House International Relations Committee Set to Pass Syria Sanctions Bill

The U.S. House International Relations Committee is expected today to approve legislation that would impose sanctions against Syria if it does not end its support of terrorism and efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Sept. 25).

The Syria Accountability Act has more than 275 cosponsors in the House of Representatives and is expected to be easily approved by the full House next week, congressional aides said.  In addition, more than 75 senators have expressed support for the bill and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected this month to consider it as part of a broader examination of U.S.-Syrian relations, the Post reported (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Oct. 8).

If approved, the bill would immediately impose penalties on Syria, including a prohibition on the export of U.S. military and dual-use items to Syria.  In addition, the president would also be required to impose at least two of six measures included in the bill, such as such as a ban on U.S. exports to Syria, a downgrading of U.S. diplomatic representation there and a freeze on Syrian assets.

The sanctions in the legislation could only be lifted if the president certified that four conditions were met:  that Syria no longer provides support for terrorism or allows terrorists to maintain facilities there, that Syria has removed all military, intelligence and security personnel from Lebanon, that Syria has ceased the development of biological and chemical weapons and the development and deployment of medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, and that Syria is no longer in violation of certain U.N. resolutions.

Under the bill, the president has the authority to issue six-month waivers of the six different sanctions listed in the bill if such a move is determined to be in the national interest of the United States.  The ban on military and dual-use exports to Syria, however, cannot be waived (Mike Nartker, GSN, Oct. 8).

A recent White House decision to lift its opposition to the bill by not taking a position on it greatly improved the bill’s chances for congressional approval, according to the Washington Post.  Previously, Bush administration officials had called on congressional leaders to not bring the bill up for a vote because of concerns it could jeopardize Syria’s cooperation in the war on terrorism.

“It looks like a fait accompli.  The administration chose not to decide (its position on the bill), and in doing so made a choice,” a Bush administration official said.  “There is a sizable reserve of support for a stronger position against the Syrians” throughout the administration, the official added (Kessler, Washington Post).

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Bush Unsure If Leakers Will Be Found

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday suggested that the person or people responsible for leaking the identity of a CIA operative might never be found (see GSN, Oct. 7).

The U.S. Justice Department is currently investigating the leak of the name and CIA status of the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.  In July, Wilson wrote a commentary in the New York Times criticizing some of the evidence offered by the Bush administration to justify going to war with Iraq.

Since reports surfaced two weeks ago that the CIA had requested an investigation into the leak, the White House has repeatedly stated its desire to find those responsible.  During a brief meeting with the press yesterday, however, Bush said he did not know if the investigation would discover who had been responsible for the leak.

“This town is a town full of people who like to leak information.  And I don’t know if we’re going to find out the ‘senior administration official.’  Now, this is a large administration, and there’s a lot of senior officials,” Bush said.

The media may play a role in the success, or failure, of the leak investigation, according to Bush.

“I have no idea whether we’ll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers,” the president told the assembled reporters at the press conference.  “But we’ll find out,” he added.

Bush also said yesterday that he hoped the leak investigation would be done as thoroughly and as quickly as possible.

“I want to know the truth.  I want to see to it that the truth prevail,” he said.

White House staff members had an internal deadline of 5 p.m. yesterday to provide the counsel’s office with any materials that might be relevant to the investigation.  Justice has set a deadline of Oct. 17 for the White House to provide the gathered materials, with intermediate deadlines set before then, the Washington Post reported today.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that the counsel’s office would now begin to examine the collected materials and weed out those deemed to be irrelevant to the investigation to help expedite Justice’s efforts.

“What the counsel’s office will do is look through his information to make sure it’s responsive to the request from the Department of Justice so that we can assist them in moving forward as quickly as they possibly can to get to the bottom of this,” McClellan said.

McClellan also said, however, that the White House would not withhold those materials that had been deemed irrelevant if Justice requested them.

“They’re welcome to look at the other documents — that’s not an issue — that are not responsive to their request.  But what we want to do is not overburden them with large amounts of documents that have no responsiveness to their request or no relevance to this investigation,” he said.

In addition, the U.S. State Department has been requested to preserve any documents that might be relevant to the investigation, spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.  No deadline has yet been set for the department to provide such materials to Justice, he said.

During yesterday’s White House press briefing, McClellan specifically cleared three senior Bush administration officials of having anything to do with the leak — Bush’s senior political adviser Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and National Security Council official Elliott Abrams.

