Kay Reports Finding No Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, But Some Biological Warfare “Activities”

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — After three months of searching, U.S.-led investigators have found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the lead investigator David Kay told the U.S. Congress yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 2).

They also have found no evidence that Iraq had active nuclear or chemical weapons programs when U.S. and British forces invaded last March, nor have they discovered any evidence of biological weapons production, though they did find evidence suggesting clandestine research activity on weapons-capable biological agents, he said.

The 1,200-member, U.S.-sponsored team, called the Iraq Survey Group, also ruled out the possibility that two equipment-laden trailers found this spring in Iraq were intended for mobile biological weapons production (see GSN, Aug. 11), despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s May declaration that the trailers proved “we found the weapons of mass destruction” (see GSN, June 2).

In addition, Kay reported that no information has been uncovered to indicate that Iraq had prepared chemical rounds for rapid deployment against the invading forces (see GSN, Sept. 30).

Despite the lack of weapon discoveries, Kay said his team has uncovered “dozens of WMD-related program activities” and equipment previously concealed from U.N. inspectors.

He said his conclusions were preliminary and that further investigation is warranted.

“We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapons stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find whether they have gone,” Kay said in testimony to a joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees that was released to the public.

“We are still very much in the collection and analysis mode,” he said.

The Bush administration had cited a threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to make its case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which began last March and the subsequent occupation.  Some officials had said there was evidence Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear weapons and that they feared Iraq might one day share them with terrorists.

Invading U.S. military forces did not report finding any banned weapons, however, and the Bush administration has been criticized for using the survey group instead of the standing U.N. arms inspection commission to search for banned weapons.

The group so far has spent an estimated $300 million on the search and the administration reportedly is asking for another $600 million and six to nine months more to continue the investigation, according to the New York Times.

No Visible Nuclear or Chemical Weapons Programs

Kay said deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wanted to obtain nuclear weapons and would have if U.N. sanctions had been lifted.

He said, though, that “to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.”

He said there was no indication of activities related to an Iraqi centrifuge enrichment program.  U.S. intelligence agencies had previously reported that Iraqi had tried to import aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges.

Kay’s team did find, however, some evidence that Iraq took steps to preserve some technological capability from its pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.

Kay also said Iraq appeared to have no significant chemical weapons program.

“Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991,” he said.

“Information found to date suggests that Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced — if not entirely destroyed — during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of U.N. sanctions and U.N. inspections,” he said.

Biological Weapons Activities Suspected

While Kay indicated no evidence of biological weapons stores or production, he said the group uncovered “significant information” indicating “biological warfare activities,” including “research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities.”

“All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents,” he said.

In particular, he said a reference strain of a biological organism that could be used to produce biological weapons was found concealed in a scientist’s home and that “new research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin” that was not reported to U.N. inspectors was uncovered.

Kay said a prison that might have been used for biological weapons testing on humans had been “explicitly ordered” not to be declared to the United Nations.

He said investigators have begun to uncover a “clandestine network of laboratories and facilities” within Iraq’s intelligence apparatus that was not declared to U.N. inspectors.

“We are still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to large-scale military efforts or BW terror weapons, but this clandestine capability was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing R&D — all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production,” he said.

Milton Leitenberg, a professor and arms control expert at the University of Maryland, said today the evidence Kay has produced so far on Iraqi biological agent activities does indicate a biological weapon program was underway, though a “little” one.

“I think there are no problems answering that there are no stockpiles, there are no weapons in the sense of munitions, there are no bulk agents. 

“But I don’t think you can say those things [Kay described] aren’t part of a program.  Every one of them is a material breach.  There shouldn’t have been a pathogen in a refrigerator.  There shouldn’t have been any equipment in a mosque.  There shouldn’t have been those two dozen or 20 laboratories in the Iraqi intelligence service,” Leitenberg said.

Two Trailers Ruled Out

Prior to the invasion, U.S. officials had said Iraq possessed trailers containing specialized equipment that were apparently intended for mobile biological weapons production and at least two suspected trailers were later found by occupying forces.

