News

The Soviet Nuclear Breakup – Promise or Perils?

By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White

International Affairs
February 1992, p. 30

The West is now watching the Soviet central government grow weaker, and may soon see it disappear. With the resulting confusion comes the risk that Soviet nuclear weapons may escape responsible control or go on sale to Third World bomb-makers. If this happens, Soviet nuclear weapons may become a greater threat to the West than they were during the Cold War.

Leonid Kravchuk, president of Ukraine, is hardly known to most Americans, but he may soon inherit the power to destroy US cities with nuclear missiles. In early December the newly-independent Ukraine became the biggest country in Eastern Europe and potentially the third greatest nuclear power in the world. On its soil are about one thousand nuclear warheads mounted on long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States, and thousands of other warheads capable of reaching Moscow aboard nuclear bombers and short-range missiles. These numbers dwarf the atomic arsenals of Great Britain, France and China.

Ukraine is also home to the largest missile-making complex in the world-at Dnepropetrovsk-and has in Pavlograd a plant for making solid-fueled missile engines and in Kiev other important facilities for missile work. Of the republics, Ukraine’s large missile production potential is second only to Russia’s.

Kazakhstan, another independence-minded republic, has two bases filled with the biggest Soviet ICBMs-some of which are believed to be aimed at the United States-and roughly a thousand nuclear warheads aboard bombers and short-range missiles. Kazakhstan also designs nuclear warheads and has a testing site.

Byelorussia, another non-Russian republic on the way to independence has over a thousand nuclear warheads and the latest mobile long-range missiles to carry them. It also has five fields for nuclear bombers.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of the other republics are trying to decide who should control these weapons. To protect the weapons from misuse, Moscow runs a complex network requiring codes from different leaders to activate the warheads on the longer-range missiles. But the short-range warheads have less protection. In any case, if the republics decide to keep the warheads they will eventually figure out how to use them.

In August, Boris Yelstin announced that Ukraine’s nuclear weapons should be moved to Russia under “central control.” But Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Byelorussia all rejected the idea. As things stand now, neither Yeltsin nor Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev can openly transfer the warheads of the smaller republics to Russia.

This raises the question of what US policy on this point should be. Since Western aid now seems vital to help the republics survive, Western policy on this issue could carry a lot of weight. Should Washington urge the smaller republics to send their bombs to Russia? Should Washington accept the idea that the republics keep their bombs under some form of “central control”? Or should Washington advocate an international solution?

Each of these alternatives has problems. Some Ukrainians see nuclear weapons as a deterrent to Russian imperialism-a last-ditch guarantee of national independence. It is also difficult politically for the smaller republics to give nuclear weapons to Russia. More bombs would only increase Russia’s military dominance. In addition, the citizens of the smaller republics helped pay for the Soviet arsenal, so they can fairly claim a portion of it for themselves. The republics are shouldering the Soviet debt, so they are entitled to a share of the Soviet assets. The Ukrainian leadership already sees nuclear weapons as a ticket to sit at the negotiating table with the other militarily powerful nations of the world.

But keeping the weapons will not be cheap. Maintaining them will be enormously expensive at the very time when the republics are going broke. Keeping them also means staying on the Pentagon’s nuclear target list and possibly jeopardizing Western aid. Will US taxpayers really send money to Ukraine while Ukraine is paying troops to man missiles pointed at US cities? If the Ukrainians can afford a giant nuclear arsenal, critics will say, they don’t need economic aid.

The second option-central control-is only feasible as long as there is a center. Mr. Gorbachev, Muscovites are now fond of saying, is “president of a non-existent country”. An independent Ukraine will control its own industry, banks and borders. Its parliament has even voted to create an army larger than Germany’s. As a sovereign nation it will want to command all the military forces within its borders. This means that Ukraine will become a new nuclear weapon power unless central military control is somehow preserved. With military units now switching allegiance to individual republics, this hardly seems likely.

A third option is to control the smaller republics’ weapons under international inspection. The smaller republics could put their arsenals under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency and then join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapon states. This would put them on the same legal footing as West Germany, which had nuclear weapons on its soil for years but didn’t control them, and promised not to make nuclear weapons of its own. The difficulty, however, is that the International Atomic Energy Agency is a rather toothless watchdog, not at all like the United States, which controlled the nuclear weapons in Germany. To make “control without destruction” acceptable, the smaller republics would probably have to dismantle the warheads and store them a form that would prevent them from being put quickly to military use. The main benefit would be to make advantage of a loophole in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Treaty allows a member to withdraw on three months’ notice if its “supreme interests” are threatened. If Ukraine ever faced a Russian takeover, it could drop out of the treaty and have the arsenal to fall back on.

A fourth option is to completely destroy the weapons under international inspection. This would allow the republics to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapon states, and also enable them to declare themselves nuclear weapon-free zones.

Joint measures regarding nuclear weapons agreed upon by 11 independent states members of the Commonwealth, primarily Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, in Alma-Ata on December 21, 1991 may not fully correspond to any of the above options, but are a timely development in the right direction. In their declaration the 11 independent states declared that to provide international strategic stability and security, a joint command over military-strategic forces and a single control over nuclear weapons will be preserved; the parties will respect each other’s effort to achieve the status of a non-nuclear or neutral state.

Joint measures with regard to nuclear weapons are made more specific in the agreement signed by heads of the referred to four states. Particularly, they have agreed upon the following: first, nuclear weapons within the joint strategic armed forces are to provide collective security of all participants in the CIS; second, member states of the agreement will jointly elaborate their policy on nuclear questions; third, Byelorussia and Ukraine commit themselves to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as non-nuclear states and to conclude with the IAEA a corresponding agreement on guarantees; fourth, the states participants to the agreement commit themselves not to hand over nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices to anybody, nor control over such nuclear or explosive devices, whether directly or indirectly, or to help or encourage any non-nuclear state to produce or obtain in any other way nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices as well as control over them; fifth, these states participants to the agreement will promote annihilation of nuclear weapons in accordance with the international treaty.

From the American point of view, the fewer fingers on the nuclear trigger the better. Thus, the ideal solution for Washington would be for the republics to send their bombs to Russia. This would be the quickest, cleanest, and cheapest outcome. But it now seems unlikely. There is simply not enough political support for it in the smaller republics. The next best alternative would be destruction under international inspection, which Washington should urge the republics to begin at once.

As part of an aid package, the West should offer to pay for the destruction of Soviet nuclear weapons outside Russia. The US Congress has just authorized a $500 million down-payment for this job, but more will be needed. It is surely cheaper to destroy bombs than to defend against them. The money spent on destruction would also have a side benefit: it would employ many Soviet nuclear scientists and engineers who now face unemployment across the Soviet Union. It would be far safer to keep these experts on a republic’s payroll destroying bombs, than to have them on a Libyan or Iranian payroll building them. There are reports that some Soviet nuclear experts have already been solicited by foreign employers.

DANGEROUS SOVIET EXPORTS

This brings us to the other main issue: Soviet missile and nuclear exports. The Soviet Union is now poised to help Brazil develop an intercontinental ballistic missile. To win a lucrative contract to launch Brazilian satellites, the Soviets are offering to teach Brazil how to produce large liquid-fuel rocket engines. In addition, the Soviets would install an ICBM-sized launch pad and tracking station at Alcantara, Brazil’s new rocket center near the equator. This aid will inevitably help Brazil build big missiles. Brazil’s first three space rockets, the Sonda I, II and III, were all developed into surface-to-surface missiles that Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia purchased directly off Brazil’s production line. The Sonda IV, Brazil’s fourth space rocket, is now being transformed into an intermediate-range missile as fast as Brazilian scientists can do so, and Brazil is trying to develop a fifth, much larger space rocket called the VLS, which as a missile could deliver a nuclear-sized warhead over 2,000 miles. The Soviet aid will help Brazil perfect both the Sonda IV and the VLS.

The Soviet Union has also offered to sell its latest upper-stage space rocket to India. In addition to the rocket motor itself, the Soviets would help India set up plants to mass-produce it. India would become self-sufficient in rocketry and could become a supplier to other countries. Because of the rocket’s size, the $10 million deal offers India the means to build an ICBM. Since India, like Brazil, freely converts its space rockets to missiles, the sale would be an egregious act of proliferation.

The deals with India and Brazil will eviscerate the main international device for halting missile proliferation. In 1987 Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, West Germany and the United States signed the Missile Technology Control Regime, an agreement not to sell any rocket that could carry a 500 kilogram payload more than 300 kilometers. The Soviet Union refused to join the regime, but later promised to abide by its provisions. The pending Soviet missile sales would fatally wound the regime.

