#72 31 May 2001

USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL Air University Air War College Maxwell AFB, Alabama

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 to Lt. Col. Michael W. Ritz, CPC Intelligence/Public Affairs or JoAnn Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953- 7538 or DSN 493-7538.

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Terrorists' 'dirty bomb' is nuclear nightmare By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor 24 May 2001 Nuclear smugglers are operating around the world with impunity, according to research by the International Atomic Energy Authority, which warns that the risk of atomic terrorism against civilians has never been greater. The biggest danger is not that a terrorist group will produce a "suitcase bomb" ­ a self- contained portable nuclear weapon considered beyond the capabilities of independent organisations ­ but that they could set off a "dirty bomb", a conventional bomb covered in highly radioactive material. This could contaminate a city or a region's water supply. Authorities in former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Kazakhstan, have recently seized quantities of plutonium and uranium from would-be smugglers ­ but the IAEA said that these cases could be the tip of the iceberg. David Kyd, a spokesman for the IAEA, said: "The amounts being moved are typically a few grams, whereas you need eight kilos of plutonium or 25 kilos of enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb. But the fact that these materials are in the black market at all is troubling, because it means that these people have access to them and could come back with more." John Large, a British independent nuclear consultant, said: "If one of these groups got a large enough amount of plutonium and got the explosion to vapourise it, so that it was spread widely, then a bomb set off on the top of Canary Wharf [the tower in east London] could contaminate everything for three kilometres around." Building an atomic weapon is almost certainly beyond the capability of any independent group; even Saddam Hussein was unable to do so despite spending billions of dollars over 10 years on the project. Though Iraq developed the detonation systems needed, it could not accumulate enough weapons-grade products to make a bomb. But that would not stop such groups finding some way to use radioactive substances for a high-profile attack. America currently monitors 130 terrorist organisations that it believes might use such weapons if they acquired them. The IAEA recently held a conference to discuss the risks of nuclear smuggling, which has worsened as the economies of many former Soviet republics have slumped. In April 1998, the British Government took a shipment of five kilograms of weapons-grade uranium and irradiated reactor fuel from Georgia because it was considered at risk of being stolen from the former military reactor where it had been held. In the 1990s, the US also bought nearly 500 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from former Eastern bloc countries to reduce the risks of proliferation. Even so the danger appears to be escalating, according to Mr Kyd. He said: "As long as there is a willing buyer or intermediary for these materials, there will be a risk," he said. New Scientist magazine reports today that a study of 11 countries including the US, China, Germany, Austria (the home of the IAEA), Romania, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh found that none had radiation- monitoring equipment for the unfenced parts of their borders. One of the 11 had no radiation monitors on any part of its borders. "Airports and ships customs officers must be horrified that these things can cross borders so easily," said Professor Large. However, the IAEA hopes that terrorists will still prefer to use germ, chemical or conventional weapons because they carry less risk to the person carrying a bomb than with nuclear products. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/science/story.jsp?story=74255

North Korean Bomb: Do They Have It? Don Kirk International Herald Tribune Friday, May 25, 2001 International Inspectors Demand Access to Supposedly Defunct Project SEOUL A high-level team from the International Atomic Energy Agency has opened negotiations in Pyongyang with fresh demands for access to the nuclear weapons project that North Korea agreed to abandon seven years ago. .At the heart of the demands, South Korean experts said, is pressure to verify that North Korea has fully complied with the Geneva agreement of 1994 under which it gave up the weapons project in return for the promise of twin nuclear reactors to fulfill its energy needs. .North Korea needs to go through a special inspection before crucial components of the reactors are installed, said Kim Sung Han, a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. If the North does not agree, he said, it will be "chaos." .Olli Heinonen, director of safeguards for the atomic energy agency in Asia, is asking North Korea for a detailed program guaranteeing scrutiny of every aspect of the facilities in which the North is suspected of having produced and stored weapons-grade plutonium for one or two nuclear warheads…. http://www.iht.com/articles/20950.html

