad apples” were discovered.  In an address to laboratory employees, Nanos outlined his priorities for the laboratory, focusing on safety, national security, science and business management, AP reported.

“The future is in our hands,” Nanos said.  “I’m very bullish about this,” he added (Leslie Hoffman, Associated Press, July 23).

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Iran:  Officials Expect Nuclear Experts to Explain Additional Protocol

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said yesterday that he expects experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit Tehran to discuss the Additional Protocol, which would allow intrusive inspections of Iran’s nuclear activities (see GSN, July 22).

“We have asked the IAEA to send legal experts to Iran to brief us on aspects of the protocol … We hope in the next days they will arrive in Iran,” Kharrazi said.  “We will prepare a document for our leaders to decide whether Iran will join,” he added (Reuters/Washington Times, July 23).

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CTBT:  Cyprus Ratifies Treaty

Cyprus ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty July 18, bringing the total number of treaty ratifiers to 104, according to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (see GSN, July 17).

Cyprus is not one of the 44 nations that must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force.  Of those 44 nations, 32 have ratified the treaty (CTBT Organization release, July 23).

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North Korea:  Washington Considering Nonaggression Treaty

The United States might offer North Korea a formal nonaggression pact if Pyongyang agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, July 21).

During talks last week, U.S. officials told Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo that they are willing to hold a second round of talks with China and North Korea, according to the Post.  The United States is insisting, however, that the talks be immediately followed by broader negotiations, which would include South Korea, Japan and possibly Russia, U.S. officials said.

During the broader talks, U.S. officials would present a plan to end the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.  Bush administration officials are currently debating the final form of the plan.

A White House official, however, denied that the U.S. approach had shifted.

“As we have said many times, we will not submit to blackmail or grant inducements for the North to live up to its obligations,” he said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, July 22).

U.S. President George W. Bush, meanwhile, dismissed reports that North Korea might have developed a second facility to reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium.

“The desire by the North Koreans to convince the world that they’re in the process of developing a nuclear arsenal is nothing new,” Bush said.

Bush’s comments are in sharp contrast to his earlier statements on North Korea’s nuclear development and his rhetoric on Iraq’s alleged weapons programs, the New York Times reported (David Sanger, New York Times, July 22).

Some officials, however, are casting doubt on reports of a second reprocessing site, the Washington Times reported.  U.S. officials said that krypton 85 — a byproduct of plutonium production — detected at the border between the Koreas probably came from North Korea’s known reprocessing site at Yongbyon, according to the Washington Times (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, July 22).

The State Department said the report on the second site was uncertain.

“We receive a steady stream of information on various types of activity in North Korea, much of which is unsubstantiated and can’t be confirmed, and I would put certainly the one report over the weekend into that category,” State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, July 22).

North Korea Could Have Eight Nuclear Weapons by End of Year

Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said yesterday that North Korea could develop up to eight nuclear weapons by the end of this year, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 15).

Perry also said that North Korea could produce five to 10 nuclear weapons next year.

“I consider that this poses an unacceptable risk to our security,” he said.  “There are plenty of bidders out there willing to bid for it.  And if any of the terror groups are willing to get nuclear weapons or are able to get that plutonium, then we could see it end up in an American city,” Perry added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 22).

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Iran:  European Union Urges Iran to Sign Additional Protocol

The European Union said yesterday that Iran must sign the Additional Protocol — which allows intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring of its nuclear activities — or risk ruining the relationship between Tehran and Brussels (see GSN, July 21).

A statement by EU foreign ministers said they “decided to review future steps of the cooperation between the EU and Iran in September,” when the IAEA is due to present a second report on Iran’s nuclear program.

European officials said that hard-line and moderate officials in Tehran were damaging bilateral ties.

“It does not matter whether they are reformers or conservatives.  They are united when it comes to a national security doctrine,” a British diplomat said (Dempsey/Bozorgmehr, Financial Times, July 21).

The United States, meanwhile, has teamed with an Iraqi political party to rehabilitate a branch of the Iraqi intelligence services that spied on Iran, according to Iraqi politicians and agents.

The Iraqi National Congress, headed by longtime exile Ahmad Chalabi, has met with senior officials from the now-defunct Iraqi spy agency known as the Mukhabarat.

“As far as what we do, we are sending back information to the Pentagon, to people who are responsible,” said Abdulaziz Kubaisi, an INC member who has been recruiting former intelligence agents (Banerjee/Jehl, New York Times, July 22).

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International Response:  Central Asian States to Meet in September on Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Five Central Asian states plan to meet in September in an effort to complete an agreement establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region, a senior U.N. disarmament official told Global Security Newswire yesterday (see GSN, March 11).

The meeting, scheduled to be held by the end of September in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, will involve representatives from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, said Tsutomu Ishiguri, director of the U.N. Regional Center for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific.  The purpose of the meeting is for the Central Asian states to develop a joint response to comments on a draft treaty provided by four of the five declared nuclear weapons states. Of the five, only China has submitted no comments.

