a state need not demonstrate that these capabilities are necessary or economical for civilian purposes.

The U.S. is now leading a charge in the International Atomic Energy Agency to find Iran in non-compliance with its NPT obligations. The impression has arisen that the contention centers on the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Yet, the allegations the IAEA is investigating are that Iran undertook pilot-scale enrichment at another, secret facility without notifying the IAEA, and may not have accounted fully and accurately for uranium-hexafluoride gas it received years ago from China. But under current rules Iran is entitled to have facilities to enrich uranium and produce and separate plutonium as long as it follows procedures for notification and monitoring. Thus Iranian officials, such as Vice President Reza Aghazadeh, argue forcefully back:

Our people and authorities always ask why Iran which has acceded to different nuclear treaties and safeguards agreements and has rendered all sorts of cooperation as demanded by IAEA and while its nuclear activities, as attested by the official reports of IAEA inspection teams are peaceful, still_remains subject to various international pressures and restrictions. Meanwhile countries which possess weapons of mass destruction and refuse to accede to treaties such as NPT are left on their own without being asked to be accountable for their nuclear conduct.1

Clearly there is a giant loophole in the NPT that needs to be closed before other states try to use it. (Egypt, Algeria, South Korea, and Turkey come to mind, and three of these states are U.S. friends, not bad guys). The rules need to be reformed. Given the surfeit of existing uranium enrichment and plutonium production and separation capabilities in the world, no additional states need acquire such capabilities that are inherently proliferation sensitive. States like Iran that already have invested in acquiring capabilities that we reasonably want them to forego should be compensated and should be guaranteed the nuclear fuel services they need for civilian purposes. Fair-minded people rather readily could devise arrangements to utilize already operating, internationally reliable fuel-cycle capabilities to provide cost-effective fuel services to states like Iran. The challenge is to negotiate reform of the underlying rules. Space does not allow detailing all the interest groups and states that would resist such reform. Unmistakably, though, the U.S. will need the cooperation of the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Japan and probably Iran and other states to effect this reform which is vital for global security.

So far I have suggested needed initiatives to strengthen regional security in the Middle East and Persian Gulf and to reform the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Another priority-maybe first in order of "doability"-is to persuade all states possessing nuclear weapons materials and weapons to implement state-of-the-art security measures to ensure that terrorists cannot get their hands on these things.2 Currently, knowledge of best security practices is not systematically shared. There are not agreements or programs to make state-of-the-art security procedures and technologies available to all possessors of nuclear materials and weapons-items such as vault locks, infiltrator detection systems, security cameras, and other anti-theft technologies. Care must be taken not to violate Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty rules against sharing technology or know-how that would enhance other states' weapons capabilities. That said, improving every relevant state's capacity to secure sensitive nuclear assets is vital to protect the world against terrorism.

Forming a "coalition of the nuclear material possessing" is not only an anti-terrorism imperative. It also offers a way to engage India, Israel and Pakistan in cooperative international nonproliferation efforts. These three states currently stand outside the NPT. This should not be allowed to impede cooperation with them to promote the common global good by doing everything humanly possible to secure their nuclear "assets." Such cooperation should be a minimal obligation of states that possess nuclear weapon materials.

Senator Lugar, writing in the Washington Post, set the ideal objectives for the initiative I am suggesting: "every nation that has weapons and materials of mass destruction must account for what it has, safely secure what it has (spending its own money or obtaining international technical and financial resources to do so) and pledge that no other nation, cell or cause will be allowed access or use.' "3 Imple

1H.E. Mr. Reza Aghazadeh, "Iran's Nuclear Policy," speech given at IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, May 6, 2003, p. 9.

2 The U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, Japan, Germany, Belgium, South Africa, North Korea-with perhaps one or two other European states that holds small amounts of highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium.

3 Senator Richard G. Lugar, "The Lugar Doctrine," Washington Post, December 6, 2001.

menting even this relatively modest agenda will require exceptional diplomacy and international cooperation. The necessary standard-setting and implementation cannot be achieved through coercion or diktat.

THE ENFORCEMENT CHALLENGE: NORTH KOREA, IRAN, AND BEYOND

This last section turns to the challenge that seems to preoccupy the U.S. today: enforcing nonproliferation norms and rules on states that seem intent to violate them.