Kay’s report yesterday said the Iraq Survey Group was yet “unable to corroborate the existence of a mobile [biological weapons] BW production effort.”

It said an investigation ruled out the two trailers were intended for biological weapons production and other suspected purposes, saying “technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers.”

Kay said the group has identified individuals who were at one time part of a mobile program and would continue to search for evidence of its existence.

Chemical Weapons Attack Plans Discounted

The Iraq Survey Group has also found no evidence that Iraq had prepared chemical weapons rounds for quickly attacking invading U.S. and British forces.

Kay said the inspectors “acquired information related to Iraq’s CW doctrine and Iraq’s war plans for [countering the invasion], but we have not yet found evidence to confirm prewar reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against coalition forces.”

A British document controversially claimed an Iraqi order had been given to be capable of launching a chemical attack in 45 minutes.  President George W. Bush in September 2002 had restated that claim and the White House had issued a statement saying Iraq “could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given.”

As for Iraq’s ballistic missile efforts, the Kay’s team found evidence that Iraq was engaged in missile development activities “that would have, if [the invasion] had not occurred, dramatically breached U.N. restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.”

“The Iraqis were engaged in a very full-scale program that would have extended their delivery systems out beyond 1,000 kilometers,” Kay told reporters after the hearing.

Back to top

Amid Mounting Criticism, Rumsfeld Defends Iraq Intelligence

By Joe Fiorill

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON ― As top U.S. weapons hunter David Kay told lawmakers his teams have “not yet found stocks of weapons” of mass destruction in Iraq — but cannot say for sure that no such weapons were present when the U.S. war in Iraq began — U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday defended controversial prewar intelligence on Iraq’s alleged WMD programs and how the Bush administration used the intelligence (see related GSN story, today).

Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing that he has seen nothing that indicates prewar intelligence on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs was “necessarily, in the aggregate, inaccurate.”  He added that there was “no debate” at the United Nations before the war “as to whether or not Saddam Hussein had these programs under way.”

“The only debate in the U.N. was whether or not you should wait longer and allow another resolution before deciding that the inspectors weren’t finding it,” said Rumsfeld.

The defense chief’s comments appeared to be at odds with statements by antiwar parties early this year in the U.N. Security Council.  Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergei Lavrov said March 4 that Russia's “own data does not confirm the U.S. charges” about Iraq’s weapons programs.

On March 7, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission head Hans Blix told the council they had found no evidence to support U.S. charges of revived Iraqi weapons programs but needed more time.  On March 19, as U.S. troops prepared to enter Iraq, Blix said that “3 1/2 months of work carried out in Iraq have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction” and expressed regret that “no more time is available for our inspections.”

Rumsfeld’s comments yesterday came a week after leaders of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee wrote CIA Director George Tenet to criticize last October’s national intelligence estimate and amid increasing questions about how much influence top administration officials had in preparing the document, which administration members cited frequently in making the case for war.

Rumsfeld said he has “never seen anything that was perfect” in the area of intelligence and added, in an apparent reference to the format of the national intelligence estimate, “The collective judgment, with a footnote saying, ‘I don’t agree with that,’ ends up getting circulated.”

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate Joseph Cirincione called Rumsfeld’s portrayal of the intelligence “a rewrite of history.”

“The October 2002 NIE is notable for two things.  It was the NIE with the most dissents, and the most serious dissents, of any NIE in memory, and … it was strikingly different from all Iraq threat assessments that preceded it.  So the question is, what went on with that NIE?  Who intervened to make that NIE come out the way it did?” Cirincione said.

The answer, he said, is that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Defense Department’s Office of Special Plans heavily influenced the preparation of the intelligence report.

Rumsfeld characterized Kay’s report yesterday as “some sort of an interim report,” adding that U.S. weapons hunters “have a lot of work left to do,” including visits to a number ― described by Rumsfeld as “quite low” ― of “suspect sites” they have not yet visited.

