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WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: CURRENT

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION CHALLENGES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 26, 2006

Serial No. 109–242

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

BENJAMIN CHANCE, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

R. NICHOLAS PALARINO, PH.D., Staff Director

J. VINCENT CHASE, Chief Investigator

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANDREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 26, 2006 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Blix, Hans, chairman, the Weapon of Mass Destruction Commission ......... 21

Graham, Ambassador Thomas, Jr., chairman, Bipartisan Security Group,

Global Security Institute; Baker Spring, F.M. Kirby research fellow

for National Security Policy, the Heritage Foundation; Jonathan

Granoff, president, Global Security Institute; Henry D. Sokolski, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; and Frank von Hippel, co-chairman, International Panel on Fissile Materials ........................................... 142

Graham, Ambassador Thomas, Jr. .......................................................... 142

Granoff, Jonathan ..................................................................................... 171

Sokolski, Henry D. .................................................................................... 199

Spring, Baker ............................................................................................. 159

von Hippel, Frank ..................................................................................... 210

Tobey, William H., Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Proliferation, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy;

Andrew K. Semmel, Deputy Assistant Secretary, International Security

and Nonproliferation, Department of State; Jack David, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating Weapon of Mass Destruction

and Negotiations Policy, Department of Defense; and Gene Aloise, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government Accountability Office ........................................................................................................ 60

Aloise, Gene ............................................................................................... 92

David, Jack ................................................................................................ 86

Semmel, Andrew K. ................................................................................... 73

Tobey, William H. ...................................................................................... 60

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Aloise, Gene, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government

Accountability Office, prepared statement of ............................................. 94

Blix, Hans, chairman, the Weapon of Mass Destruction Commission,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 25

David, Jack, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating Weapon of Mass Destruction and Negotiations Policy, Department of Defense, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 88

Graham, Ambassador Thomas, Jr., chairman, Bipartisan Security Group,

Global Security Institute, prepared statement of ....................................... 144

Granoff, Jonathan, president, Global Security Institute, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 174

Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio:

September 25, 2006 Time article .................................................................... 14

June 18, 2006 Washington Post article .......................................................... 51

Semmel, Andrew K., Deputy Assistant Secretary, International Security

and Nonproliferation, Department of State, prepared statement of ........ 76

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 3

Sokolski, Henry D., Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 203

Spring, Baker, F.M. Kirby research fellow for National Security Policy,

the Heritage Foundation, prepared statement of ....................................... 161

Tobey, William H., Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Proliferation, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 63

Page

IV

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by—Continued

von Hippel, Frank, co-chairman, International Panel on Fissile Materials,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 213

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 8

(1)

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: CURRENT

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION CHALLENGES

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:35 p.m. in room

2157, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Kucinich, Waxman, Lynch, Duncan, Porter, Platts, and Van Hollen.

Staff present: J. Vincent Chase, chief investigator; R. Nicholas

Palarino, Ph.D., staff director; Robert A. Briggs, analyst; Kaleb

Redden, Presidential management fellow; Karen Lightfoot, minority communications director/senior advisor; Andrew Su, minority

professional staff member; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and

Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations

hearing entitled, ‘‘Weapons of Mass Destruction: Current Nuclear

Proliferation Challenges,’’ is called to order.

If the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NPT, had

not been created nearly 40 years ago and consistently upheld, it is

likely there would be many more countries with nuclear weapons.

As President Ronald Reagan urged at the 15th signing anniversary

of the NPT, ‘‘All states should rededicate themselves to achieving

the purposes of this important treaty and to ensure its continued

vitality.’’

Since 1968, nearly 190 nations have signed on to the NPT and

pledged not to pursue nuclear weapons nuclear weapons in exchange for access to the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and

a commitment by the United States, Russian, France, Britain, and

China, all nuclear-weapon states, to negotiate nuclear disarmament.

In 1987 President Reagan encapsulated a key point of the NPT’s

success when he famously said to then-Soviet Leader Mikhail

Gorbachev, ‘‘Trust, but verify.’’ The International Atomic Energy

Agency, the IAEA, safeguards system verifies compliance with the

NPT. This system has been the cornerstone of efforts to prevent the

proliferation of nuclear weapons, but a powerful global nuclear

threat still remains today. The treaty obviously is not perfect.

States such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea have declared the

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have nuclear weapons. Terrorist organizations such Al Qaeda continue to seek chemical, biological, radiological, and even nuclear

weapons.

In the face of these threats, rededication to the NPT is especially

critical to ensure international peace, stability, and security.

Today we focus on challenges the world community faces from

nuclear weapons proliferation and how the nonproliferation regime

can be strengthened to effectively counter this threat to our civilization.

We look forward to three panels of distinguished witnesses testifying before our committee today who will answer these questions:

Why has the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

failed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons?

Second, what steps should be taken to strengthen compliance

with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons?

We will first hear from Dr. Hans Blix, formerly the chief of

United Nations weapons inspection in Iraq and now chairman of

the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.

On panel two we are joined by Mr. William Tobey, Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, National Nuclear

Security Administration, Department of Energy; Mr. Andrew

Semmel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, International Security and Nonproliferation, Department of State; Mr. Jack David,

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating Weapons of

Mass Destruction and Negotiations Policy, Department of Defense;

and Mr. Gene Aloise, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government Accountability Office.

Our third panel of witnesses include Ambassador Thomas

Graham, chairman of the Bipartisan Security Group, Global Security Institute; Mr. Baker Spring, the F. M. Kirby Research Fellow

for National Security Policy, The Heritage Foundation; Mr. Jonathan Granoff, President, Global Security Institute; Mr. Henry

Sokolski, Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Education

Center; and Professor Frank von Hippel, Co-Chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

We welcome all of our witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. At this time we will recognize the distinguished

ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. And I would like to yield to the distinguished

ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. SHAYS. Absolutely.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Waxman from California.

Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman, Mr. Waxman, has the floor.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you both very much, particularly Mr.

Kucinich, because I do have a conflict in my schedule and wanted

to go ahead of him.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased you have called this important hearing.

I want to extend a special welcome to Dr. Blix. It is an honor to

have you here today.

I would like to focus my opening statement on Iraq. As we all

know, President Bush took this Nation to war based on his claim

that Saddam Hussein would provide nuclear weapons to terrorists

unless the United States forcibly stopped him. Exaggerated claims

were also made by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary

Rumsfeld. On the eve of the war, for example, the Vice President

declared Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons, and

the Defense Security boasted he knew precisely where those nuclear weapon of mass destruction were located.

Well, all of them proved false. No weapon of mass destruction

were found. We learned the President’s nuclear claims were based

on obviously forged and discredited documents and information,

and we discovered Saddam Hussein’s relationship with Al Qaeda

was actually one of acrimony rather than cooperation.

As a result of the administration’s rush to war, the United States

now finds itself in an intractable, expensive, and worsening crisis.

A string of recent reports suggests that the administration’s entire

effort in Iraq is coming apart at the seams. For example, yesterday

the L.A. Times reported, Army Chief of Staff General Peter

Schoomaker took the unprecedented step of withholding a mandatory budget plan as a protest to Secretary Rumsfeld that the Army

could not maintain its current activity levels in Iraq. The general

is seeking a stunning 41 percent increase over current funding levels.

Also yesterday, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office issued a report revealing the Pentagon’s own auditors have

identified $3.5 billion in questioned and unsupported charges by

contractors in Iraq—$3.5 billion. That is astonishing. That is an

amount as much as we have spent on the entire reconstruction of

Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, General Mark Scheid, the Chief of Logistics

War Plans for Afghanistan and Iraq, complained that Secretary

Rumsfeld actually prohibited post-war planning, fearing that the

American public would not support a sustained occupation. And

when General Scheid argued that this planning was critical, Secretary Rumsfeld said he would fire the next person that said that.

But the most damning indictment, however, came this weekend

when press reports revealed that American intelligence agencies

completed a national intelligence estimate concluding that the Iraq

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war has increased the danger of terrorism against the United

States, spawning a new generation of Islamic radicalism.

According to these press reports, all of the administration’s 16 intelligence agencies disagree with claims by the President and Republican congressional leaders that the war in Iraq has made us

safer. To the contrary, they believe that the war in Iraq has made

the threat of terrorism worse by fanning Islamic extremism and

providing a training ground for lethal methods that are exported

to other countries.

The litany of incompetence is staggering. It is as if a massive category ten version of Hurricane Katrina struck the Middle East, and

the Bush administration was called in to handle the response. But

no matter how bad things get, the President’s reflexive response is

‘‘stay the course.’’ And Vice President Cheney, like Michael Brown

of this disaster, continues to insist that he would not have done a

single thing differently.

Today, I hope that Dr. Blix can shed some light on how the

United States can avoid these pitfalls in the future, especially as

the Bush administration is confronted with the delicate diplomatic

task of coaxing Iran to fully adopt the goals of nuclear nonproliferation and we confront North Korea with the risk of nonproliferation,

as well as we fear he may sell his weapons, even nuclear weapons,

to terrorists.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased we are holding this hearing. Let’s

get some more information and hopefully we won’t make the same

mistakes again.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman very much.

At this time Mr. Waxman would have been recognized, so I am

assuming, Mr. Kucinich, you now have the floor.

Mr. KUCINICH. I want to thank Mr. Waxman for his statement

and for his leadership.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this subcommittee meeting.

I think it was on June 6, 2006, our witness Dr. Blix was on Meet

the Press and he was asked could the war in Iraq have been avoided. That is a compelling question, not only with respect to the discussion of weapon of mass destruction, but looking at the path the

administration has set us upon, a path of preemption and

unilateralism, the question could a war be avoided is instructive

not only with respect to reflecting on what has passed, but in looking at what is prologued. so we are not only here talking about

forensics; we are speaking about the future of the world and our

capability to be able to assess what is happening and get what is

really going on and be able to, from that point, draw policies for

our Nation and the world which are sane and which are true.

Our country has lost credibility. In the last 6 years the U.S. administration has backtracked on international treaties and conventions, the administration misused the threat of weapon of mass destruction to invade Iraq, and the administration has pursued inconsistent approaches to nations who have or are seeking nuclear

weapons.

One of the biggest challenges to our nonproliferation goals may,

in fact, be our own policies and actions. The U.S. had rejected the

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, refused to sign the Land Mine

Treaty, withdrawn from the ABM Treaty, has not or unsigned the

Kyoto Protocol, blocked the Verification Protocol for the Biological

Weapons Convention, and this week, at the request of the President, Congress is poised to legalize torture of foreign nationals, despite the Geneva Conventions.

The U.S. administration has established a record of unilateralism

that undercuts our Nation’s credibility in the eyes of the world. The

U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, despite the lack of reliable evidence of weapon of mass destruction by U.N. inspectors, and in response this administration championed multiple justifications for

the invasion of Iraq, such as regime change and democracy. The

evolving justifications led to increased uneasiness in the world

about U.S. intentions.

Think about it for a moment. We were told and have been told

repeatedly, well, it was just bad intelligence, when, in fact, now we

are seeing that there are numerous people throughout the Federal

Government who warned the administration that the information

they were about to offer to the public as a justification for the war

was false, fraudulent, hoax.

And so we are here in part to reassess the awful path that has

been taken, policies built on a potempkin village of massive fraud

and lies. It is good that Mr. Blix is here. Thank you, because when

you ask could the war be avoided, Mr. Blix said on Meet the Press,

‘‘I think so. We carried out about 700 inspections. We have been

to about three dozens of sites which the intelligence had given us,

and in none of these cases did we find any weapon of mass destruction. If we had been allowed a couple of months more we would

13

have been able to go to all of the sites given by intelligence and

found no weapons since there weren’t any.’’

What was the rush to war all about? Somebody owes an explanation to the 2,700 families of American soldiers who gave their

life. What was this war about? And what about all of the ones who

have been injured? What about the maybe 200,000 Iraqis that have

lost their lives and perhaps a million that have been injured. What

was it all about? What was the rush about?

The growing lack of U.S. credibility greatly affects the perception

of U.S. objections to an Iranian nuclear program. The administration has drawn a hard line on Iran’s nuclear intentions, peaceful

or not. To date the administration refuses to directly talk with Iran

until Iran ceases all enrichment operations, despite the possibility

that Iran’s enrichment may be for peaceful uses only and therefore

legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The U.S. finds itself lacking credibility in nuclear weapons proliferation. The administration has promoted new nuclear weapons

for the United States in the form of bunker busters and new weapons research. The U.S. negotiated a favorable nuclear agreement

with India, despite India’s refusal to join the NPT and their acquisition of nuclear weapons. The U.S. supports the dictatorship in

Pakistan, despite their refusal to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty

and despite their acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

And the U.S. refuses to acknowledge Israel’s possession of nuclear

weapons, despite the obvious implications that has on the surrounding nations’ desires to acquire nuclear weapons.

The U.S. has effectively awarded several nations who have recently acquired nuclear weapons. Many of these nations are neighbors of nations that the U.S. is applying great pressure upon. The

U.S. must treat its allies and adversaries differently, but if we are

to prevent further proliferation anywhere we must oppose it everywhere, even and especially when it concerns an ally; otherwise, the

world’s tough neighborhoods will get a lot more dangerous due to

arms races that our own in consistencies promote.

We don’t know if the U.S. has negotiated with Iran in good faith.

There is evidence the administration has not. According to independent accounts in The New Yorker, GQ, ABC News, and The

Guardian, the U.S. has already put operatives on the ground in

Iraq to gather intelligence and prepare targeting for an invasion.

It is working with MEK opposition groups to conduct lethal operations and stabilizing operations, and according to this week’s Time

Magazine the Navy has issued deployment orders for mine sweepers to review plans for a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz,

an Iranian port, all about WMDs.

Before I wrap up, Mr. Chairman, I have a September 25, 2006

Time article, ‘‘What Would War Look Like.’’ Without objection, I

would like it introduced in the hearing record.

Mr. SHAYS. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. So, in conclusion, according to the Washington

Post, U.N. inspectors dispute Iran report by House panel, September 14, 2006. A House Intelligence Committee staff report on Iran

has come under scrutiny for making false, misleading, and unsubstantiated assertions about Iran’s nuclear program. The final committee staff report ‘‘included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate,’’ including

the gross exaggeration that the level of uranium enrichment by

Iranian nuclear plants has now reached weapons grade levels of 90

percent, when in reality the correct enrichment level was found by

the International Atomic Energy Agency to be about 3.6 percent.

Worse yet, the DNI reviewed the staff report before publication

and these exaggerations remained in the final version.

The administration’s conduct at the U.N. would lack credibility

if, indeed, it is true that we are following all of the steps necessary

for military attack. This subcommittee has attempted to find out.

In June our subcommittee held a classified Members briefing at my

request to investigate. Unfortunately, neither the Department of

State nor the Department of Defense participated. They refused to

appear at a classified hearing. Nearly 3 months later the subcommittee has not been able to question State or DOD directly on

these reports.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present this. I know that your interest in being here are

the interests of the American people.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman very much.

Mr. Lynch, thank you.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and

also Ranking Member Kucinich for holding this hearing. I would

also like to thank Dr. Hans Blix and all of our distinguished panelists today for helping this subcommittee with its work.

Mr. Chairman, it is well known that in the months leading up

to the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq the Bush administration

consistently asserted and communicated to this Congress as their

primary rationale for confronting Iraq that Saddam Hussein’s regime’s active weapon of mass destruction program posed a ‘‘grave

and imminent security threat to the United States and to the stability of the Middle East region.’’ However, since the commencement of hostilities in Iraq we have come to find out that the threat

posed by Saddam was not imminent, as the current administration

asserted, and that the capacity for redevelopment of weapon of

mass destruction was virtually nonexistent.

Between November 27, 2002, and the withdrawal of U.N. personnel on March 18, 2003, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission headed by Dr. Blix conducted 731 inspections

of 411 sites and, according to the Commission’s May, 2003, quarterly report, ‘‘In the period during which it performed inspections

and monitoring in Iraq, the Commission did not find evidence of

the continuation or resumption of programs of weapon of mass destruction.’’ Similarly, as of this date, U.S. forces have not located

either WMD or WMD-related sites, according to CRS reports of

September, 2006.

In short, our intelligence proceeding the March, 2003, invasion

was significantly flawed, leading Dr. Blix to publicly comment that,

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‘‘there was not enough critical thinking, neither in the intelligence

agencies nor at the Governmental level, prior to military action in

Iraq.’’

Now, in this subcommittee we have asked on five separate occasions—Mr. Kucinich, myself, and Mr. Waxman, the ranking member of the full committee—that we hold congressional hearings on

how we were mislead by the intelligence report supplied by the administration and to investigate whether we were deliberately misled in our decision to authorize military force against Saddam Hussein.

But the investigation and inquiry is not merely looking back, it

is also forward-looking, because now, almost 4 years later, we are

now seeking to address the potential security threat posed by Iran’s

nuclear technology activities, and specifically the country’s pursuit

of a uranium enrichment program. While Iranian President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his public threats against the United

States and Israel, continued developments in Iran’s nuclear technology capabilities and Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism do strongly

indicate that Iran does pose a serious strategic threat to the U.S.

Significant gaps continue to remain in our intelligence on Iran’s

nuclear weapons capabilities. According to the House Intelligence

Committee’s August, 2006, bipartisan staff report on the Iranian

threat, ‘‘We lack critical information needed for analysts to make

many of their judgments with confidence about Iran, and we don’t

know nearly enough about Iran’s nuclear weapon program.’’ Furthermore, they continue, ‘‘Although it is likely that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, there is still a possibility that Iran could be

engaged in a denial and deception campaign to exaggerate progress

on its nuclear programs such as Saddam Hussein apparently did

concerning his WMD programs.’’

Mr. Chairman, drawing upon the lessons of our collective experience in Iraq and given the intelligence gaps that remain regarding

Iran’s nuclear program, I would suggest at least part of today’s

hearing include a discussion on whether arms limitations and disarmament must necessarily include a dialog on how best to facilitate the timely confirmation and gathering of accurate and comprehensive information on WMD threats so that we can better assess a particular state’s nuclear plans, goals, and capabilities and

promote the development of effective national and international

policy. To this end, I again welcome Dr. Hans Blix and our panelists’ thoughts on how address existing intelligence gaps regarding

nuclear proliferation advancements, as well as other means by

which to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Again, I

would like to thank all of your for your testimony.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. DUNCAN. I have no statement, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for

calling this hearing.

Mr. SHAYS. You are welcome.

We will take care of some business.

I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee

be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and that

the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose.

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Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statement in the record.

Without objection, so ordered.

We have three panels, so it is going to be a fairly long day. This

is ultimately about weapon of mass destruction, current nuclear

proliferation challenges.

Dr. Blix, we welcome you. I just want you to know that Members

may ask questions that are somewhat off the issue here and they

are free to ask those questions. What I will be doing on my turn,

I will be asking you questions like why doesn’t the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty address the issues of nuclear terrorism, how

should the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty be amended to address the threat of nuclear terrorism. I just wanted you to know

I will be wanting to get in these issues of how has the nonproliferation regime shifted to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism and

asking you a variety of other issues of where we need to see

amendments to the treaty and what efforts our country should be

making.

You may be asked questions about Iraq and you can answer or

not answer, depending on your decision.

As you know, we swear in our witnesses. I appreciate your willingness to be sworn in. When you become a diplomat again we

won’t swear you in.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witness has responded in the

affirmative.

I thank you, Dr. Blix, because I went to see you a few years ago

in Stockholm and wanted to ask the question why did Saddam

Hussein want us to think he had weapon of mass destruction, and

you were very generous in spending about 2 hours of your time

from a vacation. I will never forget that visit, and I am very appreciative that you would have been so generous with your time. I appreciate that you would be here today and say that we are eager

to hear your testimony.

Thank you, Dr. Blix. You have the floor.

STATEMENT OF HANS BLIX, CHAIRMAN, THE WEAPON OF

MASS DESTRUCTION COMMISSION

Dr. BLIX. Thank you very much, Chairman Shays. I am pleased

to be invited by you and by the subcommittee to the Hearing on

nonproliferation challenges.

The NPT is a central instrument through which non-nuclear

states commit themselves to remain without nuclear weapons, and

for the nuclear weapon states, five of them, to commit themselves

to prevent a further spread of weapons and to act for nuclear disarmament.

I note with appreciation the efforts that you have made, Chairman Shays and others, to move into the U.S. Congress the resolution 133 of last year, which underlines the importance of the NPT

and of the need for disarmament measures on behalf of the nuclear

weapon states. And then I remind you that next year is the first

preparatory committee meeting for the NPT Review Conference

that is to take place in 2010, so I think it is time now to begin to

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think what are countries going to say at next year’s preparatory

meeting.

As the chairman of the WMD Commission, which was an independent commission which was established or financed by the

Swedish government, I remain keenly interested in the question of

nuclear weapons and the NPT, and as the former Director General

of the International Atomic Energy Association, I am responsible

for the safeguard system. I also have a continuing interest in it

and, of course, as chairman of the Hamlich in New York I have a

lot of hands-on experience, shall we say.

I have submitted some written testimony to the Commission and

I have also submitted a few corrections in it, which I hope you will

take note of, but at this point, Mr. Chairman, I would like to stress

the following:

The first point is I think there is a very strong need at the world

community, including the United States, to become aware of the

erosion that has taken place in the implementation of the NPT,

both on the side of non-nuclear weapon states, or states that should

have remained non-nuclear, and on the part of nuclear weapon

states. Kaufianan was talking about the world sleepwalking into a

new phase of disarmament, and that commission which I headed

and which presented this report, Weapons of Terror, precisely says

that we think that there is a need for a revival of the efforts of

arms control and disarmament.

I received questions from your commission and I have answered

them in my written submission, but here I would like to rather

think of chronologically what may be of most of all needed at the

present time. And then I would agree with those that say that Iran

is an acute case. Iran and North Korea are acute cases and they

need to be dealt with acutely. They are on the top of the agenda

in the media and I think they should be on the top of our agenda.

In the case of Iran, the commission that I chaired has commented in detail upon it, and we have also commented in detail

about North Korea. We agree with those who say that it is desirable that Iran should suspend the enrichment program. The question is how one will get to that, and I think we agree, we say that

the first condition is that one should try to create a situation in

which the country does not feel a need for nuclear weapons. We,

therefore, point particularly to the question of security.

Most countries that have gone for nuclear weapons have done it

because they felt a security need. Certainly India looked at China,

Pakistan looked at India, Israel looked at the Arab states, and so

forth. In the case of Iran, too, one should keep that in mind. And

how can one do that?

Well, I think that to compare the efforts made to get North

Korea to stay away from nuclear weapons, you find that in the negotiations the North Koreans had been offered assurances about security, and they have also been told that they might get diplomatic

relations with both Japan and the United States, and thereby

being taken out of the ostracism to which they have, for various

good reasons, been subjected. Both of these measures are there in

order to assure them that their security would not be threatened,

that they would not need nuclear weapons.

23

I think the same thinking would be needed in the case of Iran.

From what we have seen about the offered diplomatic negotiations,

there has been nothing held out about either security or diplomatic

relations.

These are the two most acute cases, but if I go in the order of

acuteness then I would say that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is next in line. It is now celebrating its tenth anniversary. The

Commission thinks that there could be a positive domino effect if

the U.S. were to ratify. We, frankly, directly urge the United States

to reconsider the position it has when the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We think that if the U.S. were to ratify it, then very likely others would follow—China, India, Pakistan,

Iran, etc.

At the present time I think there is particular importance in getting the U.S. and China, because the two countries are involved in

the negotiations with North Korea and it would be highly desirable

that North Korea ratify the CTBT, because if they don’t the treaty

cannot enter into force. That ought to be an element in the negotiations, but it might be hard, both for the U.S. and for China, to urge

the North Koreans to ratify the CTBT so long as they, themselves,

have not done so.

Next in line on my list would be the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty; that is to say, the treaty that will demand prohibit the production of plutonium and rich uranium for weapons purposes. The

United States has recently tabled a draft on that subject in Geneva

at the Disarmament—well, not in the Disarmament Conference,

because it is not meeting as such, but, at any rate, for the conference.

That draft, which I think has been welcomed, nevertheless

misses one important point, that is verification. It always used to

be felt and the U.S. supported in the past such a treaty with verification, and this draft does not contain it.

I think when we look at the negotiation that has been done between the United States and India, you will appreciate that it is

a severe lack in that draft submitted by the U.S., because if India,

under this agreement with the United States, would be able to import nuclear fuel, there is also a possibility—I am not saying that

it is a reality, but the possibility that they could use their own uranium for making more material for weapons. And if there is no

agreement on the prohibition on making more material for weapons

and no verification of it, then there is certainly a risk that both

Pakistan and China would not trust such an agreement, and hence

an FMCT with verification would be very important and we would

hope that the U.S. would amend its proposal in this direction.

Next the ultimate point would be Biological Weapons Convention

which will come up for a review conference later this year, toward

the end of this year, where there are no provisions about implementation. This is certainly a weakness in the convention and the

Commission that I headed came to the conclusion that we would

need a multifaceted instrument for the implementation of it, including a secretariat, including also means of verification.

And the last point, Mr. Chairman, that I mention is the Space

Treaty. Next year there will be a conference on the Outer Space

Treaty, and we know that not long ago some states in Geneva

24

wanted to take up the issue of space weaponization and it was

turned down. There were two states that were against it, the

United States and the U.K. Accordingly, since the conference operates by unanimity, they could not land on the work program.

There is relatively little public discussion in the world about the

risk of weaponization of space, but there is a lot of money spent

on it, and the Commission which I headed takes up the issue and

points to the need that we also embark on that.

So all these measures, I think if movements were made of them

that would also help to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Blix follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Dr. Blix.

Doctor, the bottom line is you focus on weapon of mass destruction and they include chemical, biological, radiological material,

and nuclear; is that correct?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. But today we are going to focus pretty much on the

nuclear side.

Dr. BLIX. OK.

Mr. SHAYS. At this time I would recognize Mr. Duncan for 10

minutes. We are going to do the 10-minute rule.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I won’t take up that much time, Mr. Chairman, but I do thank you for recognizing me at this point.

One thing I am curious about, Dr. Blix, how hard or how easy

is it to make nuclear waste? So many people in our country seem

to have the opinion that just somebody, some very small group like

two or three people, if they knew what they were doing, they could

make a suitcase nuclear bomb and carry it over here some way. I

am just curious as to how you would respond to that. I wonder. I

assume it is a very difficult thing that would involve many people,

but I am just wondering about that.