We know from theory and practice that civilized law enforcement must be by-thebook and non-selective. Actors are not arrested and prosecuted without probable evidentiary cause that they have violated specific laws. And law enforcement is not supposed to be selective. All laws, not just some, are to be enforced. All violators, not just some are to be prosecuted. Failure to live up to these injunctions undermines the legitimacy of whichever jurisdiction we are considering. Over time, doubts about legitimacy lead to instability, disorder and resistance against the enforcers. The recent and ongoing Iraq experience remains ambiguous in its effect on future enforcement of disarmament and nonproliferation norms and terms. (The looting of nuclear facilities and dispersal of dirty-bomb materials into unknown hands, and removal of valuable files, may also have exacerbated the proliferation danger itself). The two other major cases "on the docket"-North Korea and Iran-are different from Iraq and each other, as administration officials rightly insist. Yet, one of the differences is the unavoidable need for cooperation in dealing with them, and this is where the Iraq experience may affect outcomes.

North Korea poses a rather cut-and-dried case. No one doubts that it has violated central norms and treaty provisions. Unlike with Iraq, the nature of the threat and the accuracy and motivations behind U.S. arguments are not disputed. This and other factors have helped the U.S. to persuade key regional players China, South Korea, Russia and Japan to cooperate somewhat in pressuring North Korea not to act more rashly. One can argue that this cooperation is greater than it would otherwise have been if the U.S. had spoken and acted as if it did not want or need cooperation, and instead would "handle" the challenge by itself militarily.

Using a law-based model, North Korea represents a hostage crisis wherein the hostage takers-the DPRK government-have agents outside the "house" who pose tenable threats to disperse dangerous weapons in ways that we might not detect. Moreover, if the hostage takers blow up the house, the human and financial costs of the catastrophe and its aftermath are greater than the surrounding posse feels it can bear. Not only would a collapse of government in North Korea pose enormous economic and human liabilities to South Korea, China, and the U.S., it would also exacerbate the short-term proliferation danger. Iraq, and before it, the collapse of the Soviet Union, showed that major proliferation messes occur when the controls of authoritarian governments are lifted off weapons of mass destruction inventories, facilities and scientists. Dangerous weapons and materials are left there for the taking; insiders may escape with these weapons or materials; scientists and engineers may sell their know-how, all before a new order can be established. We have not yet found ways to seamlessly impose replacement controls over these dangerous materials and people. The gap between destruction of the old regime and organization and emplacement of the new would be dangerous in North Korea.

Faced with this excruciatingly frustrating, indeed outrageous, hostage-like crisis, law enforcement tries to tighten the cordon, keep calm, and negotiate an outcome that keeps North Korea from threatening international peace and security. This negotiation will go best if the negotiators include people the hostage takers know and rely upon (i.e. China), and the co-negotiators are willing to present a unified front. Indeed, the more pillars of the community who are willing to be part of the posse, the better. Good cop/bad cop only works when the two cops share the same fundamental objectives. The negotiation with North Korea obviously is influenced by the potential use of force, but the law enforcers and the hostage takers know that they will lose much if it comes to a shoot out. (Waco comes to mind.) Better to negotiate an outcome that may spare the hostage takers the death penalty if at the same time it spares the rest of the community the dangers and costs it is not prepared to bear. Iran actually is a much tougher case than North Korea or Iraq. The U.S. rightly is pressing the IAEA to investigate whether Iran has met absolutely all of its notification and inspection requirements under the nonproliferation treaty and related safeguard agreements. But the bigger problem is Iran's seeming interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, and the role that otherwise permissible uranium enrichment and plutonium separation facilities could play in this acquisition.

The U.S. rightly has tried to persuade Russia and other states that Iran is in fact seeking nuclear weapons, and therefore should be stopped through collective action.

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We need others to cooperate in trying to block further flows of equipment, materiel, and know-how to Iran's nuclear and missile programs. But if the U.S. concluded that Iran could by itself do the rest of the work needed to acquire nuclear weapons, is there any other "supply-side" way to stop it?

The answer to this question depends in large part on whether military options exist to negate or significantly delay Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons and whether the U.S. could undertake these options without allies. This question cannot be answered without access to highly classified material. Yet if we lack conclusive evidence to support our argument that Iran has a secret uranium enrichment plant that already has done at least pilot-scale enrichment that would clearly violate Iran's NPT obligations, we also lack adequate information to target such a facility (or facilities). In all likelihood, U.S. and allied intelligence could identify targets whose destruction would slow down Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons (the uranium conversion plant comes to mind), but for this to make strategic sense we would have to believe that during the time thereby bought, Iran would become less determined to acquire nuclear weapons. We would need to believe that such an attack would not stimulate countervailing asymmetrical attacks (i.e. terrorism) against U.S., Israeli and other friendly interests. We would need to assume that such an attack would not lead to major Shiite counteractions against the U.S. in Iraq. We would also need to believe that an attack on Iranian facilities without international mandate would not worsen the United States' overall political-security position in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the world more broadly.

