Getting international help on WMD

He received high marks for raising the issue.

But in urging the UN Security Council to approve a resolution that requires all states to criminalize proliferation, and enact strict export controls on nuclear materials and byproducts, it is the next step that will prove far more difficult.

The President's proposals are likely to "run into some international opposition because they do not require the United States and allied nations with nuclear weapons to reciprocate for the restrictions that Bush wants to impose on states that seek such weapons," reports the Washington Post .

It is one thing to want countries to secure all sensitive materials within their borders, as the President called for (e.g., lower-grade isotopes, like those used in medicine or research). But "as long as other countries think the United States is just trying to preserve its nuclear hegemony, there are going to be some nations that challenge that," Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington told the Post.

02/12/04 UN now backs elections in Iraq 02/11/04 Media knocked for Iraq war coverage 02/10/04 The 'Al Qaeda' memo, Zarqawi, and civil war in Iraq

Sign up to be notified daily: Find out more.

The immediate set of events that sparked Bush's new initiative is the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, the leader of what Bush called a highly lucrative international proliferation network.

In his speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., Bush zeroed in on a new kind of nuclear threat confronting the United States and other nations since the end of the Cold War, during which large stockpiles of nuclear weapons created a deterrent, or mutally assured destruction (MAD).

It is the specter that "small groups of fanatics or failing states could gain the power to threaten great nations," with nuclear materials that must be addressed, he said.

The gorilla under the bed feared by intelligence agencies is what is referred to as a " dirty bomb" ( cnews at canoe.com) which unlike a nuclear weapon,

would not ignite an atomic chain reaction and would not require highly enriched uranium or plutonium which is hard to obtain. The materials could be a lower-grade isotope, like those used in medicine or research. Conventional explosives could be used to disperse a plume of radioactive dust over a city.

The United States is "determined to confront [such] threats at the source," said Bush as he called on the world to "confront these dangers and to end them." The need for such broad international cooperation calls for expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) that he announced in May 2003, he said.

He outlined how US and British intelligence agents unraveled the network and helped stop the shipment of advanced centrifuge parts bound for Libya from an illicit factory in Malaysia via Dubai in the Persian Gulf. Before the German-owned ship carrying the parts could reach Libya, Bush said, it was intercepted by German and Italian authorities.

As originally conceived, PSI is an international program dedicated to interdicting weapons of mass destruction and related materials in transit. But that is no longer, if it ever was, enough. The President wants participants in the PSI as well as other "willing nations" to expand their focus and use Interpol and other mechanisms for law enforcement cooperation to take additional actions to pursue proliferators and end their operations.

He cited the need for greater cooperation in international law enforcement to arrest weapons traffickers, shut down their laboratories and seize their materials at sea, in the air, or on land. Bush also offered several controls to stop nuclear proliferation, including the overhaul of the United Nations watch dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.

Yet, here again, says Gregory Pemberton, Convenor of International Relations at Macquarie University in Australia in an interview with RSI, Radio Singapore International, Bush will face hurdles in getting the full extent of international cooperation he wants.

The Bush Administration has a distrust of multilateral organizations like the United Nations [that includes the International Atomic Energy Agency] because of the involvement of countries the US considers hostile or part of the axis of evil. As he actually states that countries which are in breach of the rules should not be given the responsibility to enforce the rules.

On the one hand, continues Dr. Pemberton, Bush wants to work around multilateral framework, but, on the other and at the same time, he calls for them to be improved.

What needs to be realized before the kind of "expanded cooperation" can occur is that there is a deeply held concern that nations have about US intentions and it is a hurdle that must be overcome, Pemberton says. "The Bush Administration did damage their reputation because of the unilateral action they took in the war against Iraq."

This will make it more difficult for Bush to mobilize support. ... Bush is saying, look, we are prepared to work multilaterally, are you prepared to do it with us? So Bush is putting a challenge to states to cooperate. The US has also drafted a Proliferation Security Initiative, which deals in air and sea security, and weapons of mass destruction. This shows what Bush has in mind, which is not so much of a United Nations, but more of a US led multilateral organization that consists of many states that support the US in law enforcement or conventions against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Also...
• Fast Facts: Bush Efforts Against WMD ( Fox News)
• On the trail of the black market bombs ( BBC)
• UN Agency Eager to End Spread of Nukes ( AP)
• OSAMA'S NAVY:Bin Laden has bought fleet of 15 ships for terror attacks ( The Mirror
• Saving Ourselves From Self-Destruction, By Mohamed Elbaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency ( The New York Times

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Jim Bencivenga.