The Brazilian and Indian offers are not anomalies. Since the 1960s, the Soviet Union has been willing to sell short and medium-range nuclear-capable missiles throughout the Middle East. Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and Kuwait have all been customers. The missiles include FROG-7s, SCUD-Bs and the more accurate SS-21s. The Soviet SCUD-B, made infamous by Iraq, flies about 170 miles in its original version. Iraq used an extended-range Soviet SCUD as the first stage, and a Soviet liquid-fuel surface-to-air missile as the second stage, to make a 2,000 kilometer ballistic missile called the Tammuz I.

The Soviet Union has also been willing to put high performance bombers in unstable hands. In 1989, Soviet President Gorbachev sold Libya’s Qaddafi advanced bombers able to reach Israel. As part of the deal, the Soviets agreed to train Libyan pilots to fly the new plane, which carries a payload of up to 24,000 pounds 800 miles. The sale squarely contradicted Moscow’s standing commitment to reduce regional tensions and cut back on the sale of destabilizing weapons.

The Soviet Union’s record on nuclear exports is not much better than its missile record. Unless Soviet policies change, the Soviet Union could become the supplier of last resort to the few countries that still reject the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Treaty-holdouts India, Israel and Pakistan have all recently become candidates for Soviet nuclear reactors. When the Soviets made their now-pending reactor offer to India, they broke a de facto embargo on reactor sales to India that had held since the Indian nuclear test in 1974. If the Soviets also offer a reactor to Israel, a possibility that the Soviets have considered, they would break a similar embargo on that country. And in Pakistan, the Soviets apparently have considered stepping in behind an improvident reactor offer from France that is receding because of US pressure. The effect of all these deals is to undermine the Western effort to bar reactor sales to countries that have not joined the non-proliferation treaty.

In October, it suddenly seemed that this behavior might change. At a Moscow meeting with one of the authors, a high Soviet official stated that beginning in 1992 the Soviet Union would no longer make major nuclear sales to countries that do not accept international inspection of their entire nuclear programs (i.e., “full-scope safeguards”). This would have barred the reactor sales to Israel and Pakistan. But in November, Moscow dashed hopes by officially telling Bonn that such a policy would not be adopted.

The Soviet breakup will put the republics to the economic test. The lure of foreign exchange could either pull them together so they can export better as a group, or push them apart into competition, with each selling whatever in has to the highest bidder. The Soviet Union has thousands of scientists and engineers who know how to design nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. It has a vast network of equipment and material makers who produce the actual hardware. All of this is now plunging into decentralization. The risk that it could all go up for sale, scientist by scientist, component by component, is palpable. There are already reports that private cooperatives have sold zirconium, used in reactors to make nuclear weapon fuel, and beryllium, used to boost the yield of fission bombs and to ignite thermonuclear bombs. If bomb-makers in the developing world now go prospecting in the republics, they could bring home a nuclear mother lode.

SOVIET AID TO INDIA

The case of Soviet nuclear aid to India is especially instructive. It explodes the myth that the Soviet Union has a good record on nuclear exports. It also shows that unless export controls are strengthened and guaranteed by each of the republics, dangerous sales will probably continue.

During the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union secretly sold at least 80 tons of unsafeguarded Ukrainian “heavy water” to India in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Heavy water looks and tastes like ordinary water, but is used to run reactors that produce plutonium, the explosive metal at the core of atomic bombs. Eighty tons is enough to produce about six bombs’ worth of plutonium per year.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty bars its members-including the Soviet Union-from exporting more than a ton of heavy water to any country that does not put it under international inspection. This means that any plutonium made by a reactor using the water must be inspected and confined to peaceful use. To evade this obligation for their Indian clients, Soviet exporters hid behind transit trades and phony freight documents.

Government records from five countries show that Moscow’s secret sales to New Delhi were deliberate, and that Moscow was content to help its ally build a nuclear arsenal. The paper trail begins in West Germany. In July 1985, a coded cable marked “urgent and confidential” arrived from Bonn’s embassy in Bern, Switzerland. In a transit zone in Zurich, a Swiss customs agent had accidentally discovered 6.8 tons of Soviet heavy water cargo traveling without international inspection. The water was consigned to a West German broker named Alfred Hempel, an ex-Nazi who later died in 1989. Hempel was the Soviet Union’s exclusive marketing agent in Europe. According to the Soviet freight papers, firms in seven different European countries were each supposed to get .99 tons of the precious liquid. “Switzerland,” said the embassy, “cannot imagine what the recipient countries were supposed to do with such a large amount of heavy water.” And, since the shipment had only been discovered by accident, the Swiss feared that the 6.8 tons might only be “the tip of the iceberg.”

Twenty-seven minutes later, a second cable arrived. Coded and marked “most urgent,” it reported that the heavy water had been flown out the previous day from Basel to Sharja in the United Arab Emirates. The cable also said that “Switzerland considers it proven that misdealings occurred and made this clear to the Soviet Union”.

By August 28, the West German foreign office had discovered more. Dr. von Stuelpnagel reported to Bonn’s Embassy in Paris that Bombay was the “final destination for the total amount”. He also reported that “the Soviet Union had officially ignored the … Swiss questioning”. The Soviets, it seemed, would only say “unofficially that the whole chain of events was completely harmless since all individual amounts were each below … 1 ton of heavy water”. Dr. von Stuelpnagel had also learned something else: India’s uninspected Dhruva reactor had started operating only two weeks after the shipment arrived. Thus, he said, “a connection cannot be excluded”.

On February 14, 1986, Bern was on the wire to Bonn again. The Swiss had discovered that Hempel had planned to send India four more tons of Soviet heavy water cargo through Switzerland the preceding December. But this time, the Soviet agent Hempel had been forced to change his plans. “The Swiss authorities had caught wind” of the shipment, the cable said. How did the Swiss find out? “Last but not least,” said the cable, “through the [Swiss government’s] intervention at the Soviet embassy.” The Swiss believed that after they contacted the Soviet embassy to protest the shipment the embassy had alerted Hempel. The result was that “the heavy water shipment was rerouted to Amsterdam”, where “additional shipments of Soviet heavy water are supposed to have arrived”. Bern also reported that during the preceding August, Hempel had routed an additional ton of Soviet heavy water through Basel from Greece.

So the Soviets were secretly shipping India heavy water on a regular basis, and were willing to use their embassy to help their agent avoid detection. The Swiss concluded that “the Soviet Union… is looking for ways to send India large amounts of heavy water for the non controlled Indian nuclear sites … obscuring the ways of shipment”.

On April 24, 1986, the Germans finally called the Soviets in. It fell to Dr. von Stuelpnagel to pose the question: Why was the Soviet Union secretly shipping large amounts of heavy water to India through Switzerland? If the Soviet shipments were intentional, they would be deliberate acts of nuclear arms proliferation. The heavy water would enable India’s reactors to make enough plutonium for a stockpile of atomic bombs. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Guidelines, Moscow had promised not to export more than one ton of heavy water per year to any given country without notifying the International Atomic Energy Agency. Notifying the Agency meant that its inspectors would insure that any plutonium the heavy water might make in a reactor could not be used for bombs.

Soviet Counsellor Gelisarov responded with an incredible note which he read to German official Achem Bach. It admitted that on July 11, 1985, the official Soviet export agency, Techsnabexport, had shipped 5.98 tons of heavy water to its agent Hempel in Zurich in a single lot. It also claimed, however, that the lot was composed of smaller parts for “further shipment to final destinations”. There were .99 tons for a firm in Switzerland, .99 tons for a firm in Austria, .99 tons for the Merck firm in West Germany, .99 tons for a firm a Denmark, .99 tons for a firm in Belgium, .99 tons for a firm in the Netherlands, and .04 tons for a Hempel-owned firm in West Berlin. “Thus,” said Gelisarov, “the amount of heavy water, according to each contract, did not exceed the amount of one ton, thus not raising the question of bringing this amount under the guarantees of the London agreement.” He added, for good measure, that “the embassy expresses its hope that the Federal Republic of Germany will take all necessary steps to foil the dirty attempts of certain circles to ruin the image of the policy of the Soviet Union in the field of nuclear exports”.

In response to this amazing performance, a German official penned the words “fresh rascal” on the bottom of the note. The Germans also informed Gelisarov that Merck had not received any heavy water. And making inquiries, they discovered that none of the other supposed recipients had received any either.

In 1988, a third Soviet shipment was revealed. The deal was discovered by the Norwegian police, who were investigating a diversion of Norwegian heavy water that had happened in 1983. It turned out that in December of 1983 Techsnabexport had sent 4.67 tons of Soviet water on Soviet trucks overland to Hempel in Basel, where 15 tons of illegally-imported Norwegian water were waiting. Hempel then combined the two cargoes and sent the whole lot to Bombay. The consignee was the “Director of Purchases and Stores”, the official purchasing arm of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission.