“They are good individuals.  They are important members of our White House team.  And that’s why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved,” McClellan said.

In addition, McClellan also continued to suggest that the White House would not conduct its own internal investigation into the leak.

“The president wants the career officials at the Department of Justice, who are charged with looking into matters like this, to get to the bottom of this,” he said.  “They are the appropriate officials to look into this.  They have vast experience in looking into matters like this because they are involved in these types of matters, and that’s exactly what they’re doing,” McClellan added.

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India Mulls Proliferation Security Initiative

Indian officials are considering whether to join an 11-nation effort to intercept illicit WMD shipments, The Hindu reported Monday (see GSN, Sept. 22).

U.S. President George W. Bush last month touted the Proliferation Security Initiative in an address to the U.N. General Assembly.  The United States has spearheaded the effort, which is widely believed to have been spurred by fears of the North Korean weapons trade.

“Through our Proliferation Security Initiative, 11 nations are preparing to search planes and ships, trains and trucks carrying suspect cargo, and to seize weapons or missile shipments that raise proliferation concerns,” Bush said.

New Delhi is reportedly concerned, however, over which countries would be the focus of the counterproliferation initiative.  Indian officials have often been frustrated by what they see as an international hesitance to address Pakistani weapons proliferation, The Hindu reported (Raja Mohan, The Hindu, Oct. 6).

The largest ever joint exercise between the U.S. and Indian navies is scheduled to end today, the Associated Press reported.

The United States sent two warships, a nuclear-powered submarine and a P3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft while India sent two guided missile frigates, a submarine and a tanker.  The Arabian Sea exercise will aid in the global war on terrorism, according to military officials from the two countries.

The effort “helps us in understanding each other’s operating philosophy, especially in the backdrop of the global fight against terrorism,” said Indian South Naval Headquarters spokesman Cmdr. Manohar Nambiar.

The United States is reportedly offering to sell India several Orion aircraft, and the exercise partially focused on antisubmarine tactics, AP reported.

“This exercise is a great opportunity for increasing military cooperation between India and the U.S.,” said Capt. Edward Boorda, commander of the USS Chosin, a guided missile cruiser.  “It also helps us to fight the global war against terrorism,” he added (V.M. Thomas, Associated Press/Navy Times, Oct. 7).

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Sandia Develops Hand-Held Chemical, Biological Detectors

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have developed several hand-held systems to detect chemical and biological weapons agents, officials announced yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 3).

The systems include a stationary gas detection system that is currently deployed in the Boston subway system and a hand-held detection unit that has been tested against nerve and blister agents at the Nevada Test Site.

Sandia is displaying the systems at the MicroTAS 2003 conference in California and laboratory officials are looking for commercial partners to develop the products.

“Our traditional government sponsors fund (research and development) activities, not product development or commercialization,” said Jill Micheau, a business development official at Sandia.  “To assure that our ChemLab technologies successfully transition from the laboratory to the market, we are seeking industry partners to provide capital and expertise,” she added (Sandia National Laboratories release, Oct. 7).

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Washington Rejects North Korea’s Bid to Exclude Japan

The United States yesterday rejected North Korea’s demand that Japan be excluded from future talks on the Korean nuclear crisis (see GSN, Oct. 7).

“We agree with the Japanese in rejecting the North Korean attempt to exclude Japanese participation in the multiparty talks,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.  “Japan clearly must and will continue to be a participant in the six-party talks in order to achieve a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s nuclear programs,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 8).

Speaking at a summit in Indonesia, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun also supported Japanese involvement.

“The North Korean nuclear crisis is a grave issue that can affect all of Northeast Asia, and thus Japan’s participation is needed to seek a comprehensive resolution to the issue,” Roh said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also participated in the summit (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, Oct. 8).

Analysts dismissed North Korea’s demand as a negotiating tactic and a attempt to send a message to Japan.

“It’s basically gamesmanship.  They know they have to let Japan in and that will be the eventual outcome,” said Stuart Harris, a Northeast Asia expert from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University.  “I think they are just a bit irritated with Japan for bringing up bilateral issues and this is their usual unsubtle way of telling Tokyo to back off,” he added.

Joseph Cheung, a political analyst at the City University in Hong Kong, said the move could be designed to put pressure on China after indications the United States might be willing to accept North Korean refugees from Beijing.

