chemical and biological weapons poses a clear and present danger to U.S. national security.

The anthrax that was mailed to Senator Tom Daschle's office contained dried spores that were milled to an extremely fine powder and treated with chemical additives so they would readily become airborne and infect through the lungs. These facts suggest that the perpetrators, whoever they are, had access to specialized military technology and expertise related to the weaponization of anthrax. Although to date the exposures have remained limited, a large-scale attack by the chemical or biological agent against U.S. targets at home or abroad is now a real possibility.

Because the senders of the anthrax-tainted letters may have received assistance from former weapons scientists or from a state sponsor, it is important to assess which states possess chemical and biological weapons capabilities and the extent to which trade in dual-use materials and technologies contributes to clandestine CBW programs. Evidence from open sources indicates that roughly 13 countries are actively seeking biological warfare capabilities and closer to 20 are seeking chemical warfare capabilities. Proliferant states of particular concern to the United States include Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. More information on statelevel proliferation is contained in a table attached to my written testimony.1

Furthermore, over the past decade, sub-state groups have been increasingly interested in acquiring chemical and biological weapons. The Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, and bin Laden's al Qaeda are only a few of the groups actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In recent years, the growing availability of dual-use technologies, materials, information, and expertise associated with production and delivery of chemical and biological weapons has exacerbated the problem of CBW proliferation. Indeed, the relative ease of acquiring these weapons when compared to advanced conventional or nuclear weapons has increased their attractiveness to states that cannot afford more advanced weapons or are technically incapable of developing them. Nearly all the materials and equipment used to make chemical and biological weapons are dual-use, complicating the control, detection, and interdiction of proliferation-relevant exports.

Attempts to regulate trade in dual-use technologies to countries of proliferation concern are extremely difficult. They face intense opposition not only from non-aligned states that claim that such controls are discriminatory, but also from international suppliers, companies, and research institutes that benefit from the commercial sale and transfer of such technologies.

The Chemical Weapons Convention and the Australia Group, an informal forum of 33 exporting counties, restrict trade in chemical weapons precursors, dangerous biological pathogens, and certain types of dual-use equipment. Even so, proliferant states have often been successful in circumventing these controls by purchasing the materials from unscrupulous suppliers and evading interdiction efforts by means of trans-shipment points and front companies.

Given the dual-use dilemma and the rapid diffusion of legitimate chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries around the globe, strengthened dual-use export controls can buy time, but they do not offer a long-term solution to the CBW proliferation problem. Accordingly, export controls should be seen as one of a set of policy tools for addressing the proliferation threat, together with active interdiction efforts, passive and active defenses, strengthened consequence-management capabilities, cooperative threat reduction efforts in the former Soviet Union, and multilateral arms control.

Although the Bush Administration has taken a skeptical attitude towards arms control, a strengthened international legal regime banning the possession and use of these weapons, backed by a credible threat of economic sanctions and military action against violators, offers, in my view, the best hope of reversing the spread of these heinous weapons.

Because of the dangerous precedent that has been set by the actual use of biological weapons against civilian targets in the United States, it is vital for the international community to continue to strengthen the existing international norm against possession and use of chemical and biological weapons. Although the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention impose a blanket prohibition on such weapons, both regimes have serious weaknesses that undermine their effectiveness. Accordingly, both regimes must be strengthened if they are to promote the international norm of non-use and non-possession by states of concern, and by extension, sub-state actors, as well.

For example, the United States has repeatedly accused Iran, a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, of systematically violating its treaty obligations. To date, however, the United States has failed to request a challenge inspection of Iran as permitted under the Chemical Weapons Convention, undermining the credibility of this key element of the treaty's verification regime.

With respect to the Biological Weapons Convention, the Bush Administration decided in July 2001, earlier this year, to withdraw from a 6-year effort to negotiate a legally binding compliance regime. Although the administration has recently proposed an alternative package of voluntary measures, they appear insufficiently intrusive or effective to deter violations or to enhance compliance with the treaty. The administration should work with our European allies to make legally binding the proposed measure for investigation of alleged use of biological weapons and suspicious outbreaks of disease.

To achieve these goals, the United States should devote greater political and financial capital to strengthening the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions, make more effective use of existing treaty instruments, for example, by requesting a challenge inspection of Iran and other suspected violators, and seek to brand the possession and use of chemical and biological weapons as a crime against humanity under international law.

That concludes my oral testimony and I would be happy to answer your questions.

TESTIMONY OF ROSE GOTTEMOELLER,1 SENIOR ASSOCIATE, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

Ms. GOTTEMOELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the honor of appearing today before the Subcommittee before you and Senator Thompson.

Suddenly, the press is full of terrible scenarios of suitcase bombs spewing detonation in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, a radiological bomb spreading plutonium over the White House, creating a "keep out" zone in central Washington that could last for many years. After reading about threats such as these and scenarios such as these, many people are worried, so I commend the Subcommittee for confronting these complex and difficult issues in the search for new answers in export controls as in other areas.

A simple device of the Hiroshima design is actually not the easiest nuclear capability for a proliferator to acquire, be he a terrorist or a rogue state actor. A simple device of this kind actually requires a large amount of nuclear material to achieve a nuclear explosion. We assume that 15 to 30 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or three to four kilograms of plutonium are needed for a sophisticated nuclear device, and for a cruder device, a great deal more material may be required.

For this reason, international proliferation policy has stressed keeping nuclear material production and enrichment technologies out of proliferators' hands. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the possibility that large amounts of weapons-usable material could be stolen from former Soviet nuclear facilities has also become a major concern for nonproliferation policy worldwide. What would have been achieved through years of arduous and expensive production, enrichment, and separation work, that is, a sufficient amount of material to build a bomb, could be acquired in an instant through thievery.

