NEWS BRIEFS

U.S., China Make No Progress in Missile Talks

U.S. Approves Development of Enhanced Anthrax

Ukraine Meets START I Obligations

Ukraine destroyed its last SS-24 ICBM silo on October 30, making it the third START I party to complete its obligations under the accord.

Belarus and Kazakhstan both met their obligations under the agreement in late 1996. The United States and Russia are not yet in full compliance, according to the most recent information available, but they must become so by December 5. At that time, Washington and Moscow must each deploy no more than 6,000 treaty-accountable nuclear warheads on 1,600 strategic delivery vehicles.

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the START I agreement in July 1991, but the Soviet Union dissolved five months later, leaving four successor states in possession of nuclear weapons: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

In May 1992, these four countries, along with the United States, signed the Lisbon Protocol, which designating them as successors to the Soviet Union under START I. The protocol also obligated Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to transfer their nuclear warheads to Russia and to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear-weapon states.

But Ukraine proved reluctant to give up its nuclear weapons and ultimately required additional inducement. Under a January 1994 agreement with the United States and Russia, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances, compensation for the fissile material contained in its nuclear weapons, and financial assistance.

Ukraine announced in 1996 that it had finished transferring all its nuclear warheads to Russia, but it retained treaty-accountable strategic delivery vehicles, including bombers and ICBMs. The United States has assisted Ukraine with dismantling those delivery vehicles under the Defense Departments Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

Russia, Iran Discuss Arms Deal

During an October 1-5 visit to Russia, Iranian Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani signed a military cooperation agreement that will reportedly result in hundreds of millions of dollars of new arms deals between the two countries.

Shamkhani, who had postponed an earlier visit in order not to overlap his stay with one by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, visited Russian arms manufacturing plants, met with top Kremlin officials, and signed a framework agreement for future cooperation on military-technical issues.

Neither Russian nor Iranian government officials gave details of the October 2 framework document, but press reports and analysts from both countries said it paved the way for future Russian sales of fighter jets, tanks, missiles, and naval ships to Iran that could be worth $300 million annually.

Russia made an agreement with the United States in June 1995 not to sign new weapons deals with Iran and to complete delivery of all previously sold arms by the end of 1999, but Moscow told Washington in November 2000 that it no longer planned to abide by the agreement. The United States objected, but Russia began serious discussions about reviving arms sales to Tehran during a visit to Russia by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in March.

Although Russia claims it is ready and has a right to sell defensive arms to Iran, it has also hinted that future deals might not be guaranteed. During a September 19 interview with a German television station, Russian President Vladimir Putin volunteered, If our Western partners can offer to compensate us for the possible losses if we stopped our activities in the sphere of military-technical cooperation, we can think about it.

State Department officials had no comment on Putins remarks, and it is unclear whether the Russian president was floating a proposal or simply trying to deflect criticism of Russian policy.

If Russia follows through with arms shipments to Iran, it could face U.S. sanctions. U.S. law calls for sanctions on countries that provide lethal military equipment to states sponsoring terrorism and for countries that sell destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons to either Iran or Iraq. The United States considers Iran a sponsor of terrorism.

U.S., China Make No Progress in Missile Talks

Despite a warming of relations between Washington and Beijing since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, recent efforts by the Bush administration to resolve U.S. allegations of Chinese noncompliance with a November 2000 missile proliferation agreement have apparently produced no dividends.

Attempting to lay the groundwork for an October 19 meeting between Presidents George W. Bush and Jiang Zemin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai, the two countries held missile proliferation talks October 10-11 in Beijing.

Despite pressure for a deal, the meeting yielded no progress. During an October 12 press conference, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher noted that the administration is disappointed that China was not in a position to provide authoritative assurances that it is fully implementing the November 2000 deal.

Under that agreement, Beijing pledged not to help states develop ballistic missiles that can be used to deliver nuclear weapons. In exchange, Washington said it would waive sanctions on certain Chinese entities and resume processing applications for U.S. companies to launch satellites on Chinese rockets, which it had stopped processing in February 2000.

Although the United States waived the sanctions following the agreement and resumed processing applications, it has not approved any applications for the export of satellites for launch. For that to happen, Washington would have to waive two sets of sanctions, one imposed for the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and the other imposed in September for missile technology transfers to Pakistan by a Chinese firm. (See ACT, September 2001.) It is unlikely that Washington will waive the latter set of sanctions without an agreement on Chinese adherence to the November 2000 deal.

During an October 17 briefing en route to Shanghai, Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out in some detail what Washington is expecting from China. Beijing needs to address U.S. concerns over missile-related contracts signed prior to the November 2000 accord; make progress on missile-related export controls; and fulfill requirements, which remain undisclosed, that would allow the United States to waive the September sanctions in order to permit satellite exports for launch, Powell said.

At the Shanghai summit, Bush and Jiang discussed non-proliferation, but that dialogue did not produce any reported results. Proliferation is an area where there remain differences in the Chinese-U.S. relationship, a White House official remarked during an interview.

U.S. Approves Development of Enhanced Anthrax

In mid-October, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a Defense Intelligence Agency project to develop a genetically modified, more potent form of anthrax to see if it could defeat the anthrax vaccine currently used by the United States.

The approval followed consultations that considered the projects legality under the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and U.S. law, a point of concern among some analysts. (See ACT, October 2001.) The convention outlaws development and possession of biological agents for offensive purposes but permits defensive activity. The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 implements the convention in the United States.

According to a U.S. official, the consultations concluded that there are no legal roadblocks to undertaking the project.

The United States began trying to acquire the modified anthrax strain in 1998, after it learned of a reported Russian effort to develop the strain. However, the United States failed to obtain a sample of the anthrax from Moscow, and early this year the Defense Intelligence Agency began exploring the feasibility of developing the strain itself.

Whether a contract to produce the vaccine has been signed remains unclear, but according to a Defense Intelligence Agency official, the Battelle Memorial Institute most likely would be the contractor to develop the anthrax.

Meanwhile, a U.S. request to Russia for a sample of the strain is still pending before the Russian Export Control Commission. According to the U.S. official, Russia has been more cooperative on this issue since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and may approve the U.S. request very shortly. If obtained, the sample could render the U.S. project moot, the official said.

PAC-3 Ready for Action

On September 26, the Army declared that a limited number of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles were available for deployment. The PAC-3, which is designed to destroy short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aircraft by colliding with them, is the first hit-to-kill anti-missile system ready for operational use.

The PAC-3 system has been under development for several years. The announcement that the missiles were available for deployment had been scheduled in advance for some time and was not connected with the events of September 11.

Army spokeswoman Captain Amy Hannah would not comment on how many PAC-3 missiles were available or when and where they could be deployed. Hannah said Lockheed Martin, the company that produces the PAC-3, recently transferred the missiles to the Army.

A Lockheed Martin spokesman declined to discuss the issue, citing a letter sent October 2 by Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, to private contractors. The letter asked companies to exercise discretion when speaking publicly about statistical, production, contracting and delivery information because such information could be useful to foreign intelligence collectors.

On October 19, the PAC-3 successfully completed its final intercept test in the developmental stage of its testing, which works out hardware and software bugs and refines a weapon system. During the developmental tests, the PAC-3 missed only once, hitting nine out of 10 targets. Now the PAC-3 will move forward to operational testing and evaluation, which is more representative of actual tactical conditions. For example, real soldiers, not testing personnel, operate the weapon during operational testing.

Currently, the PAC-3 is in low-rate production, but a decision is set to be made in September 2002 whether it should be moved to full-rate production. It is standard practice to keep a weapon system in low-rate production while testing is still being conducted.