Syria:  Bolton Congressional Appearance Canceled Due to Dispute Over WMD Assessment

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s planned appearance yesterday before a House International Relations subcommittee to testify on Syria’s WMD programs was delayed until September because of objections from U.S. intelligence agencies over his assessment, according to Knight-Ridder (see GSN, June 5).

Bolton was prepared to tell the Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee that Syria’s WMD programs had developed to the point where they posed a threat to the region, U.S. officials said.  The CIA and other intelligence agencies, however, objected to this assessment, saying it was exaggerated, according to Knight-Ridder.

Bolton’s planned testimony caused a “revolt” among intelligence experts who thought it inflated Syria’s WMD progress, a U.S. official said.  The CIA’s objections alone to Bolton’s prepared remarks ran to up to 40 pages, the official said.

A Bolton aide said the undersecretary’s appearance was delayed because he was called to a White House meeting yesterday afternoon.  Other White House and congressional officials said, however, that the White House Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates officials’ public statements, would not give final approval to Bolton’s prepared testimony.

Another possible reason that Bolton’s congressional appearance was canceled was because of the questioning the White House has recently faced over possible exaggerations of Iraq-related intelligence, several officials said.  There is now more attention paid to “dotting i’s and crossing t’s,” a U.S. State Department official said.  The official added that Bolton’s prepared testimony was subjected to “extensive edits” (Strobel/Landay, Knight Ridder, Miami Herald, July 16).

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Iraq I:  At Least 10 Kilos of Uranium Compounds Missing, IAEA Says

At least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds are missing from an Iraqi nuclear material storage facility near the Tuwaitha complex south of Baghdad, which was the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, June 23).

An IAEA inspection team, working under the auspices of the agency’s safeguards agreement with Iraq, found last month that at least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds “could have dispersed” from the Location C Nuclear Material Storage Facility, according to the report.  It also says, however, that the missing materials pose little threat of being used to develop nuclear weapons.

“The quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view,” the report says.

The IAEA plans to request coalition authorities to “make every effort” to find the missing materials and return them to the Location C site and place them under IAEA safeguards, the report says.  It also calls on the United States and the United Kingdom “to ensure the physical protection and security of the entire nuclear material inventory in Iraq” (International Atomic Energy Agency release, July 14).

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Iraq II:  Prior to January Bush Speech, Most Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Ambition Was in Tatters

By the time U.S. President George W. Bush’s delivered his January State of the Union address, the now-discredited evidence that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa was the only intelligence supporting the allegation that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, July 15).

Bush administration officials have recently said that the African uranium claim was just one of many pieces of intelligence that indicated Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons.  However, following Bush’s Oct. 7 speech outlining the case against Iraq, most of the other pieces of intelligence suggesting Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons had been discredited by U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the Post.

In that speech, Bush said satellite imagery indicated that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear sites.  Bush also cited as further evidence of Baghdad’s nuclear intentions “numerous meetings’ between former President Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nuclear scientists, as well as Iraq’s attempts to obtain aluminum tubes that could be used to develop uranium enrichment centrifuges.

The day before Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address, however, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council that two months of U.N. inspections within Iraq had turned up no prohibited activities occurring at former nuclear sites (see GSN, Jan. 27).  ElBaradei also said that inspectors had “useful” interviews with some Iraqi nuclear scientists and that the aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking could not have been used to build centrifuges without modifications (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 16).

Congressional Action

Meanwhile, CIA Director George Tenet is expected to testify on the African uranium claim today before a closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, according to the New York Times.

Among the questions Tenet is expected to field is why he sought personally to have a reference to Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium from Niger removed from Bush’s October speech, according to the Times.  The reference had been included in a national intelligence estimate distributed Oct. 1, but four days later Tenet called a Bush aide to have it removed from the speech, according to White House and intelligence officials.

Tenet’s move to remove the reference has led to questions by some in the White House who want to know why the Niger claim was included in the national intelligence estimate, the Times reported.

“This report was supposed to be the gold standard of our intelligence about Iraq,” a senior Bush administration official said.

CIA officials defended the intelligence, saying such reports sometimes include information that does not rise to the level of certainty required of a presidential speech.  The report also contained a footnote saying the U.S. State Department had doubts about the African uranium claim, the Times reported.

“It’s one thing to have information in a classified document with caveats and footnotes, and another to have the president flatly assert something,” an intelligence official said (Risen/Sanger, New York Times, July 16).

The House Select Committee on Intelligence is scheduled to hold a public hearing next week on claims that the Bush administration misrepresented U.S. intelligence on Iraq prior to the war, according to the Financial Times.