Kansas City Star May 27, 2001 Pg. 1 Everyone Wears A Mask For This Army Training By Scott Canon, The Kansas City Star FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. - Don't trip, I silently command myself. Whatever you do, don't trip. A man and a woman, so rounded off in protective clothing they look like a tall green ghost and a short green ghost, have just squirted the nerve agent sarin in tiny pools on a table. The resulting evaporation sends the invisible killer floating around the room. A mere whiff could short-circuit the central nervous system, paralyzing even as it sends the body into seizures and convulsions. Untreated, it would quickly turn the lungs into something like dead trout. "But we've got medics here. You'd live," Capt. Bill Karatzas, the operations officer of the Army's Chemical Defense Training Facility, had reassured earlier. "You'd just be messed up for life." Don't trip. Tripping is the everyday curse of size 14 EEE feet. They have nearly lost the power to embarrass me anymore. But here, wrapped in rubber boots over ill-fitting canvas tennis shoes, I curse them silently. A trip here would be scary. A tumble could tug layers of clothing out of place and expose skin. The gas mask could come loose. That's real trouble. Don't trip. I came here to report on how the Army trains people to defend themselves against chemical weapons, used by troops since Sparta and more recently feared as an arrow in the terrorist's quiver. Earlier this month President Bush ordered a new Office of National Preparedness set up to deal with chemical, biological or nuclear attacks. Thousands of military men and women go through chemical defense training unharmed every year. The training is not painful or terrifying, but it isn't much fun, either. The protective gear is oppressive. Breathing for hours on end under plastic through a mask is claustrophobic. And the thought of being so close to something so deadly can play with your head. Is this mask sealed? Could there be a hole in my glove? It was. There wasn't. And I didn't trip. Rather, I played with deadly nerve agents and lived to write about it. Just don't be impressed. It is entirely possible, for instance, that a person who tripped would simply stand up. Mostly it's an odd experience. It involves sweating into borrowed underwear. For hours no itch gets scratched. And near the end strangers stand together in a room wearing nothing but masks. As for the more general fear of chemical attack - on a battlefield or in a subway station - seeing the killer up close can cause simultaneous alarm and relief. Alarm because seeing sarin and VX, another notorious nerve agent, handled in the most controlled of environments (negative air pressure, well-trained instructors, no surprises) only invites thoughts of the chaos it would pose in the real world. How many people would keel over if it were sprayed over unsuspecting civilians on, say, the Country Club Plaza before a cleaning crew in moon suits showed up? Or what if the killer agent were biological, blown into the Bartle Hall ventilation system and people started dropping dead a few weeks later? In this place everybody wears masks. In real life nobody does. Relief because working around the nerve agents shows that the trick isn't so much making it as it is deploying it. Sarin evaporates into a deadly gas, but then it dissipates in short order. You need to touch VX for it to hurt you. What cleans it up? Common household bleach. Chemical weapon history Depending on the definition, chemical warfare traces to at least 2,000 years ago when armies burned sulfur to send the irritating smoke downwind against their foes. In World War I, the French spiced artillery shells in August 1914 with ethyl bromacetate, a kind of tear gas. By fall of that year the French added the poisonous gas chloroacetone to their arsenal. The Germans were first to loose chemical killers on a large scale by uncorking canisters in the spring of 1915 at Ypres, Belgium, that saturated the battlefield with 168 metric tons of chlorine gas. A half-hour later, 5,000 French troops lay dead and 15,000 more were injured. By the war's end chemical weapons caused more than 1 million casualties, with about 90,000 killed and many of the survivors left scarred, chronically wheezing for breath or blind. Yet chemical weapons accounted for less than 1 percent of World War I deaths. In fact, the combatants deployed, on average, 200 pounds of phosgene or mustard gas or other chemical weapon for each casualty. Getting ready I arrive at Fort Leonard Wood, an Army post in the Ozarks, a day early to give a blood sample. It will be tested for cholinesterase. The results will be compared against a sample taken the day after training. If I'm exposed to nerve agents, my cholinesterase level will drop. So I'm stuck at the post's Chemical Defense Training Facility, a 2-year-old compound of cinder-block buildings capped with metal roofs. I tag along through the practice part of the training with about a dozen young troops. We are introduced to the M40A1 protective mask, a torturous lifesaver. In some ways it's not much removed from the gas masks worn by World War I troops. It protects, primarily, by drawing all air in through a charcoal filter. "It needs to be comfortable," an instructor barks. "When I ask you is everything comfortable, I mean two- to three- hours comfortable." In chemical combat, it seems, comfort is relative. The mask is hot and smells vaguely of sneaker. Especially at first, it seems as if air is hard to come by. Each labored breath sounds as if drawn and exhaled into a loudspeaker. But the mask is the crucial barrier between person and poison. If it fails, we fall. We are warned of the symptoms to look for in ourselves and our in colleagues while peering out of these rubber cocoons: sudden headaches, slobbering, tightness of the chest, gargling sounds, convulsions, loss of bladder control, breathing stopped. Headaches are relative. But you are either breathing or you are not. OK, I was nervous. Another reporter had gone through this a few months before. His story was wrought with imminent danger and nearly paralyzing claustrophobia. In the end, he dropped out after a few hours in the simulation training and missed going into the "hot" area with real nerve agents. I wondered: Will I freak out, too? Fears grow "The fear factor of these things is much of what makes them so insidious," said Jonathan B. Tucker, director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. They are odorless. And, while not always invisible, nerve agents are not necessarily noticeable. They can have the battlefield effect, Tucker said, of making soldiers afraid virtually of their own shadows. The mere threat that they will be used can force entire units to pull on pounds of restricting overgarments that can make a 90-degree desert feel like 110 degrees. Chemical weapons are viewed increasingly as a terrorist threat. Such attacks have already struck civilians overseas. On March 20, 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinri Kyo carried 25 liters of sarin onto a Tokyo subway in plastic bags. They poked the bags open with umbrella tips. "They only killed 12 people" - there was no bomb or aerosol device to spread the sarin - "but they terrorized the whole city," Tucker said. Indeed, the Aum Shinri Kyo attack puts chemical terrorism in perspective. Tucker said conventional wisdom often suggests chemical weapons can easily be manufactured in a garage or basement. In reality, Tucker said, it would take a person with an advanced degree in chemistry to put together a small amount of sarin or VX nerve agent. The process demands raw materials usually available only to industrial customers. And the chemist could easily end up dead. The cult spent about $1 billion to construct what amounted to a small chemical plant. Next, to exact large-scale casualties, a bomb or some other large-scale device would have to be coupled with the hard-to-handle chemical to splash VX over a wide area or go kick up a sizable cloud of sarin. "The concern is that you might have state-sponsored terrorists in a wartime situation," Tucker said. "I'm not that worried about domestic terrorists. It's possible, but it's quite unlikely." More training Back a second day for hot-room training, I'm the 12th in a group made up of Army Special Forces troops and one Air Force enlisted man. Military people travel from around the world to train here, because it's the only place made for handling real nerve agents so many ways. American civilians, principally firefighters, also come here to train for about $250 a day. We start with a short video that shows the horrors of chemical warfare and quickly turn to making sure our masks fit right. Because the mask is so key, everyone hooks up to a device roughly the size of an average dictionary. Two tubes run from it to compare how cloudy the air is outside the mask to that breathed inside. Candles and incense burn nearby to make sure the exterior particle count is higher than the inside air. With masks off and eyes shut, small puffs of acrid stannic chloride are puffed in everyone's face. Every face takes on the type of frown prompted by smelling a jug of milk two weeks beyond the expiration date followed by coughing like a 12-year-old who has taken his first puff on a Winston. We will get a dose later to test our masks. We're ready to head for the borrowed underwear. And borrowed T-shirt, socks, canvas tennis shoes, pants and charcoal-lined outer pants and overcoat, knit glove liners and black rubber gloves and rubber boots. Everything worn into the toxic training area - from watches to wedding bands - must be left behind or incinerated. The clothing worn is recycled and worn only five times, run through perhaps the world's most aggressive laundry after each use. Then it is burned. Most of the clothes are relatively comfortable, just baggy and hot. The boots make walking marginally more awkward. Barehanded, I've been able to palm a basketball since eighth grade. But with these one-size-almost-fits-all rubber gloves, I would struggle to pick up a smallish cantaloupe. While instructors joke that "from this point on, you're wearing your latrine," they also encourage water consumption. In January a soldier passed out in the hot zone from dehydration. That set into motion a well-rehearsed drill. She was dragged into another room by her arms. There she was cut out of her gear. They sponged her body off with a bleach solution and hosed her off with cold water before sending her through an air-locked door on a gurney. "You pass out during my training," warns Staff Sgt. David Reisenbichler, "we got something special for you." Destroying stockpiles The United States is among dozens of countries that signed on to the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. The treaty requires every country to declare its stockpiles and destroy them within 10 years. Of course, that has not wiped the planet clean. Many countries didn't sign the pact. Others, like Russia, lack the money to dispose of chemical and biological weapons. Ridding America of its arsenal has proved to be a knotty environmental task. "A lot of people developed very large stockpiles," said Owen Cote, the associate director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This is really old technology. It's not rocket science, so it's available to a lot of countries." Since World War II, Western nations have resisted the use of chemical killers. But they were used in the Iran-Iraq war. Czech and French troops detected very low - and unexplained - levels of nerve agent in the Persian Gulf War. Some Americans worry that they may have been exposed to dangerous chemicals in the conflict and offer it as a possible explanation for the disparate symptoms known as Gulf War syndrome. Even though there is no clear evidence that Saddam Hussein unleashed the weapons in the war, some agents could have been kicked up by American bombs hitting Iraqi chemical bunkers. Common assumptions about American policy - implied but left deliberately ambiguous - hold that a full-scale chemical or biological attack could prompt a U.S. nuclear retaliation. Meantime, worries about chemical terrorism have grown, primarily out of fear of nihilistic terrorist organizations more driven by destruction than political calculus. Cote said a car bomb in Belfast or Kashmir or the West Bank sends a relatively precise message that the British or the Indians or the Israelis are unwelcome. It alerts the rest of the world to a cause. But a chemical attack with potentially far larger casualties, he said, would only steel the opposition. He contends that other than the sarin attack in Tokyo's subway, the threat of terrorism has yet to be proved imminent. "I'm just not sure we've seen that that new form of terrorist is really out there," he said. The real thing "Anybody nervous?" Reisenbichler shouts through his gas mask. No one confesses. For one final test of our masks, we stand for minutes under clear plastic domes while stannic chloride is pumped around our faces to check that the masks still work. No one coughs, so we step through a magnetically sealed door to the collection of rooms where the real nerve agent is made, handled and neutralized daily. A special ventilation system constantly draws air into these rooms and sucks it out through a series of multimillion- dollar filters. So there is a constant hum of fans. Because everyone is buried under plastic hoods talking through gas masks, understanding the spoken word is spotty at best. In two rows of single file, we walk on either side of ubiquitous floor drains into a stark room with a high ceiling. The group assembles around a corroded steel table and watches the sarin deposited in dime-sized pools from syringes. Then, as we have practiced outside, we step forward with a special litmus paper to dip in the small puddles to identify it (outside, Simple Green cleaning solution and brake fluid had worked as phony substances). Soon all the lights go out so we can make the same tests with a flashlight. Next we practice neutralizing the sarin with a caustic solution and brushes. So far, so good. No tripping. After each small exercise we dip gloved hands into bleach to clean off. After maybe a half-hour we are led out of the first bay to a second, where parts of a helicopter and other military equipment have been splashed with sarin and VX. Our assignment is to find the damp spots and identify the killers. After that we practice giving shots to a dummy the way we would to someone contaminated by nerve agents - one drug to kick the patient's adrenaline production into overdrive, and a second injection to reverse the process. You don't jam the hypodermic into the heart as actor Nicholas Cage did in the movie "The Rock." Just nail the dummy in the thigh. Finally, we plug canteen nozzles into our gas masks and practice sipping water. Thirsty as I am sweating under rubber and plastic, it's not a satisfying drink. With relief, we begin the tedious process of getting out. In such a high-tech environment, it's striking how much low-tech comes into play. We take turns dipping our hands in bleach. (Empty bleach bottles, in fact, seem to be stacked everywhere.) We wash each other's hoods off with frayed washcloths. Then we get undressed. Slowly. It's like leaving the beach and being careful not to get sand in the car. Except in this case the sand is invisible and a single grain could bear disaster. Ever so carefully, we pull plastic hoods off each other while being careful not to loosen our masks. Technique requires that we pull the coats and overpants off each other. We painstakingly move over one 2-foot wall after another, leaving a layer of clothing behind at each step until all of us stand in a room naked except for T-shirts rolled around our necks below our gas masks. Then one-by-one we hold our breath, tug off our masks and shirts and in a single motion, run through a freezing, pore-closing stream of water on the way to the showers. "Whoo!" shouts one relieved trainee. "Glad that's over," shouts another. "I don't know about you ... but that was murder for me," complained a third. Yet a few minutes later in the locker room, the consensus is that the training was anti-climactic. Many had expected to be doused with chemicals, not merely be in a room with droplets. And for these Special Forces, troops who trained to drop behind enemy lines and move quickly, wearing such cumbersome outfits probably isn't in their future. "Speed is too important," said Capt. Shane Dillow, my training partner for the day. "We have to keep moving." A quick check that our eyes still dilate properly - a test we had been through about every 15 minutes in the hot rooms - and we were free for the day. The next morning I gave another blood sample and waited for a phone call about the results. I was driving back to Kansas City when I stopped at a pay phone to retrieve the all-clear results left on my voice mail. I'm not sure, but I think I might have tripped slightly on the walk back to my car. To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 or send e-mail to scanon£kcstar.com. Nerve gas facts Sarin is mainly inhaled and can kill in minutes. VX can remain on material for a long time and can kill more quickly when touched. Since 1987, more than 54,000 people have completed the Army's chemical defense training. The United States, Russia, India and South Korea have an estimated 70,000 metric tons of chemical weapons. Stockpiles of nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty remain a mystery. There were more than 100 reports of chemical, radiological or biological terrorism in the United States in 1999. Most were hoaxes.

Monday May 28 6:12 AM ET Pakistan Ruler Urges Nuke Research By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Three years to the day after his nation first tested a nuclear bomb, Pakistan's military ruler on Monday urged nuclear scientists to expand their research, vowing to strengthen the nation's security. Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan's successful nuclear 1998 tests - which came on the heels of a test by neighboring rival India and sparked international alarm - were ``momentous events in the history of our nation.'' He called on nuclear scientists to ``further broaden the base of scientific research so that their work in the future is more scientifically advanced, technologically innovative and economically cost attractive.'' While Musharraf was referring to peaceful uses of nuclear power as well as weapons, his comments were a pointed reminder of Pakistan's determination to develop its nuclear capabilities amid its volatile relations with India. ``Nothing at all will distract us from fortifying national security,'' he said. The statement comes just days after a significant peace breakthrough between the rivals. After a two-year break in high-level contacts, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last week invited Musharraf to visit India for talks over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir (news - web sites). Musharraf has accepted the invitation. While announcing the peace invitation, India at the same time said it was ending a six-month cease-fire in Kashmir - a move that drew sharp criticism from Pakistan. In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, Musharraf's chief spokesman, said the world need not fear a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. ``Pakistan understands, as I'm sure does India, the destructive power of these weapons'' whose use would be ``unimaginable and unacceptable,'' he said. It is not known how many or what type of nuclear weapons Pakistan possesses. Most analysts believe neither country has deployed nuclear weapons or developed nuclear warheads for their missile systems so far. But both have tested medium- and long-range missiles capable of hitting deep within each other's territory. Pakistan and India have gone to war three times since British rule of the Asian subcontinent ended in 1947. Their development of nuclear weapons raised fears among the international community that another war in the region could result in the use of nuclear weapons. Both countries have been pressed by a worried world to halt their nuclear programs. Both say they want a minimum nuclear deterrent, but neither country has spelled out what that would mean and how many weapons it would involve. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010528/wl/pakistan_nuclear_1.html

Tuesday May 29 2:52 AM ET Gov't Holds Back Scientist's Book By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A retired Los Alamos scientist who spent the past decade gathering firsthand information on China's nuclear weapons programs is fighting U.S. efforts to block publication of his book. Dan Stillman's book, based on meetings with Chinese scientists and visits to their secret facilities, has been under review for 11/2 years at the Energy Department, Defense Department and CIA (news - web sites), said his attorney, Mark Zaid. Pentagon (news - web sites) and Energy Department spokeswomen confirmed that the review continues. Zaid and fellow scientists say the government's opposition amounts to an abuse of Stillman's First Amendment rights. Zaid expects to file a lawsuit by mid-June. ``The government's attempt to suppress an entire 500-page manuscript is intolerable to anyone who cares about the First Amendment,'' said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. ``He has every right to tell his story.'' Air Force Lt. Col. Willette Carter said the Pentagon declines to comment since a lawsuit hasn't been filed. Stillman, 67, retired at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1993, but has made 10 visits to China since 1990. He said he is among only five Americans allowed to visit both the Chinese nuclear test site and nuclear weapons lab. ``I simply asked questions, and they seemed happy to answer,'' Stillman said in an interview last week. ``Everything I brought back in my notes was unclassified,'' he said, suggesting the U.S. intelligence community later imposed ``a very high classification level in order to control the information.'' Asked why the government was blocking publication of ``Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program,'' former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Harold Agnew said: ``It may well be they're just embarrassed.'' The government has been the focus of criticism over the Wen Ho Lee (news - web sites) spy case. The Taiwan-born Los Alamos scientist was indicted on 59 counts of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets and spent nine months in solitary confinement, but was released after the government dropped all but one of the charges. The FBI (news - web sites) had said one reason for keeping Lee jailed without bail was his acquaintance with Hu Side, a former head of China's nuclear weapons program who during one of Stillman's visits tried to convey a message to Americans who accused China of espionage. ``I wish I could testify before your U.S. Congress to tell them how much damage has been done,'' Hu said in a 1999 speech attended by Stillman. ``I could tell them the truth, that we never found it necessary to steal any U.S. nuclear weapon secrets.'' He added that Lee ``is a scapegoat.'' Stillman said it is possible China never stole U.S. secrets. ``Out of 1.3 billion people, it's certainly possible to find some really brilliant scientists that can develop their own nuclear weapons program without having to steal it from the U.S,'' he said. ``I've never understood why some people in the U.S. think that we are the only intelligent people in the world.'' http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010529/us/scientist_china_book_1.html