“Trying to, you know, make an early decision on it, it seems to me, would be not something that I’d have the confidence in doing,” Rumsfeld said.

Asked about a New York Times report that $600 million of the $87 billion the Bush administration is seeking for activities in Iraq is for continuing the WMD search, Rumsfeld said, “It’s classified.”  Asked why, he replied, “I don’t classify these things.”

In related news, Maj. Gen. David Cone yesterday criticized prewar intelligence about what advancing U.S. troops could expect in a battle for Iraq’s capital.  The remarks came as Cone briefed the press on an effort he has led to determine the U.S. military’s “lessons learned” from the Iraq war.

“I don’t think the intelligence was good at all in terms of what we expected from an enemy inside the city,” Cone said.

Asked about prewar concerns that the tactics of Iraqi forces defending Baghdad could include use of weapons of mass destruction, Cone said U.S. commanders told him that, before arriving in Baghdad, they believed “the question was when they would use it, not if they would use it.”

Back to top

Investigation Into CIA Agent’s Identity Leak Scheduled to Begin in Days

U.S. Justice Department officials will begin interviewing Bush administration officials in the next few days to find the source of the apparently politically motivated exposure of a undercover CIA agent, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Sept. 30).

“We will move quickly to interview likely suspects in the next few days,” a Justice Department official said.  The CIA agent was identified to the media after her husband — former Ambassador Joseph Wilson — openly criticized the Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq.

The quick action could be an effort to undermine Democratic calls for an independent counsel to investigate the leak, according to the Post.

Justice Department officials also intend to investigate administration officials at the Defense and State departments (Schmidt/Allen, Washington Post, Oct. 3).

“We will cooperate fully,” said State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman.  Justice Department officials have sent “do not destroy” letters to both agencies, asking officials to hold on to phone logs, e-mail and other evidence (Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, Oct. 3).

“One of the first steps is you have to determine the universe of people who had access to the information,” said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo.

Meanwhile, Republican aides sought to portray the situation as concocted by scandal-seeking Democrats.

“If you make it a partisan squabble, it casts doubt on the whole story and people tune it out,” said a House Republican aide.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday that Democrats are trying to “sensationalize this issue.”

“Unfortunately, there are some that are looking through the lens of political opportunism,” he said (Schmidt/Allen, Washington Post).

Back to top

Former Iranian President Lays Out Conditions for Nuclear Cooperation

Powerful former Iranian President Akbar Rafsanjani today said Tehran must receive international assistance for its civilian nuclear program in exchange for increased Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (see GSN, Oct. 2).

Speaking during weekly Friday prayers, Rafsanjani laid out four conditions — including nuclear assistance — that must be met before Iran signs the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement and allows more intrusive international monitoring of its nuclear activities.

“The conditions we would impose for signing the protocol are the same as those imposed by the United States,” Rafsanjani said.  Tehran will insist, he said, “that our national security not be endangered, that our (Islamic) values and our sacred sites not be affected, that (military) secrets unconnected with the nuclear program not be revealed and that others fulfill their duty” to assist with Iran’s civilian nuclear plant development (Agence France-Presse, Oct. 3).

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, meanwhile, said that Iran would cooperate with the IAEA.  The U.N. agency recently imposed an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons.

“Tehran will continue its cooperation with the agency although the International Atomic Energy Agency issued an inappropriate resolution because Iran doesn’t have any worries regarding the transparency of its peaceful nuclear program,” Khatami said yesterday.  “Nuclear weapons will not be a source of security for us,” he added (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Oct. 3).

Iranian nuclear officials began meetings recently with senior IAEA representatives in Tehran (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

Back to top

Failure to Negotiate With North Korea Will Lead to Asian Nuclear Proliferation, Senator Says

By George C. Wilson

National Journal

It was a memorable Washington moment.  It came right after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee finished grilling President George W. Bush’s man in Iraq, Paul Bremer, last week.  A 20-something woman walked from the spectator seats in the cavernous hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building to the dais to lay her concerns about Iraq on Bremer’s chief griller, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the committee’s ranking Democrat.  Biden listened attentively to the young woman for several minutes as the room emptied.  He then took her aback by skipping right over Iraq and telling her that she and others in her generation had something more menacing to worry about — the accelerating nuclear arms race in the Far East.

