and ballistic missile expertise and parts, and finally, the recent unclassified CIA report on WMD also mentioned a Syrian and Russian nuclear research program, and I am wondering if you could describe that program as well. I know it is a mouthful.

Mr. BOLTON. Right. Let me try and address all three of your points if I could.

First, I do think that-obviously we are all aware of these allegations that somehow the Administration cooked the books in some sense or another.

I want to tell you as somebody—you know, before I joined the Administration I wrote a fair amount about policy on Iraq. Congressman Delahunt remembers hearings we had up here talking about it. When I was a civilian, I felt that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction required regime change in Baghdad. I thought that was the only way to be sure that we and our friends and allies in the region could be secure from the threats that he represented. But I want to assure you and the Members of the Committee that since I became an official in the Administration I have read with great care everything I could from the intelligence community about Iraq's WMD capability. I personally never asked anybody in the intelligence community to change a single thing that they presented, and I am not aware of any other official in this Administration who did that.

Sometimes what you get from the intelligence community fits with your theories and sometimes it does not, and it is the essence of sound policymaking to try to make your policies conform to reality. I believe that is what the Administration did.

I would welcome the anonymous critics coming out in public and saying what their concerns are so we could address them. The intelligence community itself is going to investigate, did so at its own initiative, where it had successes in terms of its intelligence findings on WMD and a range of other issues before the war, where it had failures, and what that should tell us how we can learn from the future.

I do not doubt that appropriate Committees of Congress will conduct their own hearings on the subject. I think it is critical that we are completely honest among ourselves about what we found, and where our intelligence succeeded and where it did not. And I have no fear that at the end of those processes we will see that the concerns that not just the Administration but overwhelming majorities of Congress had about Iraq's WMD programs will be justified.

Sir, on North Korea, I am actually quite eager to hear from you and Congressman Weldon and the other Members who just came back from Pyongyang. The President has made it very clear in his public statements, and all of us in the Administration that he seeks a peaceful solution to the North Korean nuclear weapons program. We have pushed in a variety of ways for multilateral negotiations on that subject because we believe that this is not simply a problem between North Korea and the United States. We have worked very hard to get a nearly unanimous decision by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer the North Korean's weapons program to the Security Council as a threat to international peace and security.

My colleagues recently met in Beijing with the Chinese, the North Koreans, which is about as low a definition of a multilateral negotiations as you can get with just three countries in the room. We are prepared to consider further discussions with Japan, South Korea and other interested countries.

And as I say, the President's view is that we should find a peaceful solution to the threat posed by the North Korean nuclear weapons program, and there are a variety of ways we are going about it, including the proliferation security initiative that the President announced in Krakow.

On Syria, as you know Secretary Powell was just in Damascus and made a number of points to the Syrian leadership about their support for terrorism, terrorist groups that have headquarters in Damascus, about allegations we had heard of Syrian harboring of Iraqi, top Iraqi leaders and other assistance to the former Iraqi regime. He also made a number of points very strongly about our concerns for Syria's WMD program.

In effect, I would say now the ball is in Syria's court on a range of those issues, and we will see what the response will be.

I would be happy to talk with you and other Members of the Committee at greater length about Syria in a closed session, and perhaps with colleagues from other agencies where we can go into that in a little bit more detail.

Chairman HYDE. Ms. Davis.

Ms. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary.

The previous panel, I think we heard from Mr. Sokolski who said that, you know, we have rules we just do not enforce, I think, and Mr. Iklé said that we knew of violations but we would ignore them one reason or another because we did not want to rock the boat because we were in situations. And then-I cannot remember who said it, said that we have 191 states that are signed on to the NPT, and only two that we are prosecuting, and that is supposed to be a great percentage, but I would offer to you that anything less than 100 percent on the NPT is less than acceptable.

I guess my concern is, then I read in your statement that January 10th North Korea opted to pull out of the treaty, and maybe this is not a good question. But what good is the treaty? I mean, what are we left with? Are we left with a policy of preemptive strikes?

I mean, I would be the last one to sit here and say I want to be voting every week or every month on going into one country after another to do a regime change. What are we left with?

Mr. BOLTON. Well, I think the way that this question has been approached in the past is to try to get as many countries as you can to sign up to the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but perhaps not necessarily to pay the kind of attention that we should to compliance with those treaties.

In other words, we are trying to have a treaty, but when you find that some of the countries have happily signed up and are lying about their compliance, that is a major source of concern.

The treaties themselves do not have enforcement mechanisms, and indeed, it is difficult to see how you would construct an effec

tive enforcement mechanism for treaties that have such broad membership.

The good news is that the rate of noncompliance with all three of the nonproliferation treaties we think is relatively small, but it is a subject that we are quite concerned about because it is precisely the subject of noncompliance which is very inconvenient to talk about for some people that pose the threat.

And I do actually have some charts on this subject that I did not use before, and I will provide copies to the Committee. But what this shows is that looking at the rogue states listed here, all of which are on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, many of them are parties to these nonproliferation treaties; not all of them but many of them.

And what we find is that they are violating the treaty. This is a chart that shows states where we think have stockpiles of the different kinds of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile capabilities, and others where we think there are developmental programs. And you can see that it is—through that set of states it is a characteristic that they do seek weapons of mass destruction. Now, I think what that tells us is that while the universal treaties are useful, and we support them and support them strongly in the Administration, they are not sufficient in and of themselves. And what we try to do is focus a strategy in each case to deal with the particular problem, and it most certainly does not involve regime change or preemptive military action as the first option.

The first option is to find a peaceful way to get these countries to give up their programs in weapons of mass destruction, and that is principally at the State Department what we are about.

Chairman HYDE. Mr. Crowley.