Until now, the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency have winked at the Soviet Union’s export behavior. US intelligence knew about the secret heavy water shipments to India but did not reveal them or take effective action to stop them. The IAEA has been just as guilty. Under a safeguards agreement negotiated in the 1970s, India was required to notify the IAEA whenever it imported Soviet heavy water. The agreement also authorized the Soviets to declare its exports to India, so that the heavy water could de inspected. Despite the undisputed evidence of the shipments, the IAEA has still not asked India to allow inspection on the Soviet water. The International Atomic Energy Agency should now require that the Soviet heavy water in India be put under international inspection, as well as the fissionable material made by the reactors using Soviet heavy water.

Only Techsnabexport knows how much heavy water the Soviet Union has secretly sold to nuclear weapon programs over the years. In 1989, a fourth series of Soviet shipments were revealed by German audit of Hempel’s books. From July to September 1987, an additional 70 tons of Soviet heavy water cargo, apparently diverted from a defunct reactor, were shipped to India via a Romanian firm. Court documents also prove that four to five tons of Soviet heavy water secretly went to Israel through Luxembourg as early as 1974. What has come to light is undoubtedly the “tip of the iceberg”.

Independent Ukraine can now turn off the dangerous Soviet heavy water spigot. If Ukraine limited its heavy water exports to countries that have joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India would be under great pressure to join too. India cannot run all of its reactors without yearly imports of Soviet heavy water. So India would have to choose between making electricity and making atomic bombs. Such an export policy would bring Ukraine into line with Western countries, all of whom have now adopted this policy as a means of combating nuclear arms proliferation. Ukraine should be willing to take such a step in return for Western aid.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

The Soviet republics are now in economic free-fall and things are sure to get worse. If conditions become truly desperate, local rebellions could arise in areas containing nuclear weapons. During the transition from central to republican government, there may be a legal no man’s land through which dangerous exports will go out.

The republics should act immediately to reduce these risks. The republics have endorsed the Bush-Gorbachev pledges to destroy short-range nuclear weapons. If they implement the pledges quickly, more than 10,000 Soviet warheads will be identified for destruction. Moving these warheads to a safe location-for destruction later-would be a giant step in the right direction. The republics should also offer to begin destroying their long-range weapons, as suggested above, with American aid. The sooner the republics begin to take these steps, the safer everyone will be.

As for exports, the republics now believe what all legal authority will henceforth flow from them. They, not the disappearing Soviet center, will decide who can sell- what to whom. But for the moment, none of the republics can control its exports because none has the necessary laws or personnel.

In the past, Soviet controls have never relied primarily on “law,” as understood in the West. All sales were made by state ministries, so top management approved them administratively. But in the future, as industry becomes privatized, this administrative control will disappear. Capitalist-style rules will be needed to regulate entrepreneurs. The West should start helping the republics set up such controls as soon as possible.

According to knowledgeable Soviet officials, the immediate solution to export controls will probably be delegation. The republics are likely to delegate the export control function to a committee acting on their behalf. The committee would then hire the same experts who have regulated Soviet exports in the past. The committee would also follow the same procedures. The committee’s decisions would formally bind the republics, which would use their courts to punish anyone violating the committee’s authority.

In forming US policy toward the republics, President Bush should heed the advice of Yevgeny Velikhov, director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, overseer of the Soviet nuclear complex. In August, Velikhov argued that any non-Russian republic seeking independence should first sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. By signing as a non-nuclear weapon state, a republic would automatically open all of its nuclear sites to international inspection. Velikhov cautioned that inspection would be essential to keep the republics’ nuclear weapons under control. The United States should openly endorse this idea, and then urge the republics to start destroying their weapons under international supervision.

The United States should also urge all of the republics, including Russia, to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime-two multilateral efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group would put the republics at the international table where controls on sensitive “dual-use” technology is now being fashioned-the technology that fueled the Iraqi bomb program. Joining the Missile Technology Control Regime would bar the pending rocket deals with Brazil and India.

To encourage the republics to take these steps, the West should make trade relations and economic aid depend on them. If the republics like Ukraine want to join the community of trading nations, they should accept the duties that go with a membership card. They cannot proliferate long-range missile technology across the world and expect to be embraced by the West.

Soviet Transfers of Sensitive Nuclear and Missile Technology As Reported by the Press
Importing Country, Date, Item Exported:

Afghanistan
1980s:
Supplied several hundred 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles and about 30 launchers

Algeria
mid-1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles

Brazil
1988:
Signed space accord for the joint development of guidance systems, fuels and rocket propulsion

Brazil
1990:
Soviet company Glavkosmos offered rocket technology in exchange for a Brazilian satellite launch contract and use of a Brazilian launch site

Bulgaria
1987-1988?:
Sold an undetermined number of SS-23 intermediate- range missiles (a total of 72-100 were sold to Bulgaria, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia)

Cuba
1961:
Supplied an unspecified number of 40-kilometer range FROG-4s

Cuba
mid-1980s:
Supplied 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles, bringing Cuba’s total arsenal up to 65 missiles

Czechoslovakia
1987-1988?:
Sold an undetermined number of SS-23 intermediate- range missiles (a total of 72-100 were sold to Bulgaria, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia)

East Germany
1987-1988?:
Sold an undetermined number of SS-23 intermediate- range missiles (a total of 72-100 were sold to Bulgaria East Germany, and Czechoslovakia)

Egypt
1968:
Supplied an unspecified number of 40-kilometer range FROG-4 missiles

Egypt
1971:
Supplied an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles

Egypt
1972:
Agreed to provide assistance with guidance systems for medium-range missiles

Egypt
1973:
Supplied an unspecified number of 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles

India
1983:
Techsnabexport sold 4.7 tons of heavy water, shipped illegally via the United Arab Emirates to India by West German broker Alfred Hempel

India
July 1985:
Techsnabexport sent 6 tons of heavy water cargo to Bombay via Zurich

India
Dec. 1985:
Techsnabexport sent 4 tons of heavy water cargo via truck to West Germany, for re-export via Zurich to Bombay in violation of German export law

India
Jul-Sept. 1987:
Seventy tons of Soviet heavy water, apparently diverted September from a defunct reactor, were shipped in three lots to India by the KIMIKA company of Romania

India
1988:
Concluded agreement to supply two 1,000-megawatt power reactors without requiring full-scope safeguards

India
1988-1990:
Supplied two Charlie I class nuclear-powered submarines that are usually equipped with eight SS-N-7 anti-ship, nuclear-capable cruise missiles

India
1990:
Offered to sell cryogenic rocket engines and the technology to produce them

Iran
1989:
Signed agreements on scientific and technological cooperation in the field of nuclear energy

Iran
1990:
Signed an agreement for cooperation that may include building two 440-megawatt power reactors

Iraq
1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles and about 30 launchers

Iraq
1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles and an estimated 36 launchers

Iraq
1978 or bef.:
Constructed a small radioisotope laboratory

Iraq
1986:
Sold 300 Scud B missiles, some of which have been used to form the first stage of Iraq’s large new space rocket and the first stage of Iraq’s 2,000-kilometer Tammuz I missile (Soviet SA-2 missiles form the second stage)

Israel
1974:
Shipped four to five tons of heavy water via Luxembourg

Kuwait
1980:
Sold an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles

Libya
1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles and approximately 39 launchers

Libya
1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles and 72 launchers

Libya
bef. 1981:
Built safeguarded Tajoura research reactor (light water/ highly-enriched uranium,10 thermal megawatt) and zero-power critical assembly; supplied 5 kilograms or more of 80% enriched uranium to power the reactors

North Korea
1956:
Trained approximately 30 North Korean scientists at the Dubna Combined Nuclear Institute; North Korea later built the Yongbyon 30 megawatt reactor outside international inspection

North Korea
1969-1970:
Supplied an unspecified number of FROG-5 and FROG-7 missiles and about 39 launchers

North Korea
1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles and 24 launchers

North Yemen
1988:
Supplied an unspecified number of 120-kilometer range SS-21 Scarab missiles

South Yemen
1980s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles and approximately 12 launchers

South Yemen
1980s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles and 6 launchers

South Yemen
1988:
Supplied an unspecified number of 120-kilometer range SS-21 Scarab missiles and approximately 4 launchers

Syria
1970s:
Supplied an unspecified number of 280-kilometer range Scud B missiles and 18 launchers

Syria
1973:
Supplied an unspecified number of 70-kilometer range FROG-7 missiles

Syria
1983:
Supplied an unspecified number of 120-kilometer range SS-21 Scarab missiles

Exports and Terrorism: U.S. Export Licenses to Iran: September 1990 to September 1991

By Gary Milhollin

From September 1990 to September 1991, the U.S. Department of Commerce approved nearly $60 million dollars’ worth of sensitive exports to Iran. Most of these items were “dual use,” meaning that in addition to their civilian uses, they can be used to make nuclear weapons, long-range missiles or other military equipment. The record of these exports has just become available.