The 60-year-old Biden told me later that he could not help feeling gloomy as he looked at the trusting woman and realized that his generation of leaders was bequeathing to her a world more dangerous than the one they grew up in.  They had only one nuclear gun pointed at them, the Soviet Union’s, during the Cold War.  In addition, it wasn’t always on hair trigger.  But as things stand right now, the usually buoyant Biden said sadly, that young lady and others in her generation soon will be looking down the barrel of half a dozen nuclear guns, many on hair trigger, because President Bush has not found a way to stop North Korea from starting a nuclear arms race in the Far East.

“Things are unraveling on the Korean Peninsula,” Biden said in explaining his pessimism in a lengthy interview.  The North Koreans are proceeding with their manufacture of nuclear bombs (see GSN, Oct. 2).  “If they haven’t already reprocessed those 8,000 spent fuel rods” taken out of storage in January at their nuclear facility at Yongbyon to make plutonium for bombs, “they’re on the verge of doing it.”  This will set off a chain reaction, he warned, compelling Japan to field its own nuclear weapons “within two years.  Then South Korea will become a nuclear power” (see GSN, Aug. 11).  China, confronted on its eastern front with a nuclear North Korea, a nuclear Japan, and possibly a nuclear Taiwan, “will go ballistic, literally and figuratively.”

The Chinese, Biden continued, are going to conclude that they’re really in a very different neighborhood than they were before.  “They’re going to say, ‘We only had to look south at India before in worrying about nukes.  That’s why we helped Pakistan with its nuclear program.  So India is not our greatest concern right now.  But now we have to vastly increase our nuclear capability.’”

China has less than two dozen nukes now, mainly aimed at U.S. cities, and these weapons are designed mainly to deter an American attack.  “They are really for defensive purposes,” Biden said.  But if China’s old enemy Japan goes nuclear, as it surely will if North Korea continues on its present course, China will feel compelled to develop and deploy hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nuclear weapons to deter Japan and the other new nuclear powers in the neighborhood, Biden contended.  Nor can Indonesia be expected to sit out the nuclear race in the Far East as the action-reaction phenomenon takes hold.

The senator’s gloom cannot simply be dismissed as “the-sky-is-falling” rhetoric from a liberal whose party is out of power.  Biden has spent most of his adult life trying to keep nuclear scorpions around the world from striking each other.  He has held forth not only in open Senate hearings and debates but also in private meetings with presidents and diplomats around the world.  Besides, others who have been down the road of confrontation with Pyongyang share his worries about North Korea triggering an arms race and potentially a nuclear war.  Most notable among them is former Defense Secretary William Perry, who readied the military for all-out war with North Korea in 1994 even while helping the Clinton administration to craft an accord with Pyongyang designed to freeze the country’s nuclear advance.

“If it keeps on its present course,” Perry wrote in the Washington Post on July 23, “North Korea will probably have six to eight nuclear weapons by the end of the year; will possibly have conducted a nuclear test; and may have begun deployment of some of these weapons targeted against Japan and South Korea.  By next year, it could be in serial production of nuclear weapons, building perhaps five to 10 per year.  Given North Korea’s desperate economic condition, we should expect it to sell some of the products of its nuclear program, just as it did with its missile program (see GSN, April 25).  If that happens, a nuclear bomb could end up in an American city.  The administration has suggested that it would interdict such transfers.  But a nuclear bomb can be made with a sphere of plutonium the size of a soccer ball,” wrote Perry.  “It is wishful thinking to believe we could prevent a package of that size from being smuggled out of North Korea.”

So how do we stop this locomotive that has gotten up so much steam?

