February 10, 2005
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, this morning the North Korean Government acknowledged publicly for the first time that it has nuclear weapons. In a statement issued by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, Pyongyang also said that it will boycott the six-party talks designed to end its nuclear program.
North Korea's surprising declaration has again reminded us of the most pressing national security challenge that we face: the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the possibility that a terrorist group will acquire a nuclear bomb and use it against the United States.
Earlier this week, my colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and I introduced the Omnibus Nuclear Nonproliferation and Anti-Nuclear Terrorism Act of 2005 to better enable the United States to prevent what Graham Allison of Harvard University has termed ``the ultimate preventable catastrophe.'' I am pleased that we were joined as original cosponsors by 11 of our colleagues.
Over the past several months, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and I have consulted with a range of experts to produce a set of policies that we believe will be effective and which can be implemented quickly. Our bill will do the following:
It creates an Office of Nonproliferation Programs in the White House to centralize budgetary and policy authority. Since nonproliferation programs are spread across the U.S. Government, it makes sense to have one office overseeing all of it, signing off on budgets and developing a coordinated strategy.
The bill enhances the Cooperative Threat Reduction, CTR, program by streamlining and accelerating Nunn-Lugar implementation and granting more flexibility to the President and the Secretary of Defense to undertake nonproliferation projects outside the former Soviet Union. Our bill does this by removing conditions on Nunn-Lugar assistance that in the past have forced the suspension of time-sensitive efforts.
In 2002, President Bush was unable for the first time to certify that Russia had met all of its program-wide conditions, resulting in a halt to all CTR funding until he was able to obtain and use authority to waive the certification requirement in early 2003.
The conditions have also provided CTR opponents within Russia with an excuse to blame the United States for delays caused by a lack of access and transparency on the part of Moscow.
We also ask for the President, in our bill, to catalog impediments to renegotiation of the CTR umbrella agreement and other bilateral programs with Russia. The hope is that by identifying them all, the Congress and the administration can better solve them quickly.
The bill asks the President to address the issue of unresolved liability protections for U.S. firms doing nonproliferation work in Russia.
This bill will enhance the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, announced by former Secretary Abraham last May, to accelerate the global clean-out of the most vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material. At its current pace, it will take more than a decade to clean up the most vulnerable nuclear sites around the globe.
The bill also urges the President to expand the Proliferation Security Initiative beyond its current members and to engage the U.N. Security Council to provide the specific legal authority to interdict WMD material. It also provides funding for training and exercise with our PSI partners, especially the new members.
At present there are no international standards regarding the securing of nuclear weapons. The Schiff-Shays bill urges the President to develop a set of internationally recognized standards and to work with other nations and the IAEA to get such standards adopted and implemented.
Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal is considered the most likely place from which a nuclear weapon would be stolen and sold or given to terrorists. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and I authorize U.S. assistance to Russia to conduct an inventory of tactical and nonsecured weapons. Our bill also requires the DOD to support a report on past U.S. efforts to help Russia account for and secure its tactical and nonsecured nukes and to recommend ways to improve such efforts.
We also deal with the problem of scientists in the former Soviet Union and work to prevent them from selling their services to North Korea, Iran and al Qaeda.
We also encourage the President to deal with the problem of the NPT's loophole that allows nations like Iran to pursue nuclear weapons through the guise of a nuclear energy program. Our bill asks the President to submit a report outlining strategies to better control fuel cycle technologies and possible ways to close the loophole in Article IV without undermining the overall integrity of the treaty.
These are common-sense approaches to combating the nuclear threat. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and I are committed to working together on a bipartisan basis to do whatever we can to reduce the danger of a nuclear attack on the United States, and we hope that all of our colleagues will join us in that effort.