New York Times May 29, 2001 Military Warning System Also Tracks Bomb-Size Meteors By William J. Broad In the early darkness of April 23, as Washington was beginning to relax after the spy plane crisis in China, alarm bells began to go off on the military system that monitors the globe for nuclear blasts. Orbiting satellites that keep watch for nuclear attack had detected a blinding flash of light over the Pacific several hundred miles southwest of Los Angeles. On the ground, shock waves were strong enough to register halfway around the world. Tension reignited until the Pentagon could reassure official Washington that the flash was not a nuclear blast. It was a speeding meteoroid from outer space that had crashed into the earth's atmosphere, where it exploded in an intense fireball. "There was a big flurry of activity," recalled Dr. Douglas O. ReVelle, a federal scientist who helps run the military detectors. "Events like this don't happen all the time." Preliminary estimates, Dr. ReVelle said, are that the cosmic intruder was the third largest since the Pentagon began making global satellite observations a quarter century ago. Its explosion in the atmosphere had nearly the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The episode shows how the system that warns of missile attack and clandestine nuclear blasts is fast evolving to detect bomb-size meteors as well. Now, it finds them about once a month, on average. But Dr. ReVelle, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in an interview that the developing system was likely to find many more of the natural blasts in the years ahead. "The real number is probably bigger," he said. "There's no doubt about that. But we don't know how much bigger." Already, the system has shown that the planet is being continually struck by large speeding rocks, and that the rate of bombardment is higher than previously thought. The blasts light the sky with brilliant fireballs but people seldom see the blasts because they usually occur over the sea or uninhabited lands. The rocky objects are anywhere from a few feet to about 80 feet wide. They vanish in titanic explosions high in the atmosphere, their enormous energy of motion converted almost instantly into vast amounts of heat and light. The Air Force did not publicly disclose its imaging of the recent blast until late May, more than a month afterward. In a terse release on May 25, its Technical Applications Center, at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, said the flash was "non- nuclear" and consistent with past observed meteor explosions. A Defense Department satellite, the Air Force said, detected bright flashes over a period of more than two seconds. After that disclosure, Los Alamos got the military's permission to reveal its own detection of the April event. Its ground-based sensors are even more sensitive than orbiting satellites to the repercussions of meteor blasts. The ground-based sensors work like sensitive ears to detect very low-frequency sound waves, which radiate outward from an exploding rock over hundreds and thousands of miles. The sensors record sounds well below the range of human hearing, including those from underground nuclear tests as well as atmospheric blasts. Dr. ReVelle said four arrays of the lab's sound sensors had picked up the April blast. In addition, he said, sound detectors in Los Angeles, Hawaii, Alaska, Canada and Germany had picked up its shock waves. Two sensors in South America made tentative detections, he added. "It was a big event," he said. "There are people worrying about impacts on the earth, and these things are giving us a better understanding of the impact rate. That's the real byproduct scientifically." The speeding boulder was perhaps 12 feet wide, he added. An even more sensitive global ear is emerging as the world's nations try to monitor the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a tentative accord that seeks to end the exploding of nuclear arms and to police compliance. When finished in the next year or so, the global acoustic system is to consist of 60 arrays that give complete global coverage, increasing the odds that even more large meteor impacts will be detected. The disclosure of such intruders is seen as bolstering the idea that the earth is periodically subjected to strikes by even larger objects, including doomsday rocks a few miles wide. Objects this size are predicted to hit once every 10 million years or so, causing mayhem and death on a planetary scale.

Washington Post May 26, 2001 Pg. 1 U.S. Nuclear Proposals Envision Sharp Cuts In Missiles, Bombers By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer Proposals are circulating inside the U.S. defense establishment for radical changes in America's nuclear arsenal, including a phaseout of all land-based intercontinental missiles and a sharp reduction in the strategic bomber force. Described by some experts as the first revolutionary ideas in nuclear thinking since the end of the Cold War, the proposals have been triggered by President Bush's repeated statements that the United States must move beyond the concept of mutually assured destruction. Bush said May 1 that America "can, and will, change the size, the composition and character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over." But he has not discussed specifics, such as how many of America's nuclear warheads should be eliminated, or how the cuts should be apportioned among the current "triad" of long-range bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ICBMs. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has ordered a review of nuclear strategy intended to help decide those questions. Underlying many of the proposals is the notion that the United States should pay more attention to China's small but growing nuclear forces and less attention to Russia's huge but declining arsenal. Some strategists also argue that the U.S. effort to develop missile defenses, if successful, would eliminate the need to maintain thousands of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against attack. Bush administration officials have suggested that the United States might make some cuts unilaterally, avoiding drawn-out treaty negotiations, because in any event Russia's cash-strapped forces are likely to fall below 1,500 operational nuclear warheads within a decade. A recent Air Force Academy research paper said that if the United States cuts its current arsenal of more than 6,500 strategic bombs and missile warheads to between 1,500 and 1,000, "most [national security] officials agree this will by necessity drive the United States to eliminate one offensive leg of the current triad." The authors of the paper, all active-duty Air Force officers, contended that the most logical step would be to eliminate the entire U.S. force of 550 land-based ICBMs, most of which are aimed at Russia. Those missiles "stand today as aging giants, the relics of the Cold War nuclear confrontation," they wrote. "In the event of an actual nuclear exchange, they would be the first to be targeted because they are fixed, land-based weapons." While many experts consider the elimination of all land-based ICBMs to be unlikely, the provocative proposal is an indication of how much ferment is taking place inside the military. Since land-based ICBMs belong to the Air Force, the authors were arguing against the narrow interests of their own branch of the armed services. But they urged the preservation of something even more dear to the Air Force: at least 40 of the country's 96 B-2 and B-52H long-range bombers devoted to nuclear missions. Another paper circulating inside the Air Force breaks that taboo. Written by a senior Air Force officer at Space Command in Colorado Springs, it proposes ending the nuclear mission for B-52Hs. At an Air Force nuclear posture review in April, the officers present discussed both reduction of bombers and elimination of land-based missiles, according to William Arkin, a nuclear weapons specialist. "Space is the future of the Air Force, and they are ready to get out of the missile business," Arkin said. While stopping short of calling for the militarization of space, Rumsfeld has championed the need to protect vital U.S. satellites as well as to develop missile defenses. But his study of nuclear deterrence, which officials once indicated could be finished by early summer, now appears unlikely to be ready until late fall, around the same time that a congressionally mandated nuclear posture review is due. In the meantime, resistance to deep cuts already is developing. Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy and a leading conservative arms control expert, said publicly at a Washington seminar this month that he was worried Bush might reduce too deeply "to buy support for missile defense." It would be "dangerous," Gaffney argued in a subsequent interview, to go below 3,500 warheads, the level that Russia and the United States are scheduled to reach by the end of 2007 under START II, the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. "Deterrence needs you to err on the side of having too much rather than too little," Gaffney said. "A static number reduced by some formula is not necessarily a wise idea, particularly if doing it is tied to selling missile defense." Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force general who was national security adviser to former presidents George Bush and Gerald Ford, agreed that "reductions below the START II level get complicated." Bombers are the "easiest" of the nuclear delivery systems to cut back, Scowcroft said, "but once you start getting into drawing down the nuclear land-based and submarine fleet, you could affect stability." So far, members of Congress have not weighed in on the debate. But lawmakers are certain to become involved if the theoretical proposals for restructuring the nuclear arsenal are translated into concrete moves to mothball bombers, decommission submarines or close bases, which will require substantial appropriations and could severely affect some congressional districts. The Navy already is planning to reduce the number of Trident missile submarines, each of which carries 24 missiles, from 18 to 14. Dropping below 14 could force the elimination of one of the Trident home bases, either in Georgia or Washington state. Dismantling of the first of 50 Peacekeeper land-based ICBMs, each with 10 warheads, also has begun. But the W-87 warheads on the Peacekeeper are being refurbished and will eventually, under current plans, become the warheads on the remaining 500 Minuteman III land-based missiles. And despite the proposals to phase out the Minuteman IIIs, the departments of Defense and Energy have plans to replace their solid-fuel cores and guidance systems to extend their operational lives for 20 more years. In his May 1 speech, Bush promised that he would retain nuclear forces necessary to meet "obligations to our allies," an apparent reference to roughly 150 nuclear B-61 bombs now stored by the United States in Europe. A five-year, $10 million program is now underway to modernize the Air Force computer systems that monitor the B-61s, which are kept in vaults at NATO air bases in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Some experts are also advocating the development of new types of warheads, even if that might require a resumption of nuclear testing. The Pentagon is particularly interested in creating "mini-nukes" with relatively small explosive yields that could be used to destroy underground command bunkers without causing large numbers of casualties. Retired Gen. William Odom, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, supports nuclear reductions but believes Bush's remarks about a new "composition" and "character" for the nuclear stockpile referred to requirements for new warhead types. "We absolutely need new ones," Odom said. "You want to keep a nuclear weapons development program, get rid of old big ones, and have the flexibility to investigate new ones. . . . That's why the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was so stupid."