The nuclear weapons states submitted their written proposals earlier this year, but the Central Asian states later requested that they be resubmitted in Russian so that they were available in a common language, Ishiguri said, adding that the proposals were resubmitted by early March.  After the Central Asian states had an opportunity to individually review the translated comments, representatives from the Central Asian states’ U.N. missions then met twice in New York — June 3 and July 17 — to “review notes,” Ishiguri said. 

U.N. mission representatives are now expected to meet again by the end of this month to finalize details for the Tashkent meeting, Ishiguri said.  He added that the Central Asian states need to send high-level officials to the Tashkent meeting, in addition to technical experts, so that decisions can quickly be made “on the spot.” 

After the Tashkent meeting, the Central Asian states will be in a position to meet with the nuclear weapons states to discuss their proposals, Ishiguri said.  While the five nuclear weapons states cannot prevent the creation of the zone, the Central Asian states have requested that they sign a protocol to the treaty stating that they agree to respect the zone.

The United Nations hopes the treaty can be signed by the end of this year, Ishiguri said.  The Central Asian states have twice anticipated signing the treaty — once in October 2002 and again in April.

In May, Ishiguri told GSN that delays in signing the treaty should not be interpreted as a sign that the Central Asian states are losing interest in establishing the zone.  He noted then that the Central Asian states had reaffirmed their commitment to the creation of the zone in working papers presented at a meeting of the U.N. Disarmament Commission (see GSN, April 18) and during a meeting of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty members (see GSN, May 9).  He told GSN yesterday, however, that there is concern that momentum could be lost if the treaty is not signed soon.

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United States I:  Nuclear Weapons Meeting Could Draw Protests

Large protests are expected next month at Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, where U.S. nuclear officials and scientists are scheduled to discuss plans for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the Omaha World-Herald reported Thursday (see GSN, July 21).

The Aug. 7 meeting is expected to focus on whether the United States should develop low-yield nuclear weapons.

“It’s the whole enchilada, this meeting.  Anybody who is anybody in nuclear weapons will be there,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, which first revealed the once-secret gathering that had been planned for almost one year (Robynn Tysver, Omaha World-Herald, July 17).

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United States II:  Energy Department Moves Forward With Weapon-Grade Uranium Reduction Program

The first shipment of low-enriched uranium produced through a program to reduce stockpiles of weapon-grade uranium was shipped last week to a site in Tennessee for further processing into nuclear reactor fuel, the U.S. Energy Department announced yesterday (see GSN, April 15).

Last week’s shipment of low-enriched uranium was created through the High-Enriched Uranium Blend Down Program, which seeks to reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium stored at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.  The HEU is blended down with natural uranium at the site to create low-enriched uranium, which is then sent to Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tenn.  There, the LEU will be prepared for fabrication into nuclear reactor fuel.  The program is scheduled to continue through 2007, according to the Energy release.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday praised the advance of the program.

“Today marks a big step in our nation’s nonproliferation efforts,” Abraham said.  “We have taken material that was left over from the Cold War and turned it into something that is unattractive for use in weapons.  Not only that, but we’ve turned it into a material that has an important peacetime use: producing electricity,” he said (U.S. Energy Department release, July 21).

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United States III:  Russians Visit Peacekeeper Missile Silo

In a gesture of cooperation between Cold War adversaries, five senior Russian military officials visited a heavily guarded U.S. Peacekeeper missile silo being dismantled in Wyoming yesterday, the Denver Post reported (see GSN, Oct. 4, 2002).

“It’s part of an overall process of transforming the relationship between our two countries from one of post-Cold War rivalry to one of working cooperatively,” said Brig. Gen. Frank Klotz, commander of the 20th Air Force.  The silo is located 60 miles north of Cheyenne, Wyo.

The Russian delegation included Gen. Col. Nikolay Solovtsov, commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces (Coleman Cornelius, Denver Post, July 22).

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United States IV:  Officials Express Concern Over Los Alamos Incidents, Delay Action

U.S. Energy Department officials have expressed concern over a number of incidents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but have decided to delay further action, Energy Daily reported today (see GSN, June 19).

In a letter sent July 7 to Los Alamos Director George Nanos, Stephen Sohinki, director of Energy’s Price-Anderson Enforcement Office, outlined a number of safety incidents that had been reported in the first half of 2003, according to Energy Daily.  For example, workers were reported to have been contaminated with tritium while removing copper piping in the laboratory’s ion beam facility in May.

Sohinki also said that one Los Alamos section had reported six incidents of “elevated airborne radioactivity levels” in the first half of the year, which resulted in personnel and room contamination.  In addition, a laboratory facility’s nuclear inventory was found to be in excess of storage limits because of a poor calculation of materials stored there, he said.

Sohinki said that while the incidents normally would have been cause for a formal investigation, he would allow Nanos to address the issues first.

“Therefore, because of your personal commitment and positive first steps toward resolving the types of systemic issues discussed in this letter, (the Office of Enforcement) will exercise enforcement discretion,” Sohinki wrote (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, July 22).  

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