Global Security Newswire

The U.S.-financed conversion program for former Soviet Union defense factories saw some successes in its two-year history, despite Congress’ decision in 1996 to kill the project, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, July 8).

Lawmakers branded the initiative a failure by Congress because most projects failed to get started, according to AP. The program’s advocates, however, have said U.S. officials were in too much of a hurry.

The facilities chosen for conversion to commercial production were expected to become “efficient and successful in a very short period of time demanded by U.S. political impatience,” said Laura Holgate, vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The remaking of plants like the Byelkamit missile factory in Kazakhstan have proven that the program could work, given time, advocates have said.

Byelkamit plant manager Pavel Beklemishev forged a deal with a U.S. partner under the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Byelkamit is now the only enterprise in Central Asia with a certificate from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to make pressure vessels for oil and gas storage, AP reported.

Byelkamit was one of four U.S.-sponsored conversion projects simultaneously initiated in Kazakhstan. The other sites, including a biological weapons plant and a nuclear weapons testing and research facility, were less successful, according to AP (Bagila Bukharbayeva, Associated Press/Planet Save, Dec. 14).

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]