The Commerce Department granted these licenses despite Iran’s “terrorism” status under U.S. export law. For several years U.S. regulations have designated Iran as having “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” As a result, the regulations provide that export licenses to Iran “will generally be denied” for a specific list of sensitive items. This amounts to a denial rule for items on that list.

From 1990 to 1991, however, the Commerce Department licensed the export of millions of dollars’ worth of these very items. The Commerce Department does not appear to be following its own regulations, and therefore is not implementing the U.S. policy against international terrorism.

Commerce approved one of these exports over the opposition of the State Department and another over the opposition of the Defense Department. Commerce also approved several other cases after either State, Defense or the Department of Energy recommended that the application “return without action.” According to a knowledgeable Defense Department official, “return without action” is usually a polite denial for a country like Iran. The government has information showing that the license should not be granted, but does not want to say so publicly with a rejection. The RWA is a polite way of informing the exporter of this fact. The unspoken implication is that the application will be rejected if submitted again. Applications may also be returned without action because the file is incomplete or because the application was filed for an item that does not require a license.

In the past, Commerce has deferred to the recommendations of State, Defense and Energy on dual-use licensing. These latter agencies, rather than Commerce, possess the diplomatic and strategic expertise to decide whether an export might be diverted to A-bomb or missile production. Now a new pattern has appeared: Commerce can ignore the judgement of other agencies in order to promote exports.

The following discussion is organized according to the items Commerce approved for export. Computers, the first category, have a number of military uses depending on their speed and configuration. They can powerfully aid in the design, development, and testing of both nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Navigation, direction-finding and radar equipment, the second category, is necessary for missile guidance and military targeting. Oscilloscopes, the third category, are high-speed electronic diagnostic instruments that can be used to develop missile guidance systems and to process the rapid signals from nuclear weapon tests. Compasses, gyroscopes and accelerometers, the fourth category, are also necessary for missile guidance systems.

To read the complete report, click here:  Exports and Terrorism: U.S. Export Licenses to Iran: September 1990 to September 1991

Testimony: North Korea’s Nuclear Program

By Gary Milhollin

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs

November 25, 1991

I am pleased to have this opportunity to appear before the Senate Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, and to discuss the subject of North Korea’s nuclear program. I am a member of the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty and am director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to developing nations.

I will address three points: First, how close is North Korea to making a nuclear weapon? Second, what are the risks the world faces if North Korea succeeds in its nuclear guest? Third, what can be done?

Since 1987, North Korea has been running a graphite-moderated reactor that produces plutonium in its spent uranium fuel. Plutonium is the nuclear explosive metal that the United States used to make the Nagasaki bomb. The reactor is near Yongbyon, about 50 miles north of Pyongyang. Its output is estimated at 30 megawatt thermal, so by now it would have produced somewhere betwe6n 18 and 36 kilograms of plutonium, enough for two to five bombs.1 The reactor does not seem intended for peaceful use. It is too big for research and too small for electricity production. North Korea already has a Soviet reactor for research, supplied in 1965, which has been upgraded from 2-4MWt to 8MWt. And recent North Korean defectors have identified a second site at Bak Chion as a nuclear weapon research facility.

North Korea is also building a larger reactor, estimated at 50-200MWt, also near Yongbyon. This reactor could produce enough plutonium for about two to ten bombs per year. Its distance from North Korea’s industrial belt and the absence of power lines disprove North Korean claims that it is intended for power production.

To produce a bomb core, the plutonium must be extracted from the existing reactor’s spent fuel by a sophisticated chemical process that must be carried out behind heavy shielding. It is reasonable to assume that North Korea has already extracted at least small amounts of plutonium on an experimental basis. This would have been done in a small-scale plant to gain the confidence needed to construct the larger plutonium extraction plant that has been built or is being built, also at Yongbyon.

It is unclear whether North Korea has extracted enough plutonium for a bomb, because it is unclear whether the large extraction plant is running, or how much plutonium might have been extracted in a smaller plant. Last summer I was told by an informed source that North Korea was operating a plutonium extraction plant. Upon inquiring at the State Department, I was told that the large plant was not operating and was not expected to operate for a year or more, and that my information was therefore incorrect. That was in July 1991. The State Department now says that it still has no evidence that the large extraction plant is operating, but cannot exclude the possibility that North Korea might be extracting plutonium at a secret site or that the large plant might be operating at a lower level of activity that would be difficult to detect.

To actually deploy a nuclear weapon, North Korea must design and build a workable implosion device that can cause the plutonium to explode in a chain reaction. There have been many reports of work on such a device, and of tests of components. It would be prudent to assume that as soon as North Korea produces the plutonium needed for a bomb–about six or seven kilograms– it will have an implosion device ready to receive it.

Thus, North Korea may be within months of assembling its first bomb, or within a year, or within two years, all depending on its progress in extracting plutonium. I urge the subcommittee to ask the government witnesses who will testify on this topic to state exactly what the government thinks the current status is.

What are the risks if North Korea succeeds in its nuclear weapon quest? The first, of course, is that North Korea will deploy nuclear weapons. If that happens, both South Korea and Japan would be forced to request a nuclear shield from the United States, or failing that, to make bombs themselves. The latter would create a new nuclear arms race in Asia just as the race in Europe is ending. No one wants to see a nuclear-armed South Korea or Japan.

The second risk is that North Korea could become a black-market supplier of nuclear weapon fuel. There is already one precedent for this. In the early 1980s, China supplied Pakistan a tested nuclear bomb design and enough high-enriched uranium to fuel it. Once North Korea’s larger reactor starts up, it will have nuclear weapon fuel to spare. North Korea has already sold nuclear-capable missiles to Iran, Libya and Syria. There is no reason to think that North Korea would shrink from selling nuclear weapon fuel, a nuclear weapon design, or even a nuclear weapon to anyone able to pay the price.

Bomb quantities of nuclear weapon fuel, secretly circulating among pariah states and possibly terrorists, are incompatible with urban civilization. Even one bomb in the wrong hands could force the evacuation of Washington, D.C. and other major cities. It is hard to feel secure if A-bomb fuel is available from a completely renegade seller.

So the issue comes down to what can be done now. There seem to be three options. The first is to do nothing effective, and watch North Korea develop nuclear weapons. The second is diplomacy–using economic and political sanctions to win compliance. The third is to take military action.

The Reagan and Bush administrations both followed the first option until now. The result has been a foreign policy disaster. The U.S. government has been smelling smoke in North Korea for almost a decade, but did nothing until the fire began licking at the door. Now, with bomb production imminent, the administration has suddenly declared a crisis and started making speeches, holding meetings, and calling the experts. This should have happened years ago, when there was still time to stop North Korea’s progress. North Korea’s large reactor started operating four years ago and was under construction for several years before that. North Korea has been refusing international inspection since 1985, despite its promise to allow inspection under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Now, North Korea may be so close to success that the second option, diplomacy, will not have time to work.

The Bush administration has belatedly begun to pursue this second option. In September, President Bush pledged to remove all short-range nuclear weapons from the peninsula,- and in mid-October he promised to remove the rest of the nuclear weapons stationed with U.S. forces. In addition, South Korean President No Tae Wu announced on November 8 that his nation would not “manufacture, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons,” and he renounced plans to produce or possess any nuclear weapon-grade material. North Korea responded to all this by demanding that South Korea withdraw from the American nuclear umbrella– which can hardly be called a response.

A diplomatic victory would consist of this: North Korea would open all of its nuclear sites to international inspection, including challenge inspection, and would dismantle and promise not to construct any equipment that can make nuclear weapon material. This means dismantling the plutonium extraction plant at Yongbyon and any other extraction plant or uranium enrichment equipment that might exist elsewhere. Simply agreeing to accept the present version of safeguards applied by the International Atomic Energy Agency would not be enough. North Korea could advance to within weeks of a bomb under those safeguards legally, and could even make bombs illegally without getting caught.