Mr. CROWLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Bolton, for being here today and for your testimony.

I believe the hearing notice went out that this is a hearing on U.S. nonproliferation policy after Iraq, and I note that in your testimony both oral and in written that you go beyond Iraq and talk about other countries as far away as Cuba in terms of their attempt to proliferate weapons of mass destruction, and I think that was rightfully so to talk about the broad picture.

But I thought it was interesting to say the least, in fact, incredible that your testimony did not mention either orally or written, not once or even in a note the involvement of Pakistan in relation especially specifically to proliferation in Iran and in North Korea aside from Pakistan's attaining no-don missiles from North Korea, but also in apparently Pakistan's delivery of know-how to Iran and to North Korea on uranium enrichment designs, technology and machinery, and ballistics technology as well.

What I would ask is, what is the Bush Administration and State Department doing to pressure Islamabad to fully disclose the nature and scope of its assistance to North Korea and to Iran nuclear programs? The information, I believe, is critical if you want to understand the extent of North Korea's and Iran's uranium enrichment programs.

As well as, what does this Administration and state intend to do to prevent Pakistan weapons of mass destruction and/or related material from falling into hands of terrorists which we know are

operating within the borders of Pakistan and/or preventing them from getting to countries interested in proliferation?

Mr. BOLTON. Well, I think the subject of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and India's nuclear weapons while are on the subject is of enormous concern. What I was really trying to address in this prepared statement were the countries where we saw the possession or the aspiration to possess weapons of mass destruction as having immediate concern to us and friends and allies, but not to say that the issue of India and Pakistan is not something that should be addressed.

I was already at 25 pages, and I did not even read all of that. Mr. CROWLEY. Under Secretary, excuse me, just a moment. Are you suggesting that India itself is also engaged in delivering nuclear technology to

Mr. BOLTON. No, no, no.

Mr. CROWLEY [continuing]. Terrorist states or to terrorist organizations?

Mr. BOLTON. No, sir. I was referring to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities.

Mr. CROWLEY. Which is a separate issue, I agree.

Mr. BOLTON. Right.

Mr. CROWLEY. I am talking specifically about Pakistan and its involvement in delivering technology to two states specifically, to Iran and to North Korea.

Mr. BOLTON. Right.

Mr. CROWLEY. That was something that was not mentioned, and I think it is critical in analyzing the state of proliferation of nuclear weapons, the weapons of mass destruction around the world.

Mr. BOLTON. Right. The government of Pakistan has denied to us that they have recently made such transfers, and that subject has been discussed with them by Secretary Powell and others in very serious terms.

The question of the relationship between Pakistan and North Korea in particular has been something we have addressed, and we have been assured that it does not extend to the issues that you have raised.

Mr. CROWLEY. You do not think that the horse has already left the barn? Even the technology that is transferred from North Korea to Pakistan is substantial in terms of their ballistics capability.

Mr. BOLTON. It is the case that we have found evidence of transfers of ballistic missile technology to Pakistan, and as recently

as

Mr. CROWLEY. But they do not do it free, do they?

Mr. BOLTON. They certainly do not, and as recently as September 2001, we sanctioned the Chinese entities that transferred that material.

If I could just take a second on that, this question of transfers of technology to Pakistan from China, or two other countries from China that I mentioned in my testimony, the recent sanctions of Norinco, a major PLA company, a large, large company that we sanctioned for transfers relating to the ballistic missile program of Iran. These are very troubling to us. I quite agree with you.

But the decision to impose sanctions on Chinese entities is also one that receives very careful scrutiny before we do it, and it is something that we do pursuant to the executive order and the statutes that Congress has passed, and that remains a priority to the Administration.

Now, in terms of some of the other questions you have raised, you know there are a lot of reports that we see speaking of intelligence-a lot of reports that we see and that we have to evaluate. I would be happy, again, to talk to you or others in a private session about that, to try and address any additional concerns that you have.

Mr. CROWLEY. I would just say, Mr. Chairman, and finalize this for the record, that I think it was unfortunate, I think, that you did not mention in testimony or in written testimony the link of Pakistan. I just want to state that for the record.

I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you.

Mr. Leach.

Mr. LEACH. Good to see you again.

I would like to re-raise the Biological Weapons Convention issue and the issue of compliance. As you know, early in this Administration, a pre-9/11 decision was made not to seek a strengthened compliance regime on the Biological Weapons Convention, a treaty that had been negotiated over a number of years, one that had been at one point strongly led by the United States, and had been the goal of a number of Administrations.

The argument against seeking a compliance regime of an international stature was that it would be an intrusive on the American pharmaceutical industry, and would be imperfect; that is, there is no such thing as perfect verification.

However, the Administration is now in the awkward position of asserting, as you have today, that countries as diverse as Cuba, Syrian, Iran may be pursuing biological weapons, and yet, as you point out the charts on countries that have signed or not signed treaties, it is the United States and the United States alone that has blocked an international compliance regime for the Biological Weapons Convention.

It strikes me this is a very ideologically frail conclusion of the Administration. It also strikes me it is a conclusion that ought to be reviewed. And so I have several questions for you.

One, is the Administration prepared to review this decision? Secondly, as we think about this whole area, should not a much greater emphasis be placed on education about the Biological Weapons Convention in this sense?

The Biological Weapons Convention was negotiated over a period of years after a decision was made in 1969 by President Nixon to unilaterally cease biological weapons production the United States because they were too dangerous to attempt to experiment with in the world's most sophisticated scientific society.

And we have this image out there in the world today that we are against countries developing biological weapons out of security concerns for the United States, and that is a valid concern. But it is clearly a massive security concern for the countries that play with these weapons and to the regions in which they are. And it strikes