Dr. BLIX. Mr. Chairman, I am a lawyer and I am not very good

at making nuclear weapons, but I did read some time ago about

some Ph.D.’s in California that had been given a year to try to do

it and it was claimed, at any rate, that they were able to do so

within the span of a year. Nevertheless, we see what Iraq has tried

and we see what the North Koreans have been trying, and the

Iraqis had come to the stage of enriching uranium at very old-fashioned methods before they switched onto centrifuge. It took them

a long time.

There are some doubts as to whether the North Koreans really

have a nuclear weapon. They have declared that they have them,

but there are some people who think that they have found it difficult to do it with plutonium, that this might be a reason that they

have switched and want to have enrichment. They have been active

for a great many years. I was, myself, in North Korea in the beginning of the 1990’s, and saw the reprocessing plant, and they have

been at it for a long time.

Now, it is reported that the Iranians’ enrichment program started some time in the 1980’s, in the late 1980’s. They then speculate

why would they do it. My guess would be that they were suspicious

about Iraq. They were right. I mean, that was the time when Saddam Hussein actually was working on it. But this is now 20 years

ago, and the report was last spring that they had succeeded in enriching some gram quantity, a milligram quantity, 3.5 percent, so

it cannot be all that easy to do it.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, the more general question then, which do you

think is the more dangerous threat for a nuclear weapon, a rogue

nation or a terrorist group?

Dr. BLIX. I think rogue nations, to use your term, is much the

more danger, greater danger, because states, on the whole, have

much greater capacity. It requires a lot of infrastructure if you are

to build it up yourself by starting from enrichment.

Now, considerably some group could steal a weapon somewhere.

Well, then they would avoid all that problem. But in the disarVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:56 Jun 11, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35767.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
35

mament community I think there is more concern when it comes

to terrorists that they might go for dirty bombs. Dirty bombs are

not based upon fission, an explosion, but they are based upon putting together cesium or cobalt or some such stuff which is radioactive, and you combine that with explosives and set it off somewhere in an urbanized area. Then you can have a lot of contamination and a lot of terror certainly happening.

These materials, cesium and cobalt, are things that are pretty

much spread over the world in industry and hospitals.

Mr. DUNCAN. Now, how many nations have what you would describe as major weapon of mass destruction?

Dr. BLIX. Well, if you count them all, if you include the biological

and chemical, then you come fairly high up in number. I don’t

know whether it is 35 or 40 or 50 or something.

Mr. DUNCAN. Right.

Dr. BLIX. But when you confine yourself to the nuclear, then you

have eight or nine, depending upon whether you include North

Korea.

Mr. DUNCAN. Eight or nine have nuclear weapons?

Dr. BLIX. Five original centers, if I use the expression, and then,

in addition to that, India, Pakistan, and Israel, and then maybe

North Korea.

Mr. DUNCAN. So the United States and most of our allies, then

you would have the rogue nations such as North Korea, if they

have it?

Dr. BLIX. I think there is some misunderstanding that the world

is full of would-be proliferators, that any country would like to

have it. I don’t think that is the case. If you look at the map and

you ask yourself, well, what about Egypt, what about Syria, what

about Turkey? I think when you begin to look at the concrete cases

you become a little more skeptical. I mean, longer-term, yes. It is

not a matter. And if Iran were to move ahead and if North Korea

were to move ahead, that could have domino effects in the longer

term.

I think it could also have longer-term effect if we do not get an

objective effort at arms control and disarmament, if they simply

say that they will be constructing new types of nuclear weapons,

if the U.K. takes a decision that they will prolong their Trident

program far into the next century, and if the military doctrines will

allow a greater fighting use for nuclear weapons, then we may also

have a new risk such as we had when the NPT was drafted once.

Mr. DUNCAN. Which countries in the Middle East are signatories

to the treaty?

Dr. BLIX. Well, I think all apart from Israel are.

Mr. DUNCAN. All of them except Israel?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. DUNCAN. All right.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentleman yield time to me?

Mr. DUNCAN. Sure. I yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Blix, I would like to just focus first on the issue

of I would like to separate the material versus the weapon, itself.

My concern isn’t a suitcase bomb, because I think that tends to be

more sophisticated. My concern isn’t the weapons at the head of a

36

missile. That is very sophisticated. But I have gone to Los Alamos

and I have seen a nuclear weapon constructed with pretty basic

material. It is not sophisticated. It was fairly large. It was pretty

awkward. But my view is a terrorist doesn’t care how big it is, how

inefficient it is. As long as they can get a nuclear explosion, they

have achieved their objective.

So I want to separate the capability to make the weapon and the

challenge in getting the weapons grade material. Which is your biggest concern on the part of not a rogue nation but on the part of

people within potentially a rogue nation.

Dr. BLIX. Well, the focus of international tension has been more

on the material, on enrichment. We see today very active discussion about limitation of enrichment in the world.

The thought is that there will be more nuclear power used in the

world, and I agree and I support that notion, but the fear is expressed at the same time that then there will be a need for more

enrichment capability. And if you have enrichment capability to 3

percent, you also have it to 93 percent, so there is a justified concern about that, an active discussion in which the U.S. Government

has some ideas, Mr. Abardi in India has come forward, the international fuel bank, and so forth.

I think this is valid and an important discussion that will take

a good deal of time, and that is the major focus.

Now, when it comes to the missile, the ready-made things, their

request is delivery, and you refer to the suitcase bombs. I remember we discussed it in our commission and it was not rejected that

small, small nuclear weapons could exist. The Russian general—I

think Libid was his name, was talking about that and was denied

at the time by Russian authorities. However, apparently they can

become rather small. I think it is a particular reason why one

would wish to eliminate so-called tactical nuclear weapons. We differentiate between the strategic weapons, which are bigger and use

missiles, or the tactical ones. You have had nuclear artillery, have

had nuclear mines. They cannot be very big. And, of course, if they

are stored in any manner that is not secure, then they would pose

great risk.

We were proposing in this report that for the European theater,

European and Russian theater, that there should be no nuclear

weapons at all in western Europe, that all nuclear weapons should

be in countries that own them, so that U.S.-made nuclear weapons

would be withdrawn from the European continent. But at the same

token, that the Russians should withdraw their tactical nuclear

weapons into central storage into Russia.

All in all we think that one should go further on with the destruction of tactical nuclear weapons. The agreement between Bush

and Gorbachev in the early times was not a binding agreement.

Our Commission think that it should be made such.

Mr. SHAYS. When I was confronted with weapons grade material,

when I held plutonium in my hand it was warm to the touch but

I could still hold it. When I held enriched uranium, it didn’t generate the type of heat and it was small. It seemed to me a huge

concern that it could get outside the hands of the government that

actually produced it.

37

With North Korea, we negotiated a treaty to stop their plutonium program, and then this administration recognized they were

doing enriched uranium. It strikes me that enriched uranium is a

bigger concern, given its capability of detonation. Am I correct? I

mean, I am talking about a terrorist getting hold of weapons grade

material. Wouldn’t our biggest concern be enriched uranium?

Dr. BLIX. Well, we know that North Korea has plutonium. We

cannot be absolutely sure that they have weapons, but they have

plutonium. The IAEA inspections that we set in motion early in the

1990’s concluded and showed that they had more plutonium than

they had declared. That was how the whole crisis began. And then

an agreement was reached with the so-called agreed framework

under which they would freeze their nuclear program, and they did

not make any more plutonium during the 1990’s until that agreed

framework sort of collapsed. And when it collapsed the world also

began to suspect that they were going for enrichment, and they declared so at one time but they withdrew the statement. It is still

suspected that they did.

Mr. SHAYS. But the question I have—and I want to turn it over

to Mr. Kucinich—is I am talking about the weapons grade material

getting in the hands of a terrorist, not a rogue nation using a more

sophisticated plutonium weapon. My question to you—and if you

don’t have an opinion, that is OK—isn’t our concern, when it relates to terrorists, that the more-easily detonated weapon is one

using enriched uranium, and that would be our biggest fear in

terms of terrorists getting hold of it?

Dr. BLIX. I am not sure I hear every word. I am a little poor in

hearing. But I understand that you are asking about the differentiation between an enriched uranium involvement and plutonium

involvement.

Mr. SHAYS. Right, and which is a weapon of choice for a terrors,

which weapons grade material would be?

Dr. BLIX. I think enriched uranium.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Dr. BLIX. That is the judgment I have of experts.

Mr. SHAYS. Because if you get plutonium it needs to be a moresophisticated weapon, right?

Dr. BLIX. Yes. That is my understanding.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. And our concern or my concern is that terrorists have the capability to build a weapon that could detonate enriched uranium. They would have a harder time creating a weapon

for plutonium. That was basically——

Dr. BLIX. Yes. That is my understanding. It is harder to make

a bomb with it, but the advantage is that it is smaller.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, the advantage of any sophisticated weapon is

that it is smaller, but a sophisticated weapon is important if you

want to put it on the tip of a missile, but if you are willing to stick

it in a room you don’t give a darn how big it is or in a big van.

You don’t care its size, you don’t care its looks, you don’t care how

streamlined it is, you don’t care about anything other than can you

get this thing to create a nuclear explosion.

Dr. BLIX. I would agree with you.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me call on Mr. Kucinich.

38

Mr. KUCINICH. Again, I want to begin by thanking once more the

chair of this subcommittee. I think that, despite the fact, Mr.

Chairman, that you and I may have our differences on some of

these issues, I want to say that without—and I think this needs to

be said, in fairness—without your active participation and your active efforts, there wouldn’t be much public oversight at all in this

House of Representatives, and I just want to make sure that is said

because, you know, we are in a political environment here where

it needs to be recognized when people have the courage to open up

discussions at times that it might not be the most politically opportune for the administration.

I want to begin by again thanking Dr. Blix. Dr. Blix, you spoke

about space weaponization, which is an issue that I have been concerned about for years. As a matter of fact, there is a bill that I

have introduced in the last few Congresses to ban the

weaponization of space that now has 35 cosponsors.

Are you familiar with the administration plan called Vision

2020? Mr. Chairman and Dr. Blix, Vision 2020 in its literature is

about the weaponization of space and claims that it is the destiny

of the United States to achieve ‘‘the ultimate high ground,’’ which

is domination from space.

Could you explain to this subcommittee why such an ambition

may be counterproductive?

Dr. BLIX. Well, I think that any such measure is likely to draw

countermeasures from the other side. I am old enough to have participated in the creation of the Outer Space Committee of the

United Nations, and the conclusion of the Outer Space Treaty,

which sought to insulate and to immunize space from

weaponization, and where the parties even commit themselves to

pursue the exploration of space in a manner that would not lead

to any contamination. But that sort of cautionary attitude that we

had those days seems to be gone altogether when we are talking

about the risk of even placing weapons there.

The risk of anything going off by mistake and debris spreading

in that area is one that I think has not been much discussed publicly and which might be a disaster. We have an army of engineers

who are using space for our mobile phones and GPS and all of it

and investing billions if not trillions of money in it, and then we

have another army of engineers who are busy to find out how we

can shoot down, how we can destroy it. I think all that requires

much more of the public discussion, and I was sorry that this item

was not agreed to be discussed in Geneva at the present time.

Mr. KUCINICH. You have never seen any evidence that there are

weapons of mass destruction on the moon, have you?

Dr. BLIX. On the moon?

Mr. KUCINICH. Right.

Dr. BLIX. No. I think that is an area where they had prohibited.

Nuclear weapons are prohibited in various environments, of course.

Mr. KUCINICH. I think that your recommendation 45 about calling on states to renounce the deployment of weapons in outer space

is something that this Congress and the next Congress is going to

have to have intensive hearings on.

I noted your discussion about what happens when nations aspire

to gain nuclear weapons. We are talking about Iran. Do you think

39

that it would be in the interest of the United States to have direct

talks with Iran or any other country that had the ambitions, stated

or assumed, for nuclear weapons?

Dr. BLIX. Yes. I think so. I think that the negotiations that have

been carried out by the Europeans, the U.K., France, and Germany

have been geared in the right direction.

First of all, I have told the Iranians that they need not go for

enrichment to have fuel for their reactors. They can have national

assurance of supply. Although Iran has had poor experiences of

such assurance of supply in the past, I think there could be arrangements made under which Russia and others would assure

them of supply. I don’t think that there really is strong economic

reasons for Iran to go to an enrichment program. It would be much

cheaper for them to buy enriched uranium in the international

market as Sweden or Switzerland does. I think it is probably the

assurance of supply that could be a relevant factor.

Iran does not have very much uranium in the ground, so eventually they would be dependent upon import, anyway.

The Europeans then I think have taken the intelligence stand of

yes, we will offer you an assurance of supply. That is the first

point.

But moreover I think they have also been wise in stating that

we will actually support a peaceful nuclear program in your country. We will be ready to sell you reactors, but only the peaceful sector, but thereby, nevertheless, underlying in that, we are not

against Iran as a high technology country. We are not trying to

suppress a developing country here from coming into the modern

age. I think that is a wise step, as well.

And then there is economic good that they are offered membership to the World Trade Organization and the investment, and so

forth, but what has been missing, I think, so far is any talk about

assurances of security.

Mr. KUCINICH. You know, that is the next point, and that is that

if you are going to seek to avert some kind of a crisis from building,

first, direct talks; second, there has to be assurances that you are

not going to attack the country; is that correct?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Because if Iran thought that the United States

was going to attack it, what type of behavior would most likely

occur with respect to nuclear issues?

Dr. BLIX. Yes. I think that one is likely to get better results with

an offer of security than with threats of attack.

There is one further element, Mr. Congressman, that I think is

relevant. That is this business about preconditions. I mean, the Security Council has said now in a resolution that they demand of

Iran that they should suspend the enrichment program, and thereafter there is a willingness to sit down and to discuss what could

they be given.

Well, think of a game of cards. Who wants to toss away your

trump card before you sit down to play? So it seems to me that is

very understandable from the Iranians’ point of view that here is

their leverage, that they might continue with enrichment, and they

are apparently now ready to sit down to discuss that. Whether in

40

the last resort they would go along I don’t know, but I certainly

think that ought to be explored.

Mr. KUCINICH. As I am sure you are aware, the Intelligence

Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives released a staff report last month on Iran entitled Recognizing Iran as a Strategic

Threat: an Intelligence Challenge for the United States. Subsequent to its release, the IAEA responded that the report contained

erroneous, misleading, and unsubstantiated information. Are you

familiar with the report?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. I understand that the report’s author used both

open and classified U.S. intelligence information to reach the conclusion that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear program and presented a formidable threat to the U.S. I am concerned about the

gross exaggerations made in the report. For example, the staff report stated that the uranium enrichment level at the Natans Pilot

Fuel Enrichment Plant was at ‘‘weapons grade levels.’’ Now, according to the IAEA, the enrichment level at that plant is only 3.6

percent. Do you believe that a 3.6 percent enrichment level is

weapons grade?

Dr. BLIX. No, of course not.

Mr. KUCINICH. And how many centrifuges would be required to

enrich uranium to weapons grade level?

Dr. BLIX. I really don’t know how many. It depends on how long

time working in centrifuges.

Mr. KUCINICH. Could it take thousands?

Dr. BLIX. Yes, it could. Yes. Very likely. They have what is cascade now of 168 centrifuges, or something like that, but with that

they cannot do very much.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, this report also insinuated that IAEA safeguards inspector, Christopher Charlier, was removed from his position for raising concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and concluding that Iran sought to acquire weapons. My question is, What are

the rights and duties of Iran toward allowance of safeguards and

inspectors within its territory?

Dr. BLIX. Well, it was mistaken on behalf of the investigators.

The reality is that under the safeguard system the recipient country can veto and say no to any inspector. They have a right to do

so. They don’t have that under the OPCW, the chemical sphere,

and I think it is pity that they have it in this nuclear sphere, but

that is a reality with which the acting general of the IAEA will

have to live. So I think the Iranians raised an objective to Mr.

Charlier and then he had no choice. He had to drop him from active inspection, which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t work on the

issues in the IAEA. I don’t know whether he does.

Mr. KUCINICH. How many IAEA inspectors, if you know this,

have currently looked at Iran’s program in accordance with their

safeguards agreement?

Dr. BLIX. According to the newspaper that I saw, they have

about 200 inspectors whom Iran has approved.

Mr. KUCINICH. Is that a large number?

Dr. BLIX. Normal. Normal number.

Mr. KUCINICH. That is normal.

Mr. Chairman, are we going to have another round of questions?

41

Mr. SHAYS. We will have another round. I haven’t yet used my

time, and my colleague from Massachusetts hasn’t used his first

round. I will go to you first and then I will conclude with my round

and then we will do another round.

You have the floor, sir.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Blix, again I want to thank you for being here today.

The minority has asked on five separate occasions to have hearings on the intelligence on weapon of mass destruction prior to the

invasion of Iraq. We have asked on five occasions and we have yet

to get permission from the leadership of the majority.

You have written a book about that period that is central to our

inquiry, and so I would like to just as you, you have written a book

describing your experiences as the head of the U.N. inspection

team in Iraq in 2002 and 2003, the period that we are desirous of

looking at. The book is called, Disarming Iraq, and it provides, I

think, a fairly astute and keen insight into the weeks and months

directly before the war. I would just like to ask you a couple of

questions about your observations.

One of the most interesting and probably the most disturbing

parts of your book is your description of how the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence in order to make its case for the

war. As we all remember, the centerpiece for the Bush administration’s case for war was that Saddam Hussein, while he didn’t have

the launching capabilities for a nuclear strike against the United

States, the fear here in Washington and elsewhere was that if he

constructed a nuclear weapon he could deliver it to terrorists who

could then work its way into the United States.

This is what you say in your book. I will quote the passage here.

It is at page 270. You say that, ‘‘If there was any one weapons area

where all, including the U.S., had felt Saddam was disarmed, it

was the nuclear area. It took much twisted evidence, including a

forged uranium contract—’’ the Niger document, I presume—‘‘to

conjure up a revived Iraqi nuclear threat, even one that was somewhat distant. It is far more probable that the governments were

conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order

to get the political support they would not otherwise have had.’’

This would be a central part of our inquiry if we were allowed

in other forums.

Could you tell me more about this, about what the effect of the

credibility of the U.S. Government became as a result of these, as

you described, exaggerations?

Dr. BLIX. In the autumn of 2002, when we started our inspections in Iraq—and I will say also that I don’t think Saddam would

have gone along with inspections if it had not been for the military

buildup by the United States. I am not a passivist. I am not someone who says that you must never use military pressures.

Mr. LYNCH. I understand.

Dr. BLIX. I think that had a positive effect. But in that autumn

of 2002 they wanted to describe the Iraqi threat in stark terms in

order to get support for the pressures they wanted and eventually

the war that they waged. But already that autumn you had American experts like David Albright here in Washington who said that

the well-known aluminum tubes that were described as were being

42

used in centrifuges, that it was very doubtful whether that was

true.

We heard about the uranium contract with Nigeria, but my colleague, Elbarday, succeeded me when I was in charge. I was not

in charge. But I was somewhat skeptical about it when I heard

about it because import of yellow cake that was very long—yellow

cake is a long way from a nuclear weapon. I ask myself why would

they want to have yellow cake. That was my layman’s reaction.

It took a long time before the IAEA got a copy of this agreement,

and it took them, I think, less than a day to see that it was a forgery. I know all the debates and I read some about them here in

Washington about the Valerie claim and Mr. Wilson and so forth.

What I would like to stress is that my colleague and friend

Elbarday, he sat in the Security Council next to me before the war

broke out and he said that we have had this contract and I can tell

you that is not authentic. That was diplomatic language, it was not

authentic. It was a forgery. So it was something that was known

before the war.

When I write in my book that I think that they did not exercise

sufficient critical thinking about it, and I think that in the autumn

of 2002 one should ask oneself with very critical thinking what is

this. As it seems at any rate it was known within then, there were

doubts, skepticism within the administration about the validity of

the contract; nevertheless, as I said somewhere else, I think, they

chose to replace question marks by exclamation marks.

Mr. LYNCH. Just to followup on that, we are talking about a very,

very critical decisionmaking process within our Government, within

the U.S. Government. I was a new Congressman at the time, sat

in on dozens of briefings with Secretary Powell at that time, the

National Secretary Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, went to the White

House and sat with CIA Director Tenant, met with the joint chiefs.

All of the info that we were getting was consistent with the fact

that there was an imminent threat from Saddam Hussein.

Additionally, in the interest of a broad base of information, I sat

with David Kay, who I believe was the chief weapons inspector

under the Clinton administration before you, sir.

Dr. BLIX. No.

Mr. LYNCH. Certainly in that time after the first Gulf War when

they were removing materials.

Dr. BLIX. No.

Mr. LYNCH. So maybe not just before you, but some time prior,

and Martin Indike, who was also a Clinton administration official

in the Middle East, as well. All of that information was in harmony. It was all wrong, but it was in harmony.

Given the perspective that you had and have, how do you reconcile that, that all of that information was going in a totally different direction? And we are not talking about one or two facts; we

are talking about a steady drumbeat of information fed to the

press, fed to the Congress that led inexorably to an invasion, and

now, in retrospect, given the hard facts, given the lengthy inspections on the ground there, the physical verification, and then reexamination of information that we have been given previously—the

Nigere documents, the tubes, all of that—do you have any further

thoughts on that?

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Dr. BLIX. Yes, I think that, to me, one of the lessons of the intelligence and Iraq affair is that one should take international verification and inspection more seriously. I think there was a tendency to disregard what comes out of an international organization

and to give automatic credence or much greater credence to national intelligence. I am not against national intelligence. I have

met many of them. I have great regard, respect for many of them,

put their lives at stake, and so forth, and I think it is necessary

in the age of terrorism. I am not against it. But I simply think that

here you have a government sitting on the center. They are interested in what is going on in rogue countries or elsewhere. They get

streams of information. They get streams of information from their

own intelligence and they also get the information from international inspection, from the chemical people and from the nuclear

people. They can compare.

They operate with very different sources. The intelligence, they

have a lot of defectors. They spend billions of dollars to listen to

our telephone conversations, etc., and some things are sifted out of

this. That may be valuable. International organizations do not receive the defectors. They don’t go to them. They can’t give asylum.

They go to the country. But they are on the ground. They can go

into the buildings. They can ask for documents and they can ask

for explanations.

Hence, I think the government that sits there and has both

sources, they should rely on both sources. I think that in the case

of Iraq, regrettably they did not pay so much attention to it, or at

least they didn’t appear to pay much attention to what the international inspections said.

Even now when you look at Iran we hear various stories and

speculations that, well, we can listen to that, but most of the information that has come out of Iran, nevertheless, comes from the

IAEA investigation of it.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you.

I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Dr. BLIX. Can I add, Mr. Chairman, something about the costs,

also? If I remember rightly, the cost of the IAEA safeguards inspection per year was certainly far below $100 million when I was

there. I think it is still below $100 million per year. When you

think about the intelligence cost to look after Iraq, Iran, North

Korea, I think you will see that is a very good bargain to have

international inspection.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me take my 10 minutes for the first round and

just ask you, actually, before I start my set of questions, do you

give the United States credit for having impact on Libya? And then

I am going to ask you, does the United States get any credit in outing Iran and North Korea, in your opinion, to the fact that they

were moving forward with a program that should concern us?

I have maybe a view that Europe didn’t seem to think Iran was

moving forward and North Korea wasn’t moving forward, so set me

straight if I am wrong, but I would like to get your opinion.

Dr. BLIX. You asked about Libya?

Mr. SHAYS. First, yes.

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Dr. BLIX. Well, I don’t know enough about the background of it.

Libya was always one of those places where you felt there was a

little smoke coming out. I was there, myself, once and I saw the

research reactor, which was in rather miserable condition at that

time.

Mr. SHAYS. I am not suggesting that they were advanced, but

they were moving forward with a program?

Dr. BLIX. Yes, it is clear that they did, and it was not the IAEA

that discovered it.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Dr. BLIX. This came rather through intelligence, and then they

intercepted their ship which contained, I think, various equipment.

Mr. SHAYS. And so my question is, you know, with all the beating

up that the United States gets, do we and others deserve a little

credit in turning that around? They gave us their program, as well

as other weapon of mass destruction program, and I use the

Israelis as the harshest critics. They said this is a turn-around that

is for real.

Dr. BLIX. Yes. It may well be that the U.S. has the credit. How

much goes to the U.S. and how much goes to the U.K. I cannot tell

you.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough.

Dr. BLIX. But the two of them together, yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Does the United States deserve any credit for calling

the question on North Korea, because the sense was North Korea

stopped their program. They negotiated. They just were doing another program which to me just spoke totally against the spirit of

their agreement. Does the United States deserve any credit in confronting and exposing the fact that North Korea was, in fact, moving forward with a program?

Dr. BLIX. Well, the U.S. satellites had picked up the reprocessing

plant in North Korea before the IAEA was there. We were allowed

to carry out safeguard inspections.

Mr. SHAYS. I am not putting criticism on the IAEA. That is not

my point.

Dr. BLIX. No. I realize that. But I think that the first discovery

that they were not honest came through the Agency.

Mr. SHAYS. So the United States is basically saying we have a

problem here. So my next question is, What kind of credit does the

United States deserve in terms of saying Europe, you basically said

Iran is not moving forward with the program, we disagree. Who basically deserves credit in calling the question on Iran?

Dr. BLIX. I think the Europeans were concerned about the enrichment program, but they did not assert that it was a program

intended for nuclear weapons. I think they had moved somewhat

in that direction after some of the evidence that has come up, the

fact that the Iranians were receiving documents about research

and then centrifuges.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you have any sympathy for the United States and

the Brits, given that we basically helped bring attention to three

countries that were moving forward with a nuclear program?

Dr. BLIX. I think we should all be concerned about that, and I

certainly——

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Mr. SHAYS. But do you give the United States any credit for its

efforts in each of those?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Because you deservedly have reason to be concerned

about Iraq. Let me ask you, finally, the outing of the father in

Pakistan of their nuclear program, who basically is responsible for

outing and calling Pakistan on the fact that they were incredibly

culpable in spreading a knowledge of a nuclear program to other

countries? Who deserves credit for that?

Dr. BLIX. As far as I know the discovery came in the context of

the Libyan affair——

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Dr. BLIX [continuing]. When they intercepted the ship and then

they tried to find out where did the material come from. That was

intelligence.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, that was intelligence. Again, it is the United

States, Great Britain maybe more than the United States——

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. So I just want to say, when I think of that I say well

good for you, United States. Good for you.

Dr. BLIX. I agree with you. I think both intelligence and inspection are desirable, both.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Dr. BLIX. I am not against intelligence, but I am against an exaggerated and non-critical examination of it.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. Let me ask you, I want to focus on the

Non-Proliferation Treaty as it relates to terrorism. I basically conclude—and tell me if you agree—I basically conclude that the terrorists are not going to be able to create weapons grade material.

