USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER

CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL

Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Issue No. 322, 3 March 2004

Articles & Other Documents:

DOD practices prevention through IT Aral Sea island poses major bio threat Iran Poised For Terror Campaign Against Gaddafi Death Of N. Korean Woman Offers Clues To Pakistani Nuclear Deals U.N.: Iraq Had No WMD After 1994 Libya's Disclosures Put Weapons In New Light The Spread Of Nuclear Know-How Bush Envoy Briefs Panel After Talks On A-Bombs North Korea's Use Of Chemical Torture Alleged FBI Hits Wall In Anthrax Investigation Bush Outlines Proposals to Stem Proliferation

Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness. Established here at the Air War College in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal Jo Ann Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953-7538 or DSN 493-7538. To subscribe, change e-mail address, or unsubscribe to this journal or to request inclusion on the mailing list for CPC publications, please contact Mrs. Eddy. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved

DOD practices prevention through IT New system promises breakthroughs in use of medical information BY Nancy Ferris Feb. 23, 2004 The Defense Department's state-of-the-art medical information system not only will improve health care but will also help DOD spot outbreaks of illness caused by biological or chemical weapons. Senior military health officials approved deployment of the Composite Health Care System (CHCS) II late in 2003 after a yearlong operational trial in nine military hospitals. The rollout, which includes training for doctors, nurses and other medical personnel who will use it in the 75 military hospitals and 461 clinics worldwide, will continue until mid-2006. A portable version is at work in Iraq and Kuwait. With CHCS II, doctors and other medical workers can create and add to electronic medical records for each of the more than 8 million individuals they treat. These records include active and retired military personnel and their dependents. All the records are stored in a central Oracle Corp. database and are accessible to the health officials who may need them. Recycling information CHCS II has many advantages beyond merely making the practice of medicine easier for doctors and patients, said Lt. Col. Bart Harmon, a physician who is deputy director of information management, technology and re- engineering and chief of medical information in the Health Affairs Division of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The system also will help military leaders spot clusters of symptoms that point to a biological or chemical attack, Harmon said. Many biological and chemical agents trigger symptoms that resemble influenza and other common ailments. Odd symptoms sometimes are ignored on the theory that they are anomalies. "There might not be enough information in any one patient seeing any one provider to raise an alarm, but if you saw a clustering of people with these funny new symptoms all in one geographical area, it might make you set off an alarm," he said. The system also could help officials spot outbreaks of new diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), whether the disease was introduced by hostile forces or was a natural phenomenon. To make this aspect of CHCS II effective, professionals who record patients' symptoms must use a standard set of terms so that the system can determine if "sniffles" is the same as "runny nose," for example. Symptom incidence will be monitored automatically. "I don't know of any other system that does this on the scale that we're doing it," Harmon said. He said officials at the Homeland Security Department have expressed interest in replicating CHCS II to identify biological or chemical attacks. Workflow support The system fits into health practitioners' normal workflow, Harmon said. When a doctor enters a prescription for a drug into CHCS II, the action triggers preparation of the prescription order. Before, doctors had to go to a computer other than the one they used to record patients' ailments or use a piece of paper to write the prescription. "It's a big step forward in terms of eliminating duplication and supporting the workflow of delivering health care," Harmon said. Besides increased efficiency, he added, the one-step process will reduce discrepancies between doctors' notes and prescriptions. CHCS II will stem adverse reactions to medication because there will be a record in a database of allergic reactions that patients experience. Soldiers' paper medical records are supposed to be kept at the bases where they are stationed, but they sometimes get lost during transfers. And even if the records are at the base, they don't always accompany a wounded soldier who is rushed from a battlefield to a hospital. "In military medicine, constantly we're searching for the patient's chart," said Dr. Francis Holland, an Air Force family physician who has used CHCS II. Without a patient's records, Holland said, less than optimal care could result, especially if a patient is unconscious. Up-to-date records can accelerate deployment. Soldiers need certain vaccinations before they go overseas, Harmon said, and online records will show which shots are current and which need to be updated. The prime contractor for CHCS II development is Integic Corp. of Chantilly, Va. Larry Albert, a senior vice president at Integic, said the most challenging aspects of the program were creating the user interface, ensuring that medical professionals understand how to use the new system and establishing the worldwide data communications links. Delayed system responses are not acceptable to doctors on the job, he said, and local caching of data is one solution to that problem. Common ground The user interface was a challenge because the same system is used by many kinds of practitioners: X-ray technicians, cancer specialists, pediatric nurses, dietitians and pharmacists, in addition to doctors, Albert explained. The large-scale monitoring of symptoms will take place through a data warehouse that mirrors the central database, he said. Besides identifying unusual clusters of symptoms, the warehouse will allow DOD analysts to review medical costs and study the efficacy of different approaches to treating ailments. For this to work, the standardization of terms is critically important, said one observer who is knowledgeable about medical informatics. Nevertheless, getting medical practitioners from different specialties to use common coding for symptoms and diagnoses is incredibly difficult, according to Laura Marcial, director of technical operations at the Johns Hopkins University Points of Care Information Technology Center. The importance of training users cannot be overemphasized during the rollout of such a system, Marcial said, because user resistance can defeat the intentions of the system's designers. If DOD officials encourage their medical professionals to embrace CHCS II, their acceptance will be "a good example for the rest of the medical world," she said. Building blocks The designers of CHCS II consciously made use of commercial off-the-shelf products that have been woven together to create the complete system, Integic's Albert said, adding that about two-thirds of the system relies on such products. CHCS II has a modular architecture that can easily be modified and updated, he said. This is one reason DOD policy requires developers to use commercially available products. A second release, now under development, will add dental records and other enhancements. When the portable version of CHCS II is used, the records are collected locally for review. They can be forwarded to the central database when it's convenient and safe to do so. Ferris is a freelance writer in Chevy Chase, Md. She can be reached at [email protected]. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0223/feat-dod-02-23-04.asp

