28 000 V Vaststelling van de begroting van de uitgaven en de ontvangsten van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (V) voor het jaar 2002 Nr. 2 MEMORIE VAN TOELICHTING […] Het tegengaan van proliferatie van massavernietigingswapens De proliferatie van massavernietingswapens en hun
overbrengingsmiddelen vormt een toenemend veiligheidsrisico. Een veelomvattend
antwoord hierop, waaronder verdere versterking van het internationaal
normstellend kader en instrumentarium tegen proliferatie van deze wapens
is daarom geboden. Tweede Kamer, vergaderjaar 2001–2002, 28 000 hoofdstuk V, nr. 2 45  
PROLIFERATIE VAN KERNWAPENMATERIAAL EN TECHNOLOGISCHE KENNIS Terror’s Dirty Secret: Radioactive Material, Loosely Guarded, Makes A Cheap Weapon David E. Kaplan / Douglas Pasternak (..) Back in 1987, in Goiania, Brazil, a theft of cesium-137 from an abandoned clinic spread the radioactive metal across an entire neighborhood, killing four, contaminating 249 others, and forcing the destruction of 85 homes. The amount of cesium was minute--only 20 grams--but potent. More than 112,000 Goiania residents had to be tested; moon-suited workers hauled away 125,000 drums of contaminated refuse. And that disaster was unintended--scrap-yard workers had come upon the discarded stuff and passed some of it on to friends and family. It may have been an accident, but the Goiania disaster suggests what can happen if such substances fall into the wrong hands. Osama bin Laden has long harbored nuclear ambitions, intelligence sources say. (..) "He is going to build what we call a radiological dispersal device or ‘dirty bomb’ and mix it with explosives," predicts Edward Badolato, former director of security at the Department of Energy. Such a weapon would not produce a nuclear reaction; rather, radioactive particles, like those stolen in Goiania or Greensboro, would be scattered by something like TNT. With these threats in mind, the Department of Energy’s elite antinuclear strike force—the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST--has "forward deployed" its members to key cities, U.S. News has learned. In addition, DOE scientists are modeling the impact of a range of terrorist nuclear attacks on big U.S. cities: everything from a 10-ton nuclear blast to a dirty bomb. Dirty devices are not unheard of overseas. In 1998, officials in Chechnya defused a booby-trapped explosive attached to a container of radioactive material, according to Russian press reports. Three years earlier, Chechen separatists buried a 30-pound box of radioactive cesium near the entrance to a busy Moscow park and later threatened to blow up 167 pounds of the stuff. Nor would a dirty bomb be new to Islamic militants. Some terrorism experts, including former FBI deputy director Oliver "Buck" Revell, believe that al Qaeda associate Ramzi Yousef searched for radioactive waste to add to the explosive mix for the 1993 World Trade Center bomb. Sources for radioactive material are plentiful. (..) Since 1986, the NRC has recorded over 1,700 instances in which radioactive material has been lost or stolen. "Security of radioactive materials has traditionally been relatively light," says Abel Gonzalez, a top official at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. "There are few security precautions on radiotherapy equipment, and a large source could be removed quite easily." In the United States today, there are thousands of lost, stolen, or discarded radioactive sources--dubbed "orphans" by regulators. No comprehensive registry exists of radioactive devices, but the NRC estimates that in America one new radioactive source is orphaned every day. About 50 of them are found by the public each year, along roadsides, in dumps, and at recycling centers, and many more may be on the way. Fully a quarter of America’s 2 million radioactive devices are no longer needed or wanted by their owners, says former NRC health physicist Joel Lubenau. (..) Having found in the mid-1980s that 15 percent of users could not account for their radioactive devices, the NRC this year ordered that its licensees keep better records. (..) Although recent press reports suggest the impact of a dirty bomb would be disastrous, with thousands killed and downtowns rendered uninhabitable, scientists say such scenarios are wildly exaggerated. "It is most likely that only a small area of a few city blocks would be involved," concludes a just released report by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Casualties would be low, limited largely to those hurt by the blast itself and those nearby who ingest radioactive particles. Most dirty bombs would