“One of the tactics they have consistently used is to create confusion.  I think this demand is also meant to put pressure in China, the hosts, which has a lot riding on the success of these talks,” he said (Martin Parry, Agence France-Presse, Oct. 8).

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U.S. Air Force Planning Upgrades to Strategic Bomber Fleet

The U.S. Air Force is considering several modifications to the U.S. B-1 nuclear-capable bomber fleet, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, July 14).

One possible modification is an upgrade of the bomber’s communication system, which could be conducted through a contract worth as much as $1.5 billion, according to the Times.  Air Force officials are also considering upgrades to the B-1’s engines that would double the bomber’s speed.

Already, more than $2 billion have been spent on the B-1 fleet to convert the bomber for use in conventional missions, according to the Times.  During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the B-1 was credited with dropping more precision munitions than any other U.S. aircraft.

In addition, during an exercise last month a modified B-2 nuclear-capable bomber simultaneously dropped 80 satellite-guided munitions on 80 separate targets, the Times reported (see GSN, July 11).  All 80 bombs hit their targets, according to the Air Force, the first time that so many bombs hit so many targets at once (Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8).

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Report on Screening U.S. Biological Research Draws Mixed Reviews

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A new report recommending nationwide screening for proposed biological research in the United States that might have value for terrorists is drawing general praise, but also criticism for not recommending mandatory participation for all facilities nationwide.

The report, produced by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences Research Council, weighs into an ongoing debate within the biological research community that has some experts favoring a federal regulatory scheme that involves creating a federal body for reviewing proposed research of concern.  Others say such a system would prove unworkable and might hamper important scientific research that might produce results usable for great good, if also for malicious purposes.

The report recommends a tiered system, through which most decisions on whether to allow a particular research project would be made by a board at the facility concerned, though a federal committee might decide some particularly serious cases.

The report describes its approach as one that “relies heavily upon voluntary self-governance by the scientific community and expansion of an existing regulatory process.”

In a press release yesterday, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gerald Fink, the chair of the committee called the report “a key stop in an evolving process to strike the right balance between national security concerns and the openness necessary for America’s research enterprise to thrive.”

New Review System Described

The proposed plan calls for institutional biosafety committees, which are already in place at many institutions, to continuously review proposed experiments involving seven categories of research that might have potential use for terrorists.

The types of experiments that would be reviewed, according to the proposal, include those that might demonstrate how to render human or animal vaccines ineffective; confer resistance to antibiotics or antiviral agents; enhance the virulence of pathogens, or make nonpathogens virulent; increase the transmissibility of pathogens; alter the host range of pathogens; enable the evasion of diagnostic or detection methods; or enable the weaponization of biological agents or toxins.

Decisions about whether to allow experiments, or alternatively to decide they should be classified, mostly would be considered and made by the local committees.  Certain types of experiments of particularly serious concern would also require approval by a federally appointed committee at the National Institutes of Health.

The report also recommends reviewing some completed studies to determine whether their publication might aid terrorists.  It does not, however, recommend creating a regulatory system for preventing publication of such work.

“The issue of whether these results should be published needs to be resolved within the scientific community — not by government policy,” the report says.

It also proposes creating a “National Science Advisory Board for Biodefense” to provide advice to the NIH director on the benefits and risks of new research and to promote dialogue between scientists and security experts.

Proposal Called Insufficiently Comprehensive

Rutgers University professor Richard Ebright mostly praised the report, but said it came up short by not making the reviews mandatory for all U.S. research institutions.

“The panel has correctly identified the problem [and] correctly recognized the magnitude of the problem.  It has concluded correctly that the solution to the problem must involve a combination of voluntary self-governance and expansion of regulatory mechanisms,” he said.

“However, what they propose is exclusively voluntary self-governance. … They propose a strictly voluntary review process,” he said.

Ebright said research facilities that do not receive NIH funding would not be required to submit research for review, under the recommended plan.

The process “excludes most laboratories in the private sector, the government and in the defense sector,” he said.

Ebright said the plan should recommend mandatory participation backed by sanctions for nonparticipation or violations.

Called the Right Balance

Lynn Klotz, a member of the Federation of the American Scientists’ Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, praised the report’s recommendations, in particular, for relying predominantly on institutional committees for screening.