“Big questions remain about who forged the documents and the paper trail that followed,” said Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.), referring to the documents used by the Bush administration to support the African uranium claim.  The IAEA revealed in March that those documents, purporting to show an attempted Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger, were forgeries.

After returning this week from a visit to Iraq, senior members of the House Intelligence Committee said it is unlikely that the United States would soon find evidence of large-scale Iraqi WMD stockpiles.

“Thus far, the evidence emerging on Iraq’s WMD programs does not point to the existence of large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons,” the committee said in a statement (Edward Alden, Financial Times, July 16).

Meanwhile, Niger is angry over suggestions that it was involved in an attempted sale of uranium to Iraq, according to the Straits Times.

There have been calls within Niger for Bush to make a public apology for mentioning the African uranium claim in his State of the Union address.  The BBC has reported that some in Niger have also called for the issue to be taken before the International Court of Justice (Straits Times, July 16).

France denied Monday a Financial Times report that said Paris was a probable source of the uranium information, according to Agence France-Presse. 

“Contrary to the insinuations which appeared in the British press, France is not behind the intelligence published in the British dossier dated Sept. 24, 2002, and relative to the nuclear program of Iraq,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Times report also said that Italy was a likely source for the information (Agence France-Presse, July 14, in FBIS-WEU, July 14).  Italian judicial officials yesterday began an investigation into whether Italy’s intelligence service was the source for the information, judicial sources said, adding that there is no evidence so far of any wrongdoing (Washington Times, July 16).

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Kyrgyz Response:  Kyrgyzstan to Implement Export-Control Laws

Kyrgyzstan is set to establish new export-control regulations to prevent the spread of WMD-related materials, a senior Kyrgyz trade official said yesterday (see GSN, April 18).

Under the new regulations, materials such as uranium, cyanide and rare-earth metals will now require prior approval before they can be exported or imported, Deputy External Trade and Industry Minister Nina Kirichenko said.  “These measures will allow us to strictly control movement of such dangerous materials,” Kirichenko said (Agence France-Presse, July 16).

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United States:  Cutting Nuclear Research, House Appropriators Demand Better Planning

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — In approving the $27 billion Energy Department appropriations bill yesterday, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted to significantly cut Bush administration fiscal 2004 funding requests for new nuclear warhead activities and increased testing readiness.  The lawmakers demanded that the administration provide more detailed national security justifications if it wanted to receive the funds (see GSN, July 15).

The committee also criticized the administration for not producing a detailed plan to change the current nuclear arsenal, saying in committee report released yesterday that the U.S. arsenal was “built to fight the now defunct Soviet Union.”

The House appropriators cut all $6 million requested for research and development through the Advanced Concepts Initiative, under which new, low-yield nuclear weapons would be researched.

In addition, the committee reduced funding for researching modifications to an existing nuclear earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, by $10 million from the requested $15 million.  Both the House and Senate earlier this year authorized spending on it up to $15 million in bills yet to be finalized.

Yesterday’s cuts, contained in the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill marked up by the committee, contrast with largely enthusiastic support for the administration plans in the House and Senate Armed Services committees.  Both the House and Senate have passed bills that would authorize full spending on the programs (see GSN, July 9).  Senate appropriators are scheduled to act on the bill tomorrow.

The funding cuts would be made, the committee report says, “in favor of higher priority current mission requirements.”

Testing Readiness Cut

The committee also cut the entire $24 million request to shorten the time needed to prepare for a nuclear weapons test.  The committee report says the administration must provide a “better definition of the national security requirement.”

The report says the proposal “reflects a disturbing ‘cost-is-no-object’ perspective in the [Energy] Department’s decision-making process.”

The administration is seeking funding for reducing the lead-time from an estimated 24 to 36 months down to 18 months.

“The committee is concerned with the open-ended commitment to increase significantly funding for the purpose of Enhanced Test Readiness without any budget analysis or program plan to evaluate the efficiency or effectiveness of this funding increase,” the report says.

The administration also needs to provide better justifications of its nuclear weapons stockpile requirements, the report says.

“The committee is concerned the NNSA [the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration] is being tasked to start new activities with significant outyear budget impacts before the administration has articulated the specific requirements to support the president’s announced stockpile modification,” it said.

Looking for Money

John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control lobbying organization, attributed the cuts to something else altogether.

“My understanding is the committee is looking for money for water projects, which the White House cut by $300 million, and this is how they got it,” he said.

The committee targeted cuts to the administration’s nuclear weapons priorities, Isaacs said, because unlike developing national missile defenses they have not been “an article of faith of the Republican party.”