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Aral Sea island poses major bio threat By Marina Kozlova United Press International Published 2/26/2004 9:30 AM TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The shrinkage of the Aral Sea in Central Asia has turned Vozrozhdeniye Island, where the former Soviet Union tested biological weapons, almost into a peninsula, posing a threat to the local population and wildlife, scientists told United Press International. The Soviet Union first tested biological weapons on the island in the 1930s. However, the work was suspended before long when the operation's head, Ivan Velikanov, was arrested. The Soviets resumed testing in 1954 and continued until 1991. Anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague, typhus, Q fever, botulinum toxin, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis had been tested in open-air sites on the island, now shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, according to Gennady Lepeshkin, director-general of Kazakhstan's National Center for Biotechnology. The experiments were conducted on horses, monkeys, sheep, donkeys, mice, guinea pigs and hamsters, Lepeshkin said in 2001. In the southern part of Vozrozhdeniye, the scientists studied such processes as how bacteriological warfare agent aerosols disseminate, how to detect them, and the effective range of aerosol bomblets with biological agents of different types, Lepeshkin said. The U.S. and Uzbek governments have begun a project to decontaminate the island within the framework of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. In 2002, a team from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the Department of Defense deposited anthrax stocks in 11 concrete-lined pits and mixed the anthrax with calcium hypochlorite as a decontamination agent, said Aminjon Nematov, director of the Uzbek Center for Prophylaxis of Quarantinable and Most Hazardous Infections. Despite such efforts, the island remains a threat, said Oleg Mitropolskiy, head of the zoological and parasitological laboratory at the Uzbek prophylaxis center. "Under adverse conditions, anthrax strains change into spores that are very stable and can survive for up to 300 years," he told UPI. "Hitting an organism, such spores come to life." In essence, the U.S. team repeated the operation conducted by Soviet troops in the late 1980s when they mixed anthrax with bleach. "Tests of anthrax bacteria buried on the island by Soviet troops before anything was done demonstrated that some were still alive and virulent even after 10 years," said Raymond Zilinskas, of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "Although the decontamination work conducted by (the Department of Defense team) was quite successful -- in that no viable organisms survived -- follow-up environmental monitoring will be necessary for the foreseeable future," he told UPI. Zilinskas added that scientists will need to test the soil continually to learn if disease-producing agents are surviving under the surface and in rodent and insect reservoirs. At the same time, he said, there is no precise information on how much anthrax was moved to the island, since the Russian government has refused to provide any information on this subject. Anthrax is a potentially fatal disease, which affects sheep, cows and sometimes people. It is caused by the spore- forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. In September and October 2001, someone sent anthrax-laced letters to several sites in the United States and caused five deaths. "Estimates made by U.S. experts are that between 100 and 200 tons of anthrax bacteria in slurry were buried in (the) 11 ... pits," he said, adding that although the threat has decreased due to the decontamination procedure, scientists need to conduct further investigations and decontamination actions on the island. "The sooner we do that the better," he added. Because the Aral Sea is shrinking, a land bridge has appeared, connecting Vozrozhdeniye with the Uzbek mainland - - and the peninsula is growing wider. Hence, there is a danger of island animals carrying diseases organisms will migrate to the mainland. Also, if people start traveling to the island, they might come into contact with disease agents, either buried in the soil or carried by rodents and insects, he explained. "We have to finish decontamination work before this can happen," he said. Disease agents causing tularemia, plague, cholera, and brucellosis are known to have been field tested and used for experiments on the island, Zilinskas said. "Consequently, the soil, flora, and fauna were contaminated with these organisms, although most were quickly killed off by desiccation and (ultraviolet) light," he said. Over the past several years, local residents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have flocked to the island to seize abandoned equipment, building materials and scrap metal after the Russians left. Reportedly, there have been some cases of infectious diseases among people who had spent time on the island or used equipment carried from it. Penetration of the island by a burrowing desert rodent, such as the Great Gerbil, or Rhombomys opimus, certainly would lead to an infection of animals with diseases, Mitropolskiy said. This in turn, would create natural breeding grounds for the diseases. The Great Gerbil digs longstanding burrows and lives in colonies. Some of the microorganisms tested on Vozrozhdeniye can hold out in the soil and other objects for a long time, Lepeshkin noted. "Some scientists believe that local rodents that were exposed to the weapons-grade bubonic plague bacteria, which are transmitted by fleas from animal to animal, might still be carrying them," Zilinskas said. "There is no data, however, on the level of contamination." There is no doubt Vozrozhdeniye Island poses a threat, Nematov said. "Dangerous pathogens can be there but we don't know where they are," he told UPI. http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040225-042707-9905r

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London Sunday Telegraph February 29, 2004 Iran Poised For Terror Campaign Against Gaddafi By Con Coughlin Iran is trying to prevent Libya from disclosing incriminating details of Teheran's top-secret nuclear weapons programme, by threatening to unleash Islamic fundamentalist groups opposed to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Western intelligence specialists have learned from interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects, captured close to Afghanistan's border with Iran, that a militant group of Libyan extremists is being protected and trained by terrorism experts from Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The Libyan Combat Islamic Group (GICL) was expelled from Libya by Gaddafi in 1997 after it was implicated in attacks against government targets. At first the group relocated to Afghanistan, where it became closely involved in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation. After the war in Afghanistan in 2001 the Libyan group was given a safe haven in Iran, together with other North African terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda. Now the Iranians have agreed to provide the Libyan dissidents with expert training to enable them to attack Libyan targets and intensify their campaign to overthrow Gaddafi. The Iranians have told Libya of the group's presence in Iran, but promised to restrict its activities to al-Qaeda operations elsewhere so long as Gaddafi does not reveal details of Iran's secret nuclear activity. One of the reasons that Gaddafi sought to improve relations with British intelligence following September 11 was his concern about the growing effectiveness of Libya's Islamic terrorist groups. The improved relations culminated in Gaddafi's decision, announced at the end of last year, to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction. "This is a serious initiative by the Iranians," said a Western intelligence official with access to the interrogation transcripts of al-Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan. "They are desperate to prevent Gaddafi from spilling the beans about either Iran's involvement in international terrorism or in developing nuclear weapons." Teheran is known to have enjoyed an unofficial co-operation pact with Libya on nuclear weapons development since the mid-1990s. Iran's nuclear programme has come under intense scrutiny since Gaddafi finally acknowledged the existence of the Libyan nuclear bomb project at the end of last year. In the past, Libyan military officials regularly attended test-firing sessions of Iran's Shahab ballistic missile, which many weapons experts believe is being developed as a delivery system for nuclear weapons. New evidence, collated by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna since Gaddafi agreed to dismantle his nuclear programme, has revealed how Pakistan provided both Tripoli and Teheran with the expertise and materials to construct a nuclear device. Now that Libyan scientists are co-operating fully with IAEA officials and are revealing the extent of Gaddafi's nuclear weapons project, Teheran is becoming increasingly concerned that the Libyans will also reveal details of Iran's nuclear weapons project. Officially, the Iranians deny any attempt to develop a nuclear weapon, claiming that their research programme is designed solely for civilian uses, such as developing a nuclear power industry. Last week, however, Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA's director-general, reported that Iran had undertaken nuclear experiments that it failed to declare, raising fears that Teheran is still trying to build an atom bomb. Inspectors discovered undeclared nuclear material, including polonium, a radioactive element used to trigger a nuclear bomb, and traces of uranium enriched to a far greater degree than the Iranians had previously admitted. Iran's government fears that it may become the next target in the war on terrorism if it cannot convince the IAEA that its nuclear development project is harmless. For now, the Libyan dissidents are being trained at a camp in southern Iran. If Tripoli makes any unauthorised disclosures about the Iranian programme, however, they will be encouraged by Teheran to resume their violent campaign to overthrow Gaddafi. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2004%2F02%2F29%2Fwiran29.xml