Birmingham (AL) News May 26, 2001 Incinerator Promoted To Pentagon Oversight By Mary Orndorff, News Washington correspondent WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has bumped the chemical demilitarization program up on his priority list, reassigning decision-making authority to top Pentagon levels. The escalation from Army oversight is a signal that growing consternation over the weapons incinerator in Anniston has caught the attention of the Bush administration. The new undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics had his first briefing on the issue Thursday night, said Cheryl Irwin, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon. Edward "Pete" Aldridge Jr. will now have milestone decision authority over the $14 billion chemical weapons destruction program, although the U.S. Army will continue to manage the program. U.S. Rep. Bob Riley, R-Ashland, who was with Aldridge and Rumsfeld for the briefing, welcomed the change. "We had an open, frank discussion about where we are and what we need to do to get some of these problems resolved," Riley said. The Army's $1 billion incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot is scheduled next year to start burning 2,254 tons of sarin and mustard agent, contained in weapons stored there since the 1960s. Residents, community leaders and government officials in the area fear they're not ready in case of a leak. Aldridge's staff, as part of Rumsfeld's overall strategic review of the Department of Defense, will assess the entire chemical demilitarization program and meet with Anniston-area leaders, Riley said. Key issues are the effectiveness of the chemical stockpile emergency preparedness program, or CSEPP, and whether Calhoun County governments should be compensated for the presence of the incinerator. The County Commission has asked for $70 million in impact fees. "Some decisions have to be made now about safety and how CSEPP will be adequately funded, and I believe the Department of Defense is going to be able to adequately address impact funds, because no one under that level has the authority to do it," Riley said. A watchdog organization that has been critical of the Army's management of the program said Rumsfeld's increased oversight is a good first step in improving accountability. "But it remains to be seen how long of an attention span is there and to what depth the changes go to get this program on a reliable track," said Craig Williams of the Kentucky- based Chemical Weapons Working Group. Riley, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he plans to introduce wording in next year's defense authorization bill that would stop Army officials from burning toxic nerve agents until all state and local officials are satisfied with safety precautions. Gov. Don Siegelman has also said he intends to prevent the burn, if necessary. A $600,000 National Academy of Sciences study will begin next week to determine the chances of a leak at the Anniston facility and how effective the emergency response plan is. The study should be complete by fall. Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing said the study should also determine the exact toxicity of the agents to be burned. "The public has a right to know," he said.

Colorado Springs Gazette May 29, 2001 Army Plans Disposal Of Mustard Gas By Tom Ragan, The Gazette AVONDALE - It's stored in concrete bunkers at the U.S. Army's Pueblo Chemical Depot - 2,600 tons of mustard agent inside about 780,000 rounds of ammunition, at last count. In its native state, it looks and has the texture of motor oil. And it smells a little bit like garlic. But when it's dispersed on the battlefield, it's nothing safe. It can become deadly when inhaled for a number of hours, and it was designed to create blisters on the skin if you come into contact with it. The Germans first used it against the British at Ypres, Belgium, on July 12, 1917. It is chemical warfare, a popular weapon in that era. The chemical stored near Pueblo initially was manufactured in the 1950s at Rocky Mountain Flats. Other countries had it, so the United States made it too - just another tit-for-tat in the Cold War scheme of things. Now, the mustard agent just sits in 102 igloos at the depot east of Pueblo, and the Army is trying to decide the best manner in which to destroy it - whether by incineration or by neutralizing it with water, then biologically treating it. And the Army is seeking the public's opinion. On May 11, it launched a 45-day public comment period, which ends June 25. Special meetings will be held at the Pueblo Convention Center and Avondale Elementary School on June 6 and 7, although the times have not yet been scheduled. At the meetings, the alternative forms of destruction will be discussed in depth. Marilyn Thompson, public affairs officer for the depot, said the ultimate decision, however, will be made by the Department of Defense sometime this fall. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty, which the United States signed with 60 other countries in 1997, all chemical weapons across the country are to be destroyed by April 29, 2007. Bob Kennemer, who works at the depot as an outreach office site manager for Chemical Demilitarization, an Army- run group, said incineration is the only technology that has been used so far to destroy mustard agent. "That's the only method that has been proven to work on a large scale," he said. In the South Pacific, on Johnston Island, about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii, 2,031 tons of the same chemical agent were successfully incinerated in November after two years of operations, Kennemer said. "But some in the environmental community think that there are newer and better technologies that could be utilized, and these groups managed to convince Congress that we should take a look." In Tooele, Utah, the mustard agent is being burned as well, Kennemer said. Ross Vincent, senior policy adviser for the Sierra Club and chair of the pollution prevention committee for Sangre de Cristo in southeastern Colorado, believes the agent should be destroyed in another fashion. "We basically have a choice of heating these things up or dissolving the stuff in warm water and biologically treating it - a solution," he said. But Thompson said the decision will be based on the ability of technology to destroy the stockpile. "Some of the conditions are that the alternative methods have to be safe and comparative in cost to incineration," Thompson said. "Safety is our No. 1 issue in any kind of destruction of a stockpile." Four alternate forms of destruction will be discussed in detail at the Pueblo meetings in June.

Chicago Tribune May 29, 2001 U.S. Rethinks Nuclear Aid To Russia Suspicions, cost spur a review of program to defuse Soviet-era arms By Stephen J. Hedges and James Warren, Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Deep in the heart of Russia sits a nearly completed, $640 million concrete and steel structure designed to store plutonium from Russia's dismantled nuclear weapons. But the Russians didn't pay for the high-tech building at Mayak, a city devoted to nuclear weapons production during the Cold War. American taxpayers did. And while some cite the structure as a shining example of helping Russia reduce its dangerous nuclear stockpile, others contend the U.S. is being hoodwinked into financing an upgrade of Russia's weapons complex, one that may make the world even less safe. Indeed, Mayak's rising expense--government auditors say it may end up costing the United States $1.3 billion--is a key element of a Bush administration review of all U.S.-Russia nuclear, biological and chemical non-proliferation initiatives that have blossomed during 10 years of post-Cold War diplomacy. The programs have cost the U.S. nearly $5 billion. The aim is to reduce weapons of mass destruction and make them more secure, a vital task that Russia clearly cannot do without financial and technical aid. But now, Bush administration officials say, some such initiatives may be cut back or eliminated. The reappraisal is overseen by the National Security Council, where weekly meetings are held with the Defense, Energy and State Departments, which run the programs. The results of the study are soon expected to go to President Bush. The review comes as the administration charts a new course in U.S.-Russian relations, moving from rapprochement and financial assistance to one of harder bargains and arms-length diplomacy. "We need to be aware of the fact that Russia, in particular, claims to lack the financial resources to eliminate weapons of mass destruction but continues to invest scarce resources in the development of newer, more sophisticated [intercontinental ballistic missiles] and other weapons," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently told the U.S. Senate. The collapse of the Soviet Union left nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons spread mostly across the four new nations of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakstan and Belarus. U.S. diplomacy and money persuaded Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine to ship hundreds of missiles and warheads back to Russia, where they could be disposed of more readily. Even before the reassessment, the administration's tentative budget for fiscal 2002 cut at least $100 million from non-proliferation programs. The move upset influential Republican senators, including Pete Domenici of New Mexico, now head of the Budget Committee; Ted Stevens of Alaska, now chairman of the Appropriations Committee; and Richard Lugar of Indiana, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime proponent of aiding Russian disarmament. The three will remain potent forces even with the upcoming switch to Democratic control of the Senate. Businesses and federal agencies in 26 states benefit from the Russian nuclear salvage operations, including two national laboratories in Domenici's state. Lugar acknowledges that "the Russians are not very cooperative in some of these places at all" and that some programs might have to go. But he says the destruction of weapons has been an unheralded success and should continue at a faster pace. "We should have deactivated more warheads each year," Lugar said. "From the beginning, I would have spent more. The Russians still have thousands of warheads and hundreds of ICBMs, and that is the reality of the world." The programs, initially focused on deactivating nuclear weapons, now include converting Russian nuclear sites to peaceful uses, retraining and finding work for an estimated 7,000 scientists and other workers, and tightening security around hundreds of often poorly guarded facilities. Among those initiatives, the storage facility at Mayak, a central Russian city in the Ural Mountains, is a favorite of critics. Mayak was one of the Soviet Union's 10 "secret" nuclear cities, places that couldn't be found on a map but where nuclear weapons were built. Mayak's main mission was to produce plutonium for each weapon's critical core. When the Cold War ended, Russia asked the U.S. for help in building a storage facility at Mayak for the plutonium and uranium that would be removed from weapons. The cost of such a specialized structure was estimated at $500 million. The two nations agreed to split the cost. But by 1996, the U.S. already had spent $20 million on the building when the Russians changed their minds about the method for storing the containers of plutonium. Kremlin's `11th-hour' change "At the 11th hour, the Russians said, `We want to store it vertically,' which would have required redesigning the whole building, which we did," said F. James Shafer of the U.S. General Accounting Office, which reviewed the Mayak project. "At the time, we were still negotiating with the Russians for access. We never got the transparency. The Russians wouldn't provide it, but we went ahead and built the facility." There may be more costs. The U.S. already has spent $37 million for containers that will be used at Mayak and it expects to spend another $650 million to help Russia prepare its uranium and plutonium for storage. Nonetheless, the Russians are balking at earlier pledges to allow U.S. officials access to the facility when it is completed. Without such access, U.S. officials can't be sure just what is being stored at Mayak. Still unanswered is who will pay Mayak's $10 million annual operating costs once it opens. Proliferation experts also complain that Mayak only warehouses, and doesn't reduce, Russia's weapons capability. "Mayak is a big pyramid that you cram valuable stuff into," said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Education Policy Center in Washington. "But how does that solve your problem?" Champions of the storage center hold up Mayak as an example of the progress that has been made in helping Russia reduce its nuclear weapons stockpile. In 10 years, they note, Russia has dismantled more than 5,500 nuclear weapons, 1,100 missiles, 85 bombers and other arms. The only alternative, these experts say, is doing nothing, and getting nothing in return. "I'm hoping that, over time, people will come to understand that it's within the United States' national interest to have warhead plants shut down," said Rose Gottemoeller, formerly the undersecretary for nuclear non-proliferation in the Department of Energy. Gottemoeller said that while working with the Russians is often frustrating and expensive, the projects have given American scientists and military officials a rare window onto Russia's "holiest of holies," its nuclear complex. A decade ago, Lugar and then-Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) put the notion of disarming Russia into legislation, crafting a law in 1991 that authorized the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR, within the Pentagon. Since then, the CTR has carried out a plan that, by 2007, calls for the elimination of nearly 9,900 Russian nuclear warheads, more than 2,000 missiles, 1,400 launchers and silos, 93 bombers, and 41 nuclear submarines. Along the way, though, the Pentagon agency has strayed into several projects, some of them mandated by Congress, that by many accounts became fiascoes. The agency lost $65 million, for example, on the Defense Enterprise Fund, a private investment initiative to convert Russian defense industries into high-tech manufacturing. In 1995, the CTR transferred a portion of its work to the U.S. Energy Department, whose national laboratories had 50 years of experience in making and securing nuclear weapons. The department launched the Material Protection Control and Accounting program, which has helped the Russians keep track of its weapons material and better secure it. Since then, Energy Department contractors have installed everything from security fences to cameras to steel doors at nuclear sites. They have provided guard training and handheld devices that measure radioactive material. Computers have replaced pencil and paper as Russia's means of tracking its nuclear inventory. "We have a much better understanding than we did in 1994 and 1995," Gottemoeller said. "The Russians are beginning to trust us. They know us better." Along the way, however, Russia has failed to pay its promised share on Mayak and several other projects, even for minimal expenses. At one point, Energy officials say, the U.S. paid for food and winter clothing for guards at a Russian nuclear center where security had been beefed up at American expense. U.S. scientists denied access Russia also has been stingy about granting U.S. scientists access to projects where American equipment is being installed. In 1999 alone, the Russians denied visits by U.S. officials 25 times, according to the Energy Department. That lack of access makes it difficult to know just how effective the new security measures are. And the upgrades made so far affect just 7 percent of the estimated 650 million tons of weapons material in Russia, according to the GAO. "Although the United States has spent $481 million to upgrade security systems at Russian laboratories with weapons-grade nuclear materials, because of access problems we may not know if some of these systems are being used as intended and properly maintained," GAO Associate Director Harold Johnson told the Senate a year ago. A program to dilute 500 million tons of Russia's highly enriched uranium and sell it to the U.S. Enrichment Corp. is finally under way after years of haggling. But while that arrangement takes uranium out of Russia, critics note that it will eventually pay $12 billion to Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom, which is still designing atomic weapons. "We have no idea where that money's going," said Sokolski. "If we're lucky, it's going to finance dachas or Bermuda vacations [for corrupt Russian officials]." Some Russians also are concerned about that money, and what Minatom might do with it. "We have very big doubts that the profits from the transactions will really be spent on the lofty aims proclaimed by Minatom," said Serbei Mitrokhin of the liberal Yabloko faction in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament. "But we have even more doubts that any of this money is going to be spent on something socially useful." With the U.S. policy review under way, each government agency is waiting too see how much of its programs will remain, and just how they will fit in to what will be a decidedly different approach to Russia's potential threat. A task force organized by Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson issued a report in January that described the security of Russian nuclear weapons as "the most urgent, unmet national security threat to the United States today." The 18-member task force, half of whose members are retired senators and members of Congress, recommended spending another $30 billion over the next 8 to 10 years. Bush is not likely to buy into that strategy. Although the White House will not make its results known for several more weeks, administration officials have already signaled that changes are in the wind, well beyond the $100 million in cuts they already have targeted. "I suspect there will be other cuts," said one administration official involved in the review. "And frankly, some of these programs should be cut."