lack the kind of long-lived elements like plutonium that a nuclear blast releases. And the isotopes--in most cases heavy metals--would fall to the ground, where they could be cleaned up with common detergents. The cleanup would be monitored with Geiger counters. "It would not harm a lot of people from a human health perspective," says David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But it would cause a lot of terror." (..) In the end, though, the sheer lethality of radioactive devices may be what stops terrorists from using them. To create an effective dirty bomb, one must extract the radioactive material from its shielding, exposing the terrorists to far worse radiation than their victims would receive. "That’s why we wear dosimeters and use glove boxes and robots," says a NEST veteran. "The guy’s going to irradiate himself, and we’ll find him dead four days later." Provided by: RANSAC Nuclear News; Web: www.ransac.org
U.S. Government Nonproliferation and Threat Reduction Assistance to the Russian Federation Fact Sheet The United States is committed to strong, effective cooperation with Russia and the other states emerging from the former Soviet Union to reduce weapons of mass destruction and prevent the proliferation of these weapons or the material and expertise to develop them. The importance of that cooperation has long been recognized, and is underscored by the tragic events of September 11. The U.S. Government currently conducts over 30 different cooperative programs with Russia in this area, with a total appropriation from Fiscal Year 1992 through Fiscal Year 2001 of approximately $4 billion. Another important cooperative endeavor in this area is U.S. purchase of material blended down from Russian highly-enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear warheads, for use in civilian nuclear reactor fuel. Principal elements of the multifaceted U.S. nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance to Russia include:
The Administration is nearing completion of a detailed review of these programs, designed to ensure that existing efforts serve priority threat reduction and nonproliferation goals, as efficiently and effectively as possible, and to examine new initiatives to further those goals.
U.S.-Russia: U.S. Seeks to Hire Russian Scientists Greg Seigle In an effort to stem the spread of dangerous weapons
technologies and know-how from Russia to other countries, the United States
is moving to increase the number of former Soviet scientists it hires.
Under a bill intended to help Russia reduce its stockpiles of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons—and to keep Russian scientists from
aiding such programs in Iran and elsewhere— the U.S. Senate is seeking
to increase the number of visas allotted for Russian scientists to come
to the United States from 750 per year to 950. Provided by: RANSAC Nuclear News, Web: www.ransac.org
Former Atomic Minister Plays Down Possibility of Passing Nuclear Secrets Abroad ITAR-TASS, Moscow Viktor Mikhaylov, former atomic energy minister
who heads Russian closed nuclear research centre in Sarov (former Arzamas-16)
has fully ruled out the possibility of nuclear secrets being passed abroad
by Russian physicists. "It is not only Arzamas-16, but all the other
10 closed nuclear centres which are at issue," Mikhaylov told ITAR-TASS
on Friday [23 November]. Provided by: RANSAC Nuclear News Web: www.ransac.org
MOGELIJK KERNWAPENGEBRUIK DOOR DE VERENIGDE STATEN Office of the
Press Secretary […] Q Ari, you said in response to John's question that the United States doesn't discuss what types of weapons it would use in retaliation for certain kinds of attack. There has been one important exception to that rule, and that was the warning that the first Bush administration made publicly to the government in Iraq, during the Persian Gulf War, that, as a matter of policy, we would respond to any chemical or biological attack on U.S. troops or U.S. allies with nuclear weapons. Does that policy still stand? MR. FLEISCHER: I answered this question two weeks ago, and the policy is that the United States will take all means necessary to protect itself. Q Does that mean – MR. FLEISCHER: I'm not going to comment on any specific type of weapons. […]
Federation of Atomic Scientists […] The Temptation of Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons Meanwhile, overlapping with the Bush-Putin summit,
delegates meet at the UN in New York November 11-13 for the entry-into-
force conference of the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, which the US signed
but the Senate declined to ratify in 1999.
