Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) yesterday called on Congress to provide the president with a permanent authority to waive certification requirements to allow Russia to receive U.S. cooperative threat reduction funding (see GSN, Nov. 11).

The United States helps fund Russian efforts to secure and destroy its WMD stockpiles through the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, also known as the Nunn-Lugar program for its creators — Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). Under current law, the president must first certify that Russia is meeting six congressionally mandated conditions before U.S. CTR funds can be expended.

The certification conditions require a country receiving CTR assistance: to make a “substantial investment of its own resources” for destroying weapons of mass destruction; to forgo military modernization that exceeds legitimate defense needs; to forgo using fissile materials taken from destroyed nuclear weapons in new nuclear weapons; to aid U.S. verification of the destruction of weapons of mass destruction involving U.S. funds; to comply with all relevant arms control agreements; and to observe internationally recognized human rights, according to a Lugar press release.

Last year, however, the White House for the first time could not certify that Russia had met all six conditions. In particular the arms control compliance provision raised difficulties as U.S. officials have complained that Russia has not disclosed the full extent of its chemical weapons stockpile and its suspected biological weapons programs.

As a result, funding was halted while U.S. President George W. Bush sought and obtained the authority to waive the certification requirements for one year, an authority he exercised in January. A provision expanding the presidential waiver authority to 2005 was included in the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill, which was passed by both houses of Congress earlier this month.

In a speech yesterday before a conference held here by the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, Lugar called on Congress to comply with White House requests to make the waiver authority permanent.

“This bureaucratic logjam must be corrected. I share the policy goals associated with the certification requirements, but the elimination of weapons of mass destruction must be our top priority,” he said.

While Russian officials have worked to satisfy five of the six certification requirements, Lugar said, Russian officials still needed to provide a “full and accurate disclosure” of Russia’s chemical weapons stockpile because of concerns that Russia’s Chemical Weapons Convention declaration was not accurate. He called on Russia to resolve the matter this year.

Lugar also called for increased Russian cooperation regarding CTR efforts related to Russia’s biological weapons program. Currently, four former Russian military facilities refuse to cooperate with CTR efforts, he said, adding that some Russian officials maintain the “audacious” position that the former Soviet Union never possessed a biological weapons program.

“Our Russian partners must get over this denial and obfuscation. We are anxious to assist Russia in transforming these facilities to peaceful purposes. But success depends on honesty and transparency,” Lugar said.

During his remarks yesterday, Lugar praised Congress for allowing as much as $50 million in CTR funding to be used for projects outside the former Soviet Union, a provision that was also included in the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill. 

“This new venture, like its predecessor, will take time to organize and to establish operating procedures, but I am hopeful that a decade from now, we will look back on this effort and marvel at the successes we have enjoyed,” Lugar said.

He also said, however, that the initial $50 million would not be enough to fund a large number of projects outside the former Soviet Union if the United States “ever got serious” about the effort.

Lugar yesterday declined to propose candidate countries for projects under the expanded effort. “I’m going to refuse that impulse,” he said.

[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.]