New York Times May 29, 2001 Russia Continues To Oppose Scrapping ABM Treaty By Michael Wines MOSCOW, May 28 — The Kremlin said today that its opposition to scrapping the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty would not be changed by a United States proposal that would reportedly incorporate Russian missiles and radar in a new antimissile system. But as in the past, Russia did not rule out further negotiations over the American missile proposal, saying officials still await "a concrete understanding" of how and why Washington plans to supplant the ABM treaty. A report in The New York Times today said President Bush hoped to involve President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia more deeply in American missile plans by offering Russia a package of weapons purchases, joint antimissile exercises and money to rebuild its outmoded early warning radar system and a proposal to include Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles in a new system. The report, which cited unidentified administration officials, said Mr. Bush hoped to offer the proposal when he and Mr. Putin held their first face-to-face meeting, on June 16 in Slovenia. The 1972 treaty, which bans deploying nationwide defenses against missile attacks, has been a cornerstone of arms- control policy. At its core, it holds that no nation will risk launching a missile attack if it is left defenseless against a retaliatory strike. The United States now argues that the spread of missile technology requires advanced nations to erect defenses against at least the handful of missiles that could one day be launched against them by terrorists or rogue states. Washington has sought to enlist Russia in the cause, and the Pentagon has proposed that the two nations conduct joint experiments to track dummy targets and fire antimissile devices. "Think of it as exercising their missile defense with ours, to see whether they could be made inter- operable," a senior administration official was quoted as having said. "Our systems could be interconnected. It makes a lot of sense." It also makes political sense to the administration, another official added, because an American antimissile program is unlikely to win broad approval in the United States or elsewhere without Russian participation or, at the least, assent. Many European nations have voiced doubts about the plan, despite a United States proposal to extend a limited defense against missiles across the Atlantic. But Russia appeared to offer Washington little today beyond a tentative willingness to accept money for its A-300 missiles. In separate remarks, Russia's current and former defense ministers, its foreign minister and the head of its security council said the American proposals were no surprise. The officials stressed that offers of arms deals or other military aid would not affect Russia's position on the ABM treaty. At a meeting on Russian national- security problems today, the Security Council secretary, Vladimir B. Rushailo, said Moscow remained willing to reduce its arsenal of nuclear missiles drastically, but only if the Antiballistic Missile Treaty remains in force. Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov said Russia was open to selling its S- 300 air-defense system to the United States because it had already been sold to dozens of nations. But that would contribute nothing to a missile-defense system, he said, because the S-300 is designed to work against aircraft, not ballistic missiles. Other defense experts argued that the proposal to help rebuild Russia's radar system would benefit Washington as much as Moscow, because it would reduce the prospect that Russia might interpret spotty radar data as indicating an American missile attack and respond with its own nuclear launching. Mr. Ivanov said Russia had discussed missile strategies with the Clinton administration and was open to continuing talks with the Bush administration. But in the last year, he said, "practically nothing has changed" to allay the Kremlin's concerns about such plans. "In order to hold a discussion, you have to have some subject for it, a plan, a concrete understanding of what the other side wants," he said. "For now, there are no such plans." He argued that the 1972 treaty could not be easily scrapped, because it is the foundation of dozens of other side agreements that have kept the nuclear arms race from veering out of control. "You cannot take a brick out of a wall and hope that it will stand," Mr. Ivanov said. "It will come tumbling down, and it's almost impossible to calculate the consequences."

New York Times May 28, 2001 Pg. 1 U.S. Plans Offer To Russia To End ABM Treaty Dispute By David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker WASHINGTON, May 27 — To win Russia's cooperation in scrapping the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Bush administration is preparing a broad offer of arms purchases, military aid and joint antimissile exercises, according to senior Administration strategists. Officials said the proposals are likely to include an offer to buy Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles that could be integrated into a defensive shield over Russia and Europe. Some proposals have been sketched out to Russian officials, and the full plan is to be presented in conjunction with the first meeting between President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin, on June 16 in Slovenia. Other proposals build on ideas considered during the first Bush administration and pushed, unsuccessfully, when Bill Clinton was president. Those include offers to hold joint exercises in future years to identify and shoot down attacking warheads, to provide money for Russia's decaying radar system and to share early- warning data. The administration has not elaborated on its plans publicly. But in an interview last week, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, explained the broader context of the administration's objective: "We want to convince the Russians that it is in their best interest to move beyond the ABM treaty and to develop a new relationship with us." Mr. Bush finds himself in the position of needing President Putin's agreement to dispense with the ABM treaty — both to defuse strong European objections to the military plans and to satisfy Congress, where Senate committees overseeing military and foreign affairs are about to come under Democratic control. The evolving strategy is in strong contrast to that of the administration's early weeks, when Mr. Bush and his national security aides said they were preparing to speed ahead alone to undo the treaty. But Mr. Bush's plan faces many obstacles — in Moscow, here in Washington and in foreign capitals, especially Beijing. The offers to Russia, for example, may be insufficient for Mr. Putin or the military bureaucracy he must control, a bureaucracy the administration is trying to steer around. Most details of the administration's proposals have not been presented to Moscow, though hints were floated in meetings earlier this month. One administration official said that there was "zero indication" of a response, but added that "we hope to have cooperative proposals — on missile defense, on nuclear reductions and on a broader relationship — by the middle of the summer." Mr. Bush's task has been greatly complicated by the defection of Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party, and the subsequent loss of Republican control of the Senate. The Democratic senators likely to take over as chairmen of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees are wary of Mr. Bush's plans, and have expressed a determined opposition to a unilateral withdrawal from the missile treaty. So, one senior White House official acknowledged, "if we are going to make this work, the Russians have to agree to the plan." Even a limited alliance with Moscow on missile defense would almost certainly raise fears among Chinese leaders that they were being frozen out and that the system was being designed to contain their modest nuclear force. Mr. Putin and President Jiang Zemin of China have themselves begun talking about cooperation to counter growing American military and economic power around the globe. White House officials say that over time, they might also be willing to share some technology with Beijing. The administration's ideas were first outlined to Russian officials earlier this month in Moscow by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. Ultimately, the administration's inducements may include nonmilitary matters. For example, the White House is already discussing economic aid or help in developing legal and commercial systems that would make Russia more attractive to foreign investors, many of whom fled after the economic crisis in 1998. Some elements of the military offers — including joint exercises and improvement of Russia's early- warning radar — are not new, but the earlier reactions were mixed. For example, when Boris N. Yeltsin and the elder George Bush were presidents, in 1992, they considered joint antimissile exercises. Mr. Clinton worked vigorously to strike a "grand bargain" with Russia in strategic nuclear affairs that envisioned a new security architecture that would have reduced nuclear warheads, possibly amended the ABM Treaty and deployed a limited missile defense. The Clinton administration also offered to help Russia complete a large missile-tracking radar near Irkutsk, in Siberia, if Moscow agreed to renegotiate the ABM Treaty. And Russian and American officers conducted two joint missile-defense exercises — in Moscow 1996 and in Colorado Springs in 1998 — but they were little more than computer simulations. A more ambitious "command post exercise" was briefly scheduled at Fort Bliss, Tex., last year. But a Pentagon official said late last week that that exercise had been delayed until 2002 at the earliest. In the exercise, the Russians and Americans are to practice tracing enemy missiles and coordinating and firing antimissile devices. "Think of it as exercising their missile defense with ours, to see whether they could be made inter-operable," a senior administration official said. "Our systems could be interconnected. It makes a lot of sense." Mr. Bush, administration officials said, will use the June 16 meeting with Mr. Putin to get acquainted, and serious discussions are not expected to begin until the two leaders meet again the following month in Italy at the annual economic gathering of industrialized nations. By then the adminisration hopes to have a list of initiatives in hand. But one senior official warned that "the hardest thing to put on any list" would be joint research and development, "given their own proliferation practices. "We wouldn't be confident that the technology would stop with the Russians," he added. Mr. Bush hopes to play to Mr. Putin's political needs by arguing that Russia and the United States are equally vulnerable to small rogue states and terrorists. Among the threats that worry Russia are the proliferation of missiles and the threat of biological, chemical and eventually nuclear weapons along its southern border. But Russia itself has a vigorous conventional arms-export program to earn foreign currency. And a senior administration official conceded that before deep cooperation is possible, "we would have to have serious discussions with the Russians" about their behavior when it comes to proliferation. The proposal to upgrade Russia's radars plays to the fact that early- warning systems are the vanguard and vanity of any military — and Russia's are in disrepair. Earlier this month, for example, a fire at one relay station temporarily blinded four Russian satellites. To the American side, the most attractive Russian system is the S-300 surface-to-air missile, also called the SA-10. It is designed to intercept and destroy fast-moving bombers, cruise missiles and some less-advanced short- and medium- range missiles. Analysts liken the S-300 to the American Patriot missile, which was used during the Persian Gulf war. But both the Patriot and the S-300 are of variable accuracy, and integrating the S-300 into a missile shield would do little to quiet critics who say the technology for a guaranteed shield is far away. Russia has also been trying to upgrade the S-300 to the S-400, which would have a range of 75 to 250 miles and could be guided by a Russian- designed radar. According to a report by the Federation of American Scientists, the ability of the S-400 is just within the limits defined by the ABM Treaty, which restricts the range of interceptor missiles fielded by both sides. If Mr. Bush can persuade Russia to scrap the treaty, those limits would be eliminated. "The Russians have some very good technologies," said a senior Administration official. "There is no reason why our missile defense effort should not benefit from those, especially if we are going to do it cooperatively." The more difficult diplomatic challenge may be dealing with China. Already Chinese officials have viewed Mr. Bush's proposal for a missile shield as an effort to neutralize Beijing's comparatively small nuclear arsenal. They have been alarmed at suggestions that a mobile regional missile system, based on American ships, would be used to protect Taiwan. The Chinese have tried to join forces with Russia in arguing that such an American system would lead to an arms race. The White House is clearly trying to win Russia over to its side, and how that struggle turns out could affect the balance of global military power for decades. So Mr. Bush is likely to cast any missile exercises with Russia as an effort to protect it and all of Europe against "rogue states," particularly Iran and Iraq. North Korea, the other nation whose unpredictability is used to justify Mr. Bush's plan, has missiles that could easily strike the Russian Far East. But Russia's longest border is with China, and Beijing would undoubtedly view any cooperation between Moscow and Washington as a grave threat.

