Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE: 10-31-02

TYPE: FOCUS

NUMBER=8-019

TITLE: RUSSIAN LOOSE NUKES

BYLINE: BRENT HURD

TELEPHONE: 205-4672

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

EDITOR: ED WARNER

CONTENT=

INTRO:Experts say Saddam Hussein could build a nuclear bomb within months if he could get his hands on nuclear materials from foreign sources. But if the Iraqi dictator is left to his own devices, Baghdad is unlikely to have a nuclear weapon anytime soon. Similar conclusions hold true for terrorist groups seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In this week's FOCUS, VOA's Brent Hurd takes a look at the availability of materials for building nuclear weapons is and how it can be controlled.

TEXT:

Most of the world's weapons-grade nuclear material today is located in the Russian Federation. Unlike Russian nuclear weapons -- which the Russian government insists remain under tight control -- the material needed to make a bomb is not as secured and has been the object of intense interest by terrorist groups and smugglers.

In the 1990's, U-S government efforts were directed to ensure the strict control of nuclear weapons in Russia. However, equal attention was not given to the security of the basic ingredients of a nuclear device: highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Experts estimate thousands of tons of this material is lying in laboratories across Russia.

Kurt Gottfried, a professor of Physics at Cornell University and Chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, says security for these kinds of materials is lacking.

///GOTTFRIED ACT///

Russia has an enormous, probably the largest weapons complex in the world, which it inherited from the Soviet Union. That complex was created when the Soviet Union was a police state with sealed borders. While it had excellent security during the time of the Soviet government, that system is totally inadequate for an open society.

///END ACT///

In May, a report by Harvard University and the Nuclear Threat Initiative says minimal security upgrades such as piling heavy blocks on top of nuclear material have secured only 40 percent of the potential bomb making material in Russia. At some facilities, security is provided by no more than a single night watchman and a chain-link fence. The report adds that less than one-seventh of Russia's stockpile of highly enriched uranium has been destroyed.

Some experts believe the U-S government could be doing a lot more to help safeguard dangerous nuclear material. Jim Walsh of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government is dismayed.

///WALSH ACT///

In other areas, particularly in the area of prevention, I think the U-S government has done a horrendously bad job. It is clear we are not putting a fraction of the effort into protecting vulnerable nuclear materials that we need to be if we are going to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on and using these materials in attacks against us. We are going to spend tens of billions, maybe over 100-hundred, maybe as much as 200-hundred billion dollars in the coming war on Iraq, and we spend about a billion dollars a year less than one percent of what we are going to spend on Iraq -- in helping protect nuclear materials that are vulnerable.

///END ACT///

Mr. Walsh says part of the problem is that no single entity in the U-S government is in charge of safeguarding.

///WALSH ACT///

Everyone agrees that it is a serious issue, but at the implementation level there is no one agency that feels like they have ownership of the issue. Some of it is done by the Defense Department. The Department of Energy has a piece of it, but it is really not what their mandate is. So it is a fractured system, there is little coordination, there is no one making it there top priority, and as a result, you have leaders saying they care about it, but nothing really ever gets done.

///END ACT///

Two U-S senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar have been working on the issue for over a decade. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative threat reduction program has helped secure nuclear as well as biological and chemical stockpiles after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Over the last ten years, the program has added more security at Russian nuclear laboratories and re-employed former Soviet nuclear scientists.

Senator Lugar, a Republican from the state of Indiana, tells how the program works.

///LUGAR ACT///

The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act has several dimensions. The first is to try to go to the source of weapons of mass destruction: biological, chemical and nuclear. And provide for security, that is fences, proper guards, and some way in which we can be certain, both Russians and Americans, that the material does not move, because it is in our interest that it to remain that way. By and large, the economy of Russia has not provided very much money for this, and therefore the United States appropriations have been very beneficial.

///END ACT///

Many analysts say the Nunn-Lugar program, while a step in the right direction, is not nearly enough. Cornell University's Kurt Gottfried.

///GOTTFRIED ACT///

It was very imaginative that senators Nunn and Lugar thought this up. They haven't had the kind of support needed that is really needed by their colleagues in the senate or by the Bush Administration. It is still, considering the problem, a modest, inadequate program.

///END ACT///

Meanwhile, media reports in both Russia and the United States say al-Qaida and other terrorist groups appear to have stepped up their efforts to buy weapons and nuclear material on the Russian market.

Russian customs officials recently blocked an effort to smuggle out nearly 28-thousand kilograms of uranium. In Turkey, two men were caught carrying a small quantity of weapons-grade uranium from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.

The Bush administration has shown signs of giving the issue higher priority. In June, at the G-8 meeting in Canada, President Bush announced the United States would contribute ten billion dollars over the next decade toward safeguarding the world's nuclear stockpiles.

This may be too little too late, says professor Gottfried, considering the avid efforts of terrorist groups to acquire nuclear capabilities.

///GOTTFRIED ACT///

The U-S Administration and the administration of our NATO allies the people who fought the Cold War and devoted unbelievable sums over half a century to this are not putting the kind of political or financial oomph (vigor) into this that is required. What is required is to have it get the kind of attention that Iraq is getting sustained attention from the U-S administration.

///END ACT///

In a startling disclosure, North Korea recently admitted that it has been operating a secret nuclear weapons program for years in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States.

Experts believe all of this underscores the fact that more needs to be done to police loose nuclear material around the world. Harvard University's Jim Walsh points out that even countries with stockpiles of nukes that are considered safe are nevertheless at risk.

///WALSH ACT///

But also in every nuclear state in India, in Pakistan, Israel, France, the UK and elsewhere, there are materials that may be vulnerable, that could be used by terrorists against the United States or against friends of the United States.

///END ACT///

Senator Lugar says his program and others must go beyond Russia and the former Soviet states to encompass the globe.

///LUGAR ACT///

But the interest has grown as the interest of the world and our country and the dangers have grown. We could obviously do more with more money, and my guess is, given the urgency of the situation, the administration will rise to that occasion. My guess is we are going to enact legislation to clearly give latitude for Nunn-Lugar to move into other countries.

///END ACT///

There are fears that concentration on Iraq may sacrifice the international support needed to secure nuclear material. Charles B. Curtis is president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative an organization dedicated to spreading the message that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons represent the world's single greatest threat.

///CURTIS ACT///

We must act in the case of Iraq in a way that maintains the international cooperation that we are fundamentally reliant on to deal with the threat of al-Qaida and its acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

///END ACT///

Experts conclude that an effective strategy to deny the world's most dangerous people access to the world's most dangerous weapons materials will take an unprecedented degree of international cooperation. For Focus, I'm Brent Hurd.