The question is are they going to be able to get it from some country. That is where my fear is. But I have no question about the capability of terrorists to be able to create a very inefficient, large,

bulky weapon that could create a nuclear explosion. So my question

isn’t with whether they can build it. I think they can and I think

they will. Really the question comes to this whole hearing: how do

we make sure that weapons grade material doesn’t get into their

hands?

Europe is not totally in agreement with it, but the 911 Commission said we are not fighting terrorism, we are confronting Islamist

terrorists. They were pretty clear about it. It was ten members, Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives. They all

agreed on that one point. We are confronting Islamist terrorists.

I basically conclude you are not going to find them in Iceland.

Our basic concern is in the Middle East, candidly, and obviously

through Pakistan and so on.

I want to know, do you find that the Non-Proliferation Treaty in

any way addresses the concern of nuclear terrorism, basically a nuclear weapon and a weapons grade material getting in the hands

of terrorists? If you think it does, tell me how it does. If you think

it doesn’t, tell me where it doesn’t.

Dr. BLIX. Well, sir, treaties are concluded between states and between governments, and I would take the view that a country that

has adhered to the Non-Proliferation Treaty is obliged not only to

make sure that it doesn’t, itself, require nuclear weapons, but is reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:56 Jun 11, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35767.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sponsible for what is happening within its territory. If one had any

uncertainty about that, I think that the resolution adopted by the

Security Council, 1540, would dispel any such uncertainty. That

enjoins the countries, parties to the treaties, to make sure that also

individuals in their country are respecting the treaty, so I think we

have to look to the governments for this. But the effect of 1540

also—and this is the possibility of states helping countries to set

up machinery for the implementation of the treaty.

Mr. SHAYS. What would your position be if Pakistan has basically

experienced a coup in which radical Islamists—I am not saying terrorists, but radical Islamists—take it over, very sympathetic to terrorist organizations?

Dr. BLIX. I think Pakistan is about more dangerous spots in the

world. It is a very volatile country with a lot of people with extreme

views, so it is not an entirely unrealistic fear that we have about

it.

Mr. SHAYS. But in terms of our capability to respond, I guess the

question is how would we respond. I will just tell you my bias. I

know we found no weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. I believe we

would. I believe that not finding them, having voted to go there,

along with 295 other Members of Congress, I lost credibility with

my constituents because I said we would find them, but I sure as

hell don’t blame the President of the United States for my vote.

That would be like a former Governor blaming the generals for

supporting the war in Iraq saying he was brainwashed. I made my

vote based on my research. Period. Case closed.

But this subcommittee also conducted the hearing on the Oil-forFood-Program, and we learned that Saddam undersold his oil and

got kickbacks and overpaid for commodities and got kickbacks, and

the report said no weapon of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein basically bought off the French and the Russians in the Security Council. Terek Assiz made it very clear that Saddam never

thought the United States would ever remove Saddam from power

because of his support with the French and the Russians. It gets

to my question. It sounds to me like we are in an untenable position if, in fact, we have to have everyone sign off before we would

take action against a country that could, in fact, very willingly

transfer weapons grade material to terrorist organizations.

What I am going to ask, my last question, In this real world that

we live in, how do we deal with that? Do we wait for the French

to give us permission, the Russians to give us permission, the

IAEA to say with all its members we want inspections? I don’t even

know what inspections would achieve, because the bottom line is

Pakistan has the weapons and they can choose to show you the

ones they have and choose to not show you others that they have.

That is what I wrestle with. Tell me, in this world that my

daughter is going to grow up in, how we deal with that kind of scenario under the systems that you have so much respect for.

Dr. BLIX. Well, I think you have described another perspective

which one cannot totally exclude. So far I think we have seen all

the governments that have nuclear weapons have been averse to

having any of those going into the hands of terrorists, and certainly

Saddam, with all his brutality, did not tolerate any terrorism, did

not contribute any weapon of mass destruction to them.

47

But when you mention Pakistan, which is also in my mind, is

that the only country in which you can have a regime change with

a very different——

Mr. SHAYS. No. It is the one I just chose to give.

Dr. BLIX. No. I agree with you.

Mr. SHAYS. I chose them because the father of their nuclear program was very willing to export his knowledge to some very troubled areas of the world.

Dr. BLIX. Yes. But you could also have a case in which some

other big country with nuclear weapons can, perhaps not to give

terrorists, but you would have a totally different threat picture.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like Mr. Kucinich to have his time and my

last round. When I come back, I really want to just kind of nail

down what the options are. I want to basically nail down whether

the NPT meets the need in this terrorist age or whether it needs

to be amended and how it should be amended.

And let me just say I will defer that, because I want Mr.

Kucinich to have the time. I have my red light and I have gone on

2 minutes beyond.

Mr. Kucinich, you have the time.

I am sorry, Mr. Platts, do you choose to ask any questions into

the first round?

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Chairman, if I could ask just one?

Mr. SHAYS. Sure.

Mr. PLATTS. Hopefully it has not been asked. I apologize for my

late arrival.

Mr. SHAYS. You can ask. You have the right to ask any question

you want, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Blix, I certainly appreciate your service to citizens throughout the world and the important work you have done.

In your written testimony, your answers talking about Iran specifically and use of economic sanctions and how it worked regarding Iraq versus Libya, and then specifically Iran, and you talk

about that if we imposed economic sanctions, as is being discussed

at the U.N. Security Council, that it would maybe more empower

the Iranian government. The way I read your answer, maybe kind

of embolden them with stronger public support.

What would you suggest? How do we deal with a country like

Iran, or if it was North Korea, if the sanctions are not the way to

do it because it is going to strengthen that government as opposed

to undercut their ability to move forward with nuclear weapon development? What would be your best suggestion in the alternative?

Dr. BLIX. Personally, I do not think that the threat of economic

sanctions is a very smart way of approaching them. I think that

the carrots which have been put on the table, the assurance that

they will not be attacked, that the economic advantage would be

great, that they will have an assurance of supply is a far better

method, and that they will more be nationally offended by the

threat of sanctions, and that, if anything, a vast number of people

in Iran who may be skeptical about their government will rally to

a government to a hard line position when they feel that it is under

pressure.

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There is some notion I read in the papers that you must have

both carrots and sticks, and, as it were, sticks and threats are indispensable, but to my mind you have carrots and you have absence of carrots from the other side. That is also a sort of punishment.

I think in the case of Iran that will better. Above all, I don’t

think that they have tried all the carrots they could call. We are

pointed to the quest of security. We are pointing also to relations,

to be not friendly, that the rest of the world will show friendship,

but simply accept them and deal with them.

We also point to one other possibility mentioning that if you look

at the Middle East as a particular tense place, maybe they could

copy the idea from the Korean peninsula where the north and the

south are agreed that neither north nor south will have either enrichment or reprocessing. The Middle East, if one were to agree

that none of the countries in that area would have either enrichment or reprocessing, that would mean that Israel would also have

to give up reprocessing, more reprocessing. They wouldn’t affect the

bombs that we assume they never, but they would have to give up.

I think that if one exercises one’s imagination about the Iranians, maybe there can be more that will attract them to a suspension of enrichment, which is not a very economic interest anyway.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Dr. Blix. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. We are going to go another round and

maybe not take the full 10 minutes each, but whatever.

Mr. Kucinich, we will start with you.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

This discussion again about WMDs reflects back on decisions

that were made that took this country into war and a presumption

of a nation having WMDs, and it is also prospective in terms of

what kind of a policy do we have to help to reign in proliferation.

I think that there are many Members of Congress who voted to

take this country into war who did it based on what they felt was

the right thing to do based on the evidence that was presented to

them. We see WMDs being at the center of this discussion with respect to Iraq, but now we know that the case that was presented

to the Congress was one where there were certain people in the

government presenting a case that they basically already made the

decision to go to war, notwithstanding any evidence that was

brought forward from even within that very administration.

For example, the attempt to conflate 9/11 with Iraq, the attempt

to beat the drums and say Iraq had weapon of mass destruction,

even though there was plenty of information available at the

time—international community had their doubts, weapons inspectors had their doubts, people inside the administration had their

doubts—we pursued a policy of attack based on lies, tried to connect Al Qaeda with Hussein. It was wrong. Iraq had nothing to do

with the anthrax attack. Iraq was not trying to get uranium or aluminum tubes for the purpose of processing uranium. They weren’t

buying yellow cake from Niger. That was a hoax. The mobile weapons labs that the Secretary of State talked about at the United Nations, hoax.

So here it is. We didn’t have to go to war. There is a way to use

diplomacy to avert nuclear escalation.

49

Now, Dr. Blix, it goes without saying that an attack on another

nation will de-stabilize a government, but if you de-stabilize a government does that increase the risks of nuclear proliferation by

non-state actors within that government’s territory?

Dr. BLIX. It depends on much material they have in the territory.

We haven’t talked at all about the cleaning up operations and the

threat reduction programs that will convert research reactors from

high-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium, and so forth.

There are a great many very useful, practical, not very controversial measures that are taken in this area.

Mr. KUCINICH. Does it go without saying, though, that if you

weaken a state you increase the power of non-state actors within

that state?

Dr. BLIX. It may happen that if you de-stabilize a government

that there will be a greater scope for non-state actors. That is possible. I don’t think it is axiomatic that it will happen though.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear

weapons?

Dr. BLIX. I think there have been some indications pointing in

that direction, but I don’t think it is conclusive. I think that after

the experience we have had in Iraq one should be a little careful

to jump to the conclusions. I think that constructing a 40-megawatt

heavy water reactor is something they could have avoided if they

want to avoid suspicions, because that is a very good plutonium

producer.

And I don’t think that necessarily hiding the program is conclusively showing that they have weapons. It was illegal. It was a violation of the safeguards agreement, yes. But having feared that

they could be sabotaged, that there could be bombing maybe, they

kept it secret for that purpose. I don’t think it is conclusive, but

it is certainly an indication. There are others, but I don’t think it

is conclusive.

Mr. KUCINICH. Then would you say there is indisputable evidence that the Iran program is an imminent threat to the security

of the region or of the United States?

Dr. BLIX. They will certainly increase the tension in the Middle

East if they proceed with a program of enrichment. There is a lot

of talk about trying to explore the intentions of the Iraqis, and if

they have an intention to go for weapons then it is contrary and

it is a violation of the NPT. If they don’t have that intention, it is

not a violation.

However, I think at this point the intention is immaterial. There

is no use in searching for the intention, because it could damage

them if you found really good, strong evidence that they intended

to go for weapons. But if you don’t find it, it is not going to help

anyway. Everybody is going to say they can change the intention.

If we accept today that they don’t have intention, then in 2 years

time they could change the intention. I think that I side with those

who feel that it would be desirable that one persuade Iran to stay

away from the enrichment program. They do not have really economic needs for it. One can cover the assurance of supply, but the

security I think still is something that has not been broached, and

if one tries to impose sanctions or harsher methods before those

cards have been tried, then I think one is doing it prematurely.

50

Above all, Mr. Chairman, I think that we haven’t discussed the

question of preventive strikes and preemptive action, which are

unilateral actions. The U.N. charter says that if there is an armed

attack then you have the right to exercise self defense in the case

of an armed attack or even imminent armed attack.

Now, in the case of the Iraq in 2002, no one could say that we

were facing an imminent attack.

Mr. KUCINICH. So Iraq was not an imminent threat?

Dr. BLIX. Absolutely not. And in the case of Iran today, with a

country that has produced perhaps a gram quantity of uranium of

3.5 percent, one cannot say that is a threat.

Mr. KUCINICH. Iran is not an imminent threat?

Dr. BLIX. It is not a threat today. It could become later on. But

I think that there is another article in the U.N. charter in chapter

six—not chapter seven, chapter six—about situations that can develop into threats, and that I think is the chapter that they should

use.

There is also the possibility of using force under the authority of

the United Nations, not unilateral force. These are two different

things. The Security Council can decide and can authorize military

action even if there is not an armed attack, so the Security Council

has much broader authority than individual member states have.

Mr. KUCINICH. Have you ever heard of a report that 3 years ago

Iran offered a dialog with the United States including full cooperation on nuclear programs?

Dr. BLIX. No, I am not familiar with it. I might have read about

it.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, for the record I would like to introduce a copy of this for this hearing. It is from the Washington

Post on June 18, 2006. The headline is, ‘‘In 2003 U.S. Spurned

Iran’s Offer of Dialogue. Some Officials Lament Lost Opportunity.’’

First graph says, ‘‘Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by

U.S. forces 3 years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out

of a fax machine at the Near East Bureau of the State Department.

It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialog with the United

States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table, including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel, and

the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

I think that the discussion that Dr. Blix has brought up here

about direct talks may put us in a position where we can reconcile

what may have been lost opportunities with being able to capitalize

on some new thinking.

I’d like to put this on the record.

Mr. SHAYS. We will put this on the record, without objection.

Thank you.

[The information referred to follows:]

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52

53

Mr. KUCINICH. Have you seen any statements from Iran with respect to their intentions of the use of nuclear power? Have you

heard any statements about it?

Dr. BLIX. Yes. They have made many of them.

Mr. KUCINICH. Have you heard them say that weapon of mass

destruction do not have any place in the defensive doctrine of the

Islamic Republic?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you give any credibility to that?

Dr. BLIX. Well, Mr. Afsanjami, whom I met on two occasions,

said the same thing to me, that this would be contrary to their religion. However, as an international inspector I certainly would not

take such statements just for granted, but I think we have to look

at all the facts.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, verification certainly is one of them.

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. And what kind of confidence-building measures

could be introduced to take us to a point where we could reopen

inspections, get verification, and avert another war?

Dr. BLIX. I think if negotiations were to go forward, maybe there

would be an opportunity of that, because at the present time the

Iranians are only accepting inspection under the old type of safeguards. They did for a long time accept the inspection under the

strengthened safeguards regime, and that was as a confidencebuilding measure. And when the case of Iran was moved to the Security Council against their protest, that was when they said all

right, we will now also not accept these more-intrusive inspections.

So I think if there were to be some relaxation or some negotiations,

maybe as a part of those negotiations and part of the deal that

they would have to accept more-intrusive inspections if there were

to be such.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank you Dr. Blix.

Mr. Chairman, this is really the crux of my concern about our

policies toward Iran. I mean, Dr. Blix has made the case that direct

talks in connection with the guarantee of not attacking. My concern

is that we have seen a lot of information on the record that covert

action has been generated against Iran, that the Strategic Air

Command has selected 1,500 bombing targets that enable deployment toward the Strait of Hormuz is in the offing. We have seen

the Subcommittee on Intelligence report that appears to be somewhat tricked up with respect to its assertions about the level of

weapons grade uranium enrichment.

So rather than go through all that again, it seems to me it would

be a lot better for the world if we at least tried direct talks and

tried to find a way that you could get the kind of inspections and

verifications that can de-escalate this conflict.

I thank Dr. Blix and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Dr. Blix, I will be having some questions, but Mr. Van Hollen is

here and I want to make sure that he is recognized for 10 minutes.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry to be

a little late. I was on the floor of the House speaking on a bill before the Congress.

54

I want to begin by thanking you, Dr. Blix, for your service at the

United Nations as the head of the weapons inspection effort in

Iraq, and only say that I wish the United States had listened to

you more carefully, and I believe that if we had taken heed of your

request for additional time so that weapons inspectors could complete their work we would not be in the situation we are in in Iraq,

so I thank you for your service and I also thank you for getting it

right, despite lots of pressures from lots of different places to try

and spin the information in ways that certain people would like to

have it spun. So thank you for being a straight shooter on that.

Let me just ask you, with respect to the efforts to secure fissile

material, nuclear material, around the world, I would like you to

give us an assessment, if you could, of where we are. In the United

States we have the Nunn-Luger program to try and buy up what

we commonly refer to as loose nukes with the former Soviet Union.

There are obviously other sources of fissile material around the

world.

The bipartisan 911 Commission, when they gave their final report card to the Congress with respect to nonproliferation efforts,

they gave the U.S. Government a D, a failing grade, when it came

to the effort to secure weapon of mass destruction.

I would like, if I could get it, your assessment, not necessarily

with respect to only U.S. efforts, but our worldwide efforts to get

a handle on this material. Thank you.

Dr. BLIX. Well, sir, I would hate to grade the efforts. We have

seen such efforts for a very long time. I mentioned a while ago the

conversion of research reactors from the use of high-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium. That has been going on from the

time that I was at the IAEA, and it is a long time now since the

cold war ended and money and efforts have been put into Russia

in order to secure the material, put better locks on the doors, etc.,

and to move back into Russia and material that was abroad. In

Kazakhstan and other places there was quite a dramatic expedition

for Kazakhstan. I think the latest case I read about was some place

in former Serbia, former Yugoslavia, where there was material. So

I think that has been doing on for some time, and certainly the situation ought to be much better now than it was 10 years ago.

But, as I said a while ago, I don’t think it is a terribly expensive

program compared to many other things that we do in the nuclear

field, and therefore I favor the threat reduction programs and the

other measures that are being taken. I think they are money well

invested. I do not feel quite as alarmed as some of my colleagues

are. The risks are not zero, but the world has been active and the

U.S. has been very diligently active for a long time, and I express

my appreciation for that, too.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. If I could just followup, Mr. Chairman, on that

issue, in addition to just sort of continuing the program at its current pace, do you have any recommendations for what we should

do to speed up the process of trying to track down these different

sources? I guess let me ask you this: do you have a fair amount

of confidence that we have, No. 1, identified all these sources, the

existence of loose nuclear material, No. 1? And, No. 2, do you have

a high level of confidence that it is being guarded, protected in a

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way that it is not stolen or made off with by people who we don’t

want to have it fall into their hands?

I just try to get a rough assessment, because, as I said, the bipartisan Commission gave us just last December a D in the U.S. Government in this area, and I am curious as to what additional measures, if any, you think we should be taking.

Dr. BLIX. You have probably looked at more material than I

have, but I think I would have been more lenient in my grading

of it. I mean, Russia was off to a fairly regimented state, and I

think the communist system kept fairly good control, but there

could have been sloppiness in that regime, as well. But considering

that they have been active for such a long time now, I would feel

a little less worried about it.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. In the interest of time, Mr. Chairman, I know

we have a couple more panels here.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Platts, do you have any questions?

Mr. PLATTS. No.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me not take my full 10 minutes, but let me

first ask you the scenario. There may not be a good answer, but

the question is: what does the world do when a nation, say like

Pakistan, for instance, is under the command of a coup, a very Islamic state sympathetic to potential Islamist terrorists? What are

the mechanisms available to contain the weapons grade material

before there is the possibility of it getting in the hands of terrorists?

Dr. BLIX. I don’t think I have a good answer to give you, Chairman Shays, on that. It would be a very severe situation.

A little moment ago I said that the U.N. charter allows states to

take action, military action, in self defense against an armed attack, and that is interpreted nowadays to be an imminent threat

from an armed attack. But beyond that, if the world wants to take

an armed action of some kind, the Security Council can authorize

it.

Mr. SHAYS. The challenge we have, candidly, is that, you know,

it just takes one no vote from the permanent members of the Security Council, and we saw that very clearly from our standpoint that

France and Russia were not entirely without conflict, to say it in

a gentle way, about any movement in Iraq even if Saddam had

weapons. That is the challenge. The oil for food program was pretty

clear about its consequence. So not necessarily, but it is something

that obviously would you agree the world is going to have to wrestle with, and would it be better to wrestle with the mechanism before that happens or wait until it happens?

Dr. BLIX. Well, I would feel a little less pessimistic about the Security Council. After all, we have seen that in the case of Iran the

Council has, even though it is only a minute quantity of uranium

that has been enriched, the Council, with the support or acceptance

by the Russians and the Chinese, has gone along with threatening

of a sanction.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this: is there any doubt in your mind

where the Iranians are headed?

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. There is doubt?

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Dr. BLIX. See, I don’t think it is conclusively shown. I pointed to

indications such as the 40-megawatt reactor. But I think, especially

after the experience in Iraq, I don’t want to jump to conclusions,

and frankly I don’t think that it matters very much what their intentions are.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, though, short of sanctions—I realize

this is the stick, but short of sanctions—it seems to me sanctions

are one step before actually using military force.

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. What is surprising to me is the lack of willingness

on the part of the western European nations to use sanctions.

Dr. BLIX. I share that view. I think the threat of sanctions is

counterproductive vis-a-vis Iran now. I think that they are much

more likely to make the Iranians dig down their heels and be feeling that they are being treated unfairly, and that the carrots are

more effective.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Dr. BLIX. If I may return to the other situation which you described, which is a scary one when you have perhaps a country like

Pakistan or other countries and you have a coup and you have

some people who seem very dangerous in power, that I am saying

that the Security Council would have to grapple with it. I am not

so pessimistic about the possibility of coming to agreement in the

Security Council when they were able to come to an agreement

even in the case of Iran. I think that they might also come to

agreement in how they would wrestle with the situation. It is by

no means a given that Russia or China would take that with equanimity.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you think that Iran has a unique situation, given

its wealth and particularly natural gas and oil, as well? do you

think that gives them a bargaining chip that may compromise

sound decisions on the part of western Europe, in particular, and

other nations dependent on energy?

Dr. BLIX. I am not quite sure I get it.

Mr. SHAYS. The question is this: is the challenge with Iran that

in some cases those nations that don’t want them to move forward

with a nuclear program have the concern that Iran, given its incredible wealth of natural gas and oil, are in a position to manipulate Europe, in particular, and Europe is somewhat compromised

by the fact that we are dealing with a nation that has this economic energy resource that they can use as a bargaining chip?

Dr. BLIX. I don’t think that the French or the Russians are very

much influenced by the economic relations with Iran. I think the

Russians are sincere when they say that they are also very eager

that iran should not move to nuclear weapons. They are neighbors

with Iran. So I wouldn’t immediately ascribe some oil motivations

on their part for going slowly.

I think the Europeans, too, have wanted more to go for the carrots than for the sticks, and on that——

Mr. SHAYS. And admittedly I am not from Europe and I have

limited knowledge, but I read that action candidly as, in part, the

fact that they are very dependent on energy from that part of the

world.

Dr. BLIX. We all are.

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Mr. SHAYS. Well, we all are indirectly, in some cases directly. We

all are.

Dr. BLIX. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. But the sense that we get, living where we live here,

is that we can’t get the Europeans to be definitive enough. The Iranians know it and know that we are divided, Europe and the

United States, and believe that a United States embargo is basically inconvenient but not destructive. Their big concern is what

Europe does. My concern is, if Europe doesn’t step up and doesn’t

confront Iran, they almost force the worst alternative, which is

armed conflict, which I think is unlikely, but it strikes me that is

where they push us if they, in fact, aren’t willing to use the one

tool that could have impact.

Dr. BLIX. But you are really visiting the possibility of an escalation before one has exhausted the various cards. In my view

there are still cards available. They should be tried. I cannot guarantee you that they will work in the end, but I think they must

be tried before you contemplate some further action.

Mr. SHAYS. Given we didn’t find weapon of mass destruction in

Iraq, I know our credibility has been hurt, but in the end let me

ask this last question then. What is the consequence of an Iran

with a nuclear weapons program? Tell me the consequence. Is it

something that I should be willing to accept? Do you anticipate

Saudi Arabia and Egypt responding? Do you anticipate that its impact would be minimal or quite significant?

Dr. BLIX. I think the impact of a North Korea moving on or the

domino effects there could be more serious, because we already saw

the reactions in Japan on the North Koreans testing missiles,

which did not hit any Sea of Japan, I think they were, where they

expected them to be. But if they move on and if Japan were to

abandon its policy, which is very strongly rooted, and I think it

would move a lot to move Japan away from nonproliferation, but

if it were to, then I think that the tension in the Far East between

China——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me——

Dr. BLIX. That is, I think, a more serious perspective, getting

back to the point where you are.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say, though, more serious concerned to

very serious is still both serious. So how do you rate Iran? If they

get a nuclear program, do you anticipate Egypt and Saudi Arabia,

in particular——

Dr. BLIX. There is a different time perspective. I mean, Japan is

a country that has enormous amounts of enriched uranium and

plutonium sitting on it, and in the Middle East you don’t have that.

Mr. SHAYS. Let’s forget North Korea because I am going to concede North Korea would be hugely detrimental.

Dr. BLIX. In the Middle East the countries there—Egypt, Saudi

Arabia, Syria, Turkey—they are not at that level. They have a long

way——

Mr. SHAYS. But would it compel them to get to that level?

Dr. BLIX. Well, that is a speculation. I don’t think——

Mr. SHAYS. Well, that is what we have to do in this business. We

have to speculate. I mean, that is part of—we do have to speculate.

I mean, in my travels to the Middle East—and they are frequent,

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very frequent—we have a sense that Cutter has already basically

come to the conclusion that Iran is going to be a far more dominant

power, may have a nuclear program, and we are already seeing Al

Jazeera even be far more sympathetic to Iran than they were before. That is what we are seeing. We call that hedging your bets.

How do Saudi Arabia and Egypt hedge their bets? Do they start

to develop a nuclear program or do they just cave in to and accept

Iran has it and they don’t?

Dr. BLIX. Well, we have seen no signs of their moving in that direction.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Dr. BLIX. It would take a long time before they would be able to

do so. But I share your view. I mean, my starting point that it

would be desirable to persuade Iran to stay away from it and that

we have many carrots. There are many carrots that could still be

used for that purpose.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I didn’t intend to use my 10 minutes, but you

are such an interesting man. Let me do this. Is there any question

that we should have asked you that we didn’t? I mean, we have

a number, but we are not going to ask. We will write you a question or two, if you don’t mind responding, but is there anything you

want to put on the record?

Dr. BLIX. You touched upon one issue which is also close to my

heart, and that is that of energy. Under the areas of the world

which are dangerous, really dangerous, Middle East and Central

Asia is also getting fairly tense, and they are areas in which you

have a lot of oil and gas resources, I think that trying to restrain

the consumption of oil and gas is an important, very important

mission. Of course, most people talk about it in terms of hydrocarbons and in terms of global warming and emission or carbon dioxide, and I share that completely. I think I am more worried longterm about global warming than I am worried about weapon of

mass destruction long term. I think we can solve the second issue.

However, this means that going for peaceful nuclear power is a

good thing; that we need to rely on it. I am not against wind power

and not against solar power, but you are not solving energy problems of Shanghai or Calcutta by these; therefore, I am in favor of

the Chinese developing their nuclear. When I was IAEA I tried to

give maximum assistance to the Chinese in the field of safety and

waste disposal. I think the same way of the Indian program. Many

of my friends in the disarmament area are very averse to the Indian program, and I can also see and I have pointed out here the

dangers in the field of proliferation with India, but basically to assist India to get the latest technology to develop nuclear power for

energy, which will reduce somewhat their demand for fossil fuels,

I think is possible.

