Ukraine has begun discussing how it might spend funds that it now expects to receive from backers of a multinational effort to support threat reduction projects addressing nonproliferation, disarmament, counterterrorism, and nuclear safety threats in the former Soviet Union. The effort marks the first time the partnership has sought to coordinate aid beyond Russia.
Ukraine met with the partnership at a working group meeting in Washington Nov. 16-17, after recent talks solidified the country’s new status. Ukraine has been nuclear weapons-free since the last of its remaining warheads were removed in 1996, largely with help from the U.S. Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
The Group of Eight (G-8) Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction is an initiative launched in June 2002 by the G-8, the world’s eight richest and most powerful countries. The initial participants pledged $20 billion over a 10-year period to this effort, including $10 billion from the United States, and have to date primarily funded projects in Russia. The effort has since grown beyond those original eight countries to include 13 additional donors, from Australia to Switzerland.
No formal procedure guides the selection of countries to receive aid from the Global Partnership, but consultations between Ukraine and the G-8 donor countries were initiated following a 2003 letter from the Ukrainian government requesting consideration. A G-8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia, in June endorsed the idea of expanding the partnership beyond Russia. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also in June that the United States was “actively encouraging” the Global Partnership to extend aid to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia.
Rozanne Oliver, senior policy coordinator in the Department of State’s Office of Proliferation and Threat Reduction, described the selection process as “fairly flexible and nonbureaucratic” and remarked that the Global Partnership countries ultimately decided by consensus to extend aid to Ukraine.
Although each participating donor in the Global Partnership makes its own decisions as to which programs it will fund, Oliver affirmed that a State Department program that shifts former weapons scientists into peaceful research is an area that might receive funds. Nonproliferation aid could also be channeled into securing and removing highly enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons; converting research reactors to run on safer low-enriched uranium; and strengthening export controls.
The United States will pass the Global Partnership presidency to the United Kingdom for 2005.
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