Biden and Perry see no acceptable alternative to Bush’s conducting serious and direct negotiations with North Korea.  Diplomatic officials say that the ones to date, conducted with Pyongyang under the umbrella of multilateral talks with China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, have been less than halfhearted (see GSN, Sept. 2).  One diplomat in the know said that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs John Kelly, Bush’s negotiator in the multination talks, brought nothing to the table for North Korea in the most recent round.  Kelly also infuriated the North Koreans by refusing to host a dinner for them, as they had done for us, the diplomat added.

Biden said despairingly that the neoconservatives around Bush, notably Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are viscerally opposed to duplicating anything former President Bill Clinton did, such as negotiating a pact with North Korea.  They consider negotiations with rogue leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Il a sign of weakness, the senator said.

“My instinct,” said Biden, “is that the ‘hate-Clinton’ attitude is 75 percent of the reason the Bush administration is not negotiating seriously with North Korea, and 25 percent is [the belief] that you cannot negotiate with this guy and if you’re strong enough and tough enough, he’ll yield.”  Secretary of State Colin Powell realizes that the United States, no matter how strong it is, cannot just stiff-arm countries, Biden said.  Powell periodically talks Bush into negotiating, as he did with North Korea, but Cheney keeps pulling him back.  “Like with a horse, Powell is always able to lead Bush to the water.  But just as he is about to put his head down, Cheney up in the saddle says, ‘Un-uh,’ and yanks up the reins before Bush can drink the water.  That’s my image of how it goes,” Biden said.

Everybody knows, Biden said, that the only way the United States can get North Korea to halt its nuclear march is to, “at a minimum, assure the North Koreans that we will not remove [Kim Jong Il’s regime] from power.  But what would that do to the neocons in the administration?  They would have to swallow 20 years of their tripe that they would never do that.”

According to author Bob Woodward in Bush at War, the president said, “I loathe Kim Jong Il.  I’ve got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people.  And I have seen intelligence on these prison camps — they’re huge — that he uses to break up families and to torture people.  I am appalled.  ... It is visceral.  Maybe it’s my religion, but I feel passionate about this.”

This moralist mind-set at the top of the American government, Biden said, is why he feels gloomier about the prospect of avoiding nuclear war, particularly in the Far East, than at any time since he came to Congress three decades ago.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney are among the conservatives who share Biden’s sense of alarm about North Korea’s touching off a nuclear arms race.  But they disagree that Washington can negotiate an agreement that Pyongyang will honor.  “We see no alternative but for China to use its substantial economic leverage, derived from North Korea’s dependence on it for fuel and food, to press hard and immediately for a change in regime,” they wrote in the August 4 Wall Street Journal.  “Kim Jong Il’s regime has shown that agreements signed with it, by anyone, mean nothing.”

If China fails to effect regime change, the United States should be prepared to do it through a war featuring “massive air power,” Woolsey and McInerney said.  They contend that precision bombs could destroy the thousands of North Korean artillery tubes, many in caves, before the guns could kill thousands of South Korean civilians.  Biden and others, however, do not share that belief.  The neocons of this view “are the same guys who would have been telling [President] Eisenhower that he had to use a nuclear weapon against China” to win the Korean War, Biden scoffed.  “Can you imagine the Cold War ending the way it did if these guys were in charge?”

Biden was arguing his liberal ideology.  But Perry was not arguing ideology when he studied, at Clinton’s request, what to do about North Korea’s emerging nuclear arsenal in the 1990s.  Perry’s background and interests were first and foremost technical, not political.  As Pentagon research chief under President Carter from 1977 to 1981, Perry championed the initial development of the precision weapons that we so rely on today.  He told me back then that he could not get military leaders to see their advantages, to trust them.  He sounded as discouraged about this mind-set on the technical front as Biden does now on the diplomatic front.

