Global Security Newswire

The U.S. House of Representatives last week authorized funding to expand the Cooperative Threat Reduction program outside the former Soviet Union and the Senate is expected to pass the bill this week, Senator Richard Lugar’s (R-Ind.) office announced (see GSN, Aug. 18).

The fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill, completed by House-Senate negotiators last week and approved by the full House Friday, contains the entire $450 million request by the White House for the program originally created by Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to help dismantle Russia’s Cold War WMD arsenal. The House attempted to cut the portion of the bill devoted to chemical weapons destruction by almost $30 million, but after the House-Senate conference it remained at its original level of more than $200 million.

The House also opposed the legal provision that allows U.S. officials to spend up to $50 million outside the former Soviet Union but it was retained in the final version of the bill. Lugar said that the ability to conduct CTR projects in other areas of the world prone to weapons proliferation is a “vital component” of U.S. national security strategy.

“Despite the tremendous progress realized by the Nunn-Lugar program in the former Soviet Union, the United States continues to lack even minimal international confidence about many foreign weapons programs. In most cases, there is little or no information regarding the number of weapons or amounts of materials a country may have produced, the storage procedures they employ to safeguard their weapons, or plans regarding further production or destruction programs,” Lugar said in a press statement (Lugar release, Nov. 10).

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Richard Lugar serves on NTI’s Board of Directors. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.]