Mr. SHAYS. You raise the question. I am so sorry to just have to

extend this, but do you compliment the United States on our outreach to India, or are you critical to our outreach to India as it relates to nuclear?

Dr. BLIX. Both.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Dr. BLIX. And the Commission takes that view. We say it s not

our job to discuss energy within the Commission. Some people

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would have been negative to that. But on the nonproliferation side,

yes there are dangers, and we feel that they could be remedied, I

think, if the U.S. were to go ahead with a convention prohibiting

the production of fissile material for weapons purposes. If they

joined that, if it were verification, then Indian enrichment plant

and reprocessing plants would also be under inspection and there

would not be a risk that Pakistan and China would fear that India

would accumulate more weapons and hence the risk that Pakistan

and China would also increase.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. That is the criticism. What is the positive?

Dr. BLIX. That is a criticism, yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Give me the positive. Since you have both, let’s make

sure we put on the record the positive. What is the positive?

Dr. BLIX. The positive side, organizing the energy side, that India

would have access to the most modern technology for peaceful nuclear power and therefore would restrain its thirst for oil.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you so very, very much for being here.

Is there any last point you want to make or are we all set?

Dr. BLIX. No. I was grateful for the credit that we got as inspectors and that we were looking for the truth. We did not assert that

there are no weapon of mass destruction. We have been criticized

by some people saying you could have saved the situation by saying

there were none, but we were actually working as inspectors

should. We looked at the ground, we——

Mr. SHAYS. Are we talking about Iraq?

Dr. BLIX. In Iran I think they are also being entirely professional. I think the IAEA has done—I haven’t followed in such detail, but we act as international civil servants. The job of civil servants is to compile a dossier for the decisionmakers, the Security

Council or the government. We were not politicizing. We were trying to be very factual and professional, and I think there is a great

value in that.

While criticism of the intelligence community has been that they

are bent, in some cases, bent a little to the interests of the decisionmakers, we did not do that.

Mr. SHAYS. I think that is clear. Again, we appreciate your very

noble work and your long service to your country and to the United

Nations and to this issue, in particular. You are a man of great distinction and you honor our subcommittee by your presence here.

We thank you so much.

We will have a 1-minute recess and then we will get to our next

panel.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. Our second panel is William H. Tobey, Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, National Nuclear

Security Administration, Department of Energy; Mr. Andrew K.

Semmel, Deputy Assistant Secretary, International Security and

Nonproliferation, Department of State; Mr. Jack David, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating WMD and Negotiations

Policy, Department of Defense; and Mr. Gene Aloise, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government Accountability Office.

This is a panel of four members. We appreciate their presence.

I am going to thank the Executive Department for their willingness

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to have a legislative member sit in so we did not have to have four

panels. That makes it move a little more quickly.

We will start with Mr. Tobey, and we will go to Mr. Semmel and

then Mr. Jack David.

Mr. David, it is my understanding that this may be your last official act serving for the Government; is that correct, sir?

Mr. DAVID. Yes, sir, unless there is something in the next 2 days

that you have in mind.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, let me just say all of us thank you for your

service to our country. I just want to applaud you. Thank you very

much.

Mr. DAVID. Thank you very much.

[Applause.]

Mr. SHAYS. Let me welcome all of our witnesses. I thank you for

your extraordinary patience. We didn’t think this first panel would

go as long as it did, but in hindsight we probably should have.

I hope that you feel free to respond to anything you have heard

asked during the first panel. Your full statement will be submitted

for the record.

We will, again, start with you, Mr. Tobey.

I think I need to say for the record that two of our witnesses

happen to be from Connecticut. Mr. Tobey, actually you are a constituent, so that makes it very awkward for me. And Mr. Jack

David, you are also from Connecticut, but not from the District,

less awkward. Welcome to both of you.

Mr. Tobey, you have the floor.

STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM H. TOBEY, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; ANDREW K. SEMMEL, DEPUTY ASSISTANT

SECRETARY, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND NONPROLIFERATION, DEPARTMENT OF STATE; JACK DAVID,

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR COMBATING WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND NEGOTIATIONS

POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; AND GENE ALOISE, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. TOBEY

Mr. TOBEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I should actually perhaps

point out that when I am not in New Canaan I am in Bethesda,

Maryland.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I was going to say I am a little confused because I thought Mr. Tobey was my constituent.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, let me ask you this: where do you vote?

Mr. TOBEY. I vote in Maryland, but when the President nominated me he said of Connecticut.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. We won’t take it any farther then.

Mr. SHAYS. No, he has friends in the District. Let’s leave it at

that.

OK, Mr. Tobey, we will get back to business.

Mr. TOBEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Mr. SHAYS. And we will strike out all that we said from the

record when we get a chance.

OK, you are on. Mr. Tobey, welcome to this hearing. You have

the floor.

Mr. TOBEY. Thank you, sir. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on a vital topic. I offer summary remarks and ask that my

written testimony be submitted for the record.

Under President Bush’s direction the United States has taken

many steps to meet this complex and dangerous threat on proliferation. Last week I accompanied Secretary Bodman to Vienna

to attend the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is clear that the work of the IAEA and the effectiveness of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its associated

instruments is a major international concern.

Over the past 35 years the NPT has scored important victories,

but serious challenges remain. Examples include the violations of

Iran and North Korea, the dispersion of sensitive nuclear technologies by proliferation networks and terrorists seeking WMD capabilities.

It is the goal of the United States to address these challenges in

ways that strengthen and supplement the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In my testimony today I will highlight our efforts to reduce and

protect nuclear stockpiles, to strengthen the nonproliferation regime, and to promote the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

In the area of nuclear reductions our record is undeniably strong.

Since 1988 the Department of Energy has dismantled more than

13,000 weapons and has completed the dismantlement of most nonstrategic nuclear weapons. By the end of 2012 the stockpile will be

at its smallest level in several decades.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Tobey, I am embarrassed to say after 10 years

this is the first time I think I have ever failed to swear in a panel.

The only one we have never sworn in was the senior Senator from

West Virginia because I chickened out, but I am not intimidated

by any of you. I need you to stand and swear you in. I am so sorry.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. You are reading from your written statement. We

know that all of your statement is the truth and you are sworn in

and everything that proceeded is the truth, and you are on. I am

so sorry to interrupt you.

Mr. TOBEY. Certainly, sir.

We have also removed 374 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from Defense stocks, converting 92.2 metric tons to low-enriched uranium and reserving 17.4 metric tons to support the

President’s proposal on reliable access to nuclear fuel.

Our efforts with Russia to secure nuclear materials are also

without precedent. We have eliminated more than half of 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from Russian weapons in an

agreement running through 2013. The United States and Russia

have committed to dispose of 34 metric tons each of excess weapons

plutonium. Under the Bratislava Initiative agreed by President

Bush and by Russian President Putin in 2005, we are accelerating

by 2 years, to 2008, the securing of weapons grade fissile materials

in Russia. These materials will be out of circulation and protected

against theft.

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Second, I would like to highlight is our work to improve the nuclear nonproliferation regime within the existing NPT framework

and through new mechanisms. In his speech of February 11, 2004,

President Bush challenged the world’s leading nuclear supplies to

strengthen controls on the most sensitive nuclear technologies and

enrichment and reprocessing to assure fuel supplies to states with

reliable access at reasonable cost, so long as those states forego enrichment and reprocessing technologies and are in good standing

with their nonproliferation commitments. These initiatives are

under discussion in the Nuclear Supplies Group and at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In addition to strengthening international arrangements, the Department is working with more than 70 states worldwide to prevent illicit trafficking of nuclear materials and WMD technologies

and to update international guidelines for the physical protection

of nuclear materials and facilities.

Third, I would like to highlight an initiative that President Bush

recently announced, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

Through GNEP we propose new measures in proliferation-resistant

technologies that will facilitate achieving the NPT’s twin goals: promotion of peaceful nuclear uses and prevention of nuclear proliferation. Our aim is to provide energy and security using mechanisms

that allow states to avoid the burdens associated with long-term

storage of spent fuel in uranium enrichment programs that serve

no rational economic or energy purpose.

Finally, I would note that President Bush and President Putin

at St. Petersburg launched the global initiative to combat nuclear

terrorism. This initiative provides the means to carry out the mandates of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540. While great

progress has been made to prevent proliferation, much more work

needs to be done, and the Department of Energy is committed to

addressing the nonproliferation challenges of our changing world

and we look forward to working with Congress and our international partners in accomplishing still more in the future.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Tobey follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Tobey.

Mr. Semmel.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW K. SEMMEL

Mr. SEMMEL. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, first of all that I regret

that I neither live in Connecticut or Maryland, but I am looking

for new housing.

Mr. SHAYS. It is a great place to live.

Mr. SEMMEL. I live in Virginia, unfortunately.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to come before this committee to discuss the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT, and

steps needed to strengthen the NPT regime. I might say that I appreciate the very thoughtful set of questions that you have sent in

your letter of invitation. My prepared statement, which is longer,

will address these questions more directly.

It is clear, Mr. Chairman, that the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the NPT face serious and unprecedented challenges

today, with unresolved cases of noncompliance and even withdrawal from the treaty. The regime is now at a critical crossroads.

One road leads to a crisis stemming from noncompliance of states’

parties and the weakening of a nonproliferation regime. The other

leads to a strengthening of the treaty regime to keep it strong

through the 21st century.

At this moment in history the first order of business must be to

ensure that those states not in compliance with their NPT obligations come back into compliance, that no new states develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons, and that no terrorist entity

has access to sensitive nuclear materials. Failure to achieve these

goals will undermine the NPT and the critical role it plays in promoting nuclear nonproliferation.

The NPT is intended to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and

materials related to the production of these weapons. That we

could be here today, 36 years after the treaty entered into force,

and not count 20 or more nuclear weapon states as some predicted

in the 1960’s is a sign of the treaty’s success. That other states

have stepped back from pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities also

testifies to its success. But the historical record of success of the

NPT should not induce complacency. There is much more work to

be done.

One of the key concerns that other states have raised regarding

the NPT is the claim that the nuclear weapons states, and particularly the U.S., are not doing enough to fulfill the disarmament provisions embedded in article six of the NPT. Some non-nuclear

weapon states argue that, since the nuclear weapon states have not

totally eliminated their nuclear weapons stockpiles, the NPT is failing, and that they, the non-nuclear weapon states, should not be

required to comply with their obligations to abstain from pursuing

nuclear weapons capabilities. They take this view, despite the significant reductions in nuclear arsenals by the United States, Russia, the U.K., France, particularly since the end of the cold war.

We have to explore a range of options and approaches to nonproliferation. The United States has taken a number of unilateral

steps that serve to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons and to

reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile. These are spelled out in detail

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in my longer statement, but let me mention here briefly that we

have done some of the following:

We have dismantled 13,000 nuclear weapons since 1988.

We have not produced any fissile material for weapons since the

late 1980’s.

The production of our weapons, HEU, halted in 1964.

We have dismantled more than 3,000 non-strategic nuclear

weapons.

Our article six record is significant, and the trend lines in reliance on nuclear weapons have been steadily downward. The chief

challenge to the security benefits of the NPT come not from the

supposed failure of the nuclear weapon states to disarm, but from

the proliferation activities of the treaty’s non-nuclear weapon

states. While we have been downsizing our nuclear stockpiles, others have started or advanced their nuclear weapons programs.

North Korea withdrew from the NPT and then announced it has

nuclear weapons. The Kahn network was illegally shipping nuclear

materials and weapons designs to other states and Iran’s secret nuclear sites at Natans and elsewhere were exposed.

Bilateral efforts between the United States and Russia have led

to significant cuts in both nations’ nuclear arsenals and stockpiles

of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons. The cooperative

threat reduction programs that began in the mid to early 1990’s

have been instrumental in reducing stockpiles of strategic weapons.

Our CTR programs have also been instrumental in redirecting

former nuclear weapons scientists to peaceful, sustainable employment.

Multilaterally we are seeking to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime in a number of ways. I will just mention a few:

through the full implementation of United Nations Security Council 1540, through universal adherence to the IAEA’s additional protocol, through efforts at the Nuclear Suppliers Group to make the

additional protocol a condition of nuclear supply, through the creation of the IAEA Committee on Safeguards and Verification,

through the expansion of the proliferation security initiative, and

through closing the NPT loophole by restricting enrichment and reprocessing technology, to site a few examples.

Increasing emphasis on nonproliferation and compliance in multilateral fora, such as the various export control regimes, border security programs, and the convention of the physical protection of

nuclear materials are helping to engineer a much-needed paradigm, a shift in the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.

That said, if multilateral organization arrangements fail to impose consequences on those such as North Korea and Iran who violate their nonproliferation commitments, the credibility of such fora

will be called into question. The continued failure of the Conference

on Disarmament in Geneva, for example, to break the linkages on

issues so that negotiation on a fissile material cutoff treaty can

begin is emblematic of this problem.

Let me conclude by saying that to be successful we have to be

able to adapt to changing circumstances and utilize a full range of

nonproliferation tools, some of which I have cited today. We must

have a global nonproliferation architecture that ranges from limiting access to dangerous materials and technology and securing

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them at the source, to enacting export and border patrols, to impeding WMD-related shipments during transport, and to enforcing

domestic, regulatory, and administrative practices to guard against

illegal activity.

At the core of all this architecture is the NPT. Without a global

consensus as embodied in the NPT, we and other like-minded countries could not marshal enough support to tackle the increasingly

important and complex proliferation problems.

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Semmel follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Semmel.

Mr. David.

STATEMENT OF JACK DAVID

Mr. DAVID. Chairman Shays, Congressman Van Hollen, I will try

to abbreviate very substantially the formal written statement I

submitted, and also to reduce in size my oral statement, as well,

in view of what my colleagues have said, which I fully endorse with

the Defense Department.

I thank you for the opportunity to testify on weapon of mass destruction, current nuclear proliferation challenges, on this my last

week as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating

WMD and Negotiations Policy. President Bush is committed to

countering the threat of nuclear proliferation, and the Department

of Defense’s role in supporting the President is based on his 2002

National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction and his

2006 National Security Strategy.

Our goal is summarized by these words from the President’s

2004 State of the Union Address: America is committed to keeping

the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most

dangerous regimes.

Multilateral arms control and nonproliferation treaties and regimes are key components of our strategy, with the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, the NPT, at the forefront. President Bush has

called the NPT ‘‘a critical contribution to international security.’’

The NPT is a principal element of an expanding legal framework

devised to curb the development of nuclear weapons programs. We

have sought to strengthen it.

In February, 2004, President Bush, addressing an audience of

the National Defense University on curbing WMD, offered proposals to strengthen the NPT. He urged the creation of a new committee specifically mandated to concentrate on safeguards and additional protocol issues. He asked that all members of the NPT complete and adhere to safeguards and additional protocol agreements.

He asked that the additional protocol be a condition for a state to

receive support for its civil nuclear program.

U.S. efforts to address nuclear proliferation go beyond supporting

and trying to strengthen the NPT. In May, 2003, President Bush

launched the proliferation security initiative, which now boasts

more than 75 participating states. The United States also played

a leading role in the April, 2004, U.N. Security Council passage of

resolution 1540, which requires states to control who may possess

and export WMD-related material and technology.

The cooperative threat reduction program administered by the

Department of Defense is another major effort to thwart nuclear

proliferation. DOD’s CTR efforts successfully assist Russia,

Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine in dealing with the disposition

of nuclear warheads and materials.

Since 2002, DOD’s CTR efforts have included portal programs to

detect illicit movement of nuclear materials, as well as programs

to move WMD to central locations where they can be secured.

These programs are part of the proliferation prevention initiative.

The nuclear nonproliferation measures we and other countries

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gimes, unscrupulous profiteers, and non-state actors such as the

A.Q. Kahn network have traded in nuclear materials and technology. This illicit trade has provided important assistance to the

nuclear weapons programs of other countries, including Libya and

Iran.

We live in an era where economic pressures and competition for

fossil fuels make nuclear energy an important alternative to guaranteeing the world prosperity. With the use of nuclear energy

comes the immense challenge of safeguarding nuclear technology

and materials from uses that can bring about horrible consequences.

State and non-state actors with bad motives are ever ready to

create a nightmare out of the dream of energy sufficiency. It is to

prevent such an outcome that we must do all we can to prevent

proliferation of nuclear materials.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. David follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Aloise.

STATEMENT OF GENE ALOISE

Mr. ALOISE. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I

am pleased to be here today to discuss IAEA’s safeguard program

and other measures to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and materials.

Reports about the clandestine nuclear weapons programs in

North Korea, Iran, and Libya, as well as covert nuclear trafficking

networks have increased international concerns about the spread of

weapon of mass destruction. Since the NPT came into force in

1970, IAEA safeguards have been a cornerstone of U.S. and international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. In addition to safeguards, other U.S. and international efforts to prevent the spread

of nuclear weapons, materials, and technologies have included the

Nuclear Suppliers Group and U.S. assistance to Russia and other

countries to secure nuclear materials and warheads.

My remarks today will focus on our most recent report on IAEA

safeguards system because safeguards is the most important mechanism used to ensure compliance with the NPT.

Despite successes in uncovering some countries’ undeclared nuclear activities, safeguards experts acknowledge that a determined

country can still conceal a nuclear weapons program. IAEA continues to strengthen safeguards by more aggressively seeking assurances that a country is not pursuing a clandestine nuclear program. To help do this, IAEA uses measures such as conducting

short-notice and unannounced inspections, collecting and analyzing

environmental samples, and using unattended measurement and

surveillance systems.

State Department and IAEA officials told us that safeguards

have successfully revealed undisclosed nuclear activities in countries such as Iran. Despite successes, IAEA safeguards have limitations. If a country decides to divert nuclear material or conduct

undeclared activities, it will deliberately work to prevent the Agency from discovering this. Furthermore, any assurances by IAEA

that a country is not engaged in undeclared activities cannot be regarded as absolute, and, importantly, there are a number of weaknesses that hamper the Agency ’s ability to effectively implement

safeguards, including:

IAEA has only limited information about the nuclear activities of

Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. Since these countries are

not members of the NPT, they do not have comprehensive safeguards agreements and are not required to declare all their nuclear

material.

Another weakness is that more than half of the NPT signatories

have not yet adopted the additional protocol, a separate agreement

designed to give IAEA nuclear authority to search for covert nuclear activities. Further, safeguards are significantly limited or not

applied in about 60 percent of the NPT signatories, because either

these countries have not signed comprehensive safeguard agreements or they claim they possess only small quantities of nuclear

material and are exempt from most safeguards measures.

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Last, IAEA is facing a human capital crisis that threatens the

safeguards missions. In 2005 we reported that over 50 percent of

senior safeguards inspectors and high-level safeguards officials are

retiring in the next 5 years. In our 2005 report we recommended

a number of actions designed to address the weaknesses in IAEA’s

safeguards program.

IAEA has been called upon by its member states to assume a

greater role in reducing the risks of nuclear proliferation; however,

as its responsibilities continue to expand, the Agency faces a broad

array of challenges that hamper its ability to fully implement its

safeguards system.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, that concludes

my statement. I would be happy to address any questions you may

have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Aloise follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very, very much.

Let me start by asking you all how does the IAEA fit into our

effort to deal with Islamist terrorism? Well, first let me do it this

way. Is the concern with terrorism that they will get weapons

grade material or they will actually get the weapon and the material? Is there a concern, is there an acknowledgement that they can

make the weapon, particularly enriched uranium, but would have

a hard time getting the weapons grade material? Do you get where

I am coming from? In other words, I want to know how relevant

the IAEA is to deal with the terrorist threat, and I want to know

how relevant the Non-Proliferation Treaty is to dealing with the

terrorist threat.

Who wants to start? Mr. Semmel, I will start with you.

Mr. SEMMEL. I think, Mr. Chairman, that in my opening remarks

I said that we need to have a comprehensive approach to nuclear

nonproliferation, and that would include a whole panoply of programs, such as export controls and protecting materials at their

sources, and export controls and things like that are always essential.

At the end of the day what we were trying to do, as Jack David

indicated in his remarks, we want to make sure that dangerous

materials do not get into the hands of dangerous organizations or

individuals.

Now, in order to do that you have to be able to protect or destroy

some of the sources that the terrorist organizations might want to

have access to, and, again, there is a variety of programs that are

essential for doing that.

The IAEA does have, in addition to its important safeguards and

inspection roles that it does, it also has a program called the nuclear security fund, which is a new program that was set up three

or 4 years ago, I think, in which the United States is the principal

contributor to this. Essentially what that program does is to ensure

greater physical protection at facilities and also of materials, better

protection of the materials at the various nuclear facilities. This is

a program that the IAEA, in that sense, does have a very direct

role in terms of making sure that dangerous materials—in this

case nuclear materials—don’t get into dangerous hands.

I might want to say in your second part of your question, one of

the things I think that was discovered in the initial stages of

ousting Al Qaeda from Afghanistan is that there was some discovery of documents and materials in which Al Qaeda did have some

documentation on designs and nuclear weapons. The question is

what could they do with that. It would be very difficult without an

infrastructure to be able to take those designs and make something

of them. So I think it is a long way between having——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just ask, before the others respond, do you

agree that it is relatively easy to build a crude nuclear weapon that

could create an explosion with using enriched uranium? Do you

agree that you could build a crude weapon, not one that would

maximize yield, not one that would be particularly large in its impact, but it would still be a nuclear explosion? Do you agree with

that?

Mr. SEMMEL. It could be done. The key is whether or not a group

would have access to fissile material.

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Mr. SHAYS. That is the issue.

Mr. SEMMEL. Yes. Right.

Mr. SHAYS. But we can get beyond this issue of whether they can

build a specifically.

Mr. SEMMEL. Right.

Mr. SHAYS. You do agree that they could build a weapon?

Mr. SEMMEL. With the right infrastructure and technological

know-how, yes, and to have access to that.

Mr. SHAYS. We are not talking about a small, well-crafted weapon with high yield. We are just talking about a weapon.

Mr. SEMMEL. Yes. Something beyond a dirty bomb is what you

are referring to?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. Exactly.

Mr. SEMMEL. Right. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. David, what is your response to that question?

Mr. DAVID. Well, designs for nuclear weapons have been in the

open ever since a college student wrote his thesis on it and published it a long, long time ago.

Mr. SHAYS. And ran against my predecessor. Actually, he was

from Princeton.

Mr. DAVID. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. So that is clear.

Mr. DAVID. So there are designs. There is public information out

there. There are a number of people who know how to do the engineering tasks that would allow either a complicated or less-complicated weapon. The question is whether the ingredients for a terrorist group to create such a weapon are easy to come by, and the

more ingredients there are and the more——

Mr. SHAYS. When you say ingredients, weapon grade material?

Mr. DAVID. I mean the fissile material, the other parts of the

weapon that are necessary in order to initiate a chain reaction, a

fusion explosion from the nuclear material, and putting them in

the right juxtaposition and the like. All of those kinds of things are

the kinds of things we need to keep away from terrorists, and by

the means which we have, and we have been trying to do that

through the IAEA through, resolution 1540, through intradiction

activities, through the proliferation security initiative. All of those

efforts are to keep away from terrorists the things they would need

to make WMD.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t want to draw a wrong conclusion, but I have

been spending time since 1998, in particular, in my subcommittee

looking at this issue. If I am wrong I want to be corrected, but, you

know, when you hold enriched uranium in your hand and you can

put it in your pocket, when you hold plutonium in your hand wearing a glove, when you realize that it doesn’t necessarily give out

the kind of signal in transporting it that I thought it did, when you

see a weapon at Los Alamos that basically was made with material

that you could get from commercial sources, I come to the conclusion—and that is what I was trying to develop—was where is the

effort they important.

Mr. Semmel agrees that you could build a weapon. He agrees you

have the technology. I infer, Mr. Semmel, also that it would not be

hard to get the material to build a raw, inefficient type of nuclear

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weapon. That is what I have been told. I want to know if that is

the case.

Mr. David, you are sending me mixed signals just a little bit because you are implying that the materials to make the weapon, we

would be able to keep them out of the hands of terrorists. I don’t

think we can. I think the issue really relates to one issue on weapons grade material.

Mr. DAVID. What I had in mind is that the strictures of 1540 enjoining countries to pass laws that prohibit their citizens to aggregate these materials for the purpose of making WMD. That is the

sort of thing I had in mind.

Mr. SHAYS. But tell me if I am wrong, and if you don’t know tell

me that, and if I am wrong tell me I am wrong.

Mr. DAVID. Say again?

Mr. SHAYS. If you don’t know if I am wrong, tell me you don’t

know. If you think that I am wrong, tell me I am wrong. It is my

understanding, based on the work that my subcommittee has done,

that a terrorist could build a raw, inefficient nuclear weapon that

would be actually a nuclear fissile, a chain reaction. The issue is

it wouldn’t be something you could put on the tip of a missile, but

in those days we cared about what went on the tip of a missile, so

if you couldn’t put it on a missile we didn’t care about it.

Now comes the wake-up call, September 11th, our fear of

Islamist terrorists, our knowledge that they want nuclear weapons.

It is fairly clear to me—if I am wrong, tell me—that terrorists

could make a very crude nuclear weapon with material that mostly

is available commercially. If you disagree with that, tell me you

disagree with it. If you agree with it, tell me you agree with it. If

you don’t know, tell me you don’t know.

Mr. Tobey, let’s start with you.

Mr. TOBEY. I believe that the greatest barrier to a proliferant obtaining the capability to produce a nuclear weapon is acquisition of

fissile material.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to talk about

fissile material. I just want to talk about the weapon. Let’s take

the weapon first. All I am trying to do is build a case for the need

to make sure fissile material doesn’t get in the wrong hands. I have

constituents who think the bomb is the problem, the weapon, itself,

the building the weapon. I want this hearing to be able to illustrate

if this is a problem or not.

Mr. TOBEY. I agree we should focus on fissile material.

Mr. SHAYS. And because?

Mr. TOBEY. Because that is the greatest barrier to a proliferant

obtaining a weapon and it is the one which we can control most

directly.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So your definition of a weapon is the structure

and the material together?

Mr. TOBEY. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. But to build a bomb minus the fissile material is

something they are capable of doing. Do you believe that is the

case?

Mr. TOBEY. I believe so, yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. Mr. Semmel, what is your view?

Mr. SEMMEL. I think I said yes. I think it is possible.

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Mr. SHAYS. I just want to be clear.

Mr. David?

Mr. DAVID. Well, the answer is yes, but you have to know how

to put together the neutron initiator. There is some knowledge.

Somebody with a third grade education with no knowledge of what

to do couldn’t do it.