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Los Angeles Times March 1, 2004 Death Of N. Korean Woman Offers Clues To Pakistani Nuclear Deals Sources say Kim Sa Nae watched Islamabad's first bomb tests days before she was killed in 1998, and that secrets left on plane with her body. By Paul Watson and Mubashir Zaidi, Special To The Times ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Ten days after Pakistan tested its first atomic bomb in 1998, the wife of a major North Korean arms dealer was shot to death near the heavily guarded home here of the nuclear program's leader, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Authorities hushed up the mysterious shooting of Kim Sa Nae, and it was more than a year before news broke that she was probably killed by North Koreans. After Khan's confession in early February that he secretly sold nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya, Kim's death is taking on a new meaning as fresh details emerge. Pakistan's government and military say that Khan and at least seven associates were motivated by greed and acted without official knowledge or approval. But details of Kim's death on June 7, 1998, and the way Pakistani authorities handled it, may hold clues to what officials actually knew about Khan's activities. Khan has admitted shipping nuclear secrets from at least 1989 to 2002 on what sources said were Pakistani air force cargo planes. U.S. officials and many nuclear weapons experts suspect that Pakistan aided Pyongyang's nuclear program in exchange for help with Islamabad's missile program. But Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf insists his country bought missiles separately from North Korea, and that it did not barter nuclear secrets and technology for them. Musharraf condemned Khan on Feb. 5 as a black market profiteer. He also praised him as a hero for developing Pakistan's nuclear program and pardoned him. Khan is now under house arrest in Rawalpindi, a high-security garrison town on the edge of Islamabad, which is home to many senior military and government officials. Kim was shot at point-blank range, a few yards from Khan's house in the neighborhood known as E-7, a senior police officer said in an interview. Kim previously has been described as the wife of a mid-ranking North Korean diplomat. But present and former staff members at Khan Research Laboratories, or KRL, the Pakistani scientist's weapons development facility about 20 miles southeast of Islamabad, say that was a cover story. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Kim was part of a 20-member delegation of North Korean engineers and scientists whom Khan had invited to witness Pakistan's first underground nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, and to learn how to enrich uranium for a North Korean bomb, the Pakistani officials said. There has long been speculation that Kim was killed by her own government because she was suspected of spying for the United States or another Western power. Officials in both Pakistan and rival India, whose intelligence services closely monitor Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs, backed that version of events. A Pakistani official said his country's intelligence agents suspected that the United States was using Kim as a mole inside the North Korean delegation, but that her actions were uncovered by Pakistani and North Korean agents. An Indian official who is familiar with his government's assessment of the killing said bluntly: "She was in fact killed by the North Koreans on the grounds that she was in touch with certain Western diplomats." A Pakistani intelligence source said Kim and the rest of the North Korean delegation was staying in a guest house in the compound of Khan's home when Kim was killed. Even after reports the next year revealed she was probably killed on purpose, few Pakistani officials would talk about it. They said a neighbor's cook accidentally killed the North Korean woman when he fired a shotgun borrowed from a guard. Another account at the time claimed that one of Khan's neighbors accidentally killed Kim when his gun fired as he was cleaning it in the garage. A coroner was not allowed to carry out an autopsy on Kim's body, and authorities told local police not to open a file on her death. Khan told The Times in a 1999 interview that Pakistani intelligence services told him that Kim's death was an accident. "You Americans always try to put the blame on us," he said. Three days after she was shot, Kim's body was spirited out of Pakistan on a chartered Pakistani cargo plane, a source said. The plane, a U.S.-built C-130 military transport, was the same one that Khan recently told investigators he had used to ship plans and equipment for making a nuclear bomb, according to the official, who is familiar with Khan's signed 12-page confession. The plane carried Kim's body back to North Korea along with P-1 and P-2 centrifuges, used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material, according to the source. The cargo also included drawings, sketches, technical data and depleted uranium hexafluoride gas, which is converted into weapons-grade material in centrifuges, the source said. The Pakistani source said the aircraft was under the control of his country's air force. The Indian official said the charter flight was operated by Shaheen Air International, one of several large corporations run by Pakistan's military. The company began operating in 1993, and its current chairman is the air force chief of staff, Air Chief Marshal Kaleem Saadat. Six of its seven directors are retired air force officers. Pakistan's foreign office spokesman, Masood Khan, declined to comment on Kim's death, or whether the current investigation into Khan and his associates had uncovered any new evidence. Officially, Kim was married to Kang Thae Yun, who had the title of economic counselor at North Korea's embassy in Islamabad. But the U.S. State Department has identified Kang as one of North Korea's chief arms dealers in the 1990s. Kang worked for North Korea's state-run Changgwang Sinyong Corp., which the State Department accused of missile proliferation and imposed sanctions under U.S. law several times from 1996 to last year. Kang was suspected of providing Pakistan with advanced missile technology in exchange for plans and equipment to build a nuclear bomb. "Changgwang Sinyong Corp. is a North Korean missile marketing entity and has been sanctioned repeatedly in the past for its missile-related exporting behavior," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in April 2003. It "transferred missile-related technology to [Khan's] KRL," Reeker added. "The United States made a determination to impose penalties on both Changgwang Sinyong Corp. and KRL as a result of this specific missile-related transfer." Kang left Pakistan a month after Kim's death. Musharraf became Pakistan's military chief of staff in 1998, four months after Kim was killed, and he seized power in a bloodless coup in December 1999. Times staff writer Watson reported from New Delhi and Islamabad, and special correspondent Zaidi from Islamabad. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-murder1mar01,1,5476674.story?coll=la-home-world