“It means they were more vulnerable when looking for money,” he said.

Overall, the committee increased funding for NNSA, which oversees Energy Department nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs, by $330.1 million more than fiscal 2003 levels to $8.5 billion for 2004.  That is, however, $326.4 million less than the administration had requested.

Budget Process Called Flawed

The committee report says the U.S. nuclear weapons program has not been forced to make the difficult cost-benefit trade-offs other programs make.  It says the current process for deciding requirements and shaping the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal is “flawed” because the Pentagon sets requirements while Energy is required to fund them.

When Defense “develops their requirements,” the committee report says, “their decision process is not constrained by the normal types of budget trade-offs that an agency confronts in the process of formulating a budget request.”

 The report calls for a “serious debate about whether the approximately $6 billion spent annually on DOE’s nuclear weapons complex is a sound national security investment.”

“If these costs were funded directly by the DOD, the nuclear weapons activities would be considered against other national defense priorities, such as developing improved conventional weapons, procuring more existing weapons systems, paying ever increasing operational and training costs, and providing a better quality of life for our sailors, soldier and airmen,” it says.

The committee report says the Bush administration is asking too much of the NNSA at this time.

“It appears to the committee the [Energy] Department is proposing to rebuild, restart, and redo and otherwise exercise every capability that was used over the past 40 years of the Cold War and at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded mission for nuclear weapons,” it said.

The committee said it would not “support redirecting the [NNSA’s] management resources and attention to a series of new initiatives” until it could demonstrate it is successfully meeting its primary mission, “maintaining the safety, security and viability of the existing stockpile” (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2002).

Reporting Faulted

The committee faulted the Bush administration for not delivering a committee-requested report providing specific plans to reduce the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal in accordance with the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which took effect last month (see GSN, June 2). 

A Defense official recently told Global Security Newswire the administration was planning to begin “retire” some of the planned downloaded warheads beginning in 2006, but said “dismantlement plans are not yet finalized.”

The official added, “Other warheads removed from missiles and bombers will be maintained in a nondeployed status as a hedge against unforeseen technical or international events.”

The appropriators yesterday said that lacking specific new plans for the future structure of the stockpile, NNSA continues to budget for maintaining active and inactive strategic nuclear warheads at START I levels.

“The National Nuclear Security Administration has not been able to reconcile the recently announced dramatic reductions planned for deployed operational nuclear warheads to its strategic weapons modernization plans, some of which will cost billions of dollars each, and which are currently structured to upgrade the maximum number of warheads,” the committee report says.

“NNSA is forced, through inertia and indecision, to maintain all contingencies regardless of how unlikely the threat,” the report says.

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North Korea:  China Pushes for Multilateral Talks

China has proposed a plan to begin multilateral negotiations among the United States, North Korea and other Northeast Asian countries, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 15).

“Right now it is critical to continue the process of the talks,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.

“It is of critical importance to the peace, stability and development of the East Asian and Asian region,” Kong added.

Deputy Chinese Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo returned from Pyongyang yesterday after delivering the details of the plan in a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.  The multilateral meetings would include sideline talks between Washington and Pyongyang, potentially satisfying North Korea’s desire for direct contact with U.S. officials.

“China has been very clear that it remains open and flexible on the participants and the formalities of the talks,” Kong said (Joseph Kahn, New York Times, July 16).

North Korea reportedly told the United States it would agree to multilateral talks if Washington promises not to undermine the Pyongyang leadership.

“We would be ready to accept five-nation talks if a promise was made to guarantee (the survival of) the regime,” a North Korean diplomat said, according to a Japanese newspaper (Reuters, July 16).

The White House meanwhile said it could not confirm North Korean claims to have reprocessed all of its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, a key step toward building a nuclear weapon.  Some senior officials said North Korea might be bluffing.

“The point is, they’re not going to spook us,” an official said.  “They’ve got to understand that they don’t get anywhere just by trying to up the level of blackmail,” the officials added (Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, July 16).

The U.S. Defense Department, meanwhile, said it is taking North Korea’s comments seriously.

“When they told us they had nuclear weapons, they meant it,” Lawrence Di Rita, an aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said.  “Certainly what they’ve told us in the past has been worth paying attention to,” he added (Associated Press/Newsday, July 16).

The White House is also considering allowing thousands of North Korean refugees to emigrate to the United States as a means of increasing the pressure on Pyongyang.

Such a move would most likely increase attempts at emigration from North Korea.  Refugees mostly escape into China, which usually repatriates them, and encouraging more emigration could cause trouble with Beijing, the Washington Post reported.