Mr. SHAYS. But a graduate student from——

Mr. DAVID. Yes. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And we do know that there are Islamists who have

those degrees.

Mr. DAVID. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. Mr. Aloise?

Mr. ALOISE. Based on the experts we have talked to, it is possible

with a crude nuclear device.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So let’s get that off the table.

The real issue then is the weapons grade material. Only as it relates to terrorist, if you were to explode a nuclear weapon, the kind

of weapon that terrorists would make would be one that would use

what? Enriched uranium? I mean, in other words, when we talk

about it—and if I am asking the wrong people, then just tell me.

The capability to create a crude bomb basically is our biggest concern is with enriched uranium? Nodding of heads won’t get in the

recorder here. If anybody wants to answer it, I am happy to take

this.

Mr. SEMMEL. Again, I take the same plea that Hans Blix did. I

am not a technician on this or physicist.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. SEMMEL. But I think what I have read, what I understand,

that enriched uranium would be the preferred source, yes.

Mr. SHAYS. And, see, I am just focusing on terrorism right now

because it seems to me we have been focused on what someone

could put on the tip of a missile on a warhead. There you need the

sophisticated weaponry, you need the plutonium and so on. But I

have been just focused primarily on our work on what terrorists

can do, and that is maybe why you hear me focused on this.

So let me ask you what is the challenge with each of you. Describe to me the difference between plutonium and enriched uranium in terms of its creation and in terms of our capability to secure it. Is there any difference?

Mr. TOBEY. In terms of creation, Mr. Chairman, as I am sure you

know, there are two paths to a weapon. One is weapons grade plutonium, generally manufactured through running nuclear reactors

and separating the plutonium from the spent fuel, and then the

other one is to enrich uranium, very different paths. They have different signatures. They require different technologies. I think there

are differences in our ability to monitor those activities.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just ask if anybody agrees. What I will assume is if one person answers the question we don’t need to go to

the second person if there is agreement, unless you just jump in.

And that applies to Mr. Aloise, as well. Feel free to jump in here.

So if enriched uranium becomes the bigger concern as the weapon grade material of choice for a terrorist, should there be different

protocols to deal with that?

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Mr. TOBEY. We are interested in securing both weapons grade

plutonium and highly enriched uranium and disposing of each with

the former Soviet states.

Mr. SHAYS. What I am struck with, though, is that for a terrorist

to basically use plutonium, they would have to have the weapon

come along with it. If they used enriched uranium, they might have

the capability to create the weapon, themselves. That is where my

mind is.

Is there any comment about that? Mr. Aloise, do you have any

comment about that? If you disagree with my assumptions, let me

know.

Mr. ALOISE. I am going to have to pass on that question, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Anyone care to answer that question?

[No response.]

Mr. SHAYS. Do you all know why I am asking these questions?

In other words, I am looking at a little bit of confusion here and

I have been known to confuse people, but do you understand why

I am going down this road? If I am going down a road that makes

no sense, I am happy to have you correct mitigation.

Mr. TOBEY. Well, we are certainly interested in minimization of

use of HEU throughout the world.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. TOBEY. We have worked hard to return it from HEU reactors

and to convert them to LEU and to return the fresh and spent fuel

to its sources, so we would certainly agree with that as a problem.

I guess I would just point out that we are also concerned with

the weapons grade plutonium as well and believe it is important

to secure and dispose of plutonium.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes?

Mr. DAVID. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with that, and I would

also say that, as far as I am concerned, I don’t know that I could

draw the distinctions between the relative difficulty for very smart

graduate students who are probably motivated making a crude

weapon out of uranium or a crude weapon out of plutonium. I understand that the uranium route is an easier one technologically,

engineering-wise, but I am not sure about the gradations of making

a plutonium weapon, and I don’t think I am qualified to comment

on that.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe our third panel will be able to express an

opinion on it.

Let me go do this. Let me go to Mr. Van Hollen. I have been over

my time limit.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me

thank all of the witnesses for your testimony and for your public

service. Let me just say a special word about Mr. Semmel, who I

have worked with early on in the 1980’s. I had an opportunity to

work with Andy at the Defense Department when we were both at

the Defense Security Systems Agency, I as a very new person, really, interning there. I want to thank him for his service. I learned

a lot from him during my years there and I want to thank him and

all of you for your service.

Let me just ask you all about A.Q. Kahn and the information and

technologies that he essentially steered in the direction of Iran and

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Libya and others. I assume you would all agree that it would be

useful if we were to be able to sit down and talk to A.Q. Kahn and

figure out exactly what technologies he provided, wouldn’t you

agree? And my understanding is that we have not had that opportunity. Have we had that opportunity, the U.S. Government, to sit

down with A.Q. Kahn? The answer is no, right?

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say this. It is important that we get a

yes or no because the transcriber is still not good at getting shaking of heads one way or the other.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. If I could just get an authoritative answer

from someone on the panel.

Mr. SEMMEL. Short answer, we have learned a lot from A.Q.

Kahn. We have not had extended sit-downs with him.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just interrupt 1 second just to say if, in fact,

one person answers, we are going to make an assumption either

you have nothing that would contradict that answer or you agree

with the answer. If someone disagrees with the answer, then we

would expect that you would jump in. Thank you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Has the U.S. Government or an official of the

U.S. Government representing the U.S. Government had the opportunity to sit down with A.Q. Kahn to discuss the information and

technologies that he provided to Iran or Libya?

Mr. SEMMEL. That is a very sensitive question. I think we would

have to get into a closed session on that. I can just tell you, to repeat, that we have had lots of information that has come out in

interviews that have taken place with him, but to the extent that

we have had personal one-on-one type of interviews I think we

would have to sit down and talk about that in closed session.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I understand that. Let me ask you this: are

you satisfied that we, the U.S. Government, has the benefit of everything that you think would be useful to know from A.Q. Kahn?

Mr. SEMMEL. Well, to take lead on this one, we don’t know what

we don’t know, to begin with, and I would suggest and assume that

there is information that we would like to have that we don’t have.

We have to make that assumption at this stage of the game.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, let me just say we have had President

Musharaff here and we want to thank him for his support and efforts with respect to going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, although

I happen to think that the Pakistani government could be doing a

whole lot more than they are now, but I also think that we should

be using the opportunity to make sure that we get the maximum

amount of information that we can from A.Q. Kahn. It was a gross

diversion of important technology and information, and I think

there are still many questions where his input and testimony could

be helpful.

Let me just turn quickly to the question of Iran. Mr. Negroponte

back in April said that his assessment and the assessment of the

intelligence community with respect to when Iran might obtain a

bomb was somewhere at the beginning of the next decade between

2010 and 2015. Is there any information any of you gentlemen

have that would change that assessment?

Mr. DAVID. That gets into another area that would be with classified information, I think.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. That was something that Mr. Negroponte said

on the record with respect to that timeframe. Is there any information that would change that assessment?

Mr. DAVID. Whether there is information or not about the time

lag for n to complete making its nuclear weapon is a subject that

should be discussed in a classified round.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me ask you, Mr. Chairman, if there has

been a change in this assessment I would encourage us to seek a

session in the intelligence community room.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentlemen be clear as to what he is requesting?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. My question is if the U.S. Government now

has a different assessment with respect to the timeframe in which

Iran might obtain a nuclear weapon. I would like to know that. If

there has been a change in that assessment, whether or not there

has been a change, we have to go into a secret session, I think we

should do that.

Mr. SHAYS. I think you are right. Thank you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me just ask the gentlemen, there was a

staff report that was issued by the House Intelligence Committee.

Are you familiar with that report?

Mr. SEMMEL. Yes.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. Have you had an opportunity, Mr.

Semmel, to review that report?

Mr. SEMMEL. I know of the report. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. I mean, we have some of the people who are the

top officials on nonproliferation here at the table for the administration, right? I am just trying to get information out here.

Mr. DAVID. May I interject that you are asking questions that we

get information on from the intelligence community about, and perhaps the intelligence community would be a better source for asking information about the current intelligence.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. All right. Well, Mr. Semmel, have you had an

opportunity to look at the House Intelligence Committee report?

Mr. SEMMEL. I think to be very fair about this I have not read

the report. I know of the report. There has been obviously extensive media coverage. In fact, as I like to say, column eight, I think

the Washington Post front page at one point in time had coverage

of the report. I have not read it. I have seen the response to the

IAEA to the report, but I have not read it in depth, but I understand. I see the commentary on the report.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I mean, just for the record, as you have stated,

Mr. Semmel, the IAEA actually took the sort of unusual step of

writing to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee specifically taking issue with the number of points raised in the report, stating that they were wrong based on the IAEA’s information. I think, given our past mistakes of the U.S. Government with

respect to intelligence gathering to lead up to the war in Iraq, and

given the fact that the IAEA and Mr. Blix, within his domain, got

it a lot more correct than the U.S. Government, it would behoove

us, it seems to me, to listen. There were points raised by the IAEA.

I guess my question to you, if any of you gentlemen know, is: do

you agree with the points that were raised? And let me just say

this is a report that was released. I mean, I have the report right

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here. This is not a classified report. I mean, we don’t need the intelligence community here to testify with respect to particular

points in that public report, at least as they relate to claims about

Iran’s advances on the nuclear program and the proliferation issue.

So I guess my question to each of you is: do you have any reasons

to doubt the IAEA’s claims that portions of the report were wrong?

Do you have any reason to dispute what the IAEA said about the

House intelligence Committee’s report?

Mr. DAVID. I haven’t read the report and I am not going to quibble with one side or the other side about what they said about this

detail or that detail, but there isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind,

from everything that I know, that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. That wasn’t my question, sir. I just want to

make sure, because I think the intelligence assessments, as I think

we have learned the hard way, are very important. My only question is—and I guess the answer is no, that you don’t have any information that would dispute the claims raised by the IAEA in

their letter; is that right?

Mr. SEMMEL. I would just say, Mr. Congressman, that first of all

the report, as I understand the House Intelligence Committee report, was derived largely from public source information and it was

not information that was derived that was sensitive, but it was

from a variety of sources that are available out there that all of us

can access to with diligent research, and so on.

I have seen the IAEA’s response to the report and I think the

IAEA, to the extent we can agree with the IAEA’s assessment and

the various reports that have been done over the years on Iran, the

IAEA I think, if we give that some veracity, then I think the

IAEA’s letter is something that I personally could not disagree

with.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you. Now, Mr. David, you mentioned

your assessment with respect to Iran’s intentions, and I am not disputing your assessment of their intentions. At the United Nations

recently President Bush did make a number of statements with respect to Iran, and one of the things he said was, ‘‘We have no objections to Iran’s pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program.’’

My question to you gentlemen is: how would we go about designing

a peaceful civilian nuclear power program in Iran that satisfied our

nonproliferation concerns?

Mr. SEMMEL. Well, I think the first order of business is to get

some confidence that, indeed, the program that Iran has been embarking on for the past nearly two decades is something that we

can believe with a high degree of confidence is not aiming at some

nuclear weapons capability. There have been at least seven resolutions and six or seven reports by the Secretariat of the IAEA that

raises questions about that.

Before we can hope to even come to any inkling of an inference

that Iran has embarked upon purely a nuclear energy program, devoid of any nuclear weapons intentions, it seems to me we have to

clean up the record at this point in time as to where Iran has been,

where they are right now. And, indeed, the Director General’s report on August 31st, the most recent report, indicates that Iran has

not taken the steps that are necessary to alleviate any concerns

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that we have about their intentions beyond what they say they are

with regard to a civil nuclear energy program.

I think before we even get into that degree of confidence we have

to resolve the existing problems.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I understand that. I understand that, Mr.

Semmel, but that was not the question. This is not my statement.

This is the President’s statement. The President went beyond saying what we all agree, that we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear

weapons program, he went on to say that he had no objection to

Iran’s pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program. I am

quoting from his statement before the United Nations.

I am not saying that is a good idea or a bad idea, but I assume

before making that statement the administration had done some

assessment about whether he could design a program that gave it

confidence that Iran could have the benefits of civilian nuclear

power, which the President states, and at the same time meet any

concerns we have with respect to nonproliferation. I assume the

President and the administration did some assessment of that before he made that statement. I am just curious as to exactly whether or not you are familiar with any work that has been done on

that question and what the proposal is from the administration,

some rough design or program that would address that point made

by the President.

Mr. TOBEY. Congressman, I think that one could look at hallmarks of such a peaceful program, and in the U.N. Security Council resolution that was passed on Iran, which actually is derived

from the IAEA Board resolutions, and in that resolution it talks

about suspension of enrichment and reprocessing, halting construction of the heavy water reactor that was referred to by Dr. Blix,

and full cooperation with the IAEA, including adoption or ratification of the additional protocol. I think these would be steps toward

providing assurance to the international community that Iran’s

programs were, indeed, for peaceful purposes.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman very much.

Mr. Duncan, you have the floor.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I had

some previously scheduled appointments, and I am sorry I did not

get to hear the testimony, and so I am sure you probably want to

get on to the next panel, so——

Mr. SHAYS. We are fine, sir. Just do your thing.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. Just a couple of brief questions.

First of all, to all of the gentlemen on the panel, I understand

that you have very important positions in our Government, and

from what I have read and heard and so forth I know there are

other countries that cooperate and are involved in this process, but

I have the impression that the U.S. really takes the lead and does

far more than any other country in devoting money, resources,

manpower, leadership, and employees, and everything else to the

nuclear nonproliferation effort throughout the world. Would you

say that is correct?

Mr. TOBEY. Yes, sir. I take some pride. I am new to the job, so

I can take some pride but no credit for the fact that I think we

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have one of the best or the best nonproliferation organization in the

world.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I think that is something we should be proud

of. I just wanted to put that on the record.

Mr. David, you said that you had no doubt that Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. There is a report in the Washington Times today about some type of possible deal that would suspend their uranium enrichment program for 90 days while talks

would continue. Do you feel that is just some sort of delaying tactic,

or do you see any problems with talks of that nature, if they are

going on?

Mr. DAVID. I think that it is very important that we exhaust

every bit of diplomacy we could possibly exhaust to attempt to

prove that Iran could be dissuaded from going forward on the path

that I believe it is going forward on. I don’t know whether or not

this hint of a 90-day suspension is real. We have had hints of cooperation from Iran many times before, only to have them withdrawn for one reason or no reason. I hope it is a promise and I

hope that there are negotiations and I hope that they are successful.

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Let me talk about the IAEA. First off, it was my understanding

that for about 15 years it was a zero growth budget at the IAEA.

Was that the fault of the United States or just a general decision

of all the countries involved? If that has changed now, are we the

major proponents of increasing their budget or are we tolerating

the increase? Who could speak to that issue?

Mr. SEMMEL. I can start out on that. You are absolutely correct.

I think for a period of perhaps 15 to 20 years—I don’t know the

exact amount—that IAEA was operating in its regular budget at

zero growth, and it was not until about three or 4 years ago that,

through a concerted effort in which the United States took a lead

role, that we pushed against considerable opposition at the IAEA

to increase the budget.

Mr. SHAYS. Even within the——

Mr. SEMMEL. That was in the Secretariat, but with opposition

among other states’ parties to the IAEA.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. And what do we think was the reason for their

reluctance to see it have a budget that would grow with at least

inflation?

Mr. SEMMEL. Well, other countries are mindful of their taxpayers

and simply do not want to have the obligation to have to pay and

come up with more annual payments, regular payments.

Mr. SHAYS. So we pay a disproportionate share, in one sense, but

we were willing to say we need to do it. We weren’t paying others’

shares. We were saying we all need to step up to the plate and we

all need to contribute?

Mr. SEMMEL. Right. The increase would, of course, be disproportionately falling on the United States, since we pay already 25 percent of the regular budget. Other countries are reluctant to pay additional assessments to a IAEA and they resisted that. It took sevVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:56 Jun 11, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35767.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
135

eral years of effort, in fact, to get the increase approved at the

IAEA.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, we have candid criticism of the United Nations,

its failure to deal with a variety of issues. Our criticism is not

shared by many of our very good friends around the world. But do

we have that same criticism of the IAEA? Are we comfortable with

its approach, its energy, its capabilities, its powers? Do we recommend that it have new people? Do we recommend that it have

new powers, new capabilities? If all three of you, and Mr. Aloise,

if you want to step in, as well, maybe you could give us your sense

of what we think as we view it from the legislative side.

Mr. ALOISE. First of all, I think the general view, from the people

we have talked to all over the world and our U.S. Government, is

that IAEA is a very important agency which has a lot of respect.

Despite some problems in the past, it is really the only agency out

there that is in other people’s countries verifying nuclear materials.

It is facing a lot of challenges, not only budgetary but, as I mentioned in my statement, its human capital challenge. It is going to

lose a large number of its safeguards inspectors in the next 5 years.

Mr. SHAYS. That is a funding issue or retirement?

Mr. ALOISE. Retirement issue. And some of that relates to IAEA’s

personnel policies. They have a mandatory retirement age that is

forcing a lot of people out. In fact, the State Department and the

Department of Energy have come up with some very novel ideas

to keep people working there at IAEA, even though they are beyond the retirement age.

We have made recommendations in our report that State Department needs to work with IAEA to help change the personnel policies because it is working against them in many cases. For example, they need people who have expertise in uranium enrichment

processes, and are not even taking the actions they need—IAEA isto get these people. Further, there are not that many students

going through these nuclear studies any more and the pool is

shrinking of experts to choose from.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I would like to hear from Energy, State,

and Defense on the questions that I ask, you know, how the IAEA

is doing, our Government’s sense of what it is doing. You heard me

before, so I don’t need to repeat.

Mr. TOBEY. I think the IAEA plays an important and constructive role. We do think that there are ways in which the IAEA’s

work can be improved, and we are trying to work with both the

Secretariat and other member states, and, in particular, the Board

of Governors. I would cite, particularly, improving IAEA authorities

through universal adherence to the additional protocol, and we

would also like to improve their capabilities through better technology. We are working to do that with safeguards technology

agreements.

Mr. SHAYS. So while you have touched technology, let me just

ask you to give me an example of different technologies and what

we would like, what they like them to use.

Mr. TOBEY. I think we, frankly, would like to see better monitoring technologies. Some of that gets politically sensitive, but realtime monitoring of installations could be an improvement.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Mr. Semmel.

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Mr. SEMMEL. Yes, Mr. Chairman. When President Bush made

the now-well-known speech at the National Defense University in

February 2004, he laid out seven nonproliferation initiatives. Interestingly enough, three of them pertain directly or indirectly to the

IAEA. One of them had to do with what we have already mentioned here, pushing for universalization of the additional protocol,

which is a strengthening safeguards agreement on the part of countries.

The second one was something which we call now the Committee

on Safeguards and Verification. This is a Committee on Safeguards

and Verification that the IAEA actually approved unanimously last

June, June a year ago, and is designed to be advisory to the Board

of Governors at the IAEA and to identify ways in which we can

strengthen safeguards and improve the IAEA’s ability to be able to

detect illegal use of materials, and so forth.

There is a third initiative, which the President also mentioned,

which we are working on at this point in time.

So on a number of issues we obviously agree that the IAEA is

an important part of the nonproliferation regime, if you want to

call it that, but that it needs to be strengthened. We are the major

contributor, as you pointed out. We also contribute on an annual

basis voluntary contribution in the vicinity of around $50 million

a year. Once again, we are the single largest contributor in the voluntary funds. Some of those resources go to improve safeguards.

To address what Mr. Aloise said, one small fraction of those voluntary funds also go to fund something called cost-free experts, in

which we provide, on a non-reimbursable basis, to the IAEA individuals that have certain technical skills that the IAEA otherwise

does not have, and we basically pay for that person. It could be a

year, 2 years, twoand a half years. One of my colleagues was there

for 21⁄2 years.

Mr. DAVID. I would only add to what my colleague said, that the

Committee on Safeguards and Additional Protocol, which President

Bush suggested in 2004, and which has come into existence, is also

discussing the issue of the loss of personnel and bolstering up the

personnel who could do inspections and the like, and dealing with

the problems that Mr. Aloise talked about.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, I have been to Mayak, the facility.

It was an amazing experience, forty hectors of property and a huge

building on that property. How much of the weapons grade material of the Soviet Union actually is captured in that facility?

Mr. DAVID. I can’t tell you how much, but I know they started

putting it in in July and we are really happy about that.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. I mean, this is a facility, as I remember, football

fields in size, very thick ceiling, I think ten feet or more, tubes that

go down about 18 feet. Bottom line is, it is going to hold a lot of

material, baskets all along the way. But we are starting to see that

capture some of it?

Mr. DAVID. Finally in July. As you know, it was a point of contention between Russia and ourselves for a long time, but it wasn’t

being used. They actually finally started moving material into the

facility in July of this year.

137

Mr. SHAYS. OK. And so the question I have, though, is that a significant amount of extra weapons grade material, or is it a small

percent?

Mr. DAVID. As far as I know, it is an ongoing process at this

point of moving material in there. I don’t know how much has been

put in so far, but our expectation and our requirement is that they

use this facility that CTR funds, United States taxpayer funds,

helped to build.

Mr. SHAYS. And the question is: have we been able to express an

opinion about the safeguarding of the transporting of this material

to Mayak?

Mr. TOBEY. We do, I believe, address transportation issues within Russia, yes, help to fund secure ways to do that.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Mr. Duncan, do you have any questions you

want to ask?

Mr. DUNCAN. Iran, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me just ask you about the Fissile Material

Cutoff Treaty. The question I am going to ask is: how has U.S. opposition to international verification of the Fissile Material Cutoff

Treaty undermined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Mr. SEMMEL. Well, I am not sure that it is, first of all.

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to ask, since my knowledge in this area

is a little weak, I am going to just ask that my professional staff,

participate in this. But that is the question I asked you. Why don’t

you answer it and then I will have him followup.

Mr. SEMMEL. I would say, Mr. Chairman, that, in fact, if you

were to ask other members of the Conference on Disarmament

where the FMCT, Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, has already been

introduced, we have introduced the text in July, as well as a mandate for negotiations on the FMCT. If you were to ask everybody

else, there are serious questions that some countries had, particularly on the verification issue, but there are some other issues

about definitions of what is fissile material.

Mr. SHAYS. When you say some countries, can you define

what——

Mr. SEMMEL. In order for the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty to

be a treaty and to be enforced, obviously we have to negotiate it

with other countries. Other countries would have expressed some

concerns, particularly about the fact that the text that we have introduced did not include a verification provision in it, so this is an

issue which we will have to negotiate.

I can tell you this, though, to respond more directly to your question: virtually everybody is happy that we have gotten this text of

the treaty introduced, for no other reason than that if you look at

the track record of the Conference on Disarmament, it has done

virtually nothing for the past 10 years. It has accomplished zero.

And the reason it has accomplished zero is because every country

or set of countries wants to tie their issues to other issues and they

can’t get a work plan developed.

One issue that there is general consensus on that we ought to

move forward on, however we move, whether it is fast or slow or

whatever the nature of the text might be, is the FMCT. So there

is a general—I wouldn’t call it elation, but a general happiness that

the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva may actually get down,

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if not this year certainly next year, to begin to iron out its agenda

and begin to negotiate on that. So they are pleased. We are pleased

that the FMCT finally has been introduced, and I think if we were

to make progress, if we were to negotiate this over the next several

years, this would be a strengthening of the NPT, not weakening it.

Mr. CHASE. Mr. Aloise, can you respond?

Mr. ALOISE. I really don’t have a response.

Mr. CHASE. OK. Just a followup to that, then: has the U.S.’s civil

nuclear cooperation with India changed the FM Cutoff Treaty?

Mr. SEMMEL. FMCT. Well, it hasn’t changed it. No, not at all. In

the July 18th statement between President Bush and President

Singh, the Indians indicated that they support and they will work

with us to support an FMCT treaty. Of course, they have expressed—to be candid here, they have expressed the position that

it should have a verification provision in it. The point is that they

have already committed to work with us in terms of moving that

FMCT treaty.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just interject myself, though, to ask how has

the United States’ efforts to reach out to India impacted our interaction with our allies? Have they been indifferent, critical, critical

but positive? I mean, how would you define its impact?

Mr. SEMMEL. I think, again, to be candid, you have a scattergram

of responses on that. A number of the countries, obviously, the

French, the British, and others, are very pleased with this, Russians, as well, the FMCT. And there were others who were raising

serious questions. Those same countries are very supportive right

now of the proposed U.S.-India civil nuclear cooperation initiative,

if you want to call it that. There are a number of countries that

have raised serious questions and continue to raise serious questions. We will negotiate and try to respond to those in the various

fora that are available to it, particularly in the Nuclear Suppliers

Group and something called the Consultative Group of the Nuclear

Suppliers Group, where a lot of these issues are being hammered

out, putting aside those issues are being hammered out in the Congress, as well, but on a different level.

So it depends who you talk to on this. I think a number of countries have expressed skepticism. I think at the end of the day,

when we get to the critical point in the Nuclear Suppliers Group,

which requires a unanimous decision as to whether or not India

will be treated as an exception that would allow it to receive nuclear fuel and certain technologies, I think we will eventually get

consensus on this and countries will be satisfied with the dynamics

that have taken place.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just ask a quick question. It might take forever to answer, but I would like to know, was there a huge debate

in our own administration as to reaching out to India? And then,

in the end, what was the pivotal issue that said we need to do this?

Mr. SEMMEL. Well, yes, of course there was a debate. this is a

fundamental decision.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. SEMMEL. This is a significant decision in terms of our foreign

policy.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

139

Mr. SEMMEL. As well as our economic policy, and others. It depends who you talk to, what the critical turning points may have

been, but at the end of the day our relationship with India—I think

when President Bush came into office in 2001 he said he wanted

to try to have an impact on our relationship with India. India has

a booming economy. India is the world’s most populous democracy,

will some day in the next 15 or 20 years or so be the most populated country in the world. Our relationship with India over the

past years has been correct but not necessarily warm. So in order

to improve upon that relationship, as the relationship between

countries in Asia and South Asia have begun to change, it is important for us to establish a better strategic relationship with a country that is emerging as a very significant player, not just in the region but in the world.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Do you have any questions you would

like to ask?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, let me

thank all the witnesses for their testimony.

I have a question with respect to where we are and where we are

going. As we know, the North Koreans have essentially, at least for

now, walked away from the six-party talks. They just stated again

today that they didn’t have any intention of coming back in the

near term. They say that they have nuclear weapons. They tested

a missile not too long ago. It wasn’t that successful, but they tested

it. As you have all testified, or some of you testified, they decided

to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Where are we going? I mean, where are we going with respect

to North Korea? I mean, they continue to crank out the materials

necessary to make nuclear weapons. I mean, isn’t this a huge failure in our nonproliferation policy? And what are we going to do to

fix it?

