Analysis

It was something of a surprise, said many State Department and US government officials who spoke to Bellona Web Thursday evening following the summit’s close, as non-proliferation was one common talking point the two presidents could have made binding progress on at this otherwise often prickly summit.

Hazy nuclear agreement reached
Bush, however, spoke favourably, if vaguely, of the nuclear issues he discussed with Putin, saying at the presidents’ joint press conference: "We agreed to accelerate our work to protect nuclear weapons and materials both in our two nations and around the world."

In the end, a sideline deal was inked to improve security at Russian nuclear sites where material enticing to terrorists is stored. Both presidents also agreed that Iran and North Korea should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, though neither outlined clear steps toward achieving this goal.

"We agreed that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. I appreciate Vladimir's understanding on that," Bush said. "We agreed that North Korea should not have a nuclear weapon."

Indeed, Putin remained steadfast in Russia’s commitment to aiding Iran’s growing civilian nuclear infrastructure, and he said he still believed the Islamic Republic was incapable of producing nuclear weapons, press reports said, even though mounting evidence contradicts the Russian President’s assertion.

Furthermore, the nuclear agreement drafted at the summit has clear limitations. Much of it is a reaffirmation of longstanding policy—such as the US Deparment of Energy’s Materials Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) programmes, and a similar programme run by the US Department of Defence. And while the agreement it proposes accelerating security upgrades at nuclear facilities, it does not mandate completing the work before both men's terms expire in 2008, as American officials had hoped.

"It is welcome news that Presidents Bush and Putin are talking about how to prevent nuclear terrorism," Ken Luongo, executive director of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, an NGO that advises Washington and Moscow on nuclear policy, said.

Luongo added, though, that "it is unfortunate that there were no major breakthroughs on the impediments that are hobbling the realisation of their nuclear security goals—the disputes over access to facilities, transparency, and liability protections. Deadly terrorists are seeking WMD and they are not waiting."

CIA Director Porter Goss.

AP

Last week, the Director of Central Intelligence Agency Porter Goss testified in a Capitol Hill hearing that it "may only be a matter of time" before terrorists acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, US press reports said. During questioning, Goss stated that enough material was missing from Russian facilities, "so it would be possible for those with know-how to construct a nuclear weapon." These revelations follow a November 2004 report by the National Intelligence Council, which found that undetected nuclear smuggling has occurred at Russian facilities and that missing material may not have been recovered.

One workable initiative that did arise from the meeting of the leaders was the US-Russian "Senior Interagency Group," which will meet jointly to monitor progress and report on the implementation of cooperative security programs, and the Presidents' emphasis on developing a "security culture" in Russia as key new developments.

But that was cold comfort for US officials back home who had pushed for stronger initiatives prior to the summit.

Another let down for MOX may lead to problems with other US programmes
The biggest disappointment was the failure of the two countries to agree on liability language for the US-Russian plutonium disposition program and other important nuclear agreements, which a US government official told Bellona was being drafted and would be present at the summit.

At issue is the State Department’s refusal to renew the five year 1998 Technical Agreement on plutonium disposition, which provided for research and development exchanges between the two government. With this agreement halted, the programme cannot move to its implementation phase, as stipulated under the 2000 Plutonium Disposition agreement, signed by former US President Bill Clinton and Putin.

The State Department scrapped the renewal because the 1998 agreement did not contain liability language of the so called Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Umbrella Agreement, which, if ever adopted by the Russian Duma, would place responsibility for any accidents during US driven nuclear dismantlement projects—including sabotage and terrorism—squarely at Moscow’s feet.

Failure to resolve this legal issue has prevented construction of MOX facilities in the United States and Russia to dispose of 68 tonnes of US Russian weapons-grade plutonium in MOX form. The MOX initiative, driven by the US Department of Energy, has been a source of heated debate between environmental groups, including Bellona, and the Russian and American governments since its 1994 inception because of the dangers posed by the untested use weapons-grade plutonium in the hybrid fuel which has only been used on industrial levels with reactor-grade plutonium. It is also more expensive than other methods espoused by environmentalists. Current estimates put a $7 billion price tag on just getting the MOX effort off the ground.