He said creating a national authority for screening most research would prove difficult because many types of biological research could be put to constructive or illicit purposes.

“Boy would that be a real hornet’s nest.  I don’t know how you would do that. … I think that many things are going to fall into that category, where you see the potential good and the potential evil purposes.  Almost everything could be used one way or another.”

Klotz also agreed with Ebright’s view that the proposed screening process should extend to all biological research facilities, not just those with institutional biosafety committees.

“Clearly a mechanism has to be in place to extend the review process to other institutions … including companies and other research facilities that do not have institutional review boards,” he said.

A Simple Change

Ebright said the issue over mandatory compliance could easily be remedied.

“This could be changed with just a single sentence, stating that, ‘The current NIH guidelines and process for review will be used for examining the experiments of concern, [for which] the participation will be mandatory irrespective of funding source [and] there would be sanctions for nonparticipation or violation,’” he said.

The National Academy of Sciences press release yesterday said the report intended to recommend mandatory compliance.

The final version of the report released today, however, does not say participation would be mandatory, Ebright said.

“The full report on pages 89 and 90 says that this is a goal for the long term,” he said.

At an academy briefing on the report today, Ronald Atlas, member of the committee that produced it, said participation by institutions not funded by NIH would be voluntary, but that he expected that participation would occur.

“The sense is that this is a bottom-up approach, in which collegiality within the scientific community and peer pressure will be critical across the system,” he said.

Ebright said of such participation, “If it’s not mandatory, it doesn’t exist.”

[EDITOR'S NOTE:  This National Academy report was partially funded by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.]

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Harvard University Researcher Details New Vaccine Efforts

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A researcher from Harvard University yesterday detailed her team’s efforts to create a new and more effective anthrax vaccine that could combat both the anthrax bacterium and the toxin it creates (see GSN, Sept. 3).

During a media roundtable held yesterday at the RAND think-tank in Arlington, Va., Harvard Medical School researcher Julia Wang outlined the various factors that make anthrax such an effective biological weapon, including ease of production and storage and its extremely lethal nature.  Once anthrax spores enter the body through a skin lesion, inhalation or ingestion, they develop into the bacterium Bacillus anthracis and multiply extensively, Wang said.  She added that a protective capsule over the bacterium hampers the ability of the human immune system from detecting and combating the infection.  The bacteria can then kill the infected person through a massive infection of the bloodstream caused by the huge number of bacteria or through tissue death caused by the toxins produced by the bacterium once it enters the lymph nodes.

The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provided an initial research grant of $150,000 a year for two years for the project, Wang said, adding that about $2 million of basic research is still needed.  She said that her team was seeking additional NIAID funding and that several private U.S. and foreign companies were also interested in aiding the research.

According to Kenneth Shine, director of the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security, the currently available anthrax vaccine works by preventing the toxins created by the anthrax bacterium from destroying immune cells.  The human immune system is then given enough time to build up defenses against the bloodstream infection, he said.  The current vaccine has come under fire, however, because of the six-shot regimen needed to administer it and because of the side effects it can produce.

“[It is] annoying as hell to young people to have these local reactions,” Shine of the side effects caused by the current vaccine.

Researchers at Harvard University Medical School, however, have worked to develop a new type of anthrax vaccine that would combat both the bacterium and the toxins it produces, Wang said.  To counter anthrax toxins, the new vaccine produces antibodies that attach to one of three toxins produced by the bacterium called protective antigen, which helps the toxins penetrate a human cell.  The antibodies then prevent the other two toxins produced by the bacterium — edema factor and lethal factor — from combining with the protective antigen to enter and destroy cells, she said.

In addition, Wang said, the vaccine also helps combat the protective capsule surrounding the anthrax bacterium.  This enables the human immune system to better combat and destroy the infecting bacteria, she said.  The new vaccine would likely only require a three-shot regimen, but the exact number of shots that would be needed is still unknown, Wang said.

In tests with mice, the vaccine has been found to have protected all inoculated subjects against the anthrax toxin, Wang said.  Under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “animal efficacy rule,” animal-testing data can be used to demonstrate a new treatment or vaccine’s effectiveness when it cannot ethically or feasibly be tested on humans.  Harvard researchers are now working to establish collaborations with other facilities to test the new vaccine against different types of animals, Wang said, adding that they would like to test against rabbits and guinea pigs.