Mr. SEMMEL. I need to say it is difficult. Those who have negotiated with the North Koreans tell me that they are among the

most difficult negotiators that they have ever encountered. I think

the important thing is we would like to sit down. We would like

the resumption of the six-party talks as soon as possible. We made

that point very clear to the North Koreans, as well as to the other

members of the six-party talks. The North Koreans will sit down

and talk and resume the six-party talks when they are ready. The

question is how do you get them to be ready. It is hard to be able

to discern what their real motivations are.

They say right now that they are not ready to resume those talks

that were suspended in September a year ago, a year ago actually

this month, because of certain hostile behavior, I think is the way

they phrase it, by the United States, and this hostile behavior is,

as they point out, involves the number of financial sanctions that

we have placed upon them for their illicit behavior on counterfeiting and so forth. But to get the North Koreans to the table is difficult.

They say they want to have one-on-one talks. We are not ready

for that at this point in time. They can talk to us any time they

want, and, as you probably know, Chris Hill, when he was in the

region not to long ago, sat down with his counterpart, the North

140

Koreans, on the margins of meetings. We said they can have oneon-one conversations in the context of the six-party talks.

But I think if the North Koreans were serious about wanting to

sit down again and resume these talks, they would be doing it. But

it is an intractable issue and where it will end I am not sure at

this point.

Mr. DAVID. Just to add to that—and I agree with all that Andy

said—we are working with the other five parties of the six parties

to do what we can to get them to do what they can to pressure

North Korea to make an irreversible decision to abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions and program and to irreversibly destroy

it.

We are working beyond those six parties with other countries of

the world. A couple of months ago we succeeded in getting a U.N.

Security Council resolution that imposes requirements—the word

require is in two paragraphs—requiring countries to do certain

things and not to do certain things with North Korea. Just last

week or last weekend, can’t remember which, Australia and Japan

announced that they were imposing sanctions on North Korea.

You know, we will keep the effort up. The diplomatic multinational approach that we are taking will take time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thanks. One last question on Iran, if I could.

Mr. SHAYS. You may.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We mentioned the Strategic Cooperation Agreement with India,

and, as you know, the House passed that agreement not too long

ago, a number of weeks back. Shortly after that—and Mr. Semmel

is probably familiar with this—as a result of being in charge of

nonproliferation at the State Department—the State Department

formally announced the imposition of sanctions under the Iran

Nonproliferation Act of 2000 against two Indian entities for the

transfer of WMD equipment and technology to Iran. If you could

just provide us a little bit more information on that, what it means

with respect to cooperation from the Indian government on transfers.

And finally my question is this: does Iran today continue to be

dependent on getting foreign technologies to complete their nuclear

program? Or, if you were to make sure that no new technologies

could get into Iran that related to nuclear issues, would they have

the indigenous capability now to complete a nuclear weapons program? I have heard conflicting testimony. I have heard some say

that Iran continues to be dependent on some technologies that they

don’t have domestically in order to complete their work, and some

say they have already got everything they need. So if you could just

comment on both the questions, first with respect to the imposition

of sanctions on the two Indian entities, and then with respect to

Iran’s capabilities.

Mr. SEMMEL. I think on the imposition of the two entities, I

think part of your question may be motivated by the timing implicit in your question that the report came up, I think, some time

after the House had voted on this. I can only tell you that, as you

know, having worked on the Senate side for some time and having

written many pieces of legislation for my boss then requiring reports, I can tell you that in this case putting this report together

141

was required reading voluminous documents, I think well in excess

of 10,000, involving inter-agency cooperation between the intelligence community on this. The time that it took to put this together I think was extraordinary. It came in late. I honestly don’t

think it was intentional. I think it was an evolution of the way in

which this report was put together.

Now, the two entities that were identified had to be identified because of existing law. I mean, the law simply said we had to take

these steps. I believe one of the entities was identified not because

of any kind of activity it had with Iran on the nuclear side but on

the chemical side, if I recall. You may recall this better than I.

So this is something which we are obligated to do in terms of assessing through our various sources of information that these entities have been involved in activities that are subject to a determination that they have been in violation of our act.

On the other question on is Iran self-sufficient, my best guess on

this is no, they are not self-sufficient at this point in time. I think

if there were a complete wall around Iran they would not be able

to import certain kinds of technologies or information or insights,

for that matter. I think what you would have is, since I happen to

feel that Iran is absolutely determined to have the nuclear weapons

capability, I think they are on a glide path that we have been able

to slow down and interrupt, sort of like a heat-seeking missile

going off track but going in one direction, that direction being the

ability to have the nuclear weapons capability.

I think if we were to put a wall around Iran that was effective—

and that, by the way, is virtually impossible, given the long borders

that it has—it would slow down a process. It would make the time

tables that you alluded to in an earlier question protract out for a

much, much longer period of time.

I don’t think—my colleagues might want to comment on this—

that Iran has the total indigenous capability at this point in time

to be able to move from where they are now to having a nuclear

weapons capability and nuclear weapons, as well.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

Is there anything that any of the four of you would like to put

on the record, any question we should have asked you that we

didn’t think to ask you that would be important to put on the

record? Frankly, sometimes that question solicits sometimes the

most important part of our hearing. So is there anything we need

to put on the record?

Mr. TOBEY. No, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me then thank you all, Mr. Tobey, Mr.

Semmel, Mr. David, and Mr. Aloise. Again, Mr. David, our country

is grateful for your service. The Congress respects your service, as

well, and whatever you are going to be doing next week we wish

you all the best.

Mr. DAVID. Thank you very much.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

We are going to have a 1-minute break and we will go with our

third panel.

[Recess.]

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Mr. SHAYS. We will begin with the third panel: Ambassador

Thomas Graham, Chairman of the Bipartisan Security Group,

Global Security Institute; Mr. Baker Spring, F.M. Kirby Research

Fellow for National Security Policy of The Heritage Foundation;

Mr. Jonathan Granoff, president of Global Security Institute; Mr.

Henry D. Sokolski, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; and

Professor Frank von Hippel, Co-Chairman, International Panel on

Fissile Materials.

Gentlemen, I know it is late. I don’t do the 5-minute rule as

much with the third panel. If you waited the longest, I will stay

here until you make your statement, but we will do the 5-minute

and I will trip over another 5 minutes.

It is great to have you here. You know the questions we asked

the other panels. If you care to answer that in your presentation,

your full statement will be in the record as written so you have

some choices here. And if there were some questions we didn’t ask

that you want to put on the record in your opening statement that

we should have asked, we are happy to have you do that, as well.

Ambassador, thank you so very much. Thank you again for your

patience, and you have the floor.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record that all five witnesses have responded in the affirmative.

Now, Ambassador, I can believe what you tell me.

STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS GRAHAM, JR., CHAIRMAN, BIPARTISAN SECURITY GROUP, GLOBAL SECURITY INSTITUTE; BAKER SPRING, F.M. KIRBY RESEARCH FELLOW

FOR NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION; JONATHAN GRANOFF, PRESIDENT, GLOBAL SECURITY

INSTITUTE; HENRY D. SOKOLSKI, NONPROLIFERATION POLICY EDUCATION CENTER; AND FRANK VON HIPPEL, COCHAIRMAN, INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON FISSILE MATERIALS

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS GRAHAM, JR.

Ambassador GRAHAM. Mr. Chairman, I have a short statement

which I will read. If, in the course of the subsequent discussions,

you want to revisit the issue of how easy it is to make a nuclear

weapon, I had a very interesting experience in South Africa some

years ago in which they explained to me what they did, and I

would be happy to talk about that later if you wish.

Mr. SHAYS. I would love that. I won’t count that as your time

now, so we will make sure we ask.

Ambassador GRAHAM. All right.

Paul Nitze was the archetypical cold warrior and nuclear weapon

strategist, yet in the last op ed that he wrote, at the age of 92, in

1999, entitled, A Danger Mostly to Ourselves, he said, ‘‘I know that

the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear

weapons has always been their complete elimination.’’ Senator Sam

Nunn, in an article in the Financial Times in late 2004 said our

current nuclear weapon policies, which in effect continue to rely on

the deteriorating Russian early warning system to continue to

make correct judgments ‘‘risks an Armageddon of our own making.’’

And former Defense Secretary William Perry said not long ago that

143

in his judgment there could be a greater than 50 percent chance

of a nuclear detonation on U.S. soil in the next decade.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT, is the centerpiece of world security. President John F. Kennedy truly feared

that nuclear weapons would sweep all over the world, ultimately

leading to 40 or 50 nuclear weapons states in the world today. If

this had happened we would live in an almost unimaginable security situation today. Every conflict would carry with it the risk of

going nuclear, and it would be impossible to keep nuclear weapons

out of the hands of terrorists, they would be so widespread. But

this did not happen, and the principal reason that it did not was

the entry into force of the NPT in 1970, combined with the extended deterrence policies of the two rival superpowers during the

cold war, which now have passed into history.

However, the NPT nuclear weapon states, particularly the

United States, have never really delivered on the disarmament

part of the NPT’s central treaty bargain, which would mean for the

United States, at a minimum, ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban

Treaty, revival of the nuclear weapon reduction process begun by

President Reagan, and a drastic downgrading of the role of nuclear

weapons in the security process.

Now, in the wake of nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran

and A.Q. Kahn illegal nuclear transfers ring in Pakistan, the other

side of the NPT’s central bargain has begun to fall apart.

It is of paramount importance to attempt to revive the NPS as

a treaty system based on law and to restore its credibility. In the

context of a breakdown of world order and the war on terror, with

the looming potential failure of the NPT and the ensuing likelihood

of widespread nuclear proliferation that President Kennedy so

rightly feared many years ago an increasing possibility, with nuclear tension a growing threat, with thousands of strategic nuclear

weapons on high alert and a Russian early warning system continuing to decline in effectiveness, the urgency of such an effort

simply cannot be under-stated. But if, in fact, it is indeed too late

to change the course of nations with respect to the NPT in order

to save the NPT, then, in the interest of the security and safety of

us all, some way must be found to proceed directly to the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons, as Paul Nitze urged over 6

years ago. Very difficult, but not impossible.

But in this the United States must lead. There is no alternative.

In order to do this, the United States must return to its historic

destiny of keeping the peace and prospering the development of the

community of nations, democracies, free market economies, the

international rule of law, international institutions, and the international security treaty system.

As the Secretary of State said last year in a speech to the American Society of International Law, when the United States respects

its ‘‘international legal obligations’’ and supports an international

system based on the rule of law, we do the work of making this

world a better place, but also a safe and more secure place for

America.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Graham follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Ambassador, for your very thoughtful

statement. We appreciate it.

Mr. Spring.

STATEMENT OF BAKER SPRING

Mr. SPRING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, this is a

pressing topic, and I very much commend the subcommittee for

holding such a timely hearing. Along with the related issue of terrorism, I don’t think that there is any more important security

problem facing the United States than this today.

I would like to focus my remarks on the recommendations of the

U.N. Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction. You have heard

from Dr. Blix earlier, and I think that it is worth the time of the

committee to at least assess some of the more important recommendations, at least that I found in the Commission’s report.

Let me say that I think that it is essentially a mixed bag. There

are some recommendations in the Commission report that I think

are very positive and valuable with regard to what U.S. policy

should be toward nuclear nonproliferation, as well as potentially

other weapon of mass destruction, but I think that there are others

that could muddy the waters and make it more difficult to move

forward, so I just want to itemize those, both on the positive and

negative side of the ledger.

First, I think that the Commission was absolutely correct in saying we need to focus on the underlying motivations that cause

countries to try to pursue weapon of mass destruction and nuclear

weapons, in particular. Getting at that dynamic to me I think is

at the heart of the problem. That suggests a two-track approach to

nonproliferation, one that is the NPT track that is global in nature,

and the second track that looks at the regional issues that I think

are coming to the fore, particularly in this era, in order to address

those underlying security concerns that would drive nuclear proliferation.

The second is one that has been addressed by this hearing in detail, also addressed by the Commission report, which is the special

threat posed by terrorists with weapon of mass destruction, and

again particularly nuclear weapons. In that particular case I think

the real risk is, if they get them, the propensity to use them is

much higher than for states, for reasons that are unique to terrorist organizations.

Another positive recommendation of the Commission report is

very much related to the first issue I raised, which is this regional

dimension. The Commission report addresses that, particularly in

the hard cases of Iran and India and Pakistan. In this section of

the report I wish they had spent a little more time on North Korea.

They did that in other sections, but I think that is to be commended.

Continuing the Russian-U.S. nuclear arms control process, the

United States is continuing to do that, and I think supporting the

administration in its engagements with Russia which occurred earlier this month, as I understand it, regarding the future of start,

for example, is important.

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Maintaining high standards on controlling fissile material and

making sure that those control mechanisms are effective is very

important, in my view.

Let me deal with what I think are some of the problematic elements of the Commission’s report, which was also addressed by

Ambassador Graham.

The temptation to move directly to comprehensive nuclear disarmament I think is wrong headed. What they are basically saying

is that we are having trouble in the nonproliferation regime; let’s

move the goalpost farther down the field in the hope that we would

somehow achieve those goals more quickly. I think that is sort of

convoluted logic and I think it carries some very significant security risks for the United States.

The importance of the Nation state system—I think that the

Commission pays too little credit to nations to make decisions regarding their own security, and in this case particularly the United

States. The Commission makes recommendations that would concede to the United Nations Security Council greater powers than

I think that they really should be exercising in terms of making decisions about when a threat is present and what we would do about

that in the case of the United States as an individual nation.

Pursuing no first use policies, as well as granting broader negative security assurances—I believe that the idea of the United

States providing security assurances on the positive side, as we

have done with some problematic states in the past vis-a-vis proliferation, like South Korea and Taiwan, are very important. And

modernizing our nuclear arsenal to make sure that those security

assurances are effective is very important.

The same thing goes with regard to withdrawing U.S. nuclear

weapons from foreign soil, in this case particularly NATO Europe.

That is part of our essential security relationship with our NATO

allies. I don’t think that we should compromise on that in the context of hoped-for nonproliferation or, more particularly, arms control goals.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—I believe very

strongly that we have to modernize our nuclear force to make it effective in the current environment. We have a hold-over deterrent

from the cold war. I think we need to look at making sure that

force is safe, reliable, and effective, and I think the comprehensive

test ban treaty is a problem with that.

De-alerting nuclear weapons has the same problem.

The one that I object to the most is the idea that defensive systems like missile defense systems are effectively in the same category as weapon of mass destruction, as they were treated in an

intertwined fashion in the Commission’s report. They are fundamentally different, and I think we should treat them that way.

So I think that the subcommittee should look at the recommendations of the Commission with a discriminating eye.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spring follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Granoff.

STATEMENT OF JONATHAN GRANOFF

Mr. GRANOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First I want to extol not only your virtue of courage but your extraordinary endurance, and I would like to offer for the record two

articles, one from the Chicago Sun Times and the other from the

San Francisco Chronicle extolling the virtues of the WMD Commission, the Blix Commission, if I am permitting.

Mr. SHAYS. We will put that in the record. Thank you.

Mr. GRANOFF. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. And, just for the record, this is a very interesting

hearing, so I could just tell you we are very grateful that you all

had the patience. We get to participate and stay awake.

Mr. GRANOFF. Well, I was told in 1965, when I met Robert Kennedy here while I was working on the Hill, the reality of the Cuban

missile crisis, and that on several moments civilization hung in the

balance, and he told the group of interns, in rapt attention, as we

were, that addressing this issue would determine not only the

moral standard of our time but whether, in fact, humanity would

survive. So since that time the issue has been in my gut, in my

heart, and in my soul, and so I consider it an enormous honor to

be able to address it here in these hallowed halls.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. GRANOFF. The shock of coming to the brink stimulated negotiations which culminated in the entry into force in 1970 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which contains the structure to prevent proliferation in the present based on a pledge of nuclear disarmament in the future, but the pledge must have credibility and the

nuclear weapon states, particularly the U.S. and Russia, with over

96 percent of these devices, have not fully come to grips with their

fundamental dilemma. They want to keep their nuclear weapons

indefinitely, and at the same time condemn others who would attempt to acquire them. This contradiction undercuts the treaty and

enables our adversaries to challenge U.S. sincerity and ignore our

recommendations.

Moreover, incoherence in policies leads to instability in cooperation, and nothing could be more hazardous today.

In order to prevent proliferation to more states and to dangerous

sub-state actors, far greater cooperation is required. This will not

be obtained if some states flaunt their disarmament obligations yet

display a singular passion for nonproliferation.

The path to stability is an unambiguous reaffirmation of collective security through the rule of law, which in this instance requires a clear commitment to rendering the weapons, themselves,

as unacceptable. This is both the correct and practical compass

point.

Are we urging disarmament this year? Hardly. The U.S. sets the

example. Lowering the political currency of nuclear weapons can

make us all safer. We are urging steps that will enhance security,

strengthen fulfillment of existing legal obligations, provide confidence through verification to the international community, and

each recommendation must stand on its own merits. Each must deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:56 Jun 11, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00175 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35767.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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crease the risk of use, diminish access of terrorists to catastrophic

weapons and materials to build them, and strengthen nonproliferation.

Here are five:

A Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, and we commend the administration for putting it forward, but for it to be effective there must

be verification. Verification, as President Reagan said correctly,

trust but verify. And the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, the

SORT Treaty, which requires Russia and the United States each

to deploy no more than 2,200 strategic warheads by 2012, includes

no provision for verification. Start inspections end in 2009. It is imperative to establish a verification for the SORT Treaty to have

international political meaning. Goodwill is not politically nor practically sufficient. We need laws with verification.

Reduction of the operational status of nuclear weapons—the

United States and Russia still have thousands of warheads on a

use them or lose them posture. It should be an absolute scandal

that every moment of every day the two countries remain locked

in a Cold-War-style nuclear standoff. It is time to end launch on

warning. The U.S. and Russia should follow the admonition of Candidate George W. Bush, who clearly said, ‘‘We should remove as

many weapons as possible from high alert hair trigger status, another unnecessary vestige of cold war confrontation. Preparation

for quick launch within minutes after warning of an attack was the

rule during the era of superpower rivalry, but today, for two nations at peace to keep so many weapons on high alert may create

unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch.’’

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would prevent the miniaturization of immature arsenals, it would restrain confinement of advanced arsenals, it would protect the environment, and it would

create the infrastructure, the legal and practical infrastructure of

cooperation around the world with U.S. leadership, if we would but

support it. It was promised in the preamble of the NPT, it was

pledged in order to gain the extension of 1995, and it was reaffirmed at the review of 2000. Moreover—and this might be the

most important aspect of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—it

would send a clear message of the diminishing currency of the

weapons. The United States has tested more than anyone else our

arsenal is secure, safe, and reliable. So said the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, and they were correct.

A diminishing role of nuclear weapons in security policies, as a

minimum step, we must unambiguously establish negative security

assurances. In order to gain extension of the treaty in 1995, countries without nuclear weapons were promised that if they would accede to the extension, that they would not be threatened with nuclear strikes. To ask a country to foreswear these devices and still

suffer under the threat of nuclear attack is so patently inequitable

as to lend credence to critiques of the regime, itself. The U.S.

should support rather than oppose giving these assurances of nonuse to nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT.

Moreover, during the cold war we justified the first use policy

based on the superiority of the USSR’s conventional force threat to

western Europe. The threat is gone. It is time to adopt a no first

use policy.

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These are modest proposals that demonstrate a beginning to authentically reduce the political posture of the weapons. These actions are achievable, inexpensive, and they are available now. Reliance on ultimate weapon of mass destruction leads the world in exactly the wrong direction. Its logical outcome is an increasing militarization of the world rather than the needed movement toward

law and cooperation, and its logical expression reaches burlesque

proportions in the aspiration to unilaterally weaponize the firmaments rather than pursue a cooperative non-weaponized regime

for outer space.

Is it a wonder that, while the rational leaders of the world’s most

powerful nations daily place on alert thousands of devices delivering immeasurable destructive capacity, cynicism prevails? Is such

a hopeless future the best we can provide our children? Do we really believe that counter-proliferation exercised through ad hoc coalitions can be an adequate substitute for effective diplomacy? Why

are we pursuing a regime based on principles of seasonal friendship rather than the uniformity and reliability of law? Have we forgotten that the weapons of today have triggering devices with the

destructive capacity of Hiroshima? We need no longer live with this

sword over our heads.

In India today there are Hindu fundamentalists speculating seriously whether these are the end days, and, like them, there are in

the United States fundamentalist Christians who believe very

much like their Islamicist brethren or Messianic Jews that we

await the final battles which will bring an end to history, and all

of them believe that this disaster is coming about from unseen

hands. But, Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress, you and I know

they are wrong. It is not unseen hands that is bringing about this

destruction; it is hands of rational men in these very halls. I ask

you to look at these hands, and I ask you to have the courage to

prove these speculations wrong.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Granoff follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Granoff.

Mr. Sokolski. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HENRY D. SOKOLSKI

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am a little humbled. This is quite an assembly that you have

put together of experts. It is an honor to be here, and I thank you

for holding the hearing.

Mr. SHAYS. It is an honor to have you here. And it is an assembly of some very fine experts, so thank you for being part of it.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I want to talk about the topic that you assigned

us, and I guess my message today is that your hearing is perhaps

too timely. I say that because the nonproliferation provisions in the

NPT have pretty much been watered down for a long time, and

they have been overshadowed, I think, too much by many countries’ backing of the most dangerous and uneconomical forms of nuclear energy. I think you heard some expressions of that enthusiasm, though muted, even today.

What is worse, since the early 1990’s we and our allies have

shied away from enforcing the NPT against the world’s worst

proliferators. Now, sadly, I don’t think there is any technical or

really any simple diplomatic substitute for these treaty-based systems, particularly the NPT. I think that is why I have spent so

much time, both in my service on the Hill at the Defense Department and advising the CIA, and in running my own center, on commissioning research and looking into how to make the nonproliferation provisions of these rather weak institutional barriers, the NPT

and the IAEA, much more effective.

We have commissioned at the center that I run, the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a good number of analyses

over the last, I’d say, four or 5 years. Today what I would like to

do is just give you four of the key findings of this research.

First, I think if we are to do better we really need to clarify what

the NPT protects as being peaceful. A key reason why the nonproliferation provisions of the NPT have become more difficult to

enforce is that most nations, including Iran, North Korea, and, I

hate to say it, the U.S. Government, have adopted too generous a

view of what the inalienable right to develop research and produce

peaceful nuclear energy is under the NPT’s article four. Simply because a nuclear activity or material might have some conceivable

civilian application and a country is willing to let international inspectors come and monitor them occasionally I would submit is not

enough to meet the criteria of what is peaceful under the NPT.

In addition, the nuclear activity or material must also be capable

of being monitored in a manner that will prevent it from being

used for bombs. This is laid out in article three. And their applications must be economical enough clearly to be beneficial. I think if

you note when you read the treaty it says the purpose is to share

the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy. I don’t think it was meant

to promote uneconomical activities that bring countries within days

or weeks of having bombs. That is not the purpose of the treaty.

It has become that, and that is a big problem.

Certainly building commercial nuclear fuel making plants which

could bring nations to the brink of having bombs is hardly a per

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se right under the NPT. Actually, if it is possible I would like to

submit some testimony that I gave on this very issue which basically relies on the research of other experts and legal authorities

and historians going into what the per se rights are under the

NPT, with your permission. Indeed, such a reading of the NPT

would make the treaty one that promotes the spread of nuclear

weapons making capabilities, which is the exact opposite of its intent.

Second, the IAEA should concede what it can’t safeguard and

seek more funds to safeguard what it can. The ability of the IAEA

to account for nuclear materials that are needed to make nuclear

weapons is hampered not only by a lack of candor regarding what

the Agency’s inability to safeguard nuclear fuel-making activities

is, but also its persistent tendency to rationalize away new safeguards and physical security challenges and to shy from raising the

funds needed to meet these new challenges.

You had a series of questions during the hearing that were quite

interesting about whether or not the IAEA budget was growing or

not. It is growing, but it is puny. To give you some idea, we spent

about $6 billion on the Transportation Security Agency to check

your luggage and to make sure that you don’t bring liquids on of

a certain type. We have 100 percent false alarm rate for that particular activity. We take old women and children and we put them

through the wringer. The IAEA is not permitted, by its own charter, to have a false alarm rate higher than 5 percent. Its budget

right now—and this is in the notes. We standardized it to 2004 dollars—is roughly about $100-some-odd million.

Now, I heard testimony that said that while $30 million, or even

more, had been added, but that there was a lot of resistance because the tax burden on us or on other countries. I don’t know.

That doesn’t sound right to me. The $30 million just isn’t that

much.

For the last 20 years the Agency safeguards budget has been little more than doubled in constant dollars. During that same period,

however, civilian stockpiles of separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium, which the Agency is obligated to safeguard because they are directly usable for nuclear weapons, have increased

six times over. This does not include the material that is not safeguarded, which is not six times over but twenty times over. The actual amount of civilian nuclear weapons usable material that goes

unaccounted for each year, meanwhile, has been increasing steadily

as the number and output of nuclear fuel-making facilities grows

internationally.

If we are serious about safeguarding against the spread of nuclear weapons and preventing nuclear theft or terrorism, these

trends have to change. The IAEA may be able to monitor as they

look at fuel-making activities, but it cannot inspect these facilities

to provide timely warning of diversions or thefts, which are equivalent to many, many nuclear weapons worth each year. It should

admit this publicly. I think Mr. Elbarday is to be commended for

coming as close as he has to admitting it.

Mr. SHAYS. I want you to be very specific. They should admit

what publicly?

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Mr. SOKOLSKI. That they cannot inspect nuclear fuel-making facilities to provide sufficient warning of a possible diversion to intervene and prevent it. In other words, by the time they find out that

several bombs worth has gone missing, it can sometimes be years

after the diversion could have occurred where the material was

missing.

By the way, this gets to one of the problems the administration

and Congress should have about a fissile material cutoff. Those nuclear fuel-making facilities that would be examined by a Fissile

Material Cutoff Treaty, it would be wonderful if you could verify

them, yet right now you can’t. The administration isn’t entirely

candid about this because it only says you could hide the whole facility.

The truth is, if you knew where the facilities were, you would not

be able to know in any given year how much it produced, and the

difference of what you knew and what the truth was could be

equal, depending on the facilities, literally to scores of weapons

worth in the case of one of the large facilities just brought online

in Japan. So it is kind of like keeping track of the funds in Enron.

If you don’t know what they are making, you don’t know what they

are stealing. And that is where we are. People need to come out

and admit that, and they are not.

