lost nuclear bombs ?

[Rahim Ghanooni <rahimg@earthlink.net>]

NEW YORK (Reuter) - Former Russian National Security Adviser Alexandr Lebed
said in an interview that the Russian military had lost track of more than
100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs, any one of which could kill up to 100,000
people.

In the interview with CBS News ``60 Minutes'' program, to be aired Sunday,
Lebed said the devices ``are not under the control of the armed forces of
Russia.''

Last May Lebed said at a private briefing to a delegation of U.S.
congressmen that he believed 84 of the one-kiloton bombs were unnaccounted
for. In the interview with 60 Minutes, conducted two weeks ago, Lebed said
he now believes the figure to be more than 100.

He said the devices, made to look like suitcases, could be detonated by one
person within half an hour.

``Can you imagine what would happen psychologically, morally, if this
weapon is detonated in a big city? ... About 50-70,000 people, up to 
100,000 people would be killed.''

Lebed said he did not know what had happened to the missing bombs, but he 
was certain they were not under the control of the Russian military.

``I'm saying that more than a hundred weapons out of the supposed number of
250 are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia,'' Lebed said
in the interview. ``I don't know their location. I don't know whether they
have been destroyed or whether they are stored or whether they've been sold
or stolen, I don't know.''

Asked if it were possible that the authorities did know where all the
weapons were and simply did not want to tell Lebed, he said, ``No.''

Lebed, a former top general and national security adviser to Russian
President Boris Yeltsin, speculated that the missing weapons could be
``somewhere in Georgia, somewhere in the Ukraine, or somewhere in the
Baltic countries. Maybe outside those countries.''

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, led the congressional
delegation in May and reported Lebed's information to the CIA.

He told ``60 Minutes'' the revelation ``should be troubling for everyone in
the world, because any military officer who had access to those devices
could get a very large sum of money on the black market for that device.''

``Terrorist groups would love to have that. We know they've been trying to
buy long-range offensive weapons and nuclear capability from Russia. That's
a fact,'' Weldon said.

In Moscow, Russia's Defense Ministry on Friday denied remarks by former
presidential security adviser Alexander Lebed that the Russian military had
lost track of some of its nuclear weapons.

``As a representative of the Defense Ministry I declare -- there are no
nuclear bombs in Russia out of control of the Russian armed forces,''
Vladimir Uvatenko, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said by telephone.

``This statement by Alexander Ivanovich (Lebed) can cause nothing but a
smile -- he never dealt with nuclear security questions and cannot know the
situation,'' Uvatenko said.

Uvatenko said there was no chance that the nuclear devices could be stored
ithout being properly registered or had been used or destroyed and not
accounted for.

Nuclear experts with international think-tanks have said in the past Russia
had strict control over its military nuclear sites, and said they viewed
nuclear bomb and missile theft as extremely unlikely.

But they have said there have been cases of theft of nuclear materials from
power plants and scientific laboratories.