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USA Today March 2, 2004 Pg. 1 U.N.: Iraq Had No WMD After 1994 By Bill Nichols, USA Today UNITED NATIONS — A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document. The historical review of inspections in Iraq is the first outside study to confirm the recent conclusion by David Kay, the former U.S. chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion. It also goes further than prewar U.N. reports, which said no weapons had been found but noted that Iraq had not fully accounted for weapons it was known to have had at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. The report, to be outlined to the U.N. Security Council as early as Friday, is based on information gathered over more than seven years of U.N. inspections in Iraq before the 2003 war, plus postwar findings discussed publicly by Kay. Kay reported in October that his team found "dozens of WMD-related program activities" that Iraq was required to reveal to U.N. inspectors but did not. However, he said he found no actual WMDs. The study, a quarterly report on Iraq from U.N. inspectors, notes that the U.S. teams' inability to find any weapons after the war mirrors the experience of U.N. inspectors who searched there from November 2002 until March 2003. Many Bush administration officials were harshly critical of the U.N. inspection efforts in the months before the war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in August 2002 that inspections "will be a sham." The Bush administration also pointedly declined U.N. offers to help in the postwar weapons hunt, preferring instead to use U.S. inspectors and specialists from other coalition countries such as Britain and Australia. But U.N. reports submitted to the Security Council before the war by Hans Blix, former chief U.N. arms inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, have been largely validated by U.S. weapons teams. The common findings: Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant. No evidence was found to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N. inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq was attempting to develop missiles capable of exceeding a U.N.-mandated limit of 93 miles. Demetrius Perricos, the acting executive chairman of the U.N. inspection teams, said in an interview that the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq since the war undercuts administration criticism of the U.N.'s search before the war. "You cannot say that only the Americans or the British or the Australians currently inspecting in Iraq are the clever inspectors — and the Americans and the British and the Australians that we had were not," he said. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-02-un-wmd_x.htm

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Washington Post March 2, 2004 Pg. 1 Libya's Disclosures Put Weapons In New Light Programs for Unconventional Arms Were Ambitious, but Plagued With Problems By Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writers The small desert ranch near Tripoli was described as a turkey farm, but there were no birds in sight when a group of U.S. weapons experts visited six weeks ago. Guided by Libyan officials, the Americans entered a plain metal barn to discover the farm's true purpose: a hiding place for hundreds of chemical bombs. Inside the barn were stacks upon stacks of wooden boxes, each containing a single torpedo-shaped shell. The olive- green weapons were specially designed to spread deadly mustard gas and nerve agents that were stored separately, said two senior U.S. officials familiar with the surprise disclosure. "The Libyans took us right to them," said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It was not a place where we would have looked." The turkey farm is one of a number of formerly secret weapons sites Libya has shown to U.S., British and U.N. officials in the nine weeks since Moammar Gaddafi publicly renounced weapons of mass destruction. Libya's willingness to open its weapons laboratories and storage depots -- including some that were previously unknown -- has helped cement trust between U.S. and Libyan scientists, while persuading Bush administration officials to believe that Gaddafi's December announcement was sincere. At the same time, the remarkable access granted by Libya has led to a reassessment of its nuclear and chemical capabilities. According to U.S. and U.N. experts who have toured Libyan weapons facilities and interviewed key scientists, Libya made impressive strides with many of its weapons programs, due in large measure to help from outsiders, including the Pakistani nuclear trading network that delivered uranium enrichment equipment and designs for a nuclear bomb. Recent disclosures have revealed even more about Libya's nuclear acquisitions. For example, U.N. weapons inspectors have concluded that Libya's effort to acquire equipment for enriching uranium was even more ambitious than previously believed. Working with numerous black-market suppliers, Libya was in the process of acquiring a large uranium enrichment plant that could have produced enough fuel for several nuclear bombs a year. One nuclear expert familiar with the findings said Libya had purchased a "virtual turnkey facility" in which foreign suppliers and experts would not only supply the parts for the machines, known as gas centrifuges, but also assemble and test them. "Libya would have needed to do relatively little to assemble and start the centrifuges," according to a study scheduled for release later this week by the Institute for Science and International Security, a research group in Washington that has studied the Libyan nuclear program. But each of Libya's major programs also was plagued with serious problems and hobbled by shortages of parts and technical expertise, a consequence of years of sanctions, according to U.S. officials, diplomats and independent experts. For instance, while Libya had managed to acquire a serviceable design for a nuclear warhead, the bomb depicted in the blueprints was too big to fit on any of the aging Scud-C missiles in its arsenal. Also, key parts of the weapons design were missing, and Libya's small cadre of nuclear scientists lacked the expertise to fully evaluate the plans or launch a serious program to build such a device. Even Libya's ability to effectively use chemical munitions, such as the ones found on the turkey farm near Tripoli, was far from clear, U.S. officials concluded. The Libyans had no long-range missiles or other systems capable of delivering chemical warheads beyond the country's borders. Libyan scientists complained of other difficulties that hampered their ability to load the deadly chemicals into containers for storage, the officials said. "It was interesting to see the effects of sanctions," said one senior State Department official familiar with the U.S.- led investigation of Libya's weapons programs. "The things they got weren't the best, and they weren't in a position to go to the supplier and complain." Libya began the long march toward disclosing and eliminating its unconventional weapons in March 2003, when Gaddafi initiated a series of quiet overtures to U.S. and British intelligence officials. The country's cooperation increased dramatically in October, after the discovery of nuclear components on a German freighter bound for Libya, and again in December following Gaddafi's dramatic pledge to give up nuclear and chemical weapons. On Jan. 18, one month after Gaddafi's announcement, the State Department dispatched the first of several teams of arms experts to Libya to visit weapons labs and factories. The U.N. nuclear monitoring organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is conducting a parallel probe of Libya's nuclear program and the black- market groups that supplied it. Scheduled for Destruction An early objective of the visiting U.S. teams was to remove the most sensitive weapons designs and components. In late January, two U.S. aircraft departed Libya for the United States carrying nuclear weapons plans, centrifuge parts and designs, and several containers of uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock used in uranium enrichment plants. Other sensitive equipment was scheduled for destruction in Libya under international supervision. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an independent agency, is overseeing the destruction of about 3,000 Libyan chemical bombs and warheads, a process that is due to be completed this week. Overall, the Libyan disclosures have provided U.N. investigators with an important glimpse of how global weapons proliferation actually works, exposing what the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, described last month as "the most dangerous phenomenon we have seen in the nonproliferation area for many years." U.S. and U.N. officials have praised Gaddafi for his decision and have suggested that Libya serve as a model to other nations. "Colonel Gaddafi made an historic decision to bring his country into compliance with crucial treaties banning weapons of mass destruction," Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance and a key figure in the Bush administration's Libya policy, said last week in testimony to a Senate panel. "We only hope that states with even more advanced nuclear weapons programs, like Iran and North Korea, will learn from Libya's example." Technology Shortcomings U.S. officials have avoided publicly criticizing Gaddafi or pointing out technological shortcomings in his weapons programs that might embarrass the Libyan leader. "There shouldn't be a downside to what they did: They are taking things they invested a lot of money in and they're destroying them in U.S. presence," one senior State Department official said. But according to former U.S. officials and independent weapons experts, the shortcomings are impossible to ignore. "The Libyans certainly accumulated a lot of bits and pieces, but that's very different from putting it all together," said Gary Samore, a top nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration and now a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London. "I may have all the bits and pieces of a car in my garage, but that's not the same as having a working automobile." The investigation of Libya's nuclear program also has exposed gaps in the official understanding of the nuclear black market that supplied parts and know-how to Libya, as well as Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries, weapons experts say. According to the draft report by the Institute for Science and International Security, U.S. and U.N. officials still have not identified many of the companies that were supplying Libya with components for its uranium enrichment plant. The most prominent supplier named so far -- Scomi Precision Engineering of Malaysia -- produced only 14 of the roughly 100 major components needed for a gas centrifuge, the report says. Those 14 components are not even the most technically challenging parts, said David Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq and president of the Washington-based institute. "The priority now should be finding all the major suppliers to Libya's turnkey centrifuge plant," said Albright, co- author of the report with researcher Corey Hinderstein. "One troubling realization is that many people had access to the kind of detailed, technical information needed to manufacture sensitive centrifuge components," Albright said. "An urgent goal is to try to get centrifuge designs out of the hands of members of the network and prevent it from spreading to others. Otherwise this information could form the basis of a new or reconstituted network that will later sell centrifuges to other countries." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20971-2004Mar1.html