Third, governments must put security first. By the way, I do

make recommendations for increasing the IAEA’s budget, and they

should get more money based on user fees, to be blunt. Right now

Italy has no reactors. It pays more into safeguards than South

Korea, who has 18 reactors. There is something perverse about

that. You have to change that. And there are a number of things

where the IAEA has identified where they can do better. They

know how to do it; they just lack money. So you have to make the

distinctions. You have to give them the money where they need it

and encourage them to be candid where no amount of money is

going to make much difference for the time being.

Third, governments must put security first instead of subsidizing

uneconomical, dangerous nuclear energy projects. Concern for nuclear security has increasingly taken a back seat to states’ encouragement of uneconomical nuclear energy projects that can bring

countries right to the brink. Japan, which has already been rocked

by revelations that its pilot plutonium-making plants had lost track

of roughly 40 bombs worth of material over the years, just began

operation of one of the world’s largest reprocessing plants. This

plant is certain to lose money, and experts project the IAEA will

lose track of nearly 50 bombs worth of crude nuclear weapons

worth of plutonium there annually.

Other equally problematic nuclear fuel-making operations are

underway in Brazil, South Africa, India, Ukraine, and Argentina.

One has to wonder why the IAEA has correctly established that

there is no economic or technical requirement for additional fuelmaking capacity over the next ten to twenty years, yet the U.S. is

doing little to object to these efforts and arguably is encouraging

them in order to get them to pursue becoming a nuclear fuel supplying state under its new initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy

Partnership, which Mr. von Hippel has done a great deal of work

on.

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Here it would help to pace nuclear power’s expansion and that

of commercial nuclear fuel——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me do this. I think I need to interrupt you to

make sure we get to the Professor.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Let me stop right here then.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Sorry.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sokolski follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. von Hippel. Let me just tell you I am going to

give you a choice here. I am coming back after my votes. I have

kept you here all day, so I am not expecting that you would have

to stay, but whoever stays, even if it is one of you, I will be back

to have a dialog, because, frankly, I think you can help put these

pieces together that the other two panels have introduced and so

on.

What the bell meant was four votes, but, Professor von Hippel,

we have time to have you make your statement.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. OK. I will make it in 5 minutes.

Mr. SHAYS. You can go over a little bit. We will be fine.

STATEMENT OF FRANK VON HIPPEL

Mr. VON HIPPEL. Thank you. Thank you for holding this hearing.

I have organized my statement into why the NPT is important,

why it is in trouble, and what the United States can do about it.

Mr. SHAYS. Great.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. Why it is important, the NPT embodies an almost universally shared recognize that nuclear weapons are a

threat to all mankind. It recognizes that the weapons, themselves,

are the threat, no matter which country possesses them. It also

represents a commitment to do something about this to prevent the

spread of nuclear weapons to more countries and to reduce their

numbers in the countries that have them ultimately to zero.

Under the NPT, the Atomic Energy Agency checks whether nonweapon states are complying with their commitments. We know as

much as we do about Iran’s nuclear activities, for example, only because Iran is a party to the NPT, which gives the IAEA the right

to go and look.

Now, why is it in trouble? One reason is that the non-weapon

states are increasingly reluctant to accept additional restrictions

when the United States has dropped any pretense of making irreversible nuclear arms reductions. The non-weapon states won’t pay

attention to our priorities if we don’t pay attention to theirs.

In June I saw how angry this dialog has become when I attended

a conference in Oslo on minimization of highly enriched uranium

in civilian nuclear applications, one of your concerns. The concern

was that, as you have indicated, that highly enriched uranium can

be used by terrorists to make improvised nuclear explosions, but

South Africa’s Ambassador to the IAEA at that conference declared

that the NPT is not an a la carte menu from which states’ parties

may choose their preferences while ignoring other aspects, and he

referred in particular to the lack of progress on the Fissile Material

Cutoff Treaty, which is one of the 13 steps that the U.S. committed

to at the NPT Review Conference in 2000.

The treaty, which is, in the words of the U.N. resolution, the

agreement in 2000 called for immediate commencement of negotiations under an effectively verifiable treaty banning the production

of fissile materials for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive

devices.

It is 6 years later, and negotiations at the Conference of Disarmament have not begun because of what I consider a petty disagreement by the U.S. and China over the proposed agenda.

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Now, with regard to what the United States can do, I would like

to offer a list of four things that we could do to help restore legitimacy to the NPT and thereby to its usefulness as a tool against

the dangers of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

First, a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty will only happen if the

United States gives this priority. U.S. also has to support an internationally verified fissile cutoff, not oppose it, as we do today. We

can’t require that non-weapon states be open to IAEA inspection

but refuse such inspections for ourselves. I agree with Mr. Sokolski

that there is an uncertainty of a percent or so or up to a few percent in the measurements at facilities which handle highly enriched uranium and plutonium, but that is much better than nothing.

I recall the first President Bush’s insistence that under the

Chemical Weapons Convention international inspections should be

possible any time, anywhere, without right of refusal. He did not

say except for in the United States.

Now, the second thing is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It

is almost always at the top of the list for non-weapon states. The

U.S. Senate refused to ratify the CTBT in 1999. The global test

moratorium has continued, however, and the directors of the U.S.

nuclear weapons labs have continued to certify each year that the

U.S. nuclear stockpile is safe and reliable and doesn’t require testing. The National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Energy agree that this situation can be maintained indefinitely, although they may not agree on how best to do it.

Under these circumstances, it would be in the U.S. interest to

ratify the CTBT and lock in other countries, as well. There will always be the escape clause that gives each state party to the treaty

the right to withdraw from it if it decides that its supreme national

interests are jeopardized.

Third, we should take the objective of nuclear disarmament seriously. Why does the U.S. keep thousands of nuclear warheads? Because Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads. And if it came to

nuclear war, we would want to be able to destroy as many as possible of theirs before they could be used. Why not then agree to destroy as many as possible of these warheads now by agreement and

eliminate the hair trigger situation which has been discussed?

Russia and the U.S. could get down to a thousand warheads

each—that is a thousand total warheads, not just deployed warheads—before we would need to ask other countries to reduce.

Today we each have enough material to make more than 10,000.

Fourth—and this brings me back to my colleagues’ statement—

continue the moratorium on spent fuel reprocessing. This is an

issue that is being driven by Congress that has major implications

for the future of nuclear proliferation. For 30 years the U.S. has

been able to say to other countries we don’t reprocess and you don’t

need to, either. In combination with the invisible hand of economics, that posture has been very effective.

The number of states having their reactor fuel reprocessed has

declined dramatically in those 30 years. Congress now proposes to

have federally financed reprocessing of spent power reactor fuel.

The reason is the delay in the availability of Yucca Mountain. A

reprocessing plant would be an alternative destination for spent

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fuel, but it would be a very expensive one. And such damage to

U.S. nonproliferation policy is completely unnecessary. Storing

older spent fuel in dry casks at reactor sites or at centralized storage sites would cost one-tenth as much as reprocessing and would

be much less hazardous than reprocessing.

Mr. SHAYS. Professor, I have about 4 minutes, which is still

enough time, but if you could kind of close up.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. I am down to my last half page.

Mr. SHAYS. Great.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. Just on that point, though, the hazard from

spent fuel in dry cask storage at reactor sites is a minuscule portion of the total hazard of that site. The major hazard is from the

reactor core, the next down is the recently discharged spent fuel in

the pools. The dry cask storage is negligible hazard.

So, in summary, the non-weapon states will not support the U.S.

effort to further limit their rights under the NPT if the U.S. doesn’t

begin to live up to our own central NPT commitment to irreversibly

end the arms race with the FMCT and the CTBT and get on with

the task of nuclear disarmament.

I would also like to make one specific suggestion: that Congress

require of the executive branch an annual report from the President summarizing relevant initiatives, progress, and obstacles to

implementation of U.S. commitments under the NPT.

Finally, on how easy it is——

Mr. SHAYS. I have now two and a half minutes.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. OK, but you really wanted to know the answer

to this.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Go for it.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. How hard is it to make a nuclear weapon? John

Phillips——

Mr. SHAYS. Are you going to stay or do you need to leave, because I am coming back?

Mr. VON HIPPEL. I have a 9 o’clock flight from Dulles.

Mr. SHAYS. Then you are fine. You can stay.

[The prepared statement of Mr. von Hippel follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Let me do this. My staff can tell you where you can

get a sandwich.

You have to stay, because I want to know how you do it.

Ambassador GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. I just want to say that I would welcome all of you

staying, but to force you to stay would be house arrest and I am

not going to do that, but I think I have another 25 minutes before

I am back here, and I will be back here. I think Mr. Granoff will

be back here, so I am definitely back here.

Thank you.

We are recessed.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. I call this hearing to order.

What I would like, I will let you, Professor, tell me, and, Ambassador, I would like to have you tell me what I would like to hear

from there, but in regards to the issue. This is the point I am trying to make: we have always known people could learn how to

make a weapon, so to me the issue is not is there all the documentation if you are a bright student can you do it. The question

is what I learned that I need to be disavowed of if it is not true

is that basically to make a low-yield weapon using enriched uranium you don’t need a lot of specialized parts, and you could, if you

could get the weapons grade material, create a nuclear explosion.

Professor, I will have you start out on it.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. You are absolutely right. In fact, it is so easy

to make a nuclear explosion—and it is not necessarily low yield.

We are talking about Hiroshima scale—with highly enriched uranium metal, that the Department of Energy worries about improvised nuclear devices. That is, they worry about terrorists getting

into a bunker which has highly enriched uranium metal in it and

actually improvising an explosion on the spot before they can be

stopped by the guard force. That is pretty easy.

Now, when you were talking about the Princeton undergraduate,

John Aristotle Phillips, he wasn’t a student of mine, but he did this

as a project for a course of a colleague of mine, and it is considered

so easy even by undergraduates to do a highly enriched uranium

bomb that they always go for plutonium. They want to show that

they are smart enough to do a plutonium bomb, which is an implosion bomb. In fact, the Hiroshima bomb was not designed at Los

Alamos, it was designed by an assistant professor and a couple of

graduate students in Berkeley the summer before. The whole Los

Alamos head scratching and hair tearing was devoted to the plutonium bomb. But a plutonium bomb is not necessarily out of reach

of terrorists, either. It is more difficult.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, with that, though, do you need material that would be harder to get a hold of? Is the material an issue

there?

Mr. VON HIPPEL. No. Well, the plutonium is.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t mean the plutonium.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. No. In fact, Phillips went to call up DuPont,

what kind of explosives to I use, and they were happy to tell him

what kind of explosive to use. He went to the National Technology

Information Service and asked for the Los Alamos Primer, which

was the lectures that were given at Los Alamos to the incoming

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people by this Berkeley assistant professor, and when they came

out with the primer, which has now since then been published by

the University of Chicago—no, by Berkeley University Press, California University Press. They said usually when people ask for this

they ask for these, too, with a stack of documents. So, in fact, it

was referred to in the testimony before that this was given as a

project. By the way, Phillips didn’t do it right, despite his claims.

He actually made a mistake in the design. This is beyond the ordinary undergraduate, but it has been done by graduate students

correctly.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Gotcha.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. For the plutonium weapon.

Mr. SHAYS. Super.

Mr. VON HIPPEL. I had a colleague, Ted Taylor, at Princeton for

a number of years who was an ace Los Alamos weapons designer

in his previous incarnation, and he was the one who actually first

raised the issue of nuclear terrorism in the 1970’s, and he was concerned about the U.S. going to—at that time the U.S. was pushing

toward a plutonium economy, and he was very concerned about

having plutonium used as a commercial fuel by the millions of

bombs worth, is what people were envisioning at that time. He was

making the argument—and it was an argument. I mean, the community was not unanimous about this—that, in fact, terrorists

could do it. It is more difficult, but you shouldn’t ignore it.

Mr. SHAYS. Gotcha. Let me just go to you, Ambassador. You were

going to tell me up front, and then I will get off of this issue, but

I would like to just get it off the table here.

Ambassador GRAHAM. Well, I just wanted to, Mr. Chairman, tell

you about my experience in South Africa with the South African

government.

Mr. SHAYS. Can you give us a timeframe of when you were

there?

Ambassador GRAHAM. Yes, I will. I headed the U.S. Government

efforts to permanently extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

in the 1993–1995 timeframe, and so I traveled all over the world

looking for votes. It was a little bit like a political convention. And

one of the places I went to was South Africa, because they were

a very key vote. They were a swing vote. They had the possibility

of bringing in a lot of non-aligned countries who were opposed to

us to support our view that the NPT should be permanent.

So I went to South Africa and I was there for 2 days with a colleague and the first day I spent with the government in their offices, and then the second day they gave us a tour of their former

nuclear weapon establishment, and they took us to a shut-down

nuclear enrichment plant that they used to make the HEU, and

then they took us over about ten miles away to Wallendaba, where

they actually assembled the weapons, and they took us to the

building where they assembled the weapons, and they showed us

a large room. They said this is where we assembled the weapons.

Look around you. Nothing has changed.

There was nothing in that room you couldn’t find in a high school

machine shop. They showed us the cases they had used to move the

weapons around in. It was clear they would fit in the back of a

panel truck. And then they gave us a short lecture on why they

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built the weapons, which I won’t go into unless you insist. And

then they explained how. And they said that we spent on this program $150 million. I got that wrong. We spent on this program $25

million and had 150 people working on it, including the janitor. Nobody knew what we were doing. That doesn’t count, of course, the

money we spent enriching the uranium to weapons grade, just the

bomb assembly part—$25 million, 150 people. We built six bombs

of 20 kilotons. We didn’t need to test them because we used the

gun barrel design. You are the first Americans to see this other

than those two on the International Atomic Energy inspection

team. We are telling you this for a reason, and the reason is that

once the fissile material is acquired—we made our own over in

Wallendaba 20 miles away, but if the fissile material can be acquired, the rest is really easy, really easy. Any government can do

it.

Mr. SHAYS. The rest is really easy?

Ambassador GRAHAM. Really, the rest is really easy. Virtually

any government could do it and many sub-national groups like terrorist organizations could do it, in their view. You don’t need an

infrastructure. You just need a few skilled scientists and engineers

and the fissile material.

So that goes just to reinforce what everyone else has said, but

here is a country that had direct experience doing it.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Sokolski, comment?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I think that is the reason why the IAEA could be

a heck of a lot more important than it is, because it has the job

of keeping a count of the weapons usable materials that are produced literally in the open. I think it is important to keep in mind

that in the case of highly enriched uranium some scientists like to

joke and say, well, you need a tall ladder and a tube to assemble.

I mean, I don’t think it is that easy, but you are not talking about

very much.

In the case of plutonium, I don’t think we should look at this as

one is more difficult so they will do the easier, No. 1. No. 2, so we

would be OK if a terrorist got some plutonium? I don’t think so.

In other words, what that allows a group to do, once it has possession, is raise literally kilotons of uncertainty as to what they will

be able to do, just like Iraq. You will not know. So once they give

plausible reason for you to believe they stole it, you are in a world

of worry.

I think, in addition, you need to understand again something

which there has been not very much candor about in the official

world. When I worked in the Government I had the same problem.

I worked in the Defense Department. People do not want to admit

that they cannot keep track of this material, even in civilian facilities that are declared and monitored by the IAEA, never mind the

ones that might be hidden away. They can do only such a rough

job that, in the case of a commercial-sized facility that enriches and

reprocesses, you will literally they say lost in the pipes or in solution many bombs worth per year.

Now, if you focus on that point it changes the way you look at

the whole problem of what to do. If you believe you can monitor

and safeguard—and safeguard means not just look at, but get

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pleted by getting folks to land with Black Hawk helicopters or

whatever they do. Depending on how you see that, it changes everything as to what you do.

Mr. SHAYS. First I am going to just say I tend to learn the most

about the terrorist threat from folks who used to work in the Government who now have a little more freedom to talk about issues

when they work for a non-government organization, have their own

institutions, and so on, so I really appreciate the fact that you all

stayed and I thank you very much.

Mr. Spring, were you going to make a comment?

Mr. SPRING. I was going to make exactly the same point that Mr.

Sokolski just made; that is, that I would be a little bit reluctant

to try, on the basis of probability, and say OK, we are going to

focus on the terrorist threat in highly enriched uranium at the

margin compared to what might be the risk associated with plutonium because of the relative ease of assembly. I think that these

guys are too unpredictable to say, OK, we can sort of net down and

focus more on the HEU source than on the plutonium source. I

think you could arrive at some poor policy decisions if you take

that too far.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me do this. Professor, is there anything you want

to say before we get you on your plane?

Mr. VON HIPPEL. No. I thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I think we will get you on your plane, and I thank

you so much for coming. I very much appreciate it. Nick is a very

good man at getting taxis. Follow that man. And let’s have this on

the record: my staff director is helping him get the taxi.

Do you need to leave, Ambassador? Thank you very much. Any

last comment that you would like to make for the record?

Ambassador GRAHAM. I can’t think of anything additional that I

would want to submit for the record at this point. I enjoyed the

hearing very much. I thought the questions were really excellent.

The answers were good, too, but the questions set the tone of the

hearing. I think a lot of issues that are not discussed nearly as

much as they should be got discussed today. I hope that the transcript can be drawn together in some way that can be made available to students and scholars and Government people.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say this to you. If I am back in this

place—and I hope to be—whether I am in the majority or Mr.

Kucinich, we both agree that we need to be bringing this up to a

different level, and you are going to see next year, whomever, but

we are going to pursue this big time, because it is a huge issue and

it is not getting the attention it deserves.

Ambassador GRAHAM. These are very big issues and Congress

rarely has the opportunity to address them in a detailed way as

has happened today.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, and travel safely.

Ambassador GRAHAM. My pleasure. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

With the three of you that are still here, let me ask you is there

anything that was brought up in the first panel, Mr. Blix, or the

second panel with our Government officials that you would want to

emphasize or critique in a way that says you disagreed with the

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things that were said? Are there agency points that you want to

make? Mr. Spring?

Mr. SPRING. I think that Deputy Assistant Secretary Semmel addressed this in his opening statement a little bit, but I would like

to reinforce it, and that is that the impression can be left that the

United States and, by extension, the other four declared nuclear

weapons states under the NPT, are somehow at odds with or not

complying with or in violation of article six. I just don’t believe

that. And the Blix Commission talked about the disarmament process being in disarray. I don’t believe that it is in disarray.

The Blix Commission talked about an insufficient commitment to

arms control on the part of the United States and talked about

there being this commitment during the cold war, but the numbers

of nuclear weapons were going up during the cold war and they are

coming down now, and they are on their way to between 1,700 and

2,200 at the strategic level. The U.S. has gone even greater strides

below that in the tactical area.

I find it hard to equate the idea that we were somehow OK during the cold war when the arsenals were going up but now we are

somehow sort of ignoring these obligations under article six when

they are coming down.

So I think the United States has quite a bit to be proud of in

what it has done in the arms control field. There is a tangential

relationship between strategic arms control between the United

States and Russia today and nonproliferation policy, but I think

that generally that is a positive relationship, in my view, so that

I think that I would be a little bit reluctant to denigrate too much

the position the United States has taken in that field.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Granoff, do you disagree or agree but you want to make another point?

Mr. GRANOFF. I disagree very vigorously that it is a little more

sophisticated than that. Article six is part of the law of the land,

as you know. Article six, clause two of the Constitution makes treaties the supreme law of the land, and article six of the NPT requires good faith efforts to obtain nuclear disarmament.

All of the parties to the treaty agreed, in order to gain the indefinite extension of the treaty, to principles and objectives in 1995,

and included in those principles and objectives was an unequivocal

commitment to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons, and

the parties to the treaty and the negotiations forced the United

States and the other nuclear weapons states to agree to 5-year review conferences at which the commitment to nuclear disarmament

and the steps in that direction would be reviewed.

In 2000 there was a very productive conference and 13 practical

steps were agreed upon by all parties to the treaty as a way of fulfilling the article six commitment. Now, those commitments in the

year 2000 were political commitments, no doubt, and it would be

bootstrapping a political commitment improperly into a legal commitment under our Constitution to say that because we made political commitments as part of a treaty they are the law of the land.

But in 2005 at the next review conference the position of our

Government was that our commitments made in 2000 to fulfill article six would not be reviewed.

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Now, that alone does not constitute bad faith or noncompliance,

but the failure to put forward another route of fulfilling article six

I believe puts us in a legally precarious position.

Mr. SHAYS. Us or everyone? The question was put to us or the

other four, as well?

Mr. GRANOFF. I would say the other four would be part of it, but

the other four were not as irresponsible in overtly creating unnecessary roadblocks to creating an agenda in 2005. What happened

was the conference never got a working agenda. The other countries that I would say are worth pointing out would be Egypt and

Iran, who also I would say were not operating to create an operating agenda. So at the 2005 review no statement could be made, nor

could there be an adequate review of the kind of threat-reducing

steps that were needed, steps like making it difficult for a country

to use their article four privileges and drop out of the treaty. There

were proposals, for example, of friends of the United States that

said if a country drops out of the treaty they lose the facilities that

they developed under article four. That to me would be clearly an

effective and useful nonproliferation aspect. Never got discussed.

Creating a secretariat for the NPT so they could have a corporate

memory never got discussed. Creating some way of having some

body at which complaints of noncompliance could formally be

brought and evaluated, never discussed.

Essentially, the review conference was unable to review past conduct, and the U.S. kept focusing on only the nonproliferation side

of the equation without putting forward an alternative route. I

think it is our obligation to do that.

I feel more comfortable criticizing my own country where dissent

is part of our system than criticizing others.

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you, but the bottom line is all five need to be

taking action. The burden is on all five, correct?

Mr. GRANOFF. The burden is on all parties to the treaty, but the

biggest burden I would say is on the P–5.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like you, Mr. Sokolski, to respond, but then

I would like to ask all of you, I am not hearing clearly the comment, I am not interpreting clearly the comment that parties that

aren’t part of the nuclear family have a right to expect to do more,

and because they are not seeing us do more they are going in the

opposite direction. I don’t know what the opposite direction means.

In other words, that they are doing something. I am not quite sure

what we are seeing them doing.

Mr. Sokolski, you were going to make a point earlier?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Yes. I want to make sure I understand the point

you just made.

Mr. SHAYS. Why don’t you answer your question first.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. OK. My reading of the history—and I have written a history that has been published of the proliferation treaty effort—doesn’t quite correspond to this. It is different.

Mr. SHAYS. To what? Mr. Granoff’s comments?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Yes, and even a little bit to my colleague at The

Heritage. I think there is actually a very fundamental problem in

reading this document, the NPT. You can read it through the lens

of article six, which says we would like good faith efforts for those

that declare they have nuclear weapons to disarm, or you can look

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at this understanding through the lens of article four, which says—

actually, there are three lenses, article four, which says everyone

has a right to develop nuclear energy in a peaceful fashion, and

then there is the first two articles, which says them that’s got don’t

give and them that’s not got don’t try to get. Depending on which

lens you pick, you end up emphasizing very different things. What

we have heard is, well, you shouldn’t emphasize the article six. You

should.

I think you are going to have to think about three things at the

same time, unfortunately. I think the emphasis needs to be placed

on making sense of article four. The reason why, it is the least discussed. Everyone has talked to death about how America needs to

give up more nuclear weapons, and then occasionally they say

China, which is actually making more. Then you hear some discussion that really you shouldn’t try to get. But you don’t have a discussion of what peaceful nuclear energy is.

A reason I think that is important is the United States, this Congress, is funding something called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which threatens to be roughly a bad version of Atoms for

Peace, which Eisenhower promoted, on steroids, where you are

really going to encourage people to get into fuel making.

Well, none of the people on the administration witness lineup focused on the problems that the IAEA has and what it can and can’t

do. Regrettable, Mr. Aloise didn’t speak enough to that except for

the staffing point because it is hard. You only have so much time.

I don’t know how much this committee should get into it, but somebody in this Government better, on a routine basis, build on what

GAO has done—maybe it is the CIA—and do annual reports on

what it is that the IAEA can keep track of and what it can’t, because that goes to the heart not only of article four but indirectly,

I would argue, article six.

There is no way the United States and the nuclear weapons powers are going to disarm if other people are hedging their bets and

getting right up to the edge of getting bombs.

Mr. SHAYS. It is pretty alarming, though, to think that we can’t

keep track.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I keep emphasizing because you are right, it is

pretty alarming.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. There ought to be a law. You ought to be concerned. You ought to be having hearings. I am telling you it is like

talking about something that is politically incorrect.

Mr. SHAYS. If the United States had signed the Kyoto Treaty,

would it be possible for us to move forward without extensive nuclear power?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I think the short answer is you would have to

because——

Mr. SHAYS. You’d have to have——

Mr. SOKOLSKI. You would have to move forward substantially

without much nuclear power because most of the pollution is going

to continue to be made by things that are non-nuclear. You are not

going to be able to substitute everything with nuclear.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I am not sure I understood your answer.

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Mr. SOKOLSKI. The point is that the nuclear industry would like

you to believe that the answer to all problems in transport, relying

on oil, coal pollution caused by making aluminum and fertilizer

and everything else can all be taken care of by putting nuclear reactors everywhere. That is a great thought, it is just practically impossible to do.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. But for a variety of reasons we can’t deal with

the waste and, and, and.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. They can’t build them quick enough.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. And they can’t be applied to everything that way

because just the economics aren’t there.

Mr. SHAYS. But still there is no avoiding the fact that Europe is

attempting to deal with this issue through nuclear power, correct?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. No. That is incorrect. What they are doing mostly

is trying to give incentives for people to figure out how to reduce

emissions, and there are many ways to reduce emissions, as the

British government has laid out, besides nuclear. All of the British

government, for example, is suggesting it should do is maintain the

nuclear power plants it has. It is not suggesting a big ramp-up.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me ask you, Mr. Spring, do you have a position on the issue of nuclear electric generating power? I mean, do

you believe it has——

Mr. SPRING. Let me qualify my remarks in that I am not an energy specialist.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SPRING. We have a separate analyst at Heritage that looks

at that. I would say this: I certainly share Mr. Sokolski’s concerns

about article four and what we do in that and the proliferation risk

associated with the generation of nuclear power, which is expressed

as a right in article four.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. SPRING. And as a free market economist——

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. SPRING [continuing]. Which Heritage Foundation generally

is——

Mr. SHAYS. Generally? It is synonymous with.

Mr. SPRING. If you are subsidizing this stuff, then maybe you are

not making rational economic choices, and the nuclear industry is

pretty heavily subsidized in a lot of ways, including for export. And

so if you were to ask me can we cut that stuff out, I would say yes.