Nuclear Experts in Pakistan May Have Links to Al Qaeda By DAVID SANGER This article was reported by Douglas Frantz, James Risen and David E. Sanger and written by Mr. Sanger. The United States is investigating new intelligence reports of contacts between Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists and the Taliban or the terrorist network Al Qaeda, according to Pakistani and American officials. More than a month ago, Pakistan detained and interrogated two nuclear scientists who had contacts with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but neither had any knowledge or expertise that would have helped terrorists build or obtain a nuclear weapon, the officials said. Since then, however, American and Pakistani officials have received new reports of other possible contacts involving scientists with actual experience in production of nuclear weapons and related technology. The officials in the United States and Pakistan offered different, and sometimes conflicting, accounts of the nature of those contacts and who might be involved. But American officials said the intelligence was credible enough for them to focus new concern on the security of Pakistan's weapons program. Pakistani officials said their government was resisting some of the American efforts to interrogate several of the scientists and engineers, for fear that the intelligence reports may be a ploy by Washington to learn details of Pakistan's secret nuclear program. According to Pakistani officials and news reports in Pakistan in recent days, the United States has asked that two other nuclear experts, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar, with long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear installations, be questioned. Pakistani officials said George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, discussed this issue with top Pakistani officials while he was in the country last weekend. C.I.A. officials would not confirm that account, but White House officials said Mr. Tenet's trip was related in part to nuclear issues. But in an unusual move, as soon as Mr. Tenet returned to Washington, Pakistani officials volunteered to Pakistani and Western reporters that Mr. Asad and Mr. Mukhtar were the subjects of concern by the C.I.A. The motives of the Pakistani officials for disclosing the information were unclear, but they also said the two men were unavailable because they were sent, shortly after Sept. 11, on a vague research project to Myanmar, formerly Burma, and were not expected home anytime soon. In fact, one Pakistani official said that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military president, who met Mr. Tenet during his trip, telephoned one of Myanmar's military rulers to ask him to provide temporary asylum for the two nuclear specialists, offering his assurances that they were not connected to terrorism. A spokesman for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission told a Pakistani news service that "we don't want to interrupt them" by returning them to Pakistan for questioning. While much about this latest dispute remains unclear, it underscores the degree to which Pakistan and the United States are at odds over important issues despite recent cooperation in the war against terrorism. The United States is concerned that Al Qaeda is trying to obtain at least a primitive radioactive weapon and has concerns about the security of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, the officials said. The Pakistani government, for its part, is suspicious that Washington, which is also trying to grow closer to Pakistan's nuclear rival, India, is using its security concerns as a pretext for prying open Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. Pakistan has always barred international inspectors from examining its facilities or taking stock of its production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, used to make weapons. So far, American officials say, the Bush administration does not believe Al Qaeda has a nuclear weapon, despite its clear desire to obtain one. On Friday Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the American commander heading the Afghanistan operations, said, "We have not yet found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the sites that we have been in." But officials in Washington remain concerned that Al Qaeda cells elsewhere may be searching for enough material to make a "dirty bomb," in which radioactive material would be wrapped around a conventional explosive and detonated, spreading nuclear contamination. Two Pakistani nuclear scientists who have been detained and questioned by Pakistan did meet with Taliban and Al Qaeda officials in Afghanistan to discuss nuclear issues. But the scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, were not weapons experts, and therefore of little value to terrorists, American officials say. Under interrogation, Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Majeed have recounted discussions with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, an American official said. The interrogations disclosed that Al Qaeda officials did not have even the most basic knowledge of nuclear weapons and materials, the American official said. "It was the blind leading the blind," the official said. The interrogations have provided new evidence to suggest that Al Qaeda has been lacking in technical expertise, the official added. "If they had been handed the plans for a nuclear bomb, the worst they could have done is use them as kindling to start a fire," the official said. But in the interrogations, one of the two scientists mentioned that he had a personal relationship with a Pakistani, and that the man had also been in contact with the Taliban, an American official said. United States intelligence officials believe that they have identified the man as a weapons expert who has left the Pakistani program and is now in business, an intelligence official said. While unable to confirm that account, another American intelligence official said there were new reports suggesting previously undisclosed connections between Pakistani nuclear weapons experts and the Taliban or Al Qaeda. American and Pakistani officials said that at least some of the scientists the United States is worried about had been involved in the complex of top-secret nuclear facilities southwest of