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Christian Science Monitor March 2, 2004 Pg. 1 The Spread Of Nuclear Know-How How key nuclear secrets were leaked and copied all over the world. By Peter Grier, Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – In the early 1970s, at a factory in the Dutch town of Almelo, the governments of Britain, West Germany, and the Netherlands were perfecting a secret uranium-enrichment technology: the ultracentrifuge. The machines were made of precisely crafted tubes of metal that spun at fantastic speeds. The centrifugal force this spinning created was so great it could physically separate the different isotopes of natural uranium. Naturally, this technology was housed in a factory that was supposed to be secure. But in practice the atmosphere at Almelo was relaxed. The centrifuge building housed a snack shop, and workers without full clearance routinely filtered through - including a well-liked Pakistani metallurgist named Abdul Qadeer Khan. Other workers thought nothing of their repeated sightings of Dr. Khan walking through the centrifuge facility, notebook in hand. Fast forward to 2004. Khan, who became the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, has admitted to peddling nuclear know-how for profit - and the secrets of the centrifuges of Almelo have leaked all over the world. The characteristics of the machines can be as distinctive as fingerprints. Parts and plans related to centrifuges have proved crucial clues linking Iran, Libya, and Pakistan together in a web of nuclear proliferation. Their dissemination is particularly dangerous because they can solve the most daunting aspect of building nuclear weapons - acquiring the fissile core. "There is no secret to making a nuclear bomb," says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "The hard part is getting the [fissile] material." Libya has admitted to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials that it first bought centrifuges and centrifuge parts in 1997. This initial batch - enough for at least 220 machines, according to IAEA documents - was similar in design to the first centrifuge model produced by the British-German-Dutch Urenco consortium. Beginning in 2000, Libya set its sights on a more advanced centrifuge. This design, dubbed "L-2" in IAEA documents, was itself based on a second- generation Urenco centrifuge that uses super strength maraging steel instead of aluminum for rotors. Libya ordered parts for 10,000 L-2s. These components began to arrive in large quantities in December 2002. Iran, for its part, has some 920 centrifuges of the less-sophisticated aluminum rotor design, according to the IAEA. It declared ownership of these machines to the IAEA last year. But further investigation - including interviews with ex-Iranian officials - led international inspectors to suspect that Iran knew more than it was saying about advanced steel rotor centrifuges. This January Iranian officials admitted that they had received blueprints from foreign sources for advanced "P-2" machines. The Iranians said that they decided they weren't capable of making the finely machined rotors out of steel, and instead had tried to make them from carbon composites. This failed. So they did what any backyard inventor frustrated with a balky whiz-bang might do - they threw the whole thing in the garbage. According to Iran, after June 2003 "all of the [P-2] centrifuge equipment was moved to the Pars Trash Company in Tehran," says the IAEA's recent Iran report. Centrifuges in the trash? Right. The IAEA - not to mention the Bush administration - isn't buying this part of the story. They want the Iranians to talk more about what they really have in terms of P-2 equipment. But Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is meant only to produce electricity. Squeezing them too hard at this point might be counterproductive, say some experts. They're like someone hauled in by law enforcement for an interview who can leave at any moment, since they haven't officially been charged with a crime. "We want them to continue cooperating with the police," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Agency. The development of gas centrifuges was an attempt to solve a problem which has dogged scientists since the beginning of the atomic age: the tremendous expense and energy involved in refining fissionable material. The enriched uranium thus produced can be used in nuclear power plants. Urenco began its own work so that Western Europe would not have to depend on the US to supply reactor fuel, for example. But centrifuges can also produce higher enriched uranium. This, or plutonium, is the material necessary for the core of a bomb. Clues in a technology trail The presence of centrifuges doesn't establish intent to make weapons. But combined with other clues they can be a powerful indicator of an intention to develop a home-grown arsenal. "The technology is inherently dual-use," says Corey Hinderstein, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). Thus Western intelligence agencies were suspicious of Iran as early as 13 years ago. In 1991, Italian intelligence reported that Sharif University in Tehran had ordered a sophisticated ring magnet from the Austrian firm Tribacher, according to an ISIS article. The magnet in question was suitable for use in the upper bearing of a Urenco-like centrifuge. Centrifuges work by spinning at a very high speed - close to or surpassing the speed of sound. Uranium gas is pumped inside the spinning cylinders. The gravitational force is so strong that the heavier molecules of U-238, the most-common isotope in natural uranium, move toward the outside. The lighter, much rarer, and highly fissionable isotope U-235 collects closer to the center. A stream of gas slightly enriched in U-235 is withdrawn and then fed into the next of a train of centrifuges, and so on until it becomes more than 90 percent pure. This is simple in theory but highly difficult in practice. The precision necessary to keep intact a rotor moving at more than 100,000 revolutions a minute is at the limits of modern engineering methods. In fact, the Urenco P-1, the base design for the first machines acquired by Libya and Iran, was never all that great, according to David Albright, head of ISIS and a former international weapons inspector. Thus the proliferation network which provided them may have been selling off the centrifuge equivalent of bug- ridden version 1.0 software. "The P-2 - now that worked like a charm," says Mr. Albright, former international weapons inspector. Faye Bowers contributed to this report. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0302/p01s03-wogi.html