Therefore, in the past decade, an enormous amount of attention and significant U.S. dollars, $173 million in fiscal year 2001 alone, have been spent on cooperating with Russia and the other states in the region to enhance the physical protection of weapons-usable material in facilities that house the Soviet weapons complex.

In contrast to bombs that would produce a nuclear detonation, however, radiological weapons are a simpler capability for a proliferator to acquire, if only because the threat in the case of a radiological device exists across a wide spectrum. The spectrum could range from a low-level nuclear waste package planted in an urban location through a highly toxic nuclear material explosion in the form of a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to spread material over a wide geographic area. At the very end of the spectrum could be an aircraft attack on a nuclear facility that would turn the facility itself into a radiological weapon.

It is important to stress in looking at this spectrum the different types of radioactive materials that might come into play in a radiological attack. Since 1993, the International Atomic Energy Agency has tracked 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear materials and 201 cases of trafficking in radioactive materials. These are the kinds of materials used for medical and industrial purposes.

Of all of these cases, only 18 involved small amounts of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium, the so-called weapons-usable material that is required to make a nuclear bomb. But even a small amount of low-level nuclear waste, if planted in an urban setting, would have the potential to sow considerable panic unless authorities were quickly able to neutralize the incident in the public mind. For that reason, I believe that quick action to analyze and clarify for the public the nature of radiological threats should be an important goal of public policy in the current environment, whether here in the United States or in other countries around the world where such incidents might occur.

Now let me turn my attention quickly to nuclear and radiological threats deserving more attention. In my view, we must now strike a balance between the most dangerous nuclear threats and the less lethal but profoundly disruptive radiological threats. I would like to suggest in my spoken testimony today that we focus immediately on four priorities as threats that would deserve more attention, and I will pay a little more time on the radiological threat because I think that is essentially a new priority coming to play now. But I also wanted to note that given the demand on U.S. budgetary resources, we should also be considering new methods of funding such projects, which I will specifically remark on, as well.

The four priorities that I would suggest are: Halting the production of weapons-grade plutonium in Russia; securing nuclear facilities that remain vulnerable in the former Soviet Union on a quick fix, quick turnaround basis; closing down nuclear warhead production plants in Russia, that is, the production of warheads and maintenance of warheads at plants in Russia; and improving the security at nuclear reactors and other sites where lower-level, that is, non-weapons-usable nuclear material is stored. I offer these four in no particular order of priority. That is not a relative list, but I do believe that all should be given serious and urgent attention.

Before I turn for a moment to the radiological priority, the fourth on my list, I would like to mention a new kind of funding that I think we should consider, given that there are many demands on the U.S. budget at the present time. One good idea, I believe, has already been suggested by Senators Biden and Lugar in some recent legislation, that is the so-called debt-for-security swaps. Under this concept, we would forgive Soviet-era debts that the Russians are holding in exchange for Russia putting more rubles into nonproliferation programs, and sir, I believe that should be an overall priority for U.S. policy at this point, emphasizing urging Russia to put more of their own budgetary resources into these important programs.

Now let me say just a few words about my priority with regard to improving security at nuclear reactors and other sites where lower-level nuclear material is stored or used, because, as I mentioned at the outset, I believe it addresses the radiological threat that has taken on new importance in the wake of September 11. Traditionally, U.S. cooperation with the countries of the former Soviet Union to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation have emphasized so-called higher-value nuclear materials and facilities, sites associated with the weapons complex and especially with nu

given that radiological threats have taken on new importance, programs should be emphasizing these particular kinds of threats, and I believe that one simple step the United States could accomplish would be to restore funds for international nuclear safety in the Federal budget.

For nearly a decade, the United States has been working with countries of the former Soviet Union to upgrade the safety of Soviet-built nuclear reactors and prevent another Chernobyl-style incident. This has been a largely successful program, and, in fact, the permanent shut-down of the last unit at Chernobyl occurred in December of last year. For that reason, the program is slowly ramping down, dropping from over $30 million in fiscal year 1999 to just $10 million in fiscal year 2002. The program, I believe, could be quickly ramped up in order to improve security at nuclear reactors and other sites where low-level non-weapons-usable nuclear materials are stored, and these efforts could be undertaken not only in Russia and the former Soviet Union but also other countries around the world where such facilities are vulnerable.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, I would like to note what I believe is a potential important development in nuclear technology that will, I think, impact in important ways on the future of export controls with regard to nuclear systems. Increasingly, those who are engaged in nuclear technology development, particularly for electricity generation purposes, are interested in new approaches that would limit the cross-over between peaceful uses of nuclear technology and the weapons sector.

They want to avoid the kind of situation that has been inherent, for example, in the Soviet Union, where the Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk reactors produced plutonium for the weapons system at the same time they were producing heat and electricity for the local urban areas, and this continues today. In fact, the civilian use of these reactors continues apace while these reactors are still pumping out plutonium that adds to stocks of plutonium available potentially for weapons purposes in Russia, although Russia, of course, says that no longer they are used for that purpose.

For that reason, the nuclear industry today, and here and around the world, is beginning to concentrate on developing so-called proliferation-resistant technologies, particularly in the reactor arena, that will minimize the production of weapons-usable material in their cycles. Ideally, proliferation-resistant reactors, for example, would burn plutonium, dispose of plutonium, rather than breeding it.

Although such reactors may be 20 years or more from commercial application, I think it is important that there is a new strategic approach developing in the nuclear industry. The industry is emphasizing proliferation-resistance along with other attributes such as minimization of nuclear waste and stringent design for safety and security. If this trend develops successfully, it will simplify the export control problem for nuclear technologies, and, in fact, may also prove to be the best way to fulfill the promise of peaceful nuclear uses under the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Thank you, sir, for this opportunity.