Wall Street Journal May 29, 2001 In First Reaction, Russia Rejects Bush's Offer For Missile Defense By Jackie Calmes, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON -- Russia has given an initial thumbs down to President Bush's plan to offer such enticements as arms purchases, military aid and joint antimissile exercises if Moscow will accede to U.S. plans for a global antiballistic-missile-defense system. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking at a news conference Monday, said his government has received no offer on such an arrangement. "If they approach us, we will consider it in the commission on military-technical cooperation chaired by the president." He added that "Even if we receive such proposals ... I'm certain that they will not resolve the issue of the ... missile- defense program. The S-300 is a tactical antiaircraft defense system, not an antimissile system. So I can't link this to the current disagreement on the Antiballistic Missile Treaty." The Russian minister was responding to a report in Monday's New York Times that Mr. Bush, in his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia on June 16, will offer such a package to entice cash-starved Russia to join the U.S. in scrapping the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM treaty stands in the way of Mr. Bush's goal of a global missile-defense system, but Russia and a host of allies have objected that abrogating it will spark a costly and destabilizing arms race. As part of his offer, Mr. Bush may propose to buy Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles, for inclusion in an antimissile defense of the European and Russian theatre, and to upgrade Russia's early-warning radar. Similar offers ultimately could be made to other allies, administration officials said. They had no estimate of the potential cost. "We are talking with friends, allies and Russians about broad cooperation on a missile-defense system, and that could include any or all of these things, such as purchases of missiles and joint exercises," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who was with Mr. Bush for the president's first trip to California Monday. Even if the Bush administration were to persuade Russia, the two nations' cooperation would only exacerbate the security concerns of another global force, China. Russia and China recently have begun talks on a closer alliance of their own in the face of what they see as U.S. dominance. At home, Mr. Bush could run into objections from his party's conservatives about sharing missile technology with Russia, given its record on arms proliferation. Administration officials said they weren't discouraged by Mr. Ivanov's initial dismissal of the potential enticements. The emerging U.S. overture marks a switch from Mr. Bush's earlier signals, both as a candidate and as president, that he wouldn't have any compunction about unilaterally junking the ABM treaty to proceed with his still-undefined missile-defense system. It is closer to steps proposed by President Clinton in his pursuit of a more limited missile- defense policy, and considered by Mr. Bush's father before that. The new approach is aimed not only at pacifying Russia but, as important, reassuring the European allies who have come to see a take-it-or-leave-it arrogance in the new administration's foreign policy, best illustrated by its earlier rhetoric on missile defense and in Mr. Bush's disavowal of the Kyoto treaty against global warming. Bush envoys Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, heard the complaints firsthand in their tour to consult with officials in European capitals and Moscow earlier this month. Before Mr. Bush meets Mr. Putin in June, he will attend NATO and U.S.-European Union summits. The new approach also reflects the new dynamic in Washington. With last week's defection of Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords from the Republican Party, Democrats control the Senate floor and its national-security committees, empowering leaders who oppose any unilateral withdrawal from the arms-control treaty, and generally favor a more limited missile defense. -- Guy Chazen in Moscow contributed to this article.

Washington Post May 27, 2001 Pg. 2 Bush Panel Faults Germ Warfare Protocol Administration Is Advised to Reject Proposed Inspection Rules for 1972 Treaty By Vernon Loeb, Washington Post Staff Writer A Bush administration review team has rejected a draft protocol for enforcing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and concluded that a November deadline for adopting the protocol is unrealistic, administration officials said. With the White House expected to adopt those findings by summer, U.S. arms control negotiators are searching for new enforcement strategies. They want to reassure other countries that the United States remains committed to strengthening the global ban on germ weapons, the officials said. A senior State Department official acknowledged last week that rejecting the protocol in November, during an international conference on the treaty, could produce considerable diplomatic fallout. But, the official said, "we don't negotiate against a deadline." More than 140 countries, including the United States, have ratified the prohibition on developing, producing and possessing biological weapons. Yet it has never included a mechanism to verify compliance. At issue are complex procedures -- the latest draft is 210 pages -- for conducting on-site inspections to prevent cheating. To distinguish illegal weapons facilities from laboratories that are engaged in legitimate work, such as making pharmaceuticals or conducting defensive research, the inspections need to take place on short notice and involve teams of specialists. But to prevent harassment and industrial espionage, some limits also are necessary. The trick in the protocol negotiations has been to find the right balance. The current draft was put forward in March by Tibor Toth, a Hungarian diplomat who chairs an international group that has been working on a protocol since 1995. It calls for routine plant inspections to be carried out by four- member teams with two weeks' advance notice, although "challenge" inspections could take place with only a few days' notice. It also limits the time that inspectors could spend on each site, and it restricts the equipment that they normally could carry to a few simple devices, such as tape recorders and personal computers. The Bush administration's review, conducted by representatives of the State Department, Pentagon, CIA and other federal agencies, concluded that Toth's proposals would not be sufficient to prevent cheating but would be burdensome to universities and private industry, and might leave U.S. companies vulnerable to theft of commercial secrets. Arms control experts outside the government are split on the wisdom of the draft protocol. Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical and biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, applauded the administration's review team for recommending against the draft. "There are some who are bleating that any agreement is better than no agreement," she said. "That is simply foolhardy. The draft provisions, because they have no monitoring muscle, could make a weak treaty even weaker." In a report on the protocol released earlier this month, Smithson quoted experts from pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms as saying that larger teams of inspectors, with more time allowed at each site, would be necessary to enforce the treaty effectively. Because biotechnology is rapidly evolving, Smithson said in the report, trying to detect the presence of germ weapons is far more difficult than inspecting for chemical weapons, whose precursor chemicals are well known. "Those who would endeavor to monitor the BWC must contend with the real and mercurial nature of modern laboratories and pharmaceutical facilities, where virulent characteristics can be spliced into genes and, in a matter of moments, manufacturing plants can be flushed of incriminating evidence," her report said. Marie Isabelle Chevrier, an associate professor at the University of Texas who is a member of the Federation of American Scientists' working group on biological weapons verification, strongly disagrees. Writing in this month's Arms Control Today, a policy journal, she argues that the draft protocol -- while imperfect -- would help protect the United States by "providing the machinery to promptly investigate allegations of noncompliance." Chevrier writes that the U.S. negotiating team at the protocol talks in Geneva has been unable "to convince even our closest allies that its proposals are preferable" to the draft protocol. "Indeed, if President George W. Bush rejects this less-than-perfect compromise text," Chevrier argues, "it will reinforce the perception that his administration is controlled by those who never saw an arms control treaty that they liked, that his administration is only willing to give lip service rather than leadership to multilateral security efforts." Alan P. Zelicoff, a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who was a U.S. delegate to the protocol talks throughout the 1990s, faulted the Clinton administration's National Security Council for "suppressing" the results of two U.S. mock inspections that showed the difficulty of inspecting for germ weapons. Those results, Zelicoff said in an interview, could have been used at the talks in Geneva to help produce a more workable inspections system. "The U.S. was essentially sitting on its hands for the past 10 years," he said. The "vacuum" created by minimal U.S. engagement in negotiations in Geneva, Zelicoff added, has resulted in a draft protocol that is "technically impractical, politically illogical, and dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate."

Christian Science Monitor May 29, 2001 Talking Down Germ Warfare If the United States favors international cooperation to address problems of global scope, it can't afford to insist on doing things its way. That was one lesson from the Bush administration's decision to opt out of the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Washington had legitimate concerns about that treaty - concerns that predated the new administration - but they could have been more carefully voiced within the context of continuing cooperative efforts. That would have reassured allies who were stunned by the US decision to withdraw. The same dynamic surrounds the issue of proliferating biological warfare capabilities. It's a problem of global proportions, and Washington appears poised to go it alone. After a cabinet-level review, the administration is reportedly ready to reject a protocol, six years in the making, that would give real teeth to a 1972 treaty banning the development, production, or possession of biological weaponry, such as germ-laden shells or warheads. In this case, too, the objections to the protocol raised by Bush defense and diplomatic aides are substantial. They include concerns that procedures for inspection and verification aren't tough enough to deter cheaters. Case in point: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which hid its programs to develop biological weapons under various food- and medicine- production guises. US critics of the protocol also worry that random inspections called for by the pact could allow trade secrets of US pharmaceutical companies to be stolen. For protocol writers, these concerns pose a Catch-22 of sorts: Tougher inspections are needed, with fewer exemptions for industrial facilities - but such inspections mean more intrusions on company turf. Such drafting difficulties, however, pale beside the need to do something to curb a particularly insidious and dangerous type of weaponry. Proponents of the protocol, which has an acceptance deadline of this November, argue persuasively that some enforcement system - though far from perfect - is better than no enforcement at all. At the least, agreement on a protocol would signal a global commitment to tackle the problem. Also at the least, the United States should stay engaged with the process of crafting a workable enforcement structure, regardless of its concerns about the currently circulating draft. That will reassure allies, and give no comfort to those rogue nations and terrorists who would be all too happy to have the world's only superpower stand aside.

