U.S. Losing Patience With Pakistan on Nuclear Treaty

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Friday January 28, 2011.

Pakistan’s Block on Nuclear Treaty Talks Tests U.S. ‘Patience’ - Viola Gienger for Bloomberg [link]

• Pakistan’s refusal to allow international talks to proceed on a treaty to stop production of plutonium and uranium for nuclear bombs prompted the U.S. to say today that it’s losing patience and looking for “options.”
• U.S. nuclear arms negotiator Rose Gottemoeller said she sought to convey to a conference in Geneva today “that patience is running out...We need to be thinking about this as an all-out effort this year,” Gottemoeller said in a telephone interview after her speech at the latest session of the Conference on Disarmament, which is charged with negotiating the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and requires consensus to proceed. “But if not, we’re going to have to consider other options.”
• The delay reflects traditional tensions between India and Pakistan, which both tested nuclear weapons in May 1998. The U.S. has embraced India’s pursuit of nuclear energy for civilian use while tussling with Pakistan over its weapons program and threats from militants on its soil.
• “Pakistan and India continue to produce fissile material and don’t want to stop,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonprofit group in Washington that tracks the process. “And the other countries don’t consider this serious enough an issue to make it a priority in their bilateral relations with the two countries.”  As of November, Pakistan had enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to build 80 to 100 bombs, and India had sufficient supplies for 140, according to Kimball. Pakistan’s leaders say they need to produce more to keep pace with India.
• The United Nations General Assembly called for negotiations toward a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons in 1993. Pakistan has blocked talks since then, most recently after a brief breakthrough in May 2009, when the Conference on Disarmament agreed on a work plan.

Gates Faults Congress for 'Crisis on My Doorstep' - The Associated Press

• Defense Secretary Robert Gates is accusing Congress of dumping a "crisis on my doorstep" by holding the Pentagon to last year's spending levels and creating a potential $23 billion gap that could weaken a wartime military. "That's how you hollow out a military," Gates said Thursday.  He said it looks increasingly likely that Congress will not act on the Pentagon's 2011 budget request even as lawmakers argue over Gates' proposal to slow the rate of increase in defense spending next year and freeze it by 2015.
• Gates was in Canada for North American defense talks. In an interview as he traveled to the Canadian capital, the Pentagon chief said he understands that his proposal for $78 billion in cuts in future spending has run into opposition among lawmakers.
• The opposition is bipartisan — from Republicans who oppose any reductions and Democrats along with some Republicans backed by the tea party who say Gates isn't cutting enough.  Rhetoric on all sides ignores "the real world that I live in," Gates said. He warned of emergency cuts if the Pentagon is forced to live within last year's means when it had planned for more.
• Steering the 2012 defense budget through congressional criticism that it is either too ambitious or too meek is likely to be one of Gates' final campaigns before retiring. If he quits this summer, as many believe likely, he will have been one of the longest-serving defense secretaries since the post was created in 1947.

Russia Demands NATO Investigation of Stuxnet Worm - Global Security Newswire [link]

• The "Stuxnet" computer worm that infiltrated Iranian atomic facilities merits a formal investigation by NATO, Russia's ambassador to the military alliance said yesterday, adding the malware could have caused a radiological material release on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
• The New York Times last week reported the worm's release was part of a clandestine bid by Israel and the United States to disrupt Iran's uranium enrichment program; both states suspect the effort is geared toward producing weapon material, though Tehran has maintained it would only generate fuel for civilian applications.
• Technicians overseeing Iranian enrichment centrifuges "saw on their screens that the centrifuges were working normally when in fact they were out of control," Agence France-Presse reported Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin said after meeting with NATO nation representatives.
• One U.S. official said Stuxnet was under study.  The worm was subject to "ongoing forensics efforts to understand the issues," U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said this week without elaborating.
• Iran's latest meeting with the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany ended last week without any discernible progress toward resolving the dispute, according to news reports. The six world powers had hoped to move toward agreement on a proposed exchange of Iranian low-enriched uranium for foreign material to fuel a medical isotope production reactor in Tehran. Iran , though, did not directly address its willingness to accept an updated version of the plan, Western diplomats told the Christian Science Monitor.
• Ali Bagheri, a deputy under senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, earlier this week said his country had "stressed that Iran does not need fuel swap and what prompts Iran to negotiate on the issue is cooperation and not necessity,” Iranian state media reported (Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 26).

CTBTO Tests Nuke Explosion Monitoring Technology - Global Security Newswire [link]

• A test of an international arms control regime's ability to detect the detonation of a nuclear device in the atmosphere was carried out on Wednesday in the Israeli Negev desert.  The detonation of conventional explosives was conducted to assess how well infrasound technology could identify low-frequency sound waves the human ear cannot detect, according to a release from the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization.
• "This is a crucial test for the infrasound technology, an important component of our monitoring system," CTBTO Executive Secretary Tibor Tóth said in released remarks.  The test involved 25 infrasound sensors located in 15 Middle Eastern and European states that were put on alert to detect the sound waves resulting from the detonation in the Israeli desert. The explosion was expected to produce useful data that can be used by CTBTO experts and international scientists in improving the calibrations of the infrasound processing equipment and sensors.
• The test was the result of collaboration between the treaty organization and 21 nations. Representatives from CTBT nations observed the event via a video feed at the organization's offices in Vienna, Austria.  The treaty regime's International Monitoring System encompasses nearly 340 facilities, including 60 infrasound installations, located across the planet to monitor for the detonation of a nuclear weapon.
• The pact has been ratified by 153 nations, including 35 of the 44 states whose full endorsement is required for the treaty to enter into force. Holdouts among that group of "Annex 2" states are China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States.

North Korea to Develop Nuclear-Capable ICBMs Within Decade: Adm. Mullen - Hwang Doo-Hyong for Yonhap News Agency

• North Korea will likely develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads within the coming decade, the chief U.S. military officer said Thursday.  "There's little doubt in my mind, unless North Korea is deterred, that sometime in the next, I'm not sure but, five to 10 years, the provocations ... will continue at a much higher threat level, which could include a nuclear-capable ICBM," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with Financial Times, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.
• Mullen's statement is in tune with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said earlier this month that North Korea's missiles and nuclear weapons will pose a threat to the U.S. within five years. Gates also urged North Korea to impose a moratorium on nuclear and missile testing to help revive the six-party nuclear talks.
• A six-party deal signed in 2005 by the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia calls for the North's nuclear dismantlement in return for massive economic aid and diplomatic and political benefits. The talks, however, have been deadlocked for more than two years over the North's nuclear and missile tests and other provocations.
• North Korea also revealed in November a uranium enrichment plant that could serve as a second way of building nuclear bombs in addition to its existing plutonium program, despite Pyongyang's claims it is producing fuel for power generation.  "I think we all agree it's a more dangerous place now than it was a few months ago and that the provocations -- and this is all tied to the succession thing and Kim Jong Il, who's been a pretty unpredictable guy for a long time -- the worry tied to this revelation on the nuke, the uranium enrichment piece, all of that, that it's now more dangerous than it was a few months ago," Mullen said.