Even if all of those assumptions could be made reasonably, we would still be faced with the long-term issue of dealing with the seventy million people of Iran. Would a U.S. military attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities increase or decrease the likelihood that the Iranian people and current or prospective government would integrate peaceably into the international community of norms and institutions the U.S. seeks to foster? Anyone with experience in Iran will attest that even the most democratic, internationally minded Iranians speak frequently and bitterly about the U.S. role overthrowing the nationalist Mossadegh government in 1953. Nationalist antagonism against the U.S. government-not the American people remains after fifty years. Discussions with today's reformers in Iran, including leaders of civil society, suggest that widespread affection for the American people and the principles_for which the U.S. stands would be lost if the U.S. acted coercively against Iran. For, many Iranians think it is unfair that Israel and Pakistan are allowed to have nuclear weapons and even receive U.S. aid, while Iran is denied even the "peaceful" nuclear technology to which it is entitled. Among other things, this nationalist frustration over U.S. nuclear double standards could mean that even if the current leaders of Iran's security and intelligence and judicial apparatus were displaced, the successor government would be intensely nationalistic and opposed to the U.S. government. Such a nationalist government should not be expected to abandon interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

This analysis pulls us back to the "demand-side" of the equation. We need to persuade Iran's current and future leaders that they will gain more by trading their problematic nuclear facilities and ambitions for greater integration into the international political economy. I have written a paper outlining a strategy to accomplish this objective, which I have provided the committee.

Here I would add merely that the U.S. needs to internationalize the current effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. International pressure and cajolery are vital to affecting Iran. To increase the pressure, the U.S. needs to persuade Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would pose a threat to international peace and security, and that the U.S. seeks a cooperative, peaceful path to persuade Iran not to pose such a threat. Doubts over the soundness of U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction may be obviated by the international community's apparent surprise over the recent "discovery" of Iran's facilities at Natanz and Arak. Russia, for one, seems to be reconsidering its reliance on Iran's prior claims that it was not seeking nuclear weapon capabilities. France has said that in the wake of Iraq it wants to be more proactive in combating proliferation. Concerns that the U.S. will take violent nonproliferation enforcement into its own hands provide an opportunity to motivate other major players to work cooperatively through established mechanisms to enforce global adherence to nonproliferation norms. The message from international community leaders should be that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a threat to international peace and security, especially given Iran's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist, and its support of terrorist organizations. Such a message would establish a predicate for UN Security Council action in the event Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons.

International receptivity to more robust and cooperative enforcement of nonproliferation norms and laws will depend in part on our determination to make such enforcement non-selective and to work in genuine partnership with others. The impression has grown recently that the U.S. pursues selective treaty enforcement. This is only partly fair. A major complaint, especially by Iran and Arab states, is that the U.S. says and does nothing to seek Israel's adherence to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Though Israel, India and Pakistan have not signed the treaty, U.S. nonproliferation efforts for years pressed heavily on India and Pakistan to do so, while no such pressure was put on Îsrael. Arguments can be made to justify this position, but the international political problem remains. As I mentioned above, one way to build greater support for U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East and Persian Gulf would be to exert more leadership in behalf of the long-term objective of making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. This goal cannot reasonably be achieved unless and until Israel and its neighbors achieve a durable, peaceful modus vivendi. The conditions that would allow Israel to cooperate in freeing the Middle East from weapons of mass destruction will be difficult to achieve. The point here is that the U.S. should frame its diplomatic and security initiatives as consonant and indeed informed by this larger objective.

Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center recently has proposed a non-country specific, universal innovation to enforceably ban states from deploying chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons to any other nation whether they be under their control or not. There is more to Sokolski's proposal, of course. The point here is that it deserves careful consideration.