The best chance to achieve this goal peacefully is to have the U.N. Security Council give North Korea a deadline for accepting full inspection. If North Korea does not respond, the Security Council should consider a trade embargo or even a blockade on shipping. Economic aid, diplomatic normalization, trade in oil and other basic supplies must all be put at stake.
If all else fails, one is left with the military option. All indications are that this would be costly. The North Korean army is strong; one cannot expect a replay of operation Desert Storm. South Korea has several nuclear reactors that could be attacked in retaliation for bombing North Korea’s reactors or its extraction plant. If this happened millions of persons would get large doses of radiation, possibly including some in Japan.

North Korea could also attack South Korean civilians with chemical-armed SCUD missiles.
It is vitally important to realize that the current situation was not inevitable. Only because our government failed to take effective action for so long are we forced to choose between watching a country cross the line to A-bomb making and starting a war to stop it. These are not decent alternatives. But they are the only choices left when one waits until the last minute to do anything.

This same pattern of procrastination and failure has plagued U.S. policies on Iraq, Libya and Algeria. The Reagan and Bush administrations refused to see Saddamis nuclear weapon ambition for what it was until the invasion of Kuwait. Instead of trying to deny Iraq high technology to build his mass-destruction arsenal, the U.S. government sold him what he wanted and looked the other way when other countries did the same.

During most of the 1980s, Libya was building a poison gas plant at Rabta. The administration complained feebly to the Germans, who were building it, but only declared a crisis when the plant was ready to start in 1989, which was already too late. The Libyans simply closed the plant for a while, and began producing again in early 1990 after global attention had shifted.

The case of Algeria is similar. For years, our government has known that China is building a dangerous reactor there, but the administration has turned a blind eye in favor of smooth relations with China, which is now helping Iran as well. When Algeria’s plutonium- and tritium-producing reactor is ready to operate, the same diminished options that are being discussed now will be rehashed.

Because of procrastination, the United States seems to have lost its best chance to stop the North Korean bomb, and is left with two miserable choices that no one wants.

U.S. Is Building Up a Picture of Vast Iraqi Atom Program

By Michael Wines

New York Times
Friday, September 27, 1991, p. A8.

Nuclear Skeletons in Iraq’s Closet

Following is a partial list of components of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program that were unknown before the Persian Gulf war and have since either been disclosed by Iraqi authorities or independently uncovered by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations.

KNOWN OR REPORTED TO EXIST, BUT NOT YET FOUND

  • Foreign-made calutron parts and equipment needed to make them, including coil winders used to make large electromagnets. Calutrons are devices used to enrich uranium to make it suitable for use in weapons.
  • Foreign-made machine tools used to make gas centrifuges (stripped out of buildings to evade inspectors). The centrifuges are another device for enriching uranium.
  • Nuclear weapon parts described in documents found this week, including firing circuits, neutron initiators, shaped explosive charges, and foreign-made machine tools used to make them.
  • Identities of foreign suppliers of technical advice, steel, carbon fibers and machining equipment for building calutrons and gas centrifuges, and prospective suppliers of nuclear weapons and centrifuge parts.
  • Identity of Iraq’s chief nuclear scientist.
  • Materials needed to build a bomb, including, 1.2 tons of uranium tetrachloride, a chemical used in the calutron process of making enriched uranium; 96 tons of uranium oxide, used to make fuel for reactors and nuclear weapons; hundreds of tons of HMX, a high explosive used in detonating nuclear warheads; and quantities of uranium hexafluoride, a corrosive gas used to make enriched uranium.

ALREADY LOCATED

  • Three grams of plutonium, secretly produced at the Tuwaitha reactor in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
  • Small amounts of enriched uranium.
  • Ten foreign-made carbon-fiber rotors, used in advanced gas centrifuges, and 25 sheets of hard maraging steel shaped into crude centrifuge parts, six of which were imported.
  • Working calutrons, including a pilot project at Tuwaitha and a production line in Tarmiya.
  • Two carbon-fiber centrifuges that had been successfully tested.
  • A factory to make nuclear weapon cores at Al Atheer.

Source: Gary Milhollin, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — From spy satellites, defectors and United Nations inspections, the Bush Administration has assembled the outline of an Iraqi nuclear-weapons program that is far grander and more sophisticated than first suspected and that President Saddam Hussein is still working to shield from destruction, officials say.

Government and private experts who have reviewed that outline estimated today that the Iraqi program employed 10,000 or more scientists, technicians and other workers. They said it consumed billions of dollars in the 1980’s, when Iraq was struggling for survival in a war with Iran.

Much of the program’s bricks-and-mortar base was damaged or destroyed in the Persian Gulf war. But officials said other key materials and equipment survived the air attacks and are now being hidden from inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who are in Iraq under a United Nations mandate.

More important, they said, Iraq’s formidable corps of nuclear scientists, engineers and weapons experts escaped the war virtually unharmed and could be reassembled at will should outside inspections end and global trade sanctions against Iraq be lifted.

“What we’ve found is that Iraq now has the largest technical and scientific base in the Middle East,” said Ahmed Hashim, a Washington-based consultant on Middle Eastern affairs and expert on Iraq’s military. “I’d say Israel’s is qualitatively better, but in terms of numbers, Iraq is the largest.”

Mr. Hashim, a physicist, estimated that the Iraqis might well have exploded a reasonably sophisticated nuclear weapon by 1993 or 1994 and detonated a hydrogen bomb several years later had the gulf war not cut short their plans.

Other Government experts have conceded that Iraq’s nuclear effort was far more advanced than was depicted last year by American intelligence analysts. Those analysts said then that Iraq might have produced a single crude atomic device in less than a year under a crash program, but that it was 5 to 10 years away from being able to produce more weapons, assembly-line style.

The Administration outline indicates that Iraq has employed not one, but four separate technologies in an all-out effort to manufacture plutonium and enriched uranium, either of which can form the core of an atomic bomb. It also shows that Iraq’s program has received substantial outside help, although the identities of several foreign companies or governments involved in the program remain unknown.

Seized Iraqi records and United Nations inspections show that the weapons program imported highly sensitive and restricted technologies. Among them were carbon-fiber rotors used in high-speed uranium gas centrifuges, and super-hard maraging steel that can be used both in centrifuges and in a bomb itself.

Administration officials said that Iraqi Government documents found this week by an inspection team from the Atomic Energy Agency may hold a master list of foreign suppliers. Although the team and the documents remain trapped in a Baghdad parking lot, at least some information or copies of the documents have been passed to officials at the United Nations or the atomic energy agency, an Administration official said today.

That official, like other Government experts interviewed, spoke on condition that he not be identified.

A senior Pentagon official said today that the inspection team in Iraq singled out the Baghdad office building and the actual room where Iraqi nuclear documents were being stored after being given a tip from a recent defector. The existence of the defector was first reported by CBS News.

At Least Three Defect

That defector is one of at least three Iraqi officials with detailed knowledge of the nuclear program who have fled to allied intelligence agencies since the war ended on Feb. 28, the Pentagon official said.

The first defector, an engineer who remains unidentified, disclosed that broad sections of the Iraqi nuclear-weapons project had escaped bombardment and that other key parts had almost entirely escaped detection. Among them were a vast assembly of electromagnetic devices that were already prepared to start producing enriched, bomb-grade enriched uranium.

American analysts had discounted the possibility that Iraq was using calutrons because they were judged inefficient and slow when the United States employed them in the 1940’s to produce the cores of the first atom bombs. Most experts had concluded that Iraq was seeking to enrich its uranium through the use of delicate, fast-spinning centrifuges that separate the heavier and lighter isotopes of uranium gas.

Inspectors and intelligence agencies have since learned that the Iraqis were pursuing both routes. Scientists had improved the electromagnetic separation process and built three sites for testing and production of enriched uranium, inspectors have concluded.

Moreover, Iraq also was studying the production of bomb-grade uranium by a third, method, called thermal diffusion, and had secretly produced a minute amount of plutonium by cheating on international inspection safeguards at its experimental nuclear reactor in Tuwaitha. Inspectors from the atomic energy agency discovered the plutonium last month.

Administration officials said today that Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, all mandated for destruction under the terms of a cease-fire dictated to Iraq at the close of the war, are currently dormant. But official said that Iraq still maintains the potential and the desire to rebuild its program.

Satellite photographs show that the Baghdad Government is actively seeking to hide weapons and equipment from United Nations inspectors, loading them aboard trucks that are moved each night, storing them in garages and, by one account, even burying chemical weapons containers in graveyards.

Keeping the Lid on Nuclear Arms

By Gary Milhollin and Jennifer Weeks

New Scientist
August 17, 1991, p. 26-30

In an historic accord last November, Argentina and Brazil agreed not to produce nuclear weapons and pledged to open their secret nuclear sites to mutual inspections. The accord. the first by two developing countries that are not signatories to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, sets a powerful precedent for other areas where the prospect of the spread of nuclear weapons is amplifying local tensions. The agreement suggests that non-NPT countries can move towards international safeguards without sacrificing national pride or autonomy. Pakistan hailed the agreement as a potential model for future negotiations with India, and Israel has shown interest in Latin American arms-control techniques as a model for the Middle East.

