Arms Control & Non Proliferation
Documents & Texts from America.gov
24 July 2006
U.S.-Russian Effort Seeks To Prevent Terrorist Nuclear Attacks
By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – The United States and Russia will hold the first organizational meeting of initial partners of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in the next several months.
Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph answered questions from individuals in India, Israel and the United States about the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands during a July 19 web chat at the State Department.
The initiative aims “to reduce the risk that terrorists could ever obtain a nuclear weapon or carry out a nuclear attack,” he said. It is designed to take “a comprehensive approach to dealing with all elements of nuclear terrorism risk,” Joseph said.
The two countries unveiled their plans during a bilateral meeting at the July G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. (See related article.)
Joseph said this is the first time that the United States and Russia “have come together to form a growing network of partner nations that are committed to taking effective and focused measures to build a layered defense” against nuclear terrorism. (See related article.)
“This layered defense-in-depth requires that partner nations not only improve their interdiction cooperation, but that they also enhance the security of nuclear material, develop capabilities to detect its movement, and improve national emergency response.”
The under secretary said the two countries will invite partner nations to the upcoming meeting “to elaborate and endorse a statement of principles” for the initiative. He said one of those partners will serve as the host for the initial meeting.
“The Global Initiative will build our collective and individual capacity to combat nuclear terrorism on a determined and systematic basis,” the under secretary said, because such activities “require extensive cooperation and interoperability with partner nations across the full range of capabilities, to include prevention, protection and response.”
The initiative will build on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s vision of transformational diplomacy, according to Joseph, “by building consensus among partner nations regarding our most serious international security threat, and galvaniz[ing] them to take concrete and sustained steps to defeat it.”
Asked about the cost of the initiative, he said the amount of money spent “is only one measure of success,” suggesting that how well the money is spent is another measure. Joseph said each partner nation “should be measuring what percent of cargo leaving their ports and arriving ... in the ports of other partner nations is scanned for nuclear or radiological material.”
In addition, he said partners “should be measuring how fast we share operational and technical information ... regarding potential nuclear terrorist threats as they emerge, and seeking new ways to accelerate that information flow.”
Lastly, the under secretary said, each nation should be looking at how fast their emergency response teams can deploy and gain control over dangerous material and how quickly they can respond to calls for assistance from other nations.
Through this initiative, he said the United States and Russia hope to galvanize their respective partners “to spend more resources on this threat, work with the private sector to ensure they allocate more resources to their own risk mitigation activities, and develop concrete performance measures to ensure that the money we all spend actually makes a difference.”
A transcript of the Joseph web chat is available on the State Department’s web site.
For more information about U.S. policy, see Arms Control and Nonproliferation.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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