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U.S. Sees Verification as Potential Obstacle to Nuclear Talks

Paul Basken

Bloomberg News

December 16, 2003

The Bush administration put a potential roadblock in front of new global nuclear weapons talks, saying concerns about verification could derail efforts to restrict the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

``We are not prepared to sign treaties if they are not going to be ratified,'' Stephen Rademaker, assistant U.S. secretary of State for arms control, told a briefing in Washington. ``That is a cardinal rule that we have followed and intend to follow.''

Doubts about international methods of verifying treaty compliance have kept the U.S. Senate from ratifying arms control treaties in the past, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which it rejected in 1999, Rademaker said.

Hopes for the talks next month in Geneva on plutonium and uranium led by the United Nations-organized Conference on Disarmament were boosted by China's decision to stop demanding that the conference first discuss a ban on space-based military deployments.

China's demand helped create six years of stalemate among the 66 member nations at the Conference on Disarmament, including North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India and China. The Bush administration meanwhile has made a priority of trying to win individual agreements with such countries limiting their nuclear ambitions.

Rademaker said the Bush administration is willing to help lead the Conference on Disarmament negotiations on the fissile material cutoff treaty, which would prohibit the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons purposes.

The fissile material cutoff treaty is seen as a critical non-proliferation goal because obtaining such material is often the most difficult step for a country trying to build an atomic bomb, he said.

U.S. Commitment Doubted

Arms control experts said the reservations expressed by Rademaker suggested the Bush administration was content to support the idea of a fissile material cutoff treaty as long as China's demands prevented actual progress on it.

``This administration's record of questioning the worth of binding arms control agreements and opposing formal negotiations raises doubts about its true commitment to a FMCT,'' said Wade Boese, research director at the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group.

``One hopes that the administration is sincere because a FMCT would be a useful step in capping the number of nuclear weapons that could be made,'' Boese said.

`Heavy Lifting' Required

The administration would have to lobby senators who are likely to raise the same strategic and verification concerns they cited in opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, said Michael Roston, an analyst with the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, another Washington-based study group.

``A lot of heavy lifting would be required if the Bush administration ever hopes to make ratification of the FMCT a priority,'' Roston said.

Hu Xiaodi, China's ambassador to Conference on Disarmament, announced in August that his country would no longer tie progress on the fissile material cutoff treaty to a commitment for talks on weapons deployed in space.

The U.S., which hopes to build a space-based defensive shield, has been the only country at the Conference on Disarmament to oppose the talks on weapons in space.