Defense Daily May 29, 2001 Pg. 4 New SMDC Chief Sees SIAP As Key Link For Missile Defense By Kerry Gildea Integration of ballistic missile defense systems within the United States military and with its allies will be a challenge, but could be made easier with a single integrated air picture (SIAP), according to the new commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. The Army needs adequate funding for the SIAP program, Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano told Defense Daily in an interview on Friday. SIAP is a program aimed to develop one single picture of a battlefield, combining data from a variety of sensors for ballistic missile and cruise missile defense missions. Cosumano took command of SMDC on April 30. "The Department is pushing the layered approach to missile defense and we have always tried to integrate," Cosumano said. "But, we haven’t done it as well as we could." When a SIAP comes on line, it will be a major improvement over what is now available for integrating missile defense capabilities throughout the services, he said. "We need more emphasis and funding for the single integrated air picture," he said. Air and missile defense depends being able to track and identify a target, he noted, adding that "having a single integrated air picture is key to that." Also, by pinpointing a target, commanders can respond with the best defensive weapon, rather than having three or four separate weapons shooting at the same time, he added. As the Pentagon pushes ahead with a layered approach to ballistic missile defense, Cosumano said the services must move away from solely focusing on individual programs and more on how to connect them in an integrated architecture. "The issue is how do you put it together and how do you integrate…the challenges with integration are developing architectures in which all of the data links can communicate with each other," he said. A good example of successful integration is the way people on very different computers are able to talk on the Internet, Cosumano said. In that same way, different missile defense systems from different services must link together under an overarching architecture, he said. "That is not necessarily so among the services" he said. "We have to improve that. And it even becomes more difficult with the allies who often times don’t have the same technologies we have and often times our data links and communications are classified to the extent we cannot communicate. We need to continue to work those issues as we develop architectures." It is also important for the Army to try to better integrate its systems with Navy and Air Force systems, he said. In addition to providing missile defense to warfighters, Cosumano said another key priority for him as he takes command of SMDC is to continue efforts to give the Army better access to space. There is room for more reliance on assets like commercial imagery, he said. And, the Army also must focus on denying potential enemies’ access to space, he added. "My first priority is to normalize space operations in the Army," Cosumano said. There are a lot of things the Army utilizes from space, including navigation, warning, communications and intelligence and I want to make sure those get to the warfighter, so that he has accessibility to all of those assets in a timely manner." In the intelligence area, there could be improvements in all areas of tasking, processing, exploitation and dissemination, he noted. "I think it’s really important that this information be provided to the warfighter in a timely manner so he can influence the fight," he said.

USA Today May 30, 2001 Pg. 1 Allies Balk On Missile Defense NATO partners fear restarting arms race By Bill Nichols, USA Today BUDAPEST, Hungary — In a setback for President Bush's missile-defense plan, Secretary of State Colin Powell failed Tuesday to overcome resistance within NATO to development of the controversial system. A statement issued by foreign ministers from the 19 NATO countries indicated that there are still concerns among European allies that a missile defense could spark a new arms race. Bush has yet to spell out how the system would work or what it would cost. U.S. diplomats had wanted the statement to note fears of a nuclear attack from nations such as North Korea or Iran, which Bush has cited to justify the need for a missile defense. Instead, the ministers agreed to watered-down language that future talks with Washington on the subject would include "appropriate assessments of threats." Nevertheless, Powell scored a diplomatic victory by persuading the group to omit from the statement any mention of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bars development of national missile-defense systems. Bush says the treaty, negotiated when the Soviet Union was still in existence, should be scrapped. At last year's NATO meeting, the final communiqué called the ABM treaty "a cornerstone of strategic stability." That language was acceptable to the Clinton administration, which was not seeking to scrap the pact. The omission of ABM from this year's statement did not seem to signal a change in the allies' attitudes, however. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said NATO must continue to "emphasize the importance of multilateral agreements in arms control." The ABM treaty will come up again here today, when Powell meets with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Russia has rejected U.S. incentives in exchange for Moscow dropping its objections to voiding the treaty. Those incentives included a possible U.S. purchase of Russian surface-to-air missiles. The topic also will be a key subject when Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold their first meeting June 16 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Powell also tried to reassure NATO that the administration will not pull U.S. troops out of the Balkans. He signaled U.S. acceptance of a NATO proposal to reduce its force there from 21,000 to 18,000. The U.S. contingent would fall from 3,600 to 3,100. European leaders were rattled by comments last week by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in which he suggested that U.S. forces might be withdrawn from Bosnia more quickly.

New York Times May 30, 2001 Military Analysis Russia's Role In Missile Defense By Michael R. Gordon LONDON, May 29 — It is not surprising that the Bush administration's new effort to persuade Russia to scrap the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty has received a chilly reception in Moscow. It fails to address Russia's central concern, to ensure there are strict limits — or at least clearly defined ones — on the development and deployment of antimissile systems. That way Russia can ensure that an American missile shield can never become effective enough to neutralize Moscow's nuclear deterrent and that there are some constraints on how much the United States can exploit its technological and economic advantages. But the Bush administration's latest proposals are silent on that count. Instead of new limits on defensive systems, it offers the Russians less vital inducements: joint antimissile exercises, arms purchases and funds to repair Russia's early warning network. Few of those suggestions are new and some are already in effect. That does not mean that a new understanding on missile defense cannot be reached with Moscow or that the administration's proposals may not prove useful. But it suggests that if a compromise is to be reached permitting the United States to erect a limited nationwide defense, the administration's proposals are at best only part of the solution. "The bottom line for the Russians is that a defense has to be limited," observed Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They can't go along with an open-ended defense that has the potential to overwhelm their deterrent." When the Bush administration took office it appeared to have little interest in wooing Moscow. Senior aides signaled that the decision to build an antimissile defense had been made, and the implication was that there was little Moscow could or should be able to do about it. That may still be the administration's real thinking. But politics at home and abroad requires that the White House make a diplomatic effort — or at least be perceived as trying. With the Democrats taking control of the Senate — and with skeptics of the administration's missile plans leading the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees — there will be little support for money for an antimissile defense if Washington does not try to talk to Moscow. As for the allies, they seem prepared to go along grudgingly with a missile defense, but only if a way can be found to maintain a working relationship with Russia and preserve a modicum of arms control. The unease of the allies about the Bush administration's still vague missile plan, and the still sketchy arms control strategy that undergirds it, was evident today at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Budapest. To the frustration of the administration, they declined even to acknowledge formally that the allies faced a "common threat" of a missile attack. A senior White House official seemed to concede the new political realities when he acknowledged, "If we are going to make this work, the Russians have to agree to the plan." The paradox is that having acknowledged the growing importance of securing Moscow's assent, or at least acquiescence, the administration's proposals are not sufficient to close the gap. Consider the offer to conduct joint exercises of tactical antimissile systems, the sort used against medium- and short- range missiles. That is not a new idea; the program is already under way. Two exercises involving computer simulation have been held in Moscow and Colorado, and a team of Russian officials visited the United States in February to plan a field exercise next year at Fort Bliss, Tex. Another offer is to share early warning data on missile launches. But the Clinton administration and the Kremlin reached an agreement in 1998 to do just that, and a center to share such data is to be established in Moscow. The Bush administration is also ready to finance improvements in Russia's early warning system, but one example suggests that is not sufficient to win the hearts and minds of the Russian military. The Clinton administration offered assistance in constructing an early warning radar in eastern Siberia and in launching Russian early warning satellites. In return, the Clinton team sought the right to build a limited nationwide missile defense. Moscow rejected that offer. Now the Bush team is recycling the Clinton plan, but it wants the right to build a much larger antimissile system than the Clinton administration considered. Finally, the Bush administration is offering to buy S-300 antimissile systems, which the Russians have offered to install in Europe. Those would provide a defense against medium- and short-range missiles within the strict limits of the ABM treaty. Because the sale of the S-300 was essentially a Russian idea, Moscow can hardly object. But it is unlikely that the purchase of the systems will be decisive in overcoming Russia's concerns about a multitiered missile defense. The key questions for the Russians — and for Congress and the United States' allies — are clear: What sort of defensive system does the Bush administration propose to build? Will it be ground based or sea based, or will some elements be based in space (a big worry for Moscow, which fears that a space-based system could be expanded into a much vaster shield)? How long will it take to develop? And when does the program bump up against the limits of the ABM treaty? And if the ABM treaty is abandoned, does the Bush administration plan to negotiate new binding limits on antimissile defenses and offensive nuclear arms? In short, what is the new strategic framework President Bush has called for (but never defined)? Until the Bush administration fills in those blanks, it will be hard not only to hammer out an agreement, it will be hard even to have a serious discussion. "In order to hold a discussion, you have to have some subject for it, a plan, a concrete understanding of what the other side wants," said Sergei B. Ivanov, the Russian defense minister. "For now, there are no such plans."