Moreover, as RANSAC argued in a recent article, the US-Russian dispute over liability language could potentially derail the extension of the CTR Umbrella Agreement governing all CTR programs. Bellona has been a staunch critic of the MOX plan, and has urged both governments to take other disposition methods into account. The legal deadlock, in as much as it slows the progress of the program, however, should not, in Bellona’s opinion, be allowed to threaten any other CTR driven programmes. The CTR programme faces renewal hearings in US Congress next year.

De-emphasising MOX
Many possible reasons for winding down the MOX programme and letting it suffocate under a mountain of paper work have been suggested by various US and Russian government officials in the past months, who mainly say that the inter-governmental agencies involve are simply tired of dealing with the programme’s continual cost over-runs, red-tape, shaky science, and the nagging sense that cheaper alternatives are available.

Just prior to the summit, the Marketing and Consulting Russian news agency reported that the US administration was reconsidering the option of immobilization, which is by the DOE’s own estimates cheaper and safer.

The Bush administration in 2003 actually removed immobilization—a process which, generally speaking, encases weapons-grade plutonium and highly radioactive glass in special self defending containers—as an option and decided to pour its energy into hastening the MOX programme.

But according to Marketing and Consulting, Bush wants to reconsider his stance on immobilisation. Indeed, the White House budget request to Congress for the DOE’s nuclear remediation project budget for 2006 includes a $10m budget line item for immobilisation related projects—a line item absent in last year’s budget request.

The democracy at hand
Recent months have seen backsliding in Russia’ progress toward democracy, accentuated by the Kremlin’s clamp-down on the media and the Yukos affair, which the US regards as a move toward neo-Soviet re-centralisation of the Russia economy.

For its part, Russia is feeling more isolated as the US develops relationships with other former republics of the Soviet Union, and has chosen—as illustrated by the recent “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine—to back more authoritarian governments in these countries. Ukraine backfired as massive election fraud, and the apparent assassination attempt on the non-Kremlin backed presidential candidate, back-fired, casting much of the buck-shot on the Kremlin.

Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhaur also noted that the United States and Russia are no longer united in their conception of the war on terrorism—a seeming hallmark of friendship between the two nations that has gone to tatters since the US occupation of Iraq. As long as the Bush administration agreed to keep its opinions on brutal human rights violations in Chechnya to itself—unlike the previous administration—Russia would dampen its public response to US military action against “rogue states,” government officials from Moscow and Washington have told Bellona Web in interviews since the 9/11 attacks.

“The war on terrorism is no longer a unifying factor: The American campaign to install democracy in Iraq and the Russian war to enforce its will in the North Caucasus are as far apart ideologically as the United States and Russia are geographically,” Felgenhauer wrote in his weekly column for The Moscow Times.

Bush and Putin pose for photos after an apparent rap on democracy to the Russian President.

AFP

Bush said he talked with Putin at length of his "concerns about Russia's commitment in fulfilling these universal principles" common to all democracies — such as the rule of law, protection of minorities and viable political debate.

Putin was somewhat recalcitrant when pressed by reporters on Russia’s recent back-peddaling on Western-style democracy.

"Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy. It has done so for the past 14 years and requires no help from the outside,” he said with thinly disguised irritation. “This is our final choice and we have no way back. There can be no return to what we used to have."

What does Russia have in terms of democracy and environmental rights?
Last Spring saw a vertically structured power shift that stripped Russia’s nuclear regulatory body, now part of a body known as The Federal Service for Ecology, Techology, and Atomic Energy (FSETAN in its Russian acronym).

The head of FSETAN’s nuclear division is Andrei Malyshev, a recruit from the former Ministry of Atomic Energy—known after the spring shake-up as the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy (Rosatom). Rosatom’s mandate—like FSETAN’s—is still unclear, but it has stepped in to fulfil the roll played by its predecessor, even though many of these responsibilities do not legally fall within its realm.

It is safe to say, therefore, that Russia has neither an independent nuclear regulatory body, nor the democratic soil from which such an organisation must spring.