NEWS BRIEFS

Russian Duma Approves Open Skies Treaty

White House Budget Seeks Threat Reduction Cuts

Moscow Provides Few Details on BMD Proposal

CCW Members Prepare for Review Conference

Russia Begins 'Category 2' CW Destruction

CD Session Ends in Stalemate

Russian Duma Approves Open Skies Treaty

The Russian Duma approved the Open Skies Treaty on April 18 by a vote of 281-103, moving it closer to entry into force. The treaty still must be approved by the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, and by President Vladimir Putin. But passage by the Duma, the lower and more powerful Russian legislative body, stood as the major test for Russian ratification. Belarus, which has said it would act once Russia did, must also ratify the treaty before it can enter into force.

Signed in March 1992 between the members of NATO and the former Warsaw Pact, the Open Skies Treaty permits states-parties to conduct unarmed reconnaissance flights over the entire territory of other states-parties to collect data on their military activities and weaponry. Open Skies aircraft may be equipped with cameras, infrared sensors, and other equipment that could allow observing parties to distinguish between tanks and trucks. Parties conducting overflights must provide at least 72-hours notice and supply a mission plan 24 hours in advance.

Based roughly on the size of each country's territory, every state-party is assigned a passive quota, the maximum number of flights it must allow annually over its own territory, and an active quota, the maximum number of total flights per year it may conduct over other states-parties. The United States, which ratified the treaty in December 1993, and Russia have passive quotas of 42, the highest of all states-parties.

All countries with a passive quota of eight or greater must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force. Thus, Belarus, which shares Russia's passive quota, must also ratify the treaty to trigger its entry into force. Except for Russia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan, all of the other 27 treaty signatories have completed ratification.

Russia's delay in ratification has been attributed to several factors, including cost, which Moscow has increased by insisting that overflights of its territory be conducted in Russian planes rather than observing countries' aircraft.

While awaiting entry into force, treaty signatories, including Russia, have conducted joint trial flights. Since 1993, the United States has participated in 76 such flights.

White House Budget Seeks Threat Reduction Cuts

Reports of impending cuts to U.S.-funded non-proliferation programs in the former Soviet Union were confirmed April 9, when the administration released its fiscal year 2002 budget proposal. The White House is advocating sharp cuts to Energy Department programs but is apparently not seeking a change in overall funding for State Department threat reduction efforts. Information on funding for the Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction program is not yet available, pending ongoing defense reviews.

The administration released a detailed Energy Department budget proposal that would cut cooperative nuclear security efforts by about a third, from fiscal year 2001 levels of $311 million to $211 million in 2002. These cuts include moderate to sharp funding reductions for a range of programs and a limited increase in one.

For example, proposed funding for material protection, control, and accounting efforts, which work to upgrade security at a range of vulnerable fissile-material and weapon-storage sites, was reduced from just under $170 million for 2001 to $138.8 million in 2002. The Nuclear Cities Initiative, which works to create alternate employment opportunities for scientists in Russia's nuclear complex, would be cut from $27 million in 2001 to $6.6 million in 2002. On the other side of the ledger, funding for the Second Line of Defense program—a fledgling effort initiated in 1998 to boost the Russian customs service's capability to detect illicit nuclear transfers across Russia's borders—is proposed at $4 million, a substantial increase over 2001 funding of $2.4 million.

Program-level budget hearings in congressional committees began in the final week of April, and there are signs of strong bipartisan support among lawmakers for reinstating at least some of the administration's proposed threat reduction cuts. In early May, final votes are expected on a House-Senate budget resolution containing overall spending limits but little programmatic detail. The appropriations process, in which funds are designated to specific programs, will intensify over the summer and could extend into the new fiscal year in the beginning of October, as has been the trend in recent years.

Moscow Provides Few Details on BMD Proposal

Russia offered little additional detail on its proposed pan-European missile defense during an April 26 meeting of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council at NATO headquarters in Brussels. All 19 NATO ambassadors and NATO Secretary-General George Robertson attended, along with former Russian Defense Minister, now presidential assistant, Igor Sergeyev, who headed the Russian delegation. The meeting marked the first time the two sides discussed the issue since Moscow presented Robertson with an initial, vague proposal in late February. (See ACT, March 2001.)

At the meeting, the Russian side concentrated on the "conceptual and procedural rather than the technical or hardware," according to a NATO spokesperson. Russian officials since February have said that, before talking about the means to counter the threat from missile proliferation, including missile defense, there must first be discussions on whether a threat exists.