A second problem of selective enforcement arises when the U.S. appears to bar nuclear cooperation with parties to the NPT as called for in Article IV of the treaty and at the same time resists international calls for enforcing Article VI requirements that the nuclear-weapon states take steps to stand down their nuclear arsenals. We are alleged not to be living up to our commitments to help others with nuclear technology, while we also do not enforce our obligations to adopt measures such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. As I have suggested above, the U.S. refusal to help states like Iran's acquisition of uranium enrichment and plutonium production capabilities is reasonable, but would be greatly strengthened by an initiative to change the rules so that states no longer can claim an inherent right to acquire these capabilities. Rewriting these rules will be politically impossible if the U.S. and other nuclear-weapon states do not take more seriously their obligations to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies and adopt measures like the CTBT which are intended to end nuclear arms racing. American pursuit of a new generation of nuclear weapons would gravely undermine much of the world's willingness to cooperate with us in strengthening enforcement of export controls and treaty enforcement in cases that we care greatly about.

Ultimately, nonproliferation is not unlike the war on terrorism. The U.S., starting with the strong moral leadership of the president, has stated categorically that "targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong.' ."4 Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith has declared similarly that "Worldwide moral battles can be fought and won . No decent person any more supports or excuses slave trading, piracy, or genocide. No decent person should support or excuse terrorism either." Civilization ultimately requires the same categorical injunction against weapons of mass destruction. After all, these weapons inherently threaten innocent civilians for murder. This is true even of our nuclear weapons and those of our friends as well as our adversaries. These weapons' destructive powers are so great that they terrorize the innocent as well as the guilty, even if their exact targets are military and command and control installations. For the moment, nuclear weapons are permitted in eight states; they serve morally defensible purposes by deterring threats to innocent civilians in many states. Yet over the long-term these weapons cannot be kept from spreading if they are not made universally anathema. Declaring the goal of universally freeing the world from threats of weapons of mass destruction will greatly strengthen our efforts to enforce the norms and terms of nonproliferation in the cases that threaten us today. Failing to accept and promote this civilizing mission, and instead focusing our efforts on a select few bad guys, will undermine the cause of nonproliferation and the rule of law.

4 President George W. Bush, "New Threats Require New Thinking," speech to the graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, June 1, 2002.

[NOTE: Additional material submitted for the record by Mr. Perkovich, entitled "Dealing With Iran's Nuclear Challenge," dated April 28, 2003, is not printed here but is included in the files of the House Committee on International Relations.]

Mr. BEREUTER. Dr. Perkovich, thank you very much.

Next we will hear from Dr. Alan Zelicoff. He is a senior scientist with the Center for Arms Control and National Security at Sandia National Laboratories, a practicing physician before he joined Sandia in 1980. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Biological Weapons Convention from 1992 to 2000, and currently participates in the Cooperative Measures Program with Russia Nuclear Laboratories.

Welcome, Dr. Zelicoff. You may proceed as you wish.

STATEMENT OF ALAN ZELICOFF, PH.D., SENIOR SCIENTIST, CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AND ARMS CONTROL, SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

Mr. ZELICOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am honored to testify before the Committee, and especially amidst such decorated company, and I say this not out of kindness alone, but because it really does give me great faith to know that a technical person such as myself can actually be asked to try to answer a key question before the Committee, which is: What next for U.S. North Korea policy in the aftermath of Iraq.

Let me say a few more words about myself. I am a physicist and physician. The focus of my work is on scientific cooperation with researchers and staff, primarily at biological weapons laboratories in the countries of the former Soviet Union. I am going to restrict my comments today to biological weapons proliferation as I would claim no expertise in nuclear or missile technologies.

In my role as senior scientist in Sandia's Center for National Security and Arms Control and the Advanced Concepts Group at Sandia, I have been blessed with the opportunity to actually do a couple of things that might have made a bit of difference in our understanding of the old Soviet biological weapons program.

I have set up Internet connections in far-flung outpoints in the Russian and Kazak biological weapons archipelago; I have carried out some disease surveillance programs with scientists in isolated spots across EurAsia; and I have played a small part in fostering joint research in identification of an prophylaxis against dangerous infectious diseases.

Not all of which I have learned about the remnants of the Russian biological weapons program has been encouraging, and I did not expect it to be, but I will share a couple of my lessons with you in a moment.

First and foremost though, I want to tell you, Mr. Chairman, and also Mr. Lantos, I want you to know that my message is a very simple one. I concur with your united vision of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. I watched the Committee's hearings held in July of last year, and I must say I watched them with great fascination, and I believe that the vision may serve as the model for what we do in other areas of the world.

In other words, I think the boldness of the Committee is appropriate, necessary and meaningful in this regard, and I will put my own spin on the next steps. But I think we have to focus on things