NEWS BRIEFS

Russia Clarifies Yeltsin Statement on Nuclear Cuts

U.S.-Russian HEU Deal Still on Track

Supercomputer Export Controls Strengthened

122 States Sign Ottawa Landmine Treaty

Russia Clarifies Yeltsin Statement on Nuclear Cuts

During a December 2 news conference in Sweden, Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would unilaterally reduce its nuclear arsenal by one third, a statement that was quickly "clarified" by his aides. Presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky explained that Yeltsin had meant that Russia was willing to accept nuclear force reductions below the START III level of 2,000 to 2,500 deployed strategic warheads agreed to last March in Helsinki. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told concerned members of the Duma, the lower house of parliament, that Russia had no plans to make unilateral reductions in its nuclear arsenal. "Neither the president, nor, for that matter, we, have proposed any unilateral reductions. Everything will be done on the basis of parity," Sergeyev said December 5.

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Mamedov met with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott December 3 4 in Washington to discuss a range of security and arms control issues, including START III. Although the United States and Russia are currently holding a series of expert level discussions on START III, the Clinton administration maintains that official negotiations on a follow on treaty cannot begin until the Russian Duma approves START II.

U.S. Russian HEU Deal Still on Track

In mid December, news sources inaccurately reported that Russia had decided to withdraw from the 1993 highly enriched uranium (HEU) purchase agreement, which requires the United States to buy over a period of 20 years Russian low enriched uranium (LEU) that has been blended down from 500 metric tons of HEU removed from dismantled former Soviet nuclear warheads. According to a December 12 statement issued by the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), the U.S. government's executive agent for the purchase agreement, press reports had confused the U.S. Russian HEU deal with a separate 10 year agreement reached in August 1997 between Russia and three Western companies—CAMECO (Canada), COGEMA (France) and NUKEM (Germany)—involving the purchase of Russian natural uranium. It is this latter agreement that Russia has decided to terminate.

Implementation of the U.S. Russian HEU deal is moving forward. By the end of 1997, the USEC is scheduled to have received a total of 1,038 metric tons of LEU that has been blended down from 36 metric tons of HEU—the equivalent of more than 1,600 former Soviet nuclear warheads according to USEC estimates. The USEC is expected to receive the LEU equivalent of an additional 24 metric tons of HEU in 1998.

Supercomputer Export Controls Strengthened

Despite two previous veto threats, President Bill Clinton signed into law on November 18 congressionally mandated changes to U.S. supercomputer export controls, which were contained in the fiscal year 1998 defense authorization act. The new guidelines reverse some of the modifications made by the White House in 1995, and will require the administration to expand its monitoring of proposed sales, and verify the actual uses of many U.S. high performance computers in countries of proliferation concern.

Prompted by reports that Moscow and Beijing had circumvented U.S. export controls and acquired U.S. supercomputers for use in military research facilities, including nuclear weapons labs, legislators forced three key changes to U.S. export policy. First, for unlicensed sales of computers operating at speeds above 2,000 million theoretical operation per second (MTOPS) to countries of "some security or proliferation concern"—so called tier 3 states—the determination of the buyer's legal eligibility will no longer be done by computer exporters, but through a 10 day inter departmental review process. Second, presidential changes to the list of tier 3 countries and the 2,000 MTOPS threshold will henceforth require 120 and 180 day congressional review periods, respectively. Finally, the Commerce Department will be required to conduct post shipment verification of the location and uses of all U.S. origin computers above 2,000 MTOPS in tier 3 states.

Commerce Department Undersecretary Bill Reinsch objected to the new requirements at a November 13 hearing of the House National Security Committee. According to Reinsch, the new requirements are "unrealistic both philosophically and procedurally," and infringe on the president's ability to conduct foreign policy. Reinsch added that the new verification requirements will waste scarce verification resources, overburden the intelligence community with needless license support obligations, and ultimately provide a significant competitive advantage to foreign computer companies.

122 States Sign Ottawa Landmine Treaty

Only 14 months after Canada first called for states to negotiate a treaty banning anti personnel landmines worldwide, 122 states (plus the Holy See and two Pacific Island dependencies) emerged from a December 2 4 signing conference in Ottawa with a commitment not to use, stockpile, produce or transfer mines. They joined the 1997 Nobel Peace prize winning international non governmental coalition (the International Campaign to Ban Landmines) in celebrating the signing of the "Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction."

Canada was the first to deposit its ratification, followed by Ireland and Mauritius. The convention will enter into force six months after the 40th state deposits its ratification with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, at which time the clock on a 10 year framework for stockpile destruction will also start ticking. (See ACT, September 1997.) Key non signatory countries such as the United States, China and Russia observed the conference. The U.S. respresentative, Ambassador Karl Inderfurth, said in his December 4 statement that the United States would be "in a position to sign the Ottawa Convention," if it finds alternatives to the use of an anti tank mine system that incorporates anti personnel submunitions and to mines on the Korean Peninsula.