But however good the intentions, formidable obstacles have still to be overcome before the agreement is implemented. In particular, it is proving difficult to establish an independent inspection system, one of the most important steps in convincing the world of the two countries’ commitment after decades of clandestine operations. Neither Argentina nor Brazil has so far agreed to accept unconditionally verification on the scale required by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged by the United Nations with ensuring that nuclear material for civilian purposes is not diverted to military uses. Next month the two countries will sit down with the IAEA for the fifth round of a series of negotiations to try to agree on a foolproof verification method. IAEA officials are optimistic that both countries will eventually accept thorough inspections of their nuclear facilities.

The governments of the two countries face considerable opposition from their armed forces, which want to keep the military options open. Last November’s accord, signed at the border city of Foz do Iguacu, followed a spectacular revelation the previous month by Brazil’s secretary of science and technology, Jose Goldemberg. For 15 years, he disclosed, the Brazilian military establishment had mounted a covert effort to make nuclear weapons. Called the “parallel” programme, it secretly paralleled the civilian nuclear power programme under which Brazil was openly importing technology from West Germany. Brazil’s previous governments had denied the parallel programme’s existence, even after the country returned to civilian rule in 1985 and began improving relations with its neighbour. Argentina, too, had secretly built a uranium enrichment plant suitable for a nuclear weapons programme.

Argentina and Brazil have mounted civil nu-clear power programmes built on imports, but technical snags and lack of money have plagued them both. Argentina’s two power reactors, which have a total capacity of less than 1000 megawatts, have not run reliably, and Brazil’s single 600-megawatt reactor breaks down so often it has been dubbed “the firefly”. More reactors are planned and being built, but budget cuts are forcing the two countries to reconsider their options. The Foz do Iguacu agreement appears to be part of a reappraisal of commitments to nuclear energy.

Two projects from Brazil’s parallel programme have attracted particular attention: the Aramar uranium enrichment plant at Ipero, operated by the navy, and the army’s plans to build a nuclear reactor for producing plutonium. For military use, 5 kilograms of plutonium is as effective as 15 to 20 kilo-grams of uranium, which means that plutonium bombs can be lighter or more powerful than uranium ones. According to Goldemberg, the army has scaled down the reactor from its original rating of 20 megawatts to 2 megawatts. reducing its capacity for plutonium production from one bomb’s worth, or 5 kilograms a year. to I kilogram, which is hardly enough for serious nuclear weapons manufacturing. But Brazilian critics, including Social Democrats in the legislature. say that the army should not he doing such work at all. None of the exotic uses suggested for the plutonium, including nuclear-powered satellites and buoys, and fast breeder reactors, appears feasible or relevant to Brazil’s energy or security needs.

Criticism of the Aramar plant focuses on plans to give it the capability to produce enough uranium to fuel 20 Hiroshima-sized bombs a year by 1996. Aramar will have 958 centrifuges by the end of this year, according to its director Rear Admiral Othon Luiz Pinheiro da Silva. enough to fuel about one bomb every three years. But the navy wants to spend more than $300 million to boost the plant’s output by a factor of 50 within the next five years. A budget proposal strongly supports the navy’s goal.

Aramar’s centrifuges spin uranium hexafluoride gas at high speed to separate the heavier uranium-238 isotope. which is stable, from the lighter uranium-235 isotope, which is unstable and produces the neutrons that sustain the chain reaction in a nuclear fission bomb. This enrichment increases the concentration of fissile uranium-235 from the natural level of 0.7 per cent to as much as 93 per cent, the strength generally used for nuclear weapons.

Navy officials say that Aramar’s purpose is to give Brazil the capability to produce its own supply of partially enriched uranium (less than five per cent uranium-235) to fuel power reactors. They add that the plant will also produce the fuel for Brazil’s planned nuclear-propelled submarines, which would require uranium enriched to anywhere between 7 and 93 per cent. Though the navy could buy reactor fuel more cheaply on the world market, it can plausibly claim that Brazil should aim for self-sufficiency in strategic materials.

It is less easy to excuse the navy’s desire for the submarines themselves. Since a British nuclear submarine sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the South Atlantic war of 1982, both Argentina and Brazil have viewed nuclear-powered submarines as crucial for maritime defence. But the main advantage of nuclear submarines over diesel-powered vessels is their ability to travel at sea for long periods, a feature more suited to strategic nuclear deterrence. In The Lessons of Modern War, published last year by Westview Press, American military analysts Anthony Cordesman and Abraham Wagner observe that Argentina’s single diesel submarine effectively harassed the superior British navy during the conflict.

On the Argentine side, the most threatening project is a gaseous-diffusion enrichment plant at Pilcaniyeu, near the border with Chile. The diffusion process passes uranium hexafluoride gas through porous membranes that are more readily penetrated by uranium-235 than by uranium-238. Diffusion is technically simpler than enrichment using centrifuges but requires more energy. Operating at its projected capacity, the Pilcaniyeu plant would be capable of fuelling about four nuclear weapons per year. Budget cuts seemed to have delayed its completion, however.

Argentina’s other sensitive project, a pilot-scale plutonium extraction plant at Ezeiza in Buenos Aires, was put on indefinite hold in March 1990, also for lack of funds. Its planned capacity would allow Argentina to extract 15 kilograms of plutonium per year—enough for two to three bombs—from the spent fuel produced by the German-supplied Atucha-I power reactor north-west of Buenos Aires, and the Canadian-supplied Embalse power reactor at Rio Tercero in the centre of the country. Germany or Canada would have to approve the extraction, however, because both countries reserved this right in their sales contracts.

The November accord thus came at a critical moment. Simply by spending more money on existing programmes, both Brazil and Argentina could soon have begun producing material suitable for building a nuclear weapons arsenal.

The two countries have also been willing to sell dangerous technology to other developing nations. From 1984 to 1990, Argentina sponsored the Condor II medium-range missile project jointly with Egypt and Iraq. using a network of companies established in Europe to provide the necessary equipment. Pressure from the US forced Argentina to withdraw from the project early last year. Similarly, international pressure forced a team of Brazilian engineers to leave Iraq late last year. during the Gulf crisis. The Brazilians had been teaching Iraqi rocket scientists how to extend the range of their Scud missiles and how to build a rocket launcher to put satellites in space.

Brazil also seems to have been involved in the development of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme. Last year, two former Brazilian government ministers told the national newspaper Jornal do Brasil that Brazil sold natural uranium to Iraq in the early 1980s. helped Iraq prospect for uranium de-posits. analysed samples of Iraqi uranium, supplied nuclear material and equipment for laboratory tests. and designed an Buenos An’ Aires underground plant to produce the uranium dioxide used to make uranium hexatluoride for enrichment.

It is even possible that Brazil taught Iraqi engineers how to run centrifuges. Several Iraqi technical teams visited Brazil during the 1980s, and at least one had access to the Aramar enrichment plant. In 1990, the contract manager of the Brazilian firm that designed Iraq’s uranium dioxide plant told Jornal do Brasil: “It was always in our minds that the real objective of the Iraqi nuclear programme was to construct an atomic bomb.” Although neither Brazil nor Argentina is a party to the NPT, and so has not flouted an international commitment, Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, apologised late last year for the technology transfer that he described as “potentially significant”. Iraq is a signatory of the NPT, though for political and commerical reasons its suspected development of a nuclear weapons programme went unchallenged until the invasion of Kuwait.

Developing friendship

The November accord between Argentina and Brazil follows a decade of improving relations between the two countries—after years of competition for political and economic influence in South America. An agreement in 1979 on development and border issues in the Plata basin opened the way to a series of nuclear agreements in the 1980s. First came technical cooperation, then reciprocal ceremonial visits to sensitive plants and, finally, the beginnings of a mutual inspection system. According to John Redick, a specialist in Latin American nuclear politics at the University of Virginia: “The Foz, do Iguacu agreement only makes sense in the context of broader economic cooperation. Without the economic ties, the nuclear agreement doesn’t mean a lot.”

Argentina and Brazil have pledged to set up a common accounting and control system for nuclear material: exchange lists of all their plants and materials: submit their accounting system to the IAEA: and permit reciprocal inspections. The first three steps were carried out by mid-December, says Goldemberg. The two countries also promised to allow the IAEA to inspect their nuclear sites. In addition, they agreed to conform to the terms of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which bans nuclear weapons from Latin America and has been signed and ratified by every other country in the region except Cuba and Chile.