The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provided an initial research grant of $150,000 a year for two years for the project, Wang said, adding that about $2 million of basic research is still needed.  She said that her team was seeking additional NIAID funding and that several private U.S. and foreign companies were also interested in aiding the research.

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Pentagon Biological Equipment Resold to Foreign Buyers

The U.S. Defense Department has sold thousands of dollars worth of biological laboratory equipment to the general public over the last several years and some of that equipment has been resold over the Internet to buyers in the Philippines, Malaysia and Egypt, General Accounting Office officials said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 7).

In the last 3 1/2 years the Pentagon has sold 521 centrifuges, 18 biological safety cabinets, 199 incubators, 65 evaporators and 286,000 protective suits to the general public.  The sales are not illegal but the equipment can be used to develop biological weapons, GAO officials told the House Government Reform Committee’s national security subcommittee.

“DOD should not be a discount outlet for bioterrorism equipment,” said subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays (R-Conn.).

Although the Pentagon reportedly stopped selling protective equipment in January, 4,000 protective suits have been sold since then, the Associated Press reported today.

The GAO established a front company to purchase surplus Pentagon biological equipment, the AP reported.  Investigators purchased $4,100 worth of equipment, including a safety cabinet, an incubator, a centrifuge, an evaporator, and protective clothing, according to Gregory Kutz, GAO director for financial management and assurance.

“We were surprised at what we could buy,” said Keith Rhodes, the GAO’s chief technologist (Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 8).

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Pakistan Successfully Tests Nuclear-Capable Ballistic Missile

Pakistan today successfully tested its Hatf 4 nuclear-capable ballistic missile, also called the Shaheen 1, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Oct. 3).

“We have successfully test fired the Shaheen 1,” Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

The Shaheen 1 surface-to-surface missile has a range of 700 kilometers, according to AFP.  The missile was tested at a secret location, Sultan said.

“The test is part of the ongoing series of tests of Pakistan’s indigenous missile systems,” a military press statement said.  “All technical parameters required to be tested were successfully validated,” it added.

Pakistan notified neighboring countries, including India, to the test before it was conducted in “a spirit of confidence building,” the military said (Rana Jawad, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 8).

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Delays Continue to Affect MDA Testing Schedule

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency plans this month to conduct the first flight test of a Lockheed Martin rocket competing to be the booster rocket for the agency’s national Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, which the Bush administration has vowed to deploy one year from now, MDA spokesman Chris Taylor said yesterday.

Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences are competing to win the GMD booster contract and Orbital conducted the first test of its version in August (see GSN, Aug. 18), but the Lockheed Martin booster verification test has been delayed.  It was once scheduled to take place before the Orbital test (see GSN, Aug. 6).

In addition to the delay in testing the Lockheed Martin rocket, MDA has also pushed back the next Orbital test from next month to December, according to an Orbital source.  Taylor said that test and the equivalent Lockheed Martin test, designated Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13a and -13b, will both be completed “before the first of the year.”

The first flight test of Lockheed Martin’s product now comes nearly two months after Orbital’s booster verification test, but delaying the next Orbital test would put tests of the rival rockets back on a roughly parallel schedule.  In any case, Maj. Gen. John Holly, MDA’s manager for Ground-based Midcourse Defense, said in August that the agency would field both rockets at least through 2005 at bases in Alaska and California (see GSN, Aug. 21).

The booster verification tests involve rockets with dummy payloads, rather than actual kill vehicles, and the IFT-13 tests are to involve real kill-vehicle payloads but no attempt will be made to intercept targets.  A subsequent series of booster tests involving actual intercept attempts ― IFT-14a and -14b ― is planned for next year, but the agency has not disclosed when.

The Bush administration has set an October 2004 deadline for deployment of Ground-based Midcourse Defense, a target critics call unrealistic.

Center for Defense Information senior adviser Philip Coyle said today that the latest booster-selection delays should have no significant effect on the overall timeline.  Coyle added, though, that repeated past delays in developing the GMD booster rocket have slowed the overall development of national missile defense.  Originally, the agency tried to use boosters based on a Minuteman ICBM design, but that approach proved unsatisfactory.

“If you go back far enough, there was a point in time in the ground-based program … when the booster development was to have been finished in the year 2000. … Depending on how you do the arithmetic, the booster development program itself has delayed the program for about three years.”