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New York Times March 3, 2004 Bush Envoy Briefs Panel After Talks On A-Bombs By David E. Sanger WASHINGTON, March 2 — President Bush's chief negotiator with North Korea told a Senate panel on Tuesday that it was "quite possible" that the country had turned all 8,000 of its spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium to fuel nuclear weapons. The assessment, by James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Asia, who just returned from negotiations with North Korea in Beijing, left open the possibility that while the Bush administration has been conducting painstakingly slow negotiations with the North, the government there made good on its threats to produce several new atomic bombs. But after his testimony, Mr. Kelly said that formal intelligence assessments of North Korea's arsenal had not changed, and that "the operative phrase I used is, `We don't know for sure.' " Until Tuesday, the administration's public position had been that it believed that North Korea, at worst, had turned only a portion of the spent fuel rods into nuclear fuel. The rods were under international inspection until Jan. 1, 2003, when North Korea ordered the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors to leave the country. After that, the rods were moved from storage at Yongbyon, the country's main nuclear complex. Ever since, the American intelligence agencies have been wrestling with the question of how many rods have been reprocessed and how quickly North Korea's nuclear arsenal has grown. The country is believed to have produced one or two weapons in the early 1990's during the administration of Mr. Bush's father. If it has now produced five or six more, as some intelligence officials estimate, that could create a far more difficult disarmament challenge: the North could hide several, and perhaps sell one or two, as it has periodically threatened to do. President Bush has said he would never tolerate a nuclear North Korea. But Tuesday morning, meeting South Korea's new foreign minister, Ban Ki Moon, Mr. Bush did not appear impatient with the slow pace of the talks. "He understood this is going to take time," said a senior Asian official familiar with the meeting. Mr. Bush's tone seemed to convey a sense that the talks could continue for much of this year. Asian officials say they suspect that the North Koreans may be delaying in hopes that Mr. Bush will not be re-elected, or to complete more nuclear work during the election, a period in which they believe Mr. Bush will not risk a military confrontation. In his testimony, Mr. Kelly said the North Koreans continued to deny the existence of a second nuclear weapons program, one involving highly enriched uranium and based on technology obtained from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist. But he said those denials were less vociferous than in the past, perhaps because the North Koreans knew that Mr. Khan had delivered a detailed confession of his activities. Mr. Kelly suggested that, slowly, the North Koreans might be willing to include the uranium program in the talks, even though he did not explain how they could do this without acknowledging its existence. "It was clear by the conclusion of the talks that this is now very much on the table," he told the senators. Last week, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the results of the Pakistani investigation were bolstering American efforts to get North Korea to acknowledge a second nuclear effort. "Now the North Koreans should also recognize that, with the unraveling of these proliferation networks, the A. Q. Kahn network, what the Libyans are now freely admitting and talking about, that their admissions and what they say is not the only source of information about what's going on in North Korea," Ms. Rice said. "And it's probably a good time for the North Koreans to come clean." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/politics/03KORE.html

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Los Angeles Times March 3, 2004 North Korea's Use Of Chemical Torture Alleged A scientist who defected says he saw toxic substances being tested on political prisoners. Rights groups call his story credible. By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer SEOUL — A senior North Korean chemist who defected to the South two years ago says he witnessed the government testing chemical weapons on political prisoners. Although the chemist's information is dated — he says he saw one experiment personally in 1979 and heard about others until the mid-1990s — his statements mark the first time a high-level scientist from North Korea has spoken out about human experimentation. Similar allegations have been made before. Last month, papers said to have been smuggled out of North Korea appeared to show that prisoners were sent to a chemical complex for gas experiments in 2002. But many of the prior reports had been made by former political prisoners and guards whose credibility has been questioned. The chemist said fear of retribution against family members still in North Korea had kept him from speaking out until now but he decided to break his silence because of the need for the world to know. He asked that his name not be published. "It is not easy for me to speak about this because I am a criminal myself," said the chemist, a man in his 50s, at the beginning of a halting and emotional three-hour interview last week that was arranged by a U.S.-based human rights group. The chemist said the experiment he witnessed took place at a military prison near Pyongsong, 15 miles north of the capital, Pyongyang. At the time, he was a PhD candidate. He was invited to witness the experiment because his dissertation involved the chemical compounds being tested — cyanide and ortho-nitrochlorobenzene. The chemist said that the prison was known to house political prisoners. He said that they were kept in stacked cages made of concrete and wire "like rabbit hutches." The two men in the experiment, he said, were unshaven and emaciated and "they looked barely human." They were brought to the chamber in wheelchairs, he said. He could not determine their ages. The chemist said the men were tested separately in a chamber with a large window on one side — where scientists and officials observed. It was outfitted with bright lights, a speaker system that allowed the scientists to clearly hear the prisoners' screams and a nozzle to spray the chemicals. "One man was scratching desperately. He scratched his neck, his chest. He was wearing a gray prison uniform, and he tore it off. He was covered in blood…. I tried to look away," said the chemist, who said he watched with other researchers from behind the glass. "I kept trying to look away. I knew how toxic these chemicals were in even small doses." It took three hours for each man to die, the chemist said. "It was horrible. They were screaming and yelling…. They seemed to develop some superhuman strength before they died. I kept thinking: It is not so simple to kill a human being after all," he said, his voice cracking. "This is not something you want to remember." After the men were dead, guards in gas masks and full body suits pulled the prisoners into an uncontaminated compartment of the chamber to examine them. North Korea denied as recently as last month that it had gassed prisoners, and it is impossible to confirm the chemist's account of the human experimentation. Other defectors have been known to exaggerate North Korean atrocities for money or to win asylum for their families. But several people active in the human rights field said they found the chemist and his story believable. Seoul-based human rights investigator Kim Sang Hun said that so far, the chemist is the most credible witness on the issue of human experimentation. "What he saw happened a long time ago, but he is a very senior scientist, and he is the first to describe human experimentation. We are hoping that more witnesses will have the courage to come forward and speak out," Kim said. Jae-Joong Nam, president of the Aegis Foundation, a human rights organization based in Ashburn, Va., that arranged the interview, said: "He is a very credible person. He has a PhD. He was a respected scientist. His story is very consistent." South Korea's Unification Ministry, which oversees North Korean defectors living here, confirmed that the chemist was a senior official at a research laboratory in Hamhung, an industrial city on North Korea's east coast well-known for its chemical factories. After receiving his PhD, the chemist worked mainly on civilian research. But he said he learned, through a colleague, of human experimentation for chemical weapons taking place through at least 1994, when a famine plunged North Korea into chaos. The U.S. State Department, in its annual report on human rights released last week, estimated that 150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans were held in prison camps where "conditions are extremely harsh and prisoners are not expected to live." Over the weekend, a Japanese TV station aired what it said was the first video footage of a North Korean labor camp to be seen abroad. At Yodok 15, near the Chinese border, prisoners in gray uniforms were shown carrying buckets hung from poles on their shoulders; the buckets were said to contain human excrement. In another scene, women were shown furtively eating cabbage leaves in a field. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chemist3mar03,1,3171348.story?coll=la-headlines-world

