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Untitled Document U.S. Lawmakers Urge White House to Resolve Threat Reduction Liability Dispute with Russia Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire January 14, 2003
WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers last week called on the Bush administration to resolve an ongoing dispute with Russia over liability protections in nuclear nonproliferation agreements (see GSN, Oct. 17).
In a provision to the fiscal 2004 energy appropriations conference report, House and Senate negotiators said they were “greatly concerned with the continued impasse” in the negotiations between the United States and Russia over liability protections, which are intended to protect workers involved in cooperative threat reduction efforts. The impasse led the Bush administration to allow two nuclear nonproliferation projects — the Plutonium Disposition Scientific and Technical Cooperation Agreement (see GSN, July 25) and the Nuclear Cities Initiative (see GSN, Sept. 19) — to expire recently.
“The conferees urge a speedy resolution to the liability negotiations,” the report says.
Kenneth Luongo, executive director of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, yesterday praised lawmakers for urging a speedy resolution to the liability dispute.
“The Congress now has clearly stated that the protracted wrangling over liability issues threatens the success of U.S.- Russian nonproliferation engagement. The Administration may find it hard to ignore such a pointed bipartisan message from key legislators,” Luongo said in a press statement.
Last week, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the United States and Russia were moving to resolve the disagreement.
“[Russian Atomic Energy] Minister [Alexander] Rumyantsev suggested this summer that we get the legal teams together, and we’ve already had one such meeting. I think it was a positive meeting that hopefully can help lead to resolving these legal issues in terms of interpretation and issues of that sort. We’re obviously each putting a great deal of emphasis on the program,” he said in a Nov. 6 press briefing.
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