In addition, MDA has canceled a number of flight-intercept tests this year, fueling criticism of the administration’s deadline (see GSN, April 18).  Industry and military representatives indicated this week that MDA appears to be seeking ways to condense its schedule as the deadline for deployment draws closer.

Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, head of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, repeated yesterday that Ground-based Midcourse Defense, initially using six interceptors in Alaska and four in California, “will be operational” by this time next year.

An extensive series of tests that goes well beyond booster selection is still required before the system can be deployed in October, and missile defense officials acknowledge that next October’s deployment will provide only a preliminary capability.  Holly said in August that he expects the system as initially deployed to be a “70-percent” solution.

Coyle cited planned satellite and radar capabilities as two key elements that are not likely to be in place by next October.

“The president is determined and the Missile Defense Agency is determined to deploy something.  They may not be able to deploy much, but they’ll deploy something,” Coyle said.

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U.S. Rips Disarmament Committee at U.N. General Assembly

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — While most governments addressing the General Assembly’s disarmament committee yesterday and Monday made veiled criticisms of U.S. policies of unilateral actions and interest in doctrines that call for greater use of nuclear weapons, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker yesterday criticized the committee, repeatedly characterizing its agenda as “old Cold War-era thinking.”

“In these dangerous times, too many nations still orient themselves by the anachronistic coordinates of the past; the results have been years of disappointing drift and growing irrelevance,” he said.  The committee “must reshape itself into an effective multilateral body — one that is relevant to the security threats of today and of the future,” he added.

Rademaker said, “As we face together the many new challenges to international peace and security, the question is whether the U.N. and the international disarmament machinery can still make a contribution, or will be left behind.” The United States “would not view favorably yet another year of desultory debate and rote reaffirmation by this committee of the same tired and divisive resolutions of years past,” he said.

Two of the “premier threats” that the committee should address are noncompliance with treaty obligations and preventing weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, Rademaker said.

The committee should “name names” of treaty parties who violate their obligations, such as North Korea and Iran over the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he said.

The prospect of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction “must be challenged on every front and defeated in an effective, hopefully multilateral, way,” he said.  “The international community has no time to spare and no margin for error in this endeavor,” Rademaker said.

The United States “does not believe in multilateralism for its own sake. … Rather, the United States is committed to an effective multilateralism, properly targeted at today’s security threats,” he said.  As examples of Washington’s commitment to multilateralism, Rademaker pointed to efforts to strengthen the verification processes of the NPT, and the Chemical and Biological Weapons conventions and the cuts in the nuclear arsenals it has made on its own or with Russia, such as 80 percent cuts in tactical weapons and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty commitments to reduce deployed warheads by two-thirds.

China, the only other nuclear power to speak yesterday, followed the pattern of most other nations, calling for the strengthening of multilateral systems as the best route to nonproliferation and disarmament.

“We should vigorously promote multilateralism and bring the leading role of the United Nations into full play,” Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi said.  “We should maintain the international legal system and promote the rule of law in international relations.  Undermining this legal system will jeopardize the stability of international relations.  Only terrorists and extremists will benefit from such an outcome.”

In an obvious reference to U.S. policies, Hu said, “It is against the trend of the times to lower the threshold of nuclear war by developing new types of nuclear weapons which are easier for use in actual combats; to refuse undertaking, in a legally binding manner, no-use or threat-of-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states; or even to list other countries as targets of nuclear attack.”

Japan and South Korea called on North Korea to renounce its nuclear weapons program and promised to provide aid to a nuclear-free North Korea.  South Korean Ambassador Kim Sam-hoon said, “North Korea’s nuclear weapons program can not be tolerated under any circumstances.  Moreover, there is no substitute for North Korea’s complete, irreversible and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear-weapons program.”

He added, “North Korea has nothing to gain and everything to lose by pursuing its nuclear ambitions.  On the contrary, once North Korea abandons its nuclear program, my government will spare no effort in helping North Korea to overcome its economic difficulties and to join the mainstream of the international community.”

Japanese Ambassador Kuniko Inoguchi said she was “deeply concerned” about North Korea's intention to withdraw from the NPT.  “Any development, acquisition or possession, test, and transfer of nuclear weapons by North Korea must never be tolerated,” said Inoguchi.  “Japan once again urges North Korea to immediately and completely dismantle all of its nuclear development programs in a verifiable and irreversible manner,” Inoguchi added.

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