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Chicago Tribune March 2, 2004 FBI Hits Wall In Anthrax Investigation Suspect profile is only clue agency has after 2 years By Frank James, Washington bureau WASHINGTON -- The FBI's profile of the mastermind behind the anthrax attacks envisions an unsociable suspect who holds grudges and seeks revenge long-distance but lacks the personal skills for face-to-face confrontations. Yet after expending millions of dollars and thousands of hours searching for him, authorities appear no closer to finding the criminal who sent anthrax through the mail shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Moreover, if the investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings is an indication, the search for suspects in recent mailings of deadly ricin to the White House and Senate could be long and frustrating. In the 28 months since the letters containing anthrax were discovered on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, hundreds of FBI agents have worked on the case. Hundreds of present and former government workers have taken lie-detector tests. Investigators have spent millions of dollars, including $250,000 to drain a pond in rural Maryland, in search of evidence. Still, the FBI has not found whoever mailed the anthrax that killed five people and sickened at least 17 others. "The investigation remains intensely active," said Debbie Weierman, an FBI spokeswoman who offers a list of numbers to prove her point: 28 FBI agents and 12 U.S. postal inspectors assigned to the case; 15 searches conducted; more than 5,000 people interviewed; and more than 4,000 subpoenas served. Still, experts say the FBI has hit a wall in its investigation. That is all the more unsettling given the crime's proximity to the Sept. 11 hijackings, though no known link has pointed to the involvement of Al Qaeda. Focus of inquiry questioned Leonard Cole, author of "The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story," is loath to fault the FBI because of factors beyond the agency's control, including the lax regulations on laboratories handling anthrax until the 1990s. But he questions the bureau's focus on a lone, domestic perpetrator as the villain. "By focusing on the likely perpetrator in the manner that the FBI has done, [it] may have allowed other areas to be less carefully examined that deserve more scrutiny," Cole said. The FBI has focused on a former Army bioweapons researcher, Steven Hatfill, 50, as a "person of interest" in the case. Authorities have placed Hatfill under 24-hour surveillance. Agents searched his current and past homes. The pond agents drained was targeted because Hatfill had reportedly visited that area. Hatfill's foot even was run over by a vehicle driven by an FBI agent watching him in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood. Weierman would not say whether the former researcher is still being watched, and Hatfill's lawyer did not return a call seeking comment. Hatfill, who has never been charged with a crime, has denied involvement with the anthrax incidents. His lawyer previously said the FBI targeted Hatfill because it was growing desperate. Other high-profile federal cases also have taken years to solve. In the 1980s, seven people in the Chicago area died after ingesting cyanide-laced pain relievers purchased off store shelves. The case, known as the Tylenol murders, remains unsolved after nearly 22 years. In the Unabomber case in which 23 people were injured and three others killed, it took the FBI nearly 18 years to capture Theodore Kaczynski. The big break in finding the bomber--now age 61 and sentenced to life in prison-- came only after his brother provided law-enforcement officials with the crucial tip. During the wave of anthrax attacks, the bureau had said the perpetrator was likely a poorly socialized adult male like Kaczynski, who was found in 1996 living at a remote cabin in Montana. Cole thinks the FBI investigation of the anthrax mailings may have been overly influenced by the Kaczynski case at the expense of other possible angles. The psychological profile of a likely suspect found on the FBI's Web site seeking tips in the anthrax case says the perpetrator could be "a non-confrontational person." It also makes these points: "He lacks the personal skills necessary to confront others. He chooses to confront his problems `long distance' and not face-to-face. He may hold grudges for a long time, vowing that he will get even with `them' one day. "There are probably other, earlier examples of this type of behavior," the FBI profile continues. "While these earlier incidents were not actual anthrax mailings, he may have chosen to anonymously harass other individuals or entities that he perceived as having wronged him. He may also have chosen to utilize the mail on those occasions." Possible Al Qaeda tie-in Cole is intrigued by circumstances of the anthrax attacks that could point to a Sept. 11 connection. For instance, several of the Al Qaeda hijackers were known to have lived in New Jersey, where the anthrax mailings were postmarked. The first building contaminated in the 2001 anthrax attacks was the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton, Fla., where a photo editor died after inhaling spores. Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers had searched for an apartment through a real-estate agent whose husband was a top American Media executive. What's more, one of the hijackers subscribed to at least one of the supermarket tabloids published by company, Cole said. Cole has also noted that six of 19 hijackers lived near the American Media building. Also, a South Florida emergency-room physician recalled seeing a patient, thought to have been one of the hijackers, who had a black skin lesion on his leg consistent with cutaneous anthrax. Thomas Inglesby and Tara O'Toole, two biodefense experts affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed the physician's observations and concluded what he saw could have been caused by cutaneous anthrax, though others have questioned that conclusion. Last year, Hatfill sued the Justice Department; the lawsuit is pending. As the ricin incident in early February shows, even a prepared workplace like Capitol Hill is still vulnerable to a potential bioterrorist attack. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0403020250mar02,1,5923469.story