Basic elements of the Russian proposal remain unclear, such as whether Moscow envisions a missile defense system capable of intercepting ballistic missiles in their boost, mid-course, or re-entry phase. Moscow has been very clear, however, that the proposed system would be designed to intercept short- and medium-range theater ballistic missiles and not long-range strategic ballistic missiles. Russia staunchly opposes U.S. proposals to build a system providing nationwide or global defenses against strategic ballistic missiles, which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

CCW Members Prepare for Review Conference

States-parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) met April 2-6 in Geneva to prepare for the CCW's second review conference, scheduled to be held December 11-21. Delegations from the treaty's 84 states-parties reviewed proposals for strengthening or broadening the accord, which restricts the use of excessively injurious or indiscriminate weapons. The states-parties did not act on any of the proposals at this latest meeting but will hold a third preparatory committee meeting this September.

Opened for signature in 1981, the CCW was initially comprised of three different protocols limiting the use of certain conventional weapons: non-detectable fragmentation weapons; mines, booby-traps, and other devices; and incendiary weapons. At the first review conference, held in separate sessions in the fall of 1995 and the late spring of 1996, CCW states-parties approved a fourth protocol on blinding laser weapons and amended the protocol on mines to, among other things, increase the detectability of anti-personnel landmines (APLs) and require remotely delivered APLs to have self-destruct and self-deactivation features.

Currently, the United States is seeking to amend the mine protocol further to apply the detectability and self-destruct requirements of APLs to anti-vehicle mines, but some countries, most notably China and Pakistan, have expressed reluctance at amending the mine protocol again. As an alternative, the United States and Denmark proposed adding a new CCW protocol devoted to mines other than APLs, essentially anti-vehicle mines.

The United States has also proposed creating a voluntary compliance mechanism for the mine protocol that would allow states-parties to hold meetings and convene experts to discuss and investigate allegations of noncompliance. France, meanwhile, has advocated adoption of a compliance regime for the entire convention, though details remain unclear.

Other proposals discussed included extending the convention's restrictions from interstate conflicts to internal conflicts (the amended mine protocol already includes such language) and addressing small arms and unexploded ordinance left on the battlefield.

Russia Begins 'Category 2' CW Destruction

Russia recently took a step toward meeting its Chemical Weapons Convention commitments, beginning destruction of its "Category 2" chemical weapons, according to an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) official.

Moscow had previously informed the OPCW, which oversees the convention's implementation, that it would begin destroying its "Category 2" weapons on April 18. These weapons are considered to pose a "significant" risk to the convention. The OPCW official confirmed that the destruction activities, conducted at the Shchuch'ye site, had begun in mid-April.

The official added that Russia also resumed the destruction of "Category 3" weapons—comprised of unfilled munitions, devices, and other equipment—at the Maradykovsky and Leonidovka sites. Moscow had destroyed 40,000 items at these sites last year, but it did so without the OPCW verifying their destruction. The organization has now begun to monitor these destruction activities.

Under the convention, Russia must destroy its entire stockpile of about 40,000 tons of chemical weapons by 2007, although the OPCW could extend this deadline by as much as five years. Russia was supposed to have started destroying its Category 2 and 3 weapons by December 1998 and is required to complete their destruction by April 29, 2002. It has not yet begun the destruction of its "Category 1" weapons, those that pose a "high" risk to the convention.

CD Session Ends in Stalemate

Concluding the first third of its 2001 negotiating session, the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) ended its March 27 plenary deadlocked, leaving its 66 members little prospect for progress when plenary meetings resume May 17. Strong U.S. opposition to Chinese and Russian insistence on negotiations on the prevention of an arms race in outer space continued to be the key obstacle blocking the required consensus for any negotiations to get underway within the Geneva-based forum. The CD last held negotiations in 1998.

Russian Ambassador Vasily Sidorov, who asserted March 22 that current agreements covering outer space have "blank spots," reiterated Moscow's support for negotiating a regime to prohibit stationing "any type of weapons in outer space" and threatening the use of force in or from outer space. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which the United States, Russia, and China are party, bars stationing nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction in space.

Russian advocacy of outer space negotiations is supported strongly by China but viewed by the United States as aiming, in part, to restrict possible U.S. ballistic missile defenses. Although ready to discuss the issue, Washington has stated firmly it will not formally negotiate on outer space, contending the issue is "not ripe." The United States advocates immediate negotiations on a fissile material cutoff treaty, but China and Russia, among others, will not support negotiations on this issue unless negotiations also begin on outer space.

Chilean Ambassador Juan Enrique Vega, who held the rotating presidency of the CD during February and March, indicated March 8 that frustrations were growing within the conference. He noted that some delegations are "impatient," while others, who feel the CD is already "dead," come to meetings with a "certain degree of boredom." The following week, Vega expressed his conviction that the nuclear-weapon states should shoulder the "greater responsibility in getting the conference out of the stalemate."