Russia's Mountain of WMD

["Gerry Blackwood" <gpblackwood@justice.com>]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0218/p08s03-comv.html



"We have more work to do," President Bush told the world in a

speech on WMD proliferation last week. That particular sentence

referred to the "Nunn-Lugar" program to dismantle, destroy, and

secure weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.    

    

Mr. Bush's one-liner puts the "under" in "understatement." The

program championed by former Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Richard Lugar

is grossly behind schedule. What was supposed to be accomplished

in 10 years is now in its 13th year, and the work is not even

half done.



Since 1991, all of the nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan,

and Belarus have been removed; 6,252 nuclear warheads have been

deactivated; and more than 20,000 scientists employed in WMD have

found peaceful work. That's progress.



But it leaves more than 7,000 warheads to go, and hundreds of

metric tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium to properly

secure. Most of the 40,000 tons of chemical weapons - much of it

in suitcase-size shells - has yet to be destroyed.



Some critics, noting the administration's decreased budget

request for 2005, argue that more funding would speed things up.



The real need here, however, is not money but political will.

Serious bureaucratic delays are stalling efforts, preventing

allocated money from being spent. The wrangling covers everything

from physical access at Russian facilities to liability concerns.



Pouring money into a system where it gets stuck in bottlenecks

can't do much good. These problems could be more speedily

resolved if they received sustained attention at the highest

levels in the White House and the Kremlin.



_________________________________________________

FindLaw - Free Case Law, Jobs, Library, Community

http://www.FindLaw.com

Get your FREE @JUSTICE.COM email!

http://mail.Justice.com

************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To

unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the

text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,

with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/