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Arms Control Today March 2004 Bush Outlines Proposals to Stem Proliferation Wade Boese Painting a stark picture of a world facing growing dangers from the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), President George W. Bush offered seven proposals to tamp down rising proliferation threats in a Feb. 11 speech at the National Defense University. Bush said today’s “greatest threat” is the specter of a “secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons.” He described the possibility of such an attack as less remote than during the Cold War, contending that, unlike the Soviet Union, terrorists view such dangerous arms as weapons of “first resort.” Making matters worse, the president noted, “[t]hese terrible weapons are becoming easier to acquire, build, hide, and transport.” Bush said that rising awareness and condemnation of the problem is not enough. International consensus against proliferation “means little unless it is translated into action,” the president declared. He said the world must do more to deny, ferret out, and punish individuals, groups, and governments seeking weapons of mass destruction. Toward that end, Bush set out seven proposals, not all of which were new, that his administration will pursue. The most far-reaching initiative calls upon governments to revisit, in part, the right of states lawfully to possess, under certain conditions, equipment and technologies to reprocess plutonium or enrich uranium. These technologies can be used to make fuel for power reactors and to produce nuclear bomb material. Specifically, Bush argued that states not already legally operating reprocessing and enrichment plants ought to be prevented from acquiring such capabilities from the 40-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which includes many of the world’s leading exporters of nuclear technologies, equipment, and materials. That group excludes several countries with significant nuclear capabilities, such as India and Israel, as well as known proliferators Pakistan and North Korea. On Jan. 26, China formally applied to join the voluntary regime. Bush’s proposal conflicts with the key bargain of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that promised states forswearing nuclear weapons “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” Bush charged that unscrupulous governments have exploited this “loophole” to advance nuclear weapons programs illicitly under the guise of civilian programs. Iran and North Korea are the two states under the greatest suspicion by Washington as wrongfully taking advantage of the NPT provision. The president said that governments truly interested in peaceful nuclear programs have no need for enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. Governments forgoing these capabilities should be guaranteed nuclear fuel for civilian reactors at “reasonable cost,” he stated. The chief international official charged with verifying that non-nuclear-weapon states under the NPT do not misuse their civilian nuclear technologies for weapons shares Bush’s concerns about reprocessing and enrichment activities, although he has advocated a different approach. Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has recommended that the rights of all states to nuclear technology be preserved but that capabilities useful in building arms be put under multinational control and supervision. Bush said his proposal “will prevent new states from developing the means to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.” However, Bush did not call on all states currently capable of producing fissile materials—highly enriched uranium and plutonium—to cease such activities. For more than a decade, the United States has pushed for the negotiation of a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) to end the production of these two materials for nuclear weapons purposes, but Bush made no mention of the proposed agreement. The administration initiated a review of the FMCT concept late last year after China appeared to remove a long-standing obstacle to starting negotiations on the treaty at the UN Conference on Disarmament. (See ACT, November 2003.) In his speech, Bush described in great detail how the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, built up a proliferation ring that supplied nuclear know-how and technologies to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The president said governments must act more aggressively to uncover and prosecute black-market peddlers and smugglers such as Khan that operate across borders. Bush proposed that the U.S.-led effort to intercept shipments of dangerous weapons—the Proliferation Security Initiative—be empowered to halt proliferation earlier in the supply chain before weapons and other deadly goods are already in transit. He further called on states to support a U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution to “criminalize proliferation.” Despite his tough talk on the need to arrest and penalize proliferators, Bush did not comment on or criticize Pakistani Gen. President Pervez Musharraf’s pardon of Khan. The president also spoke of the need to eliminate and better secure weapons and materials at their source so they are unavailable or inaccessible to terrorists and other potential buyers or thieves. As part of this effort, Bush implied that operations similar to ones conducted in Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia to extract weapons-usable materials from their territories could be replicated elsewhere. “We will help nations end the use of weapons-grade uranium in research reactors,” he stated. Bush also said that national and international programs dedicated to dismantling and safeguarding leftover arsenals, as well as providing work for former weapons engineers and scientists in the former Soviet Union, should be expanded to additional states, such as Iraq and Libya. The United States announced last December that it would soon start an initial two-year, $2 million program to employ Iraqis with weapons expertise in that state’s reconstruction efforts. (See ACT, January/February 2004.) Bush did not propose any specific increase in U.S. funding for all these activities. In fact, overall spending on global WMD reduction and security programs has remained constant at about $1 billion annually, despite calls from Bush’s potential Democratic presidential opponents to spend up to three times as much. Bush also urged all states to adopt an IAEA additional protocol giving international inspectors more power to roam around and collect information inside their borders on short notice. He recommended that governments that do not become bound by additional protocols by next year be made ineligible for imports to their civilian nuclear programs. The U.S. additional protocol is currently awaiting Senate approval, and in his speech, Bush prodded the Senate to act quickly. Bush also suggested that the IAEA should set up a special body to work on verification and compliance issues and prohibit states suspected of illegal nuclear activities from serving on the organization’s Board of Governors. “Those actively breaking the rules should not be entrusted with enforcing the rules,” the president explained. Addressing proliferators, Bush held out two options with very different ends. He said they could drop their pursuit of dangerous weapons and thereby improve relations with the United States and the world or continue to seek WMD and face “political isolation, economic hardship, and other unwelcome consequences.” Bush recommended that proliferators follow the example of Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi in choosing the former and not that of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who he said opted for the latter and now “sits in a prison cell.” Bush did not comment on the continuing and so far fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, merely saying that Hussein “refused to disarm or account for his illegal weapons and programs.” Bush’s address received a generally positive response from Congress, but Democrats challenged the president to match his words with deeds and money. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) pointed out that the administration is seeking roughly $42 million less in funding this year than last year for Department of Defense programs to eliminate and guard Soviet-era weaponry. “There is a glaring gap between [Bush’s] statements today and the paltry funding for nonproliferation efforts that he has called for in his budget for next year,” Hoyer stated in a press release. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accused the administration of saying one thing and doing another when it comes to nuclear weapons. Biden charged the administration with seeking to develop new nuclear weapons of “dubious utility,” showing disdain for arms control treaties, and suggesting that the United States might use nuclear weapons against states without them. “Such administration actions have unwittingly promoted a world of proliferation, thereby undermining U.S. security,” Biden declared in a Feb. 11 press release. Biden’s colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), took a different tone. “Implementing the steps outlined today by President Bush will make great progress toward a safer world,” Lugar said. Bush's Seven Proposals During his speech at the National Defense University Feb. 11, President George W. Bush proposed seven steps to help combat the development and spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD): · Expand the Proliferation Security Initiative to take direct action against proliferation networks and seek greater cooperation among intelligence, military, and law enforcement services. · Strengthen laws and international controls that govern proliferation by passing a Bush-proposed UN Security Council resolution that requires all states to criminalize proliferation, enact strict export controls, and secure sensitive materials within their borders. · Ask the 40 states in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to refuse to sell uranium enrichment or reprocessing equipment or technology to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment or reprocessing plants. Ensure that states renouncing enrichment and reprocessing technologies have reliable access, at reasonable cost, to fuel for civilian reactors. · Expand efforts to secure WMD in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere under Nunn-Lugar and the G-8 partnership. · Make signing the IAEA Additional Protocol by next year a condition for countries seeking imports for their civilian nuclear programs. · Create a special committee on safeguards and verification within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). · Prevent any state under investigation for proliferation violations from serving on the IAEA Board of Governors or on the new special committee. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_03/Bush.asp

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