More than a decade later, Perry, as defense secretary, analyzed whether precision munitions and other weaponry could derail North Korea’s nuclear program at a cost the world would accept, not condemn.  In contrast to the antiseptic war outlined by Woolsey and McInerney, Perry concluded that a war with North Korea — precision weapons notwithstanding — would be unacceptably bloody, especially for the South Koreans.  He recommended negotiations instead.  He is recommending them again today, with the very same Pyongyang government that later double-crossed him by eventually starting a separate nuclear program to enrich uranium.  Perry is holding his nose and saying, “The only reason for considering negotiations with North Korea is that the other alternatives are so terrible.”

Back to top

North Korea Claims to Solve Nuclear Technology Obstacle

North Korea today announced that it had overcome key obstacles in its attempt to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons (see GSN, Oct. 2).

“All the technological matters have been solved fully in the process of making a switchover in the use of plutonium,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The announcement comes on the heels of belligerent North Korean statements yesterday, in which officials promised to build the nation’s nuclear deterrent (Sang-hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said today that the last round of six-nation talks in Beijing had produced a mutual agreement not to escalate the nuclear crisis, an arrangement that North Korea is now apparently ignoring.

Japan called the recent announcements from Pyongyang “lamentable” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also voiced concern about the North Korean statements.

“I think clearly the American people need to be concerned about North Korea,” he said.  “I think anyone who listens to all of the things that come out of that country and registers them has to be concerned about what one’s hearing,” Rumsfeld added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

Back to top

Putin Says Moscow Retains Effective Nuclear Deterrent

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia can maintain its long-range nuclear deterrent well into the future (see GSN, Oct. 2).

In a meeting with senior military officials, Putin said Russia has several dozen SS-19 missiles that have been stored without fuel and “in that sense are new.”  Liquid missile fuel breaks down over time and can damage a missile, the Associated Press reported.

“Their capability, in particular in the sense of their ability to penetrate any missile defense systems, is unparalleled,” Putin said of the SS-19 missiles.  He described the missiles as “the most menacing” in Moscow’s stockpile.

The comments were apparently designed to assuage fears that Russia’s aging Soviet arsenal will soon fall behind that of the United States, according to AP.

“Thus, we have enough time to develop new types of weapons of the 21st century without rush,” Putin said (Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press/Rocky Mount Telegram, Oct. 2).

The missiles can remain in service until the 2030s, deputy chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky told the meeting.

Analysts, however, expressed some skepticism on the recent statements.  Putin’s announcement, and a recent warning to NATO, could be aimed toward Russian voters ahead of State Duma elections, according to Alexander Pikayev, a security analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center (Simon Saradzhyan, Moscow Times, Oct. 3).

Back to top

Russian Needs $5 Billion for Chemical Weapons Destruction

The destruction of Russia’s remaining stockpile of chemical weapons will cost $5 billion, according to a report released yesterday by Moscow’s federal ammunition agency (see GSN, Sept. 19).

The report, which was submitted to Russian officials, termed the chemical disarmament program “unique in scale and political importance.”

Moscow has so far destroyed 1 percent of its stockpile, and intends to eliminate all chemical weapons stores by 2012 (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Oct. 2).

Back to top

Missile Code of Conduct Nations Miss Reporting Deadline

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — Nearly one year after creating an international missile nonproliferation effort, the vast majority of participating nations have failed to meet their own deadline for providing information on their nonproliferation policies.

The Hague Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation was launched last November in The Hague and it calls on members to exercise “maximum possible restraint” in developing and deploying ballistic missiles and to not aid the ballistic missile programs of any countries that might be developing weapons of mass destruction.  To increase transparency, the code calls on members to implement several confidence-building measures, such as making an annual declaration outlining their ballistic missile policies.

Of the 109 nations that have subscribed to the code, however, only about 20 provided the declaration by the Sept. 30 deadline, forcing the code’s administrators to extend the deadline to Jan. 31.

The information emerged from the code’s first annual meeting, a two-day session that ended today here in New York.  Chilean Foreign Ministry official Luis Winter chaired the meeting after taking over from Dutch officials who had led the code of conduct through its first year.

One reason that code members have delayed in submitting their annual declarations is that they are “watching what to do,” Winter said, adding that it was important for a dialogue to be established among countries to help others prepare their annual declarations.  During yesterday’s session, several submitted declarations were distributed to code members to serve as models, he said. 

