Weapons Destruction Program Reduces Threat, Enhances Security
10 September 2007
Albania is first nation to eliminate chemical weapons stockpile
Washington –- Albania’s recent destruction of its stockpile of chemical weapons is the latest success in ongoing partnerships between the United States and countries that have deadly weapons that are vulnerable to theft or illicit smuggling attempts by terrorists, criminals or rogue states.
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana and former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia recently visited a chemical weapons destruction facility built to destroy Albania’s stockpile of chemical weapons. The facility was financed under legislation Lugar and Nunn authored in 1991.
“This is a truly remarkable achievement,” Lugar said September 1 in Tirana, Albania, as it marks “the first time in history that any nation has completely eliminated its stockpile of chemical weapons.” (See related article.)
Lugar said the Albania effort represented an important first test of the Nunn-Lugar program outside the territory of the former Soviet Union “proving that we can work with other governments in new environments.”
The chemical weapon destruction work in Albania is an outgrowth of the original 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act -- also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. The early legislation focused on securing or destroying weapons in the former Soviet Union, whereas the 2003 Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act funds projects like the one in Albania.
Experts with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency worked with Albanian authorities and a U.S. contractor to obtain equipment and truck it into the mountains where the weapons were stored in a remote bunker. Nunn and Lugar visited the nearby warehouse, built for $38.5 million specifically to incinerate the stockpile of 16 tons of chemical weapons and materials.
A delegation of current and former members of Congress and other U.S. officials recently visited sites in the former Soviet Union and Albania where large numbers of dangerous Cold War era weapons and materials have been destroyed.
The delegation visited another chemical weapons destruction program in Shchuchye, near Chelyabinsk in Russia. U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction money is combined there with funding from Russia, Canada, Norway, Italy, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and the United Kingdom for a facility that eventually will eliminate millions of artillery rounds and warheads filled with toxic agents.
U.S. funding peaked in 1994 at almost $600 million, but the overall program is still distributing $372 million in 2007. On the 15th anniversary of the program on August 29, President Bush pointed to it as “a critical tool ... to address one of the gravest threats we face -– the danger that terrorists and proliferators could gain access to weapons or materials of mass destruction.” He cited several large-scale former Soviet biological and chemical production plants that have been dismantled safely in Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Russian Defense Minister Yevgeny Malin told experts at the Carnegie Moscow Center -– including Lugar and Nunn during their trip -- that Russia could have tackled this alone, but it would have taken much longer and “been done in a much more dangerous manner.”
Nunn, who helped found the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative after leaving office, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that without U.S. support there would have been “enormous dangers of leakage of both know-how and weapons-grade material.”
During the Moscow leg of the trip, National Nuclear Security Administration Deputy William Tobey said the United States invested heavily to ensure that Russia’s nuclear arsenal and infrastructure “are secure from terrorists or rogue actors.”
PROGRAM INVESTMENTS PAY OFF
Malin said the program reduced nuclear proliferation dangers in several former republics: Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine now have no nuclear weapons. This corresponds with the key objectives of the program:
• Destroying nuclear, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction;
• Transporting, storing and disabling and safeguarding such weapons while awaiting destruction;
• Establishing verifiable safeguards against the proliferation of these weapons, components and weapons-usable materials; and
• Preventing the diversion of scientific expertise that could fuel weapons development programs in other countries.
Leonard Spector, who runs the Washington office of the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told USINFO the program has had a successful history because it has evolved in a careful and structured way. He also said it has benefited from consistent participation and support from Congress and successive administrations making it an example of true bipartisanship.
During the recent trip, delegation members witnessed the destruction of a rocket motor that could propel a Soviet nuclear missile to the continental United States. With U.S. assistance, hundreds of SS-24 and SS-25 missiles are being destroyed at the Geodeziya Motor Burn Facility under the terms of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Tobey said the enhanced security of weapons materials, facilities and better port and border security and redirection of scientific talent are all a reflection of the multiyear investment.
Nunn-Lugar money in 1992 financed the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow that has helped 58,000 weapons scientists convert to a new line of work. The center was founded by the European Union, the United States, Japan and Russia.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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