According to the IAEA, it is still unclear exactly what kind of inspection the two countries will propose. or what degree of intrusion they will accept. The most open and comprehensive form of inspection system, enshrined in the NPT and the Treaty of Tlatelolco, encompasses what the IAEA calls “full-scope safeguards”, which entail monitoring all nuclear facilities and materials, whether imported or domestic. But not even all parties to the NPT accept such a degree of intrusion because the treaty operates a two-tier system that distinguishes between countries that have nuclear weapons and those that do not. The full-scope safe-guards are applied only to countries that do not already have nuclear weapons, a distinction that Argentina and Brazil have rejected as discriminatory.

In December last year, a Brazilian congressional committee investigating the implications of the ac-cord voted against allowing the IAEA into Brazil’s ground nuclear research sites. The committee, with the support of the military establishment, wants the monitoring done by an internal commission responsible only to the Brazilian congress. In response, Goldemberg has eschewed the term “full-scope safeguards” and called instead for “very comprehensive” inspections. In Argentina, some officials are reluctant to grant access to all parts of the Pilcaniyeu enrichment plant. They say they want to protect technical information.

If the IAEA is allowed only to review the results of a bilateral accounting system, without being able to make its own independent inspection, there can be no confidence that all nuclear material will be accounted for. For a start, the two countries have no plans to use seals, cameras, or other electronic detection methods to prevent tampering between visits, as the IAEA does (“Arms and the ban”, New Scientist, 29 July 1989). Bilateral inspections would also be vulnerable to simple changes of heart: either country could stop cooperating at any time, either for military reasons or because of friction between them. An agreement with the IAEA, however, would be an international obligation. Breaching the agreement would expose the non-cooperating country to censure by the UN.

Since May, however, the IAEA has been discussing a “comprehensive” safeguards agreement with the two countries and says it expects full-scope standards to be accepted eventually. But before any kind of inspection can begin, it will be necessary to account for the nuclear material each country has already produced, starting with a beginning balance. The last point is crucial, because both countries have been running secret plants with unknown outputs. To calculate what Pilcaniyeu and Aramar have already made, inspectors will need records such as the history of each plant’s production levels, the raw materials used, energy consumption and waste produced.

Clandestine imports will also have to be disclosed. For in-stance, in the early 1980s, China secretly sold Argentina about 70 tonnes of heavy water without imposing any restrictions on how the material could be used. Heavy water (deuterium oxide) is used to sustain a chain reaction in reactors that use natural rather than enriched uranium fuel. China also sold Brazil about 200 kilograms of uranium enriched to a concentration of 3, 7 and 20 per cent uranium-235, again without imposing any restrictions on its use.

Most of these inspection questions would be solved if both countries conformed to the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which they have signed but not implemented in full. But even the treaty has some loopholes, such as allowing “peaceful nuclear explosions”. Most parties to the treaty regard such explosions as indistinguishable from nuclear weapon tests and therefore barred, but until late last year Argentina and Brazil were not prepared to go along with this view.

Another loophole in the treaty is that, in defining nuclear weapons, it states that an instrument “used for the transport or propulsion of [a nuclear weapon] is not included . . . if it is separable from the device”. This could be interpreted as exempting submarine reactor fuel from inspection. The NPT has a similar loophole: it allows enriched uranium to be withdrawn from inspection for “non-proscribed military purposes”, which has been interpreted to include submarine fuel. Goldemberg has promised that submarine fuel will be included in inspections, but the Brazilian navy may resist this to maintain politically sanctioned access to enriched uranium.

Pressure from the countries that supply Argentina and Brazil with their nuclear equipment and materials helped to forge the November accord. Germany, a key nuclear supplier to both countries, announced earlier in 1990 that it would stop exporting to countries that did not accept full-scope safeguards. Canada, another important supplier, has had such a policy for years. And the United States was holding up the sale of a much desired IBM supercomputer to Brazil because of reports in the international press that Brazil was helping Iraq develop ballistic missiles.

Some US government officials say privately that they regard both Collor and Carlos Menem, president of Argentina, as sincere in their plans to renounce nuclear weapons. The questions are whether the two presidents can carry out this pledge, and whether the Foz do Iguacu agreement will out-last the governments that signed it. Redick says that the Brazilian air force includes “a maverick group that planned to go the Indian route and test a bomb in a supposedly peaceful nuclear explosion”.

A prudent course for supplier countries would be to reward Argentina and Brazil with non-nuclear benefits in the short term, but to withhold the more sensitive exports until the two countries put all nuclear facilities under civilian control, reveal their entire nuclear inventories, set up a thorough inspection system, and pledge publicly to stop making dangerous exports. Canada has set the tone: despite its desire to sell Argentina a fourth power reactor, the Canadian government has said that its reaction to the Foz do Iguacu agreement will depend on “the nature and scope of agreements to be negotiated with the IAEA and any changes proposed for the Tlatelolco Treaty”.

Unfortunately, the US has not followed Canada’s lead. President George Bush approved the export of the IBM supercomputer in December, overriding concern in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Department of Energy and Congress that the machine would boost Brazil’s ability to design nuclear missiles. To complicate matters, Brazil then refused to guarantee that it would not use the computer for military projects or re-export the machine to another country.

In arms control as elsewhere, actions speak louder than words. Full “nuclear transparency” and a thorough, reliable inspection system are musts for international confidence in the November accord. Implemented properly, the Foz de Iguacu agreement could reach around the world.

Gary Milhollin is professor of law at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Washington DC. Jennifer Weeks, a former researcher with the Wisconsin Project, is now military policy analyst with the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus of the US Congress.

Maybe Saddam Did the World a Favor

By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White

International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, August 14, 1991, p. 4

WASHINGTON — For the fourth time since the Gulf war, a pack of sleuthhounds from the United Nations is in Iraq trying to sniff out Saddam Hussein’s cache of nuclear treasure. Previous UN teams discovered that Iraq was only a few years from building a nuclear arsenal and had managed to hide bomb factories from international inspectors before the war. Unless atomic detection improves, America’s next conflict with a regional power could be nuclear.

As a UN official put it, “Inspecting Iraq has been like peeling an onion.” The first layer, weapons-grade fuel, has been removed from Iraq’s control or is trapped under rubble. The next layer, equipment needed to make the fuel, has been largely destroyed or buried by the Iraqi army, which wanted to erase clues to a deeper layer: machines and factories needed to make the fuel-making equipment.

The United Nations now has a chance to destroy this in Iraq, but is unable to destroy it in any other country that is quietly making the bomb. Therein lies the problem.

By signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Saddam Hussein was obligated not to make nuclear weapons and to open his sites to inspectors. But inspections were limited to what Iraq itself declared.

More aggressive inspections would have found Iraq’s calutrons, machines that concentrate the uranium isotope that produces nuclear fission. Iraq had prepared sites to run hundreds of calutrons, enough to fuel a small nuclear arsenal in less than five years. It even ran six experimental calutrons at a site near Baghdad where inspectors had gone for more than a decade and issued clean bills of health. Iraq would be running the calutrons today if it had not invaded Kuwait.

Since the Gulf war, UN inspectors armed with U.S. intelligence reports and backed by military threats have gamed admission to any suspected site in Iraq. This has paralyzed Iraq’s nuclear manufacturing base. More of the same will be needed to keep Iraq in check and to monitor other countries trying to make nuclear weapons.

The United States should now advocate Iraq-type inspections everywhere, an idea that the International Atomic Energy Agency favors. A good starting point would be South Africa, which has just signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and is suspected of hiding nuclear weapons.

America should improve its intelligence on developing countries. In the post-Cold War era, a dollar spent for intelligence on the Third World will buy more security than a dollar spent on “star wars” or the B-2 bomber.

At long last, Saddam Hussein maybe doing the world a favor. His country is now a giant laboratory for nuclear sleuthing experiments. Early results show that the old formula for stopping proliferation did not work. But a new one might.

Stop the Nuclear Threat at the Source

By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White

The New York Times
Saturday, August 10, 1991, p. A19

WASHINGTON — For the fourth time since the gulf war, a pack of sleuthhounds from the United Nations is in Iraq trying to sniff out Saddam Hussein’s remaining cache of nuclear treasure. Previous U.N. teams discovered that Iraq was only a few years from building a nuclear arsenal and had managed to hide bomb factories from international inspectors before the war. Unless atomic detection improves, America’s next conflict with a regional power could be nuclear.