Islamabad where much of Pakistan's rogue nuclear weapons program is concentrated. It remains unclear whether Pakistan plans to detain any of the individuals suspected of involvement. The new American concern over Pakistan's nuclear program highlights what could well become a growing source of tension between the United States and Pakistan as the war against terrorism enters a new phase. Mr. Bush is more focused than ever, his aides say, on preventing any repeat of the Sept. 11 terrorism, and is particularly worried that Al Qaeda, seeking revenge for the American success in Afghanistan, will use any weapon it can find. But in private, midlevel Pakistani officials say that while they share Mr. Bush's concern, they also believe that the United States is trying to leverage the current crisis to discover more about Pakistan's facilities, in case Washington someday feels the need to secure or destroy them. But the American approach, to one Pakistani government official, seems straightforward. Asked in Islamabad about the American requests for cooperation, he characterized the requests this way: "One of the things the U.S. wants is Pakistani knowledge of the market. Could these people have passed on how to acquire technology? Who is selling on the international market?" If the survivors of the American- led military assault on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are searching for such nuclear technology and materials, there are two natural targets: Russia and Pakistan. The Pakistani program may be particularly tempting, American officials say, because its major facilities are near the Afghanistan border, as far from India as possible. Pakistan has barred international inspections of the facilities, so their security is unclear. While American officials believe that Pakistan has built fewer than 20 complete nuclear weapons, all based on designs that use uranium, they also believe that Pakistan has enough weapons-grade material to build a total of at least 45 nuclear weapons. That figure includes Pakistan's recent production of plutonium, enough for at least five bombs. As one former American official who carefully followed the program until recently said, the estimates of Pakistan's nuclear material are "almost certainly way, way low." The fact of the matter, said another senior Bush administration official in Washington this week, is, "we simply don't know what they've got, how much they've made. That means we can't create a baseline" to determine whether nuclear material is missing. But the most immediate concern is whether Pakistani scientists and engineers harbor sympathies for the defeated Taliban government in Afghanistan, or are willing to carry on for Osama bin Laden. "Is there loose plutonium in Pakistan?" one senior administration official with lengthy experience in Pakistan said on Friday. "I don't think so. Is there loose technology? That's a different question, and everyone there who has knowledge and access to the material needs to be talked to." The interrogations of Pakistani scientists and engineers began several weeks ago. After a tip from the United States, Pakistani authorities last month arrested Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Majeed. Both men were associated with a private foundation that did humanitarian work in Afghanistan, and both apparently had contact with Al Qaeda members within the country. Papers found in the foundation's office in Kabul indicated that someone there was also sketching out designs for a helium balloon that could disperse anthrax. The two men were released and then rearrested, and attempts to reach them have been unsuccessful. They are still being detained without charges. A spokesman for the Pakistani foreign ministry said yesterday that several other associates of the private foundation had recently been detained for questioning, but that none of them were nuclear experts. The families of Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Majeed have said they are innocent of any wrongdoing. Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and a former senior nonproliferation specialist in the Clinton White House, returned from Pakistan last week with a similar report. "Pakistani officials claim that no sensitive nuclear materials or information was provided by these retired scientists to Al Qaeda, although they acknowledged that there were discussions that were ongoing," he said. "The critical question is whether that is accurate, and whether there are other cases of individual Pakistani scientists willing to sell nuclear or missile information." American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Pakistan may become the site of a furtive struggle between those trying to keep nuclear technology secure and those looking to export it for terrorism or for profit. "The Pakistanis themselves have a strong interest in keeping everything locked down," one senior American official said. "But at the same time, they refuse to stop producing new material," because India, Pakistan's nuclear rival, continues its own production. "And there are some in the Pakistani hierarchy who fear a Trojan horse that we are learning about their nuclear program because, in their minds, we may one day need to deal with it."
Vragen en antwoorden over de MID naar aanleiding van de vaststelling van de begroting van de uitgaven en ontvangsten van het Ministerie van Defensie 28 000 X, nr.3 12, 13 en 17 Het MID-jaarverslag spreekt in dit verband van een escalatierisico (van regionale conflicten) dat (…) vervolgens zal kunnen leiden tot betrokkenheid van de internationale gemeenschap. Deze omstandigheden brengen daarom ook potentiële veiligheidsrisico’s voor Europa met zich mee.
Mubarak Links U.S. Aid to Israel With Arab Nuclear Arms Race International Herald Tribune Cairo - Continued U.S. military aid to Israel may
prompt Arab governments to seek nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,
according to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
Fugitive in Court for Nuclear Parts Deal Washington Post, 27 November 2001 LOS ANGELES, Nov. 26 -- A 72-year-old engineer from
the Los Angeles area who has been on the run for the last 16 years pleaded
not guilty today to charges of illegally shipping nuclear triggering devices
to Israel. "I'm not guilty," Richard Kelly Smyth told U.S. District
Judge Pamela Ann Rymer in a hearing in Los Angeles. |