“The Chinese will be enraged by this,” an official said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, July 16).

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Iran:  Tehran Willing to Sign Protocol After Rights Are Clarified

Iran has indicated that it may be willing to sign the Additional Protocol to its international nuclear safeguards agreement, which would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct intrusive inspections of Tehran’s nuclear activities, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, July 15).

During a visit to Moscow, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Galiamali Khosru said that Iran and the IAEA must understand their specific rights before the agreement is signed.

“We favor signing the protocol but we believe that the rights of Iran and the IAEA must be clarified,” Khosru said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 15).

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Food Safety:  FDA Awards Contract to Review Food Safety

The U.S. Food And Drug Administration announced yesterday that it has awarded a contract for a research group to review the nation’s food safety (see GSN, June 12).

“The Institute of Food Technologists review will focus on preventative controls and research needs that might be used for eliminating or reducing the risk of an intentional act of terrorism or contamination for high- and medium-risk combinations of various food commodities and agents,” the FDA said in a statement.

The institute will look at possible technologies that could protect the food supply.

The review, which is scheduled for completion in June 2004, will not be made public, Reuters reported (Reuters, July 15).

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United States:  Army Might Miss October Starting Date for Newport VX Disposal

Lingering technical difficulties in the neutralization method to be used to dispose of stockpiles of VX stored at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana could delay the target October start date of the disposal effort, the Terra Haute Tribune-Star reported yesterday (see GSN, July 2).

The U.S. Army has still not met a 20-parts-VX-per-billion requirement when conducting neutralization tests, said Jeff Brubaker, project manager at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.  The 20-parts-per-billion standard refers to the amount of VX left in the byproduct formed by neutralization, according to the Tribune-Star. 

Five scientific organizations are urging Parsons Inc., the contractor hired to construct and operate the Newport neutralization facility, to determine how to reduce the amount of VX left behind in the byproduct — called hydrolysate — to meet the Army standard, Brubaker said.  Testing is being conducted to determine the best neutralization method, with results expected by the end of the month, he said.

Another concern is that the Army and Parsons have not developed contingency plans in the event the neutralization byproduct cannot be shipped off site for final disposal, according to the Tribune-Star.  The byproduct is slated to be shipped to a commercial hazardous waste facility in Dayton, Ohio, but area residents are working to block the shipments.  Parson officials are considering whether to build an on-site storage facility at the Newport depot in case the byproduct cannot be shipped to the Dayton facility.

If the remaining challenges cannot be solved, the October starting date for the VX disposal effort could be delayed, said Army spokeswoman Terry Arthur.

“If everything goes exactly right, October is still a good date,” Arthur said.  “Parsons and the Army are conducting continuous, around-the-clock efforts to stay on schedule,” she said (Patricia Pastore, Terra Haute Tribune-Star, July 15).

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United States:  Pentagon Clears Patriot Crew That Downed British Aircraft

A U.S. Defense Department board of inquiry has cleared a Patriot missile crew of responsibility for the March 23 downing of a British Air Force Tornado jet and the killing of the aircraft’s two-man crew, the London Daily Telegraph reported today (see GSN, April 4).

Flt. Lt. Kevin Main and Flt. Lt. David Williams were killed by a Patriot missile that reportedly misinterpreted their landing aircraft to be an incoming Iraqi missile.

According to an inquiry by the U.S. Central Command, the Patriot battery “mistook the aircraft for an antiradiation missile based on its high-speed descent and lack of functioning IFF (the plane’s Identification Friend or Foe signal).”

British sources criticized the U.S. finding, saying the plane would not have taken off without a working IFF signal and that the pilot would have noticed if it had failed midflight and contacted ground-control officials.

British Royal Air Force officials also said that the radar image of a Tornado aircraft is not similar to an incoming missile (Michael Smith, London Daily Telegraph, July 16).

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U.S.-Russia:  Joint Early Warning Center to Open Next Year

A joint U.S.-Russian center to provide advance notification of ballistic missile launches is set to open in Moscow early next year, an adviser at the Russian Political Studies Center said last week (see GSN, May 23).

The center will be equipped with computer equipment to process, track and display ballistic missile information, Lt. Gen. Vasiliy Lata said.  Approximately 20 U.S. Defense Department officers will work at the center alongside Russian experts, according to ITAR-Tass. 

The mission of the center is to prevent false alarms of missile launches and to make a realistic assessment of the ballistic missile situation in space, according to Lata (ITAR-Tass, July 10 in FBIS-SOV, July 11).

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