Barack Obama

U.S. focuses on Russian WMD

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Chicago Tribune
By Jeff Zeleny

Senators to inspect weapons sites

MOSCOW -- The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and its newest member, Barack Obama of Illinois, began a weeklong tour of former Cold War weapons sites Friday to inspect the progress of dismantlement and highlight what they fear is a growing global threat from stolen nuclear material.

Poor security at aging nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities across the former Soviet Union has been a longstanding worry. But Lugar said he was encouraged that Russia recently agreed to open warhead sites to three U.S. inspections, which would allow for specialized training, stronger oversight and a better idea of what risks lie inside.

"It has broken a logjam of misunderstanding," said Lugar, who for more than a decade has been traveling here at least once a year to measure the advances that countries have made in eliminating their nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. "This was an important breakthrough."

Sen. Obama's first foreign trip

Obama, making his first foreign trip as a senator, said until the weapons were destroyed or properly safeguarded, the U.S and other nations were vulnerable to a nuclear attack. Neither the government nor the public, he said, views the threat with sufficient urgency.

"People can sort of put it off, and it's not confronting you day-to-day in an immediate sort of way," Obama said. "The consequence of inaction can be enormous, but I think it's one of those issues where until it's too late, you don't see a problem."

Obama, a Democrat, and Lugar, a Republican, also will travel to Ukraine and Azerbaijan. And they will meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair next week in London.

Lugar, along with former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, authored the Nunn-Lugar Act in 1991 to begin dismantling large stockpiles of weapons in the former Soviet Union. Since then, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has deactivated or destroyed nearly 7,000 nuclear warheads and hundreds of missiles and bombers.

But nearly 15 years after Nunn-Lugar, some goals of the program have not been realized, and funding has fallen short. The Russian government has given security upgrades to only a dozen weapon sites, officials said, leaving the majority of locations untouched and their weapons not properly cataloged.

"The Russian government is in denial to the nuclear threats that exist everywhere," said Laura Holgate, who managed portions of the Nunn-Lugar program at the Pentagon and Department of Energy during the Clinton administration. "They think that everything is fine in Russia, that no one could possibly steal from us."

Nonetheless, Lugar said he started the tour Friday with a "sense of goodwill," though he acknowledged numerous challenges with Russian officials.

"There were years where the friendship was up or the friendship was down," he said, "but this has been a program that has been solid in terms of our understanding."

Although a new economy was born in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government hasn't invested much in dismantling weapons. At a news conference in Moscow, Lugar was asked why it is still necessary for the U.S. to carry the bulk of the program's expense.

U.S. responsibility

"That question is raised frequently by members of the House and Senate of the United States and probably by a number of American taxpayers who would hope that perhaps Russia would assume more and more of the responsibility and expense," Lugar said. "It's true that at this point the Russians have not been forthcoming with the level of funds that would maintain the pace of the programs, so we are going to be visiting about that."

The weapons dismantlement, he said, is too significant to change course.

"Being involved in cooperative reduction really implies expense on our part, which we had felt, in terms of the United States security, was money well spent," Lugar said. "And we think the momentum of the program is important to continue."

Another topic of joint concern between the two countries, Obama said, is trying to prevent the spread of the avian flu. So far, the disease has killed about 60 people in Asia, and health experts warn that the strain could be spreading to Russia.

Obama, who several months ago was among the first U.S. senators to raise concern about avian flu, said he fears it is becoming a pandemic.