In addition, the delegates also discussed their experiences to date in preparing and submitting the prelaunch notifications also required by the code, a U.S. State Department official said, adding that this issue has been more difficult for code subscribers.  To date, five code members have submitted prelaunch notifications, Winter said. 

The United States and Russia have placed a priority on completing bilateral prelaunch notifications, which, when finished, will make it easier to submit such notifications in the code’s framework, the State Department official said.

A Dutch Foreign Ministry official agreed that more needed to be done to improve transparency under the code, especially in the field of prelaunch notifications.  Some members have not had the necessary time to “get their act together” to submit such declarations, the official said.

Overall Praise

Despite the compliance rate, officials here praised the code’s first year.

The United States is “extremely pleased” with the code, a U.S. State Department official told Global Security Newswire yesterday.  The delegates held a “good discussion” on efforts to increase code membership, and Chile outlined several measures to further promote the agreement, the official said.  He added that Chile’s membership in a number of international organizations and the nonproliferation success of Latin America as a region will further aid such efforts.

According to the official, about half a dozen “smaller states” are close to joining the code.  Since a June intercessional meeting in Vienna, Eritrea, Liechtenstein and Tonga have become members (see GSN, July 2).

A number of states of missile proliferation concern such as China, India and Pakistan, however, still refuse to join the agreement, the Dutch official said yesterday.  “The world has not changed [enough] over the last year” for countries of concern to have changed their position on the code, the Dutch official said, adding that persuading such countries to join remains “a major task for us.”

Chile yesterday formally replaced the Netherlands as chair of the code.  Officials praised the selection of Chile, noting that it is neither a European country or a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, which seeks to restrict the export of critical missile technologies by establishing common export controls among the regime’s 33 members (see GSN, Sept. 30).  The Dutch official noted that some countries have “ambiguous” feelings toward the MTCR, with some complaining the regime is a discriminatory measure.

It is good “for the public face of the code to not be an MTCR face,” the State Department official said.

During today’s session, delegates are expected to discuss measures to strengthen links between the code and the United Nations, Winter said.  Such measures could include a “mild [U.N.] resolution,” he said, adding that it still needed to be determined if the time for such a resolution was right.  Winter also said there has been talk among code members of making the code sometime in the future a formal treaty.  In addition, code members are also expected to discuss preparations for a second intercessional meeting, possibly to be held in Vienna in June, and plans for a second annual meeting of members, Winter said. 

According to Dutch Foreign Ministry officials, an Iraqi official attempted to enter yesterday’s meeting, but was turned away because Iraq is not a code member.  Iraq was not invited to join the code prior to the November ceremony because it was under U.N. sanctions at the time (see GSN, Nov. 22, 2002).  The Dutch official said the Iraqi official’s attempt to enter yesterday’s meeting was “the first bit of interest we’ve seen” in Iraq joining the code.

Back to top

Pakistan Test Fires Ballistic Missile

Pakistan today announced that it has tested a Hatf 3 missile, an “indigenously developed” ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead (see GSN, Sept. 22).

Using a new name for the missile, the Pakistani military said in a statement “This was the second test of the Ghaznavi missile which is capable of carrying all types of warheads accurately up to a range of 290 km.”

Islamabad has planned a series of tests to take place over the next few days, Reuters reported.  Pakistan played down underlying tension with its nuclear neighbor, India.

“The timings of the tests reflect Pakistan’s determination not to engage in a tit-for-tat syndrome to other tests in the region,” the statement said.  “Pakistan will maintain the pace of its own missile development program and conducts tests as per its technical needs,” it added (Reuters, Oct. 3).

Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Amitabh Chakravorty said that New Delhi had been told ahead of time about the missile test.

“Pakistan had given due notification to us,” he said (Munir Ahmad, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said today that “there is nothing special” about the missile test (Press Trust of India/Hindustan Times, Oct. 3).

Back to top