Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Discuss Lugar-Obama Bill to Keep Weapons Out of Terrorists' Hands
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
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Washington Contact: Robert Gibbs or Tommy Vietor, (202) 228-5511
Illinois Contact: Julian Green (312) 886-3506
Date: February 8, 2006
Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Discuss Lugar-Obama Bill to Keep Weapons Out of Terrorists' Hands
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-IN) Thursday will hold a hearing to discuss the Lugar-Obama cooperative threat reduction program, which is designed to keep non-nuclear weapons such as artillery shells used in roadside bombs or shoulder-launched missiles out of the hands of terrorists. The Honorable Robert Joseph, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security will testify at the hearing.
Unsecured caches of conventional (non-WMD) weapons are emerging as a major threat to American security. Improvised roadside bombs fashioned from old artillery shells have become the leading cause of death for American troops in Iraq. In addition, there are up to 750,000 shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles around the world. Since the 1970s, these weapons have hit more than 40 civilian aircraft, killing more than 600. The U.S. government's efforts to secure vulnerable weapons stockpiles are underfunded and unfocused.
In January, Obama and Lugar wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the program. The Senators wrote: "Our bill would . . . seek to get rid of artillery shells like those used in the improvised roadside bombs that have proved so deadly to U.S. forces in Iraq. In many circumstances, these are the weapons of choice of today's terrorists."
Last August, Lugar and Obama traveled together to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan to oversee a number of Nunn-Lugar projects. In Ukraine they saw a convention weapons storage and destruction facility that is typical of the focus of the new legislation.
Since 1991, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated 6,760 Soviet nuclear warheads and helped employ 58,000 former nuclear scientists. In their letter to Secretary Rice, Senators Obama and Lugar said that the Nunn-Lugar program is a successful model that should be expanded to better secure conventional weapons caches that have fueled insurgencies across the globe and to better intercept and seize smuggled weapons of mass destruction.