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Nuclear Weapons
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South Korea Continues Pursuit of Nuclear Reprocessing
Friday, March 12, 2010South Korean Prime Minister Chung Un-chan said today that his government would work to convince the United States to permit it to use nuclear fuel reprocessing technology for the nation's growing atomic ...
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U.S. Sanctions Official Conducts Talks in South Korea
Friday, March 12, 2010A high-level U.S. official assigned to oversee sanctions on North Korea traveled to South Korea this week, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 11). ...
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Hard to Get U.S. Nukes Out of Europe, Former Australian FM Says
Friday, March 12, 2010Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans yesterday said it would be a "long haul" to remove U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 4). ...
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India Could Assist Russia on Fuel Bank
Friday, March 12, 2010India has suggested it could participate in a Russian initiative to establish an international nuclear fuel enrichment center at Angarsk, Siberia, RIA Novosti reported Wednesday (see GSN, March 9). ...
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Gulf Nations Urged to Press China on Iran Penalties
Friday, March 12, 2010 Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates must exert greater pressure on China to back a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran over its disputed nuclear activities, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday (see GSN, March 11). Beijing has rebuffed calls by Washington and other Western governments to endorse additional U.N. penalties against Iran, a nation the West fears could develop a nuclear weapon with help from its current atomic activities. Tehran has maintained it is only interested in pursuing peaceful nuclear enterprises. Gates said there appeared to be increasing "willingness" in Riyadh to exploit its economic position in seeking support for new sanctions from China, a permanent Security Council member with veto authority over the body's decisions, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saudi Arabia exports more petroleum to China than any other nation, and it purchases Chinese commodities that include weapons and consumer items. -
Nuclear Smugglers Still at Work, Expert Says
Friday, March 12, 2010 WASHINGTON -- Iran admits building a secret uranium enrichment facility in the religious hub of Qum. Pakistan's High Court releases nuclear black marketer Abdul Qadeer Khan from house arrest. Spy satellites reveal North Korea boring another tunnel in a remote mountainside. Israeli warplanes bomb a suspicious facility in the Syrian desert (see GSN, Aug. 17, 2009). This drumbeat of seemingly unconnected news reports has prompted many experts to warn that the world is fast approaching a nuclear tipping point. Beyond that invisible mark, the proliferation of nuclear technologies gains an unstoppable momentum and leads to a cascade of new nuclear weapons states and an era of increasing global instability, with grave consequences for the United States. The common thread running through those disparate reports is a secret, global smuggling network that traffics in nuclear technologies, materials, and know-how. Few experts have spent more time studying that illicit nuclear trade than David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former weapons inspector in Iraq. National Journal Staff Correspondent James Kitfield recently spoke with Albright. Edited excerpts follow. -
Medvedev, Clinton to Discuss New START Pact
Friday, March 12, 2010 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are expected next week in Moscow to discuss work by their governments to complete a pending successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December, Foreign Policy magazine's The Cable reported yesterday (see GSN, March 10). "The secretary is going to Moscow for a quartet meeting regarding the Middle East peace process," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "She will have a number of meetings while there. I am confident that the subjects will include not only the Middle East, but also Iran, START, and other topics. Our relationship with Russia is about more than one issue." Medvedev and President Barack Obama pledged last July to cut their nations' respective strategic arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 deployed nuclear warheads under the new treaty. Negotiators have reportedly also agreed to reduce each state's arsenal of nuclear delivery vehicles -- missiles, submarines and bombers -- to between 700 and 800, down from the 1,100-vehicle limit set by the leaders (Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy, March 11). -
Japan Reaffirms Anti-Nukes Policy
Thursday, March 11, 2010Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada reaffirmed yesterday that the island nation has no intention of amending its antinuclear stance, the Asahi Shimbun reported (see GSN, March 10). ...
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Middle East States Frustrated by Nuclear Treaty, Egyptian Diplomat Says
Thursday, March 11, 2010A leading Egyptian diplomat said yesterday that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has left nations in the Middle East feeling duped, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 8). ...
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Obama Extends U.S. Sanctions on Iran
Thursday, March 11, 2010U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday announced he would extend for another year a 15-year-old set of sanctions gainst Iran due to the threat the Middle Eastern country poses to the United States, the Xinhua ...
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Washington Could Revise East Asian Security Policy
Thursday, March 11, 2010The United States is reported to be weighing revisiting its long-standing East Asia Strategy Report before 2011 in order to incorporate evolving security dangers like the spread of nuclear arms, U.S. ...
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China Seen Building Long-Range Missiles for Conventional Strikes
Thursday, March 11, 2010 An independent assessment found that China appears to be producing more missiles than nuclear warheads, suggesting the country is preparing some long-range weapons to carry out non-nuclear attacks, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 18). A possible Chinese drive to develop long-range conventional weapons could be compared to a similar effort under way in the United States, said Mark Stokes, a China expert and former Air Force officer who prepared the report for the Project 2049 Institute (see GSN, July 1, 2009). The document drew on open-source materials and input from other specialists. "The implication is that there could be a significant expansion in the [Chinese] second artillery's conventional strike mission, beyond just short-range ballistic missiles," Stokes said. -
WMD Disposal Forces Take Part in U.S.-South Korea Drill
Thursday, March 11, 2010 U.S. soldiers trained in dealing with weapons of mass destruction are taking part in a large-scale military exercise with South Korea, the senior U.S. military official in the South said yesterday (see GSN, March 10). "They are here for this exercise and if we ever went to war, they would naturally come also," U.S. Army Gen. Walter Sharp told journalists in Seoul, the Associated Press reported. He said the anti-WMD troops were running through simulations with South Korean military personnel on finding, securing and disposing of North Korea's stockpile of unconventional weapons. -
Senior Lawmakers Question Obama’s Nuclear Security Goal
Thursday, March 11, 2010 WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a key congressional panel yesterday expressed skepticism that the U.S. government would be able to meet President Barack Obama's goal of securing all of the world's loose nuclear material within four years (see GSN, Feb. 26). "Securing all vulnerable nuclear material is a laudable goal that this committee supports," House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee Vice Chairman Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) said in his opening statement during a hearing on the administration's nuclear nonproliferation efforts. However, the "magnitude of the [funding] increase" for the programs involved -- about $550 million in total -- raises concerns over whether those dollars can be "effectively executed" in fiscal 2011, according to Pastor, who is overseeing the panel's work on the budget request. -
Russia Drills for Nuclear War
Wednesday, March 10, 2010Russia's strategic missile forces today launched a three-day drill expected to simulate the use of nuclear weapons, RIA Novosti reported (see GSN, Sept. 9, 2009). ...