New York Times May 30, 2001 Powell Fails To Persuade NATO On Antimissile Plan By Marc Lacey BUDAPEST, May 29 — In his first effort to sell President Bush's missile defense plan to allies, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell failed today to pierce NATO's sharp opposition. He could not even convince them that a threat of a missile attack against their countries actually exists. At a meeting of foreign ministers, Secretary Powell pressed the administration's case for abandoning the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and shifting American doctrine away from the cold war theory of mutually assured destruction. But the French and the Germans, in particular, remained skeptical, along with other NATO members, according to diplomats in the closed- door meetings. The ABM treaty has long been the centerpiece of the alliance's defense strategy, and it specifically prohibits the development of a nationwide missile defense shield. "Clearly not all allies are on the same page," a senior State Department official conceded. But the Bush administration appeared to make some gains during the meeting. Just a year ago, in a joint communiqué, the NATO ministers called the ABM treaty "a cornerstone of strategic stability" that was essential in reducing offensive nuclear weapons. But today, the ministers, divided on what to say, did not mention the ABM treaty, a move that pleased the administration because it considers the accord an artifact of the cold war. On the issues of a nuclear test-ban treaty, the ministers' language this year appeared to be a compromise. Last year at a meeting in Florence, they endorsed the treaty, which the Bush administration opposes as unverifiable and unenforceable. So this year, the ministers replaced their endorsement with a call on all nations to maintain a voluntary ban on nuclear testing. American officials had also hoped to win approval of a joint statement today that would declare that NATO countries faced a "common threat" of missile attack — stronger language than the reference last year to a "potential threat.". But the ministers could not agree after a long debate, so they vowed instead to continue assessing the level of threats. "I didn't take a poll around the room but I think I can safely say there is recognition that there is a threat out there," Secretary Powell said later at a news conference, discounting the conflict. "Some people see it as more immediate than others. Some see it as greater than others. It would be irresponsible for the United States as a nation with the capability to do something about such a threat not to do something," In Washington, a senior administration official said Secretary Powell had made some headway with the ministers. "We wanted them to move conceptually, and they did," he said. "We didn't expect them to jump ahead. We expected, and hoped, they would move conceptually." He was referring to the threat and the need for defenses. Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said that he continued to have concerns about the American plans and that he would continue challenging them until he is sure they add to NATO's security and stability. "It must not lead to another arms race," Mr. Fischer said. France's foreign minister, Hubert Védrine,said in a briefing with reporters that he continues to see multilateral agreements like the ABM treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as important. "I stressed the importance of multilateral agreements in controlling levels of armaments," Mr. Védrine said. "They are important for our safety." The allies, meeting for the first time in a country once part of the Soviet bloc, tried to paper over the discord by issuing a statement in which they said they were pleased by the Bush administration's consulting them as it moved forward with missile defense. That back-and-forth will continue next week when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is in charge of pursuing a missile defense system, will brief NATO defense ministers on his review of technological options. And Mr. Bush will make his case personally at a meeting of NATO heads of state in mid- June. "People want to hear the thinking and to contribute to that thought process before the American proposals have been firmed up," said the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson. American officials said they were listening even as they moved ahead with the planning stages of developing such a system. "This is a real consultation that President Bush wants and not a phony consultation," Secretary Powell said. "We really want to hear back from our allies. At the same time we made clear to them we have to move forward. We see a threat." The secretary also reassured the allies that the United States did not intend to pull its peacekeeping troops out of the Balkans, despite suggestions by Mr. Rumsfeld that the military work in Bosnia is over and that the Americans troops ought to go. "We went into this together and we'll come out together," Secretary Powell said he told the group, dismissing reports of discord. The allies endorsed "a moderate reduction" in the number of peacekeepers in Bosnia but made clear that "it is not advisable at this time to consider major restructuring or reductions." The expected reduction to 18,000 from 21,000 troops will be announced next week in Brussels. The American contingent in Bosnia will very likely be reduced to 3,100 from 3,600 troops, officials say. When the mission began in the mid-1990's, 60,000 NATO troops were stationed in Bosnia — a third of them American. On the worsening crisis in Macedonia, the ministers condemned Albanian rebels and called on them to lay down their arms. Javier Solana, the European Union's security policy chief, briefed officials on his recent talks with feuding factions in Skopje. "A band of armed thugs must not be allowed to destroy a multi-ethnic democracy," Lord Robertson said. "There can be no place at the table for those who take up arms against a democratic government."

Washington Post May 30, 2001 Pg. 15 NATO Divided On Missile Danger Europeans Rebuff Powell's Plea to Recognize 'Common Threat' By William Drozdiak, Washington Post Foreign Service BUDAPEST, May 29 -- The United States clashed today with several European countries over whether NATO faces a serious risk of a missile attack from hostile states, reflecting deep misgivings in European capitals over the Bush administration's plans to press ahead with a missile defense system. U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sought unsuccessfully to convince his European counterparts that the alliance as a whole must take urgent measures to cope with a "common threat" posed by intercontinental ballistic missiles being developed by potential enemies such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But European allies, notably France and Germany, rejected his appeal that they embrace the same security-risk assessment that the United States holds. They said raising the level of perceived threat was unreasonable because they did not feel endangered and did not deem it wise to provoke a potential confrontation by declaring that they were. The conflict emerged at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers here -- the first ever in a former Warsaw Pact state -- as participants debated phrasing of a document listing NATO's defense priorities. While the dispute might appear trivial, it demonstrated the wide gap that separates the United States from much of the alliance over Washington's plans to build a missile shield. Early this month, the United States dispatched a team of envoys to Europe and Asia in a bid to persuade friendly nations to cooperate with, or at least show sympathy for, its missile defense plans. But European governments have grown more antagonistic toward missile defense since the idea was revived in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Since President Bush assumed office insisting that any anti-missile umbrella be large enough to protect allied countries as well as the United States, European governments have stepped up criticism of what they see as an expensive and unrealistic project that could trigger a global arms race by goading countries to develop new arsenals to overwhelm such defenses. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine expressed concern about the impact a defense system would have on arms control treaties and the danger of provoking an arms race. But he welcomed the prospect of further consultations with the United States and the Bush administration's willingness to keep open channels of discussion. Washington maintains that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed in 1972 by the United States and the Soviet Union to restrict development of national missile defenses, has become obsolete and no longer corresponds to post- Cold War security threats. But many European governments still refer to it as "the cornerstone of strategic stability." Until today's meeting, that language was enshrined in NATO's twice-annual policymaking reviews. But at Powell's insistence, the language was dropped from the communique, a gesture that European diplomats said was retribution for their refusal to endorse the "common threat" language sought by the United States in the passage on missile defense. Because NATO works by consensus, any member can exercise a veto. To satisfy everybody, NATO approved consultations that "will include appropriate assessment of threats and address the full range of strategic issues affecting our common security, and the means to address them, including deterrence and offensive and defensive means, and enhancing the effectiveness of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, as well as diplomatic and counter-proliferation measures." Powell acknowledged that "it may take some time" to persuade the allies to accept the administration's approach in dealing with a new strategic environment, but he expressed confidence that they will agree once they understand the nature of emerging threats and the technological potential to respond to them. "I did not take a poll of everyone in the room today, but I think I can safely say there is recognition of some sort of threat out there and that it would be irresponsible for the United States not to do something about it," Powell told reporters. "Some people see it as more immediate. Some see it as greater than perhaps others. But I don't think there's any question but that there's some sort of threat out there." Late today, Powell met with the foreign ministers of Russia, France and Britain -- putting together four of the five members of the U.N. Security Council -- to discuss a new sanctions regime against Iraq that could be implemented as early as Monday. A senior U.S. official said it would relax the economic hardships imposed on Iraqi civilians but keep in place prohibitions on military items. Powell said that "we are hard at work . . . at the United Nations on a . . . resolution, and you will see the results of these consultations in the near future."

Wall Street Journal May 30, 2001 Bush's Missile Shield Plan Fails To Win NATO's Endorsement By Michael M. Phillips, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal BUDAPEST -- In a sign of continued European skepticism over its missile- defense plans, the Bush administration failed to win an endorsement from top North Atlantic Treaty Organization policy makers for scrapping the Anti- Ballistic Missile treaty and building a strategic missile shield in its place. At a high-level meeting Monday of the 19-nation North Atlantic Council, the group, fearing a new arms race, rebuffed the U.S. proposal for a joint statement saying the allies face a common threat of missile attack, a position that would have helped justify abandoning the 1972 ABM treaty. The continued split over missile defenses comes on top of U.S.-European disagreements over global-warming policy and fears that the U.S. is increasingly willing to go it alone in international affairs. The NATO allies came to easier agreement on the situation in the Balkans. The foreign ministers decided "it is not advisable at this time to consider major restructuring or reductions" in NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, although a routine "moderate reduction" in troop numbers is likely to be finalized at a NATO defense ministers" meeting in Brussels next week. Inside the closed-door meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell promised the U.S. wouldn't pull out its 3,000- plus troops until NATO agrees they aren't needed. "We went in together, we'll come out together," he told them. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been publicly and privately pushing for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Bosnia, arguing that the military mission there is over. "The job is not yet completed," NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson told reporters. Mr. Powell did, however, press his colleagues to redesign the peacekeeping force to include more police units trained for crowd control and other civilian functions. At last May's meeting of NATO foreign ministers, member governments praised the ABM treaty as the "cornerstone of strategic stability" and called on the U.S. and Russia to "strengthen and preserve" it -- diplomatic code that gave the Clinton administration some wiggle room to negotiate changes in the treaty to allow scaled-down missile defenses. By contrast, this year the U.S. and Europeans squabbled over the wording of the communique, delayed its completion, and finally agreed to release a text that made no mention of the treaty at all. The ABM treaty bans weapons that could be used to destroy incoming missiles, on the premise that if everyone is defenseless against nuclear weapons, nobody will dare use them. The Bush administration argues that the U.S. could face an accidental missile launch, or an attack by rogue states or terrorists undeterred by the threat of annihilation. "I'm pleased that it didn't warrant particular attention this time around," Mr. Powell said of the ABM treaty. A senior U.S. diplomat stressed later that the U.S. hadn't been seeking a specific allied endorsement of missile defense, just an early consensus the missile threat is real. Most European governments oppose the missile-defense concept, fearing that it could lead to a new arms race. "They're trying to prevent opening up a door that could be interpreted as a green light for abandoning the ABM treaty," said one NATO official. Mr. Powell insisted the U.S. isn't trying to force a unilateral decision upon its allies, and the recent loss of control of the Senate to the Democrats would make such a move difficult at home, too. NATO governments are holding extensive discussions about the missile threat and U.S. proposals. "This is a real consultation that President Bush wants ... not a phony consultation," Mr. Powell said. But, he added, it would be "irresponsible" not to develop defenses. "It will take us time to persuade everybody of that proposition, but I think we'll be successful at the end of the day," he admitted. The U.S. heard some encouragement from Hungary, a former Soviet satellite now in the NATO camp. "The logic of Cold War, which was based on mutual vulnerability, has lost its legitimacy," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told his colleagues. "The alliance has the right and duty to defend itself." NATO officials were also of one voice when it comes to Macedonia, where the elected government is battling ethnic Albanian rebels. Mr. Robertson labeled the rebels "a band of armed thugs" who didn't deserve a seat at the negotiating table. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, flew to the Budapest meeting from Skopje peace talks Tuesday, then immediately returned to the Macedonian capital. NATO officials suggested that a breakthrough in the negotiations could be imminent.

Washington Post May 30, 2001 Pg. 18 For The Record From remarks by Secretary of State Colin Powell during a news conference yesterday in Budapest: With respect to the strategic framework that we are consulting with our allies on, and the Russians and the Chinese and other concerned nations, I made it clear to my colleagues that President Bush sees this in terms of an overall strategic framework dealing with offensive weapons, missile defense, proliferation, nonproliferation, counterproliferation, cooperative arrangements and agreements: the whole range of issues that would reflect the new strategic environment and not the old strategic environment. We're looking at reductions in offensive weapons. We're looking at what technologies are available to deal with limited missile attacks coming our ways. I made it clear to them that this is a real consultation that President Bush launched on May 1 with his speech in the National Defense University and not a phony consultation. We really want to hear back from our allies. We are an alliance; we believe in this alliance, and we're going to consult with our colleagues as we move forward. But at the same time, I made it clear to them that we know we have to move forward; we can see the threat, the threat is clear, and we have to deal with that threat, and we'll do it in a way that I think will enhance overall strategic stability. And it will take us time to convince everybody of that proposition, but I think we'll be successful at the end of the day.