And so let’s say, for example, with the state du jour on nuclear

cooperation, which is India, sure, you can have this agreement that

we would cooperate on nuclear stuff, but let’s look at it. Has India

made a rational economic case that nuclear energy is the best option for them? Have we made a rational economic case that subsidizing nuclear exports to Iran, presumably under this agreement,

makes sense for either energy production regions or for not incurring nonproliferation problems? I think that my answer is we can

have the agreement but I am not sure that it would make sense

to exercise it in the full panoply of what it would allow.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, let me use this to segue, since you mentioned

Iran. You heard the responses in the other two panels about Iran.

I would like each of you to give me your take on what Iran is doing,

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No. 1, and, No. 2, what we should be doing based on what they are

attempting to do.

I will start with you, Mr. Granoff.

Mr. GRANOFF. I think Iran is hedging. I think Iran is

untrustworthy. I think we can learn some lessons from Iran. Iran’s

spoofing and noncompliance with the inspection regime should

teach us that there should be a line drawn in the sand prospectively that says if a country doesn’t fully cooperate with inspections

it from then on loses its article four privileges. You can’t apply that

retroactively. We haven’t shown that their program was designed

for weapons purposes, but there should be a rule that this sort of

conduct is simply intolerable going into the future.

Where are we now? It would seem to me that you cannot negotiate a solution if on Monday you threaten with regime change and

then on Tuesday you ask somebody to cooperate and foreclose a potential military option in the future, and then on Wednesday say

we are going to have regime change again. It is simply incoherent.

So I think we need to have a coherence that states very clearly: do

we recognize the sovereignty of this country? Have they so violated

the fundamental human rights of their citizens that they have violated their right to function as a sovereign? I don’t think that they

have. I don’t like the system of government there. I find it abhorrent. I find their human rights standards to be unacceptable. I

think they have misinterpreted the message of compassion and

unity that the holy prophet preached. I don’t think they understand the value of pluralism. I don’t think they understand the values of the modern age. I think that they are a very hazardous

country. But I also look at the demographics, which are that there

are a lot of young people there. So I think the extent to which we

can dialog and engage, time is on our side.

In terms of nuclear, Iran shows us that to prevent the next

Iran—I view it as sort of a sparks out a volcano or a canary in a

mine shaft. As long as nuclear weapons are a currency of power,

countries are going to want to get them. So what do we need to do?

We need to have a sufficiently intrusive inspection and verification

regime that will give us sufficient confidence that countries cannot

use article four to break out.

The atomic audit of the Brookings Institute said that we have

spent approximately $5.7 trillion on this venture without real public debate.

Mr. SHAYS. What venture?

Mr. GRANOFF. The venture of building nuclear arsenals in our

country, alone. That doesn’t even go to the whole world. That is

$5.7 trillion. Steven Schwartz, who led that, informs me that we

are spending in excess of $105 million a day now on the venture

of keeping the arsenal ready and the entire enterprise.

The IAEA has never spent in excess of $105 million in a year for

inspections. change the equation: robust inspections, but do not try

and shame Iran. It is a country that has a martyrdom mythos and

they will die before their honor will be compromised.

Mr. SHAYS. It is amazing for me to be in the Middle East and

hear people talk about honor, even in the Sudan. I mean, when we

were in North Darfur to hear a Governor talk about the pride of

the Sudanese not tolerating any foreign troops, and there was no

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discussion or concern about the loss of literally hundreds of thousands of lives. It was pride. And he said it in such a way that he

expected me to be totally in sympathy with him because I would

connect. So it is just very interesting.

Mr. Spring, what is your answer to this question about Iran?

Mr. SPRING. My answer to this is that I think the Iranians are,

in fact, seeking a weapons capability, and I think they are playing

the politics of energy at the Security Council to try and frustrate

any efforts at enforcement that the nonproliferation regime lodges

in the Security Council. In my judgment, that leads me back to the

regional track. I think that the United States should be working

very strongly with the other states in the region to make sure that

Iran is politically isolated in that region to the greatest extent possible—countries like Pakistan and Turkey and Saudi Arabia and

the other Gulf Cooperation Council states—and really work on that

diplomacy to leave Iran as completely isolated as possible as the future that they face, and that their ambitions to lead some sort of

great broader Islamic coalition in that region will come to naught

if they continue down this path. I think that the regional element

is a very important role to play.

Mr. SHAYS. The regional element is, but in my reading—and that

is one area where I spend most of my time. I mean, when you talk

to various country leaders, or in many cases I learn more by talking to their advisors, you know, some are already hedging their

bets——

Mr. SPRING. I know.

Mr. SHAYS [continuing]. That Iran is going to have it. Others

don’t have confidence that we have the staying power. They look

at the debate here at home about Iraq and believe we will leave

prematurely. I have no faith that our western allies will back us

up, and so an embargo done just by the United States—so I know

what you are trying to accomplish; I just don’t see how we could

get it done. I really don’t see how we would get it done.

Mr. SPRING. It is going to be very difficult, and that is why The

Heritage Foundation has put so much effort into this nuclear gains

exercise that my full testimony refers to that presumes a nuclear

setting, presumes a proliferated setting with seven players to look

at the dynamic of how these states would interact, not with the

idea that nuclear proliferation is inevitable—I hope it is not—but

actually to try and look at what happens in that kind of future to

explain the implications for all the regional players involved as to

what is at stake for them, because my judgment is that, in playing

this game with real human beings assuming the roles of state leadership, is that one of the cardinal sins that they commit across the

board is to assume, not understand but just assume that nuclear

weapons have massive political and military benefits. They over-estimate their value initially without question. It is just unbelievable.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. And under-estimate cost.

Mr. SPRING. And they under-estimate cost, indeed. And, of

course, the United States and the Soviet Union went through that

process in the early stages of the cold war, but I think we learned

the lessons, fortunately, before there was a catastrophe.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

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Mr. SPRING. But in a seven-player environment I would say that

it is even worse.

Mr. SHAYS. And the seven-player environment, you are not including India or Pakistan? what is the seven-player environment?

Mr. SPRING. Well, the seven players can be applied to any region.

The first study that is on our website looked at it in a model, not

exact duplicate, but a model of the East Asian with North Korea,

China, Japan, Taiwan, the U.S., and Russia essentially being the

players of unequal strength.

We have grafted the game in a Middle East version where the

players are roughly equivalent to Israel, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan,

Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Sokolski, did you want to weigh in on this issue

with Iran, and then I am going to ask the question. Maybe I can

ask you to elaborate and just quickly come back to Mr. Granoff and

Mr. Spring. What happens to Egypt and Saudi Arabia if Iran gets

a nuclear weapon? So why don’t you tell me how you think we

should be dealing with Iran.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. First, seven sounds pretty good to me. You are

looking at a world that is going to have seven, seven, seven, and

seven. Your model is 1914, trying to keep track of a lot of folks

gaming the system, thinking that a quick war or whatever they

have in the way of military capability will win if they get in trouble

and that they can diplomatically figure things out. The problem

with the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities is the stakes for

failure exceed what we experienced in the First and Second World

Wars, what we have to worry about.

I think that is the reason why he is doing the study and probably

even telling his own people I love missile defense, but that isn’t the

entire answer. And for someone at Heritage to say that means you

had better be listening, because that comes hard. Am I right?

Mr. SPRING. You are right.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. OK. I mean, here we are. You are on a panel with

somebody I am thinking probably doesn’t vote Republican all the

time, right? I am talking about you. But they are agreeing on

something. I think that should be noted.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, they are disagreeing in terms of how to deal

with Iran, though.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Well, let’s get on with that.

Mr. SHAYS. They want to deal with Iran, but they are going in

two different directions.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Well, but let’s get on with that.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I think first I would endorse adopting the French

suggestions, and the reason I do is those suggestions about how to

tighten up the enforcement of the NPT came as a result of meetings that actually my center was involved in 4 years ago, and these

people are listening and innovating, and when they are right we

should back the French. I can get you more information on that.

It is even cited in the testimony. But that is what you are referring

to, the non-paper that was given at the NPT Review Conference.

I see nods, so that is one.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Speak to about what Egypt and Saudi Arabia

does.

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Mr. SOKOLSKI. Trouble. Saudi Arabia has publicly said that it is

studying whether or not to lease or buy nuclear weapons from

China and Pakistan. Now, what billboard do you need to get the

story that gee, that could be a problem.

Turkey has made it very clear that, well, you know, we have

pipeline problems. And, by the way, they do. But oh, by the way,

since they were involved in all those Pakistani Kahn problems,

they are also folks who, when they look at the European Union,

which they probably are never going to get into—I mean, think

about that—may want to hedge their bets to get a little leverage.

Egypt, if you think that the Israeli Prime Minister is speaking

straight when he says not a problem——

Mr. SHAYS. What’s not a problem?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Egypt. Egypt has already announced that they

want to get more nuclear energy. That is code for the bomb. It is

clear as day.

Now, the people at this table and the panel one or panel two

probably wouldn’t say that, but if you talk to Egyptians about that

speech—and I can get you people who read Arabic—they will tell

you that speech a few days ago by the heir apparent, Mubarak’s

son, is a signal. We are not going to let Iran have the bomb option,

alone. And the reason why is Iran clearly wants to do this much.

Look at their missile program. Forget the nuclear weapons for a

moment. Look at the range arks. Those are diplomatic shadows

over the region, and they intend to keep you guessing as to what

they can load up on those things. That is the reason why Europe

is getting a little nervous, because pretty soon, believe it or not,

they are going to be in range with the latest follow-on missile, the

Shahab–4.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, you can fool me that they are getting concerned.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Oh, no. The French government paid to have me

come out and talk with people in Defense Ministry about an

entire——

Mr. SHAYS. That shows they are desperate, right?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. No, no. Well, it does that, too. I will agree. But

I had a sort of plan, if you will, for—you know, the Iranians play

chess. I understand they invented it. I don’t know much about it

because I don’t speak Farsi. We play checkers probably compared

to them. What you have to figure in chess is you have to be able

to think three moves minimum. If you don’t think three moves, I

understand you can’t play the game. You are just a victim. We are

thinking one move, practically. The moves you have to think

about—and here are some things you could do. You asked what we

should do.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. First of all, in the international basket the IAEA

has a right under the additional protocol to what is called widearea surveillance. That means they can go lots of places, put up

sensors, send in inspectors. Guess what they haven’t budgeted for?

Standing up a force that could go into places like Iran with maybe

200 sensors. They will be crappy sensors. Don’t get me wrong. This

will not be a silver bullet. But there is nothing. They have not even

done a bad job of standing up a wide-area surveillance capability.

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They need about $10 to $20 to $30 million. Guess what? They can’t

raise it because, well, everyone would be upset if we raised the

fees. A spotlight needs to be put on that. That is outrageous.

Mr. SHAYS. Is the implication—and I want to get to the other

members—is the implication, in terms of raising dollars, that,

while we are willing to put some more money in, there is very little

concern on the part of the other member nations to contribute?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I don’t think there is enough. I think the French

government, I think the German government, for a lot of complicated reasons, and the British government are interested, and I

would not under-rate what certain elements in those governments

are willing to do, because when I talked with them they were interested about the very thing that I think someone here took offense

to. Maybe we need to buildup our forces in the region to enforce

the law of the sea, which even Iran subscribes to, so that, instead

of them threatening to close the straits, which is the strategic center of gravity—it is that oil that we have to worry about—maybe

we could ruin their surviving such an embargo and imposing it.

Now, that leads to a whole lot of other things you have to do.

You have to make sure you can get the oil out of that region without going through the strait. The French and the GCC nations are

focused on that like a laser beam. It means connecting certain

pipes. It is not heroic.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just get to North Korea. Did you want to say

something briefly?

Mr. GRANOFF. Briefly. Resolution 687, which was the enabling

resolution of the Security Council for the first Gulf War——

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. GRANOFF [continuing]. In section 14 called for creating a

weapon of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East. Iran has

been calling for that. Egypt has been calling for that. We have just

simply been ignoring it.

Mr. SHAYS. What does that mean? That Israel has to

basically——

Mr. GRANOFF. Well, obviously Israel is not going to join the party

right away, but it would seem to me that it would be in our benefit

to start a confidence-building series of conferences in the region

amongst the parties because regional parties like Egypt don’t want

to see a total breakdown.

Mr. SHAYS. Does it impact the United States? In other words, I

make assumptions that we don’t have a nuclear weapon on our carriers or—well, maybe I shouldn’t on our submarines.

Mr. GRANOFF. The effect on the United States to me would be to

lower the saliency of nuclear weapons in the region would be very

much in our interest, but Israel is a strategic partner and I don’t

think we want to really open up the can of worms of having a fullscale discussion about it. I think it is time. [Latin phrase.] I think

it is time to put the truth out: Israel is not going to join——

Mr. SHAYS. So it is primarily an issue of dealing with Israel is

what I was trying to——

Mr. GRANOFF. Exactly, and, of course, that is Egypt’s sub-text

when they are saying they want to have a weapon of mass destruction free zone in the region, and Iran’s. But the fact is that they

also have interest, as you point out. Egypt is a Sunni country. Iran

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is a Shi’a country. They still live with the shadow of karbala over

their heads. They haven’t given that up. It is like Sherman’s

march. It happened yesterday for some people. I think we have to

be sensitive to those dynamics. And so there are parties in the region, for their own interests within the Islamic world, who have an

interest in making sure weapon of mass destruction don’t proliferate, and I think we should take advantage of that because I

think it is a good thing to stop it.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Don’t they have an interest in making sure that

they identify Israel as having nuclear weapons? You want to be

careful to promote confidence-building measures. I mean, Blix had

a better idea, which is no reprocessing, no enrichment. Once Israel

admits it has nuclear weapons, all hell will break loose there. Particularly the Egyptians will feel like they have to get them if they

even admit it.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me just ask you about North Korea. Our

panelists I think said North Korea is a bigger problem. What it

raises for me, the concept that you can practically snap a finger

and Japan could have a nuclear program. So what that has gotten

me to think about is just the fact that Japan, what, has so much

material close to being weapons grade, and that is because, what,

their nuclear generation, or are there other——

Mr. SOKOLSKI. We gave them a green light back in the 1980’s.

When I first came here and worked for Senator Gordon Humphrey—that is a long time ago—there was an agreement that we

reached with Japan that let them strip out weapons-useful plutonium from spent fuel as a fuel spent fuel management technique.

It wasn’t economic. Still isn’t. They have gone ahead and, as a result, they are piling up tons of weapons-usable plutonium, and they

can’t figure out what to do with all of it.

The Chinese looked at that, and the Chinese have a big stockpile

of weapons-usable material, as well, and they are looking at one

another, and that North Korean drama is a staged rehearsal for

that bigger competition.

Mr. SHAYS. But that is why the United States gets criticized for

acting unilaterally, and we want with North Korea to act multilaterally because we believe that Japan and China and Russia and

South Korea have something at stake here. The irony is that we

are getting criticized for it, which is amazing to me.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I think it is because people look at those six-party

talks and they look at North Korea and they say this dog isn’t

going to hunt very much. I think there needs to be a flash of candor that everyone is sort of saying sub-text, which is ultimately you

are going to have to wait North Korea out, much as you did with

the Soviet Union. I mean, it is not going to be——

Mr. SHAYS. No, no. We are not going to wait them out if they are

going to develop a weapons program and then Japan decides they

have to.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. That is where what you need to do is some of the

things that the French are suggesting and isolate North Korea so

it doesn’t become an example for the others where it is either rewarded or we do nothing when it violates, No. 1.

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No. 2, yes, hold Japan close. I am sure, you know, our friend

from The Heritage has lots of suggestions on how to enforce the alliance with Japan.

Second of all, take a page out of the suggestion made right here.

I think you mentioned China. Perhaps it is time to lean on China

to stop being so unclear about the size and growth of its nuclear

arsenal. I mean, everyone else is much more transparent, even the

Russians. Even the Russians are more transparent, which is saying

a lot. We are not focusing on that topic.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Spring, what about North Korea?

Mr. SPRING. I think that Mr. Sokolski set the table for me very

nicely. I think that what is really key here on the part of the

United States is those positive security assurances that we provide

our friends and allies in the region. That is one of the things I

think that will really convince the Japanese to continue with their

current policy with regard to not obtaining nuclear weapons, because they have the capability to do it very, very quickly, but they

don’t have, at least in the body politic as I look at Japan, the appetite to do that. But they will seek and they are seeking reassurance.

I think, as a result of the situation with both China and North

Korea, Japan has as close a security relationship with the United

States as I can remember right now. So reinforcing the positive security relationship between the United States and Japan to foreclose a weapons incentive for them I think is a key element to addressing the problem.

We played this same nuclear game I am talking about with Japanese nationals just in August, and the Japanese national player

who was playing the Japanese equivalent player opted immediately

to dispense with the nuclear weapons that the game assumed that

he had at the outset. In other words, he went back to being a nonnuclear state, and at the same time he moved very strongly in the

relationship with the United States, and it worked.

He was able to avoid a direct nuclear conflict with either China

or North Korea with the over-arching security relationship with the

U.S., and it was based in part on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, it was

based in part with regard to nuclear nonproliferation and arms

control efforts that the U.S. was pursuing diplomatically—and we

kept diplomatic records of what was going on—so that dynamic did

play it out and Japan did not suffer for its decision that would presumably be irrational at one level, at least, that you look at it to

say OK, even though all these other countries have nuclear weapons it is presumed in this game I am going to get rid of mine. I

am just going to get rid of them.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Granoff?

Mr. GRANOFF. I had the privilege of being a guest of Kim Dae

Jung and Mikhail Gorbachev in June, this past June, in Quan Ju,

Korea, which was the birthplace of the democracy movement. They

were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the democracy movement

there, and they had a summit of Nobel Peace laureates. At those

gatherings there were over 100 leaders from the industrial community of North Korea, the Minister of Unification of North Korea,

and the Minister of Unification of South Korea, President of South

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Korea, and there was 2 weeks of deliberations specifically on these

subjects.

I learned much more than I had expected. As you might know,

Kim Dae Jung was the author of the Sunshine Policy reaching out

to North Korea and pushing for unification. The South Koreans

know that if there is going to be unification they have to ensure

that there won’t be the economic shock that took place in East and

West Germany. It would be even far greater. So there was a large

number of businessmen there who were looking to invest in factories and trade with North Korea to try and normalize the economic disparity between the north and the south.

It was also clear to me that there would be no unification if there

are nuclear weapons in the peninsula, because South Korea has a

very high interest in maintaining the nonproliferation aspects of

the NPT. They know that if they were to have unification with nuclear weapons that Japan would be forced to follow suit, etc.

So the kind of proposals that these learned people in the region

informed me of—and I have shared this with the committee in my

submission—talked about increasing trade. There is a railroad line

that has already been laid.

Now, while this was going on, if you look at the chronology, while

these talks were going on North Korea did those missile tests. So

what I concluded from that is there is a divided house in North

Korea. There are clearly elements there that want to maintain the

status quo, a status quo in which the North Korean people suffer

tremendously, and there are also people who realize that the conditions of their people are a remnant of the cold war that they need

to overcome. I think we should help those people reach out and increase trade, increase normalization, and isolate their military

neanderthals.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to bring this to a close, but let me just

ask you, so when I look at Iran, they could have a nuclear program,

but when I look at Japan, they could have a nuclear program. It

is quite different. You know, it is quite a different motivation and

direction. Is there any other country in the world like Japan that

is accumulating massive amounts of potential weapons grade material?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. Sure. You have reprocessing going on in weapons

states, so that is good news.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. You have the Netherlands, Germany doing enrichment, which means if they leave the switch on on the machine it

could go up to weapons level. There are a number of countries that

are making enrichment facilities—Argentina, Brazil, South Africa,

Ukraine—who want to be considered nuclear fuel supplying nations

under our program, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Canada, Australia have voiced interest in making sure they get on the

right side. So I think you have 15 years. If you——

Mr. SHAYS. In a sense, isn’t that just as concerning in a sense,

if not——

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I have been trying to say all throughout my testimony nuclear fuel making is nuclear ready. Nuclear ready is as

much of an uncertainty generator as the bomb itself. If you wink

or encourage this or don’t think through the security risks, you buy

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the farm. You are absolutely culpable if you let this continue. We

did it for the last 40 years. We winked at Japan. We winked at the

Netherlands. We winked at Germany, Brazil, South Africa. Now

the bill is starting to come due because people are saying, well,

why not us.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. I think you may have started to answer the

question I asked in a very confused way when we were talking

about other countries looking at the United States and not taking

the NPT seriously. They are seeing a number of particularly western European countries, some of the more developed South American countries—I was thinking at least South America is a nuclear

free zone, but what you are telling me is——

Mr. SOKOLSKI. No, sir. I know too much. I worked in the Pentagon dismantling program secretly with the Argentinian government

because they did not know what was going on with the rocket program, and with Brazil it was basically having their military dig a

hole for a test. So it is all good and well to hope that no one that

renounces will ever change their mind again, but we are all

human.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me do this. This has been a great hearing. It sure

makes me want to be back here. Why don’t I just ask is there anything we should have put on the record we didn’t, and is there anything that you want to emphasize to make sure we get it? I will

start with you, Mr. Sokolski.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. I guess since I talked so much and I went over

I am only going to make one request.

Mr. SHAYS. What is that?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. We are having a meeting co-sponsored by the

French government. One of your staff wants to come. I hope he can

come.

Mr. SHAYS. And where is that meeting?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. In Paris. And we are actually getting a Congressman to come.

Mr. SHAYS. When is that going to be?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. The 13th. That is the problem.

Mr. SHAYS. The 13th of?

Mr. SOKOLSKI. November.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, we will see you get a staff there.

Mr. SOKOLSKI. All right. Now, I get a percentage of his pay don’t

I? [Laughter.]

Mr. SHAYS. No. Well, you know what, I am sure it will be an excellent conference.

Mr. Granoff.

Mr. GRANOFF. I will be leaving here and going to Ottawa tomorrow for a gathering of 25 middle-power countries.

Mr. SHAYS. I thought you were going to ask me if you could be

one of my staff so you could go to Paris.

Mr. GRANOFF. I would be honored.

Mr. SHAYS. You are not thinking.

Mr. GRANOFF. I would be honored. There will be 25 middle-powered countries, countries with good human rights records, countries

friendly to the United States, countries that have renounced nuclear weapons, and countries that want to see progress on article

six. In fact, it is called The Article Six Forum. It is convened by

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the middle powers initiative. That is where Dr. von Hippel was flying off and Dr. Blix, as well.

Mr. SHAYS. Where is that going to be?

Mr. GRANOFF. Ottawa. Foreign Minister MacKay will be giving

an address on Thursday morning. The focus will be exactly what

we are talking about. So this is a matter in which our friends are

calling for progress.

My deepest concern is that during the cold war there was some

kind of qualified morality to the posture to the weapons. The logic

was we have the weapons to ensure they won’t be used. But there

have been statements that have come out in recent years from our

administration that indicates a backing away from that moral condemnation of the weapons and seems to indicate that it is not so

much the weapons that are at issue but making sure the weapons

are only in the hands of our friends.

Now, this moves from the standard of the unacceptability of

these horrific devices and from the power of law to the raw law of

power, and countries that are friendly with us 1 day may not be

friendly the next day. This is not the way to set a global norm, sort

of taking the National Rifle Association philosophy at large: it is

not the weapons, it is the people.

But with nuclear weapons I think it is the weapons. I think that

they are intrinsically incapable of distinguishing between civilians

and combatants. I think that they are of a different caliber because

of their effect on future generations. I think that we need to start

thinking of nuclear weapons as something like the way we look at

biological weapons, like the plague. It is not a benefit in anybody’s

hands.

But by no means can we just get rid of them overnight. We have

to build an edifice of peace and cooperation and security in the

same way as we have built this edifice of destruction.

I think that if we would say what are the criteria for building

that edifice, do the steps enhance security, do they enhance law, do

they stand on their own merits, and if they do and they follow on

that compass point of disarmament—it is a compass point, not

something we can reach overnight, but if it follows on that compass

point I think we have to say that is in our interest. If we don’t,

we are going to be breeding incoherence.

The Middle East, now that we have legitimized Pakistan’s weapons, why would there not be a Middle East Treaty Organization

like NATO with nuclear sharing? What is our argument against

that? It is dangerous? It is de-stabilizing? Well, I mean, we have

it in NATO.

So I say let’s get back to the principles of law that our country

stands for and the principles of morality that our country stands

for. That is in our security interest and that is the right thing to

do.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Spring?

Mr. SPRING. Just two quick sort of practical things that I think

that everybody in Congress has reached. One is that during the

cold war there was a rather sharp divide between people who were

regional specialists on the one hand, for example, in the State Department’s Regional Bureau, to just take one department at a time

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here, versus the functional people that worked on arms control and

nonproliferation matters.

I think that there is a natural coming together with that, but I

think it is something that Congress could probably help accelerate,

and that is putting together real teams of functional and regional

specialists to hash these issues out, because they have to be done

in tandem, I think, now that the division that we had during the

cold war between regional and functional isn’t going to be as workable. It is not a huge step. It is a matter of really encouraging, you

know, different ways of looking at how to handle issues within the

bureaucratic wire diagrams, if you will, and I think that would be

useful.

The other is that what I see is going to be the next sort of ideological battle on this entire arms control nonproliferation front,

which is one that Representative Kucinich raised, which I think is

really a ruse, which is the weaponization of space issue. I think it

is really artificial. I don’t think it really comes to the heart of the

concerns the United States should have for security. I think that

the nuclear proliferation issue is much more important. I think almost as important are the other issues related to the proliferation

of weapon of mass destruction.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me be clear though. Are you advocating that

there be nuclear weapons in space?

Mr. SPRING. No, not nuclear weapons. The weaponization of

space thing is going to be really driven about missile defenses.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SPRING. And also the survivability of U.S. military systems

to support tactical operations from space.

Mr. SHAYS. Is this in the end just to make sure—I wanted to

make you smile, not look so serious. So you are just putting in a

word that, while you think it is far more serious to deal with nonproliferation issues, you are saying that a defensive system is not

something we should just dismiss.

Mr. SPRING. Exactly. That is exactly right. And it has to be really

in space, in my judgment, because that is where the missiles fly.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SPRING. The missiles fly in space.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SPRING. And so we are talking about non-nuclear defensive

systems that we would have in space, and also the same technologies go into making survivable our overall satellite networks

that support very important tactical military operations all over

the world.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me just say that Mr. Granoff disagrees, but

I am not going to give him the opportunity to speak because I want

to close this hearing up, but you do have the last word.

Gentlemen, all three of you have been delightful, tremendously

informative. I think my job is to listen, to learn, to help, and to

lead, and I think you are helping me be a better leader and ultimately the Congress by your contribution to this afternoon and tonight, and I thank you all very, very much.

With that I also thank the transcriber for stepping in and reminding me once again not to forget to swear in our witnesses.

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With that, we will adjourn this hearing. Thank you all very

much.

[Whereupon, at 7:37 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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