“Inspecting Iraq has been like peeling an onion,” says one U.N. official. The first layer, Iraq’s weapons-grade fuel, has been removed from Iraq’s control or is trapped under rubble. The next layer, the equipment needed to make the fuel, has been largely destroyed or buried by the Iraqi Army. The army wanted to erase clues to a deeper layer — the machines and factories needed to make the fuel-making equipment. The U.N. now has a chance to destroy this in Iraq, but is unable to destroy it in any other country that is quietly making the bomb. Therein lies the problem.

By signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Mr. Hussein was obligated not to make nuclear weapons and to open his sites to inspectors. But inspections were limited to what Iraq itself declared, and inspectors had no authority to took for secret sites. This allowed Iraq to masquerade as a treaty supporter while secretly making bombs.

More aggressive inspection would have found Iraq’s calutrons, machines that concentrate the uranium isotope that produces nuclear fission. Iraq had prepared secret sites to run hundreds of calutrons, enough to fuel a small nuclear arsenal in lest than five years. It even ran six experimental calutrons at a site near Baghdad, where inspectors had gone for over a decade and issued clean bills of health. Iraq would be running the calutrons today if it had not invaded Kuwait.

Since the gulf war, U.N. inspectors armed with U.S. intelligence reports and backed by military threats have gained admission to any suspected site in Iraq. This has effectively uncovered and paralyzed Iraq’s nuclear manufacturing base. More of the same will be needed to keep Iraq in check and to monitor other countries trying to make nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union already require a high level of intrusion under the intermediate-range nuclear forces agreement. The two countries can examine each other’s missile sites within hours of making the demand. They also have intelligence from satellites, listening posts, radar and specialists, U.N. inspectors need the same type, of access and level of technical support — probably more. Missing a handful of missiles in the US or Soviet arsenal is barely significant; missing the only nuclear warheads in a hostile developing country threatens world security.

The United States should now advocate Iraq-type inspections everywhere, an idea the International Atomic Energy Agency favors. A good starting point would be South Africa, which has just signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and is suspected of hiding nuclear weapons. The US, Soviet Union and others should furnish data on suspected nuclear sites. In addition, America should improve its intelligence on developing countries. In the post-cold-war era, a dollar spent for intelligence on the third world will buy more security than a dollar spent on “Star Wars” or the B-2 bomber.

Inspection results should be made public. The inspectors now in Iraq should name the sources and makers of the machines they find. The U.N. already has a list of Iraq’s chemical suppliers, but refuses to give it out. Unless the suppliers are named and the technology cut off, Iraq will simply resume its secret programs when it starts selling oil again.

At long last, Saddam Hussein maybe doing the world a favor. His country is now a giant laboratory for nuclear sleuthing experiments. The early results show that the old formula for stopping proliferation didn’t work, but that a new one might.

Exports and Terrorism: U.S. Export Licenses to Iran and Syria: 1986-1990

By Gary Milhollin

From 1986 to 1990, the U-S. Commerce Department approved over $300 million worth of sensitive American exports to Iran and Syria. Most of these were “dual-use” items, capable of making nuclear weapons or long-range missiles if diverted from their claimed civilian purposes. The record of these exports, compiled from Commerce Department data, has just become available. Three hundred seventy two exports worth over $282 million were approved to Iran, and 129 exports worth over $23 million were approved to Syria.

These approvals were made in spite of the U-S. policy against international terrorism. Iran and Syria have both been implicated in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103, which sent 270 persons to their deaths at Lockerbie, Scotland. To combat these countries’ support for such terrorist acts, Congress put Iran and Syria on a special “terrorism list” under U.S. export law. From 1986 to 1990, the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (Section 785-4) provided that an enumerated list of sensitive, high-technology items “would generally be denied” to both countries.

In spite of this denial rule, millions of dollars worth of these exports were approved. The Commerce Department records reveal why some of the approvals were made, but by no means explain them all. Some were made because of loopholes in the anti-terrorism regulations; others because of an informal practice of servicing U-S.-origin goods abroad. Still others, however, seem to have been made because the regulations were ignored.

To read the complete report, click here:  Exports and Terrorism: U.S. Export Licenses to Iran and Syria: 1986-1990

Military Exports to Iraq Come Under Scrutiny

By Clyde H. Farnsworth

The New York Times
June 25, 1991 p. A11

WASHINGTON, June 23 — The Commerce Department has started an internal investigation of charges that officials of the agency altered documents related to the export of militarily useful technology to Iraq so that the material would appear less incriminating when examined by a Congressional committee, Congressional aides say.

The investigation, which is being undertaken by the department’s Inspector General, came to light as a Washington public policy group provided examples of discrepancies between the Commerce Department’s internal export control documents and those it presented to Congress and the public.

The disclosures are likely to fire still more debate over the Bush Administration’s permissive general export policies toward Iraq up until just before President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait last August. Democrats have pointed to the shift as a sign of a weak, inconsistent and unpredictable foreign policy.

The disclosures related to a report presented to Congress last March 11 listing export licenses the Administration approved for Iraq between 1985 and 1990. The total value of the goods that received approval was $1.5 billion, of which $500 million was shipped.

Discrepancies in Reports

The public policy group, the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which tracks the spread of nuclear weapons to developing countries, analyzed the list and found discrepancies between internal documents and those presented to the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs.

Government agencies routinely edit documents that are meant for the public. In this case, however, the editing gave an impression that the Commerce Department was not completely forthcoming with Congress.

For example, an internal document obtained by the Wisconsin group showed approval of a sale of $139,535 of equipment for calibrating, adjusting and testing surveillance radar. The equipment was ordered from the Hewlett-Packard Company of Palo Alto, Calif.

The internal document identified the buyer as the “Salah al-Din” Establishment and said “according to our information the end-user is involved in military matters.” But the report that was released to the public and Congress did not identify the American seller or provide a description of the buyer.

According to intelligence officials, Salah al-Din was a state enterprise building military radar for Saad 16, one of Iraq’s centers for missile development

Gary Milhollin, the Wisconsin group’s director, said it was “not surprising that Commerce concealed this knowledge from the public.”

He asserted that the volume of militarily useful exports to Iraq is an indication that the Government’s export control machinery “has broken down.”

State Department Blamed

Mildred Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration, would not comment on any editing of public documents, except to note that the Export Administration Act bars disclosure to the public of proprietary information, including the name of an applicant for an export license.

Dennis E. Kloske, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration, resigned this year after telling Congress that the Administration had ignored warnings about exporting to Iraq.

But he placed the blame on the State Department, which he said overruled many of the Commerce Department’s objections to specific export licenses in hopes of keeping diplomatic lines open.

Theodore J Jacobs, the chief counsel of the House commerce and consumer subcommittee, said he would withhold comment on any editing of reports until the Department’s Inspector General made his finding. “I think the general view is that Commerce was following policies of the United States Government,” he said.

But the panel’s chairman, Representative Doug Barnard Jr., Democrat of Georgia, has said the panel would issue a report this week on ways to revamp the export control system.

US-approved exports may have aided Iraqi army, says report

By Alan Friedman

Financial Times
June 20, 1991, p. 18

The US government approved exports to Iraq between 1987 and 1989 that may have helped Baghdad improve its weapons capabilities, according to a study by a Washington-based nuclear weapons expert.

Key areas that could have benefitted included increasing the range of Iraqi Scud missiles, improvements to anti-aircraft radar systems and enabling testing to be carried out at a nuclear weapons design laboratory.

Professor Gary Milhollin’s report which makes use of both publicly available and confidential Commerce Department records, details militarily useful US exports in those years that were part of $1.5bn of equipment and technology approved for export to Iraq between 1985 and 1990.

The Bush administration released a list of these exports three months ago. A senior Commerce Department official admitted at the time that up to six of the 771 export licences issued in the 1985-1987 period would have been banned by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a seven-nation agreement unveiled in April 1987. He said the “lack of specificity” in export regulations made it difficult to stop some shipments.

Prof. Milhollin made public yesterday a confidential copy of some of the export licence records. He said his analysis showed “that US export controls suffered a massive breakdown in the period preceding the Gulf war”. The Commerce Department last night declined to comment on the report.

The report cites an export licence approved in November 1989 for $140,000 of frequency synthesisers made by Hewlett Packard that can be used in in radar systems. When the Commerce Department made its list public in March it described the equipment as not restricted by export controls, although it said the export was destined for the Salah al-Din establishment, one of Iraq’s key military electronics factories.

A copy of the same Hewlett Packard export licence entry from the records prepared for internal use at the Commerce Department states that “according to our information the end-user is involved in military matters”. The entry said the products would be used “in calibrating, adjusting and testing” a surveillance radar system.

Prof. Milhollin claimed yesterday the Commerce Department deleted this statement before it made public the export list in March.