EEE会議（米ロ核軍縮協力に暗雲？）..........................................................2003/7/27
米ロ両国は、冷戦終了後核軍縮の一環として、ロシアの核兵器解体と解体プルトニウムの処分（MOX化して原発燃料に転換するなど）の分野で密接に協力しつつありますが、最近どうもこの協力関係の継続を困難にする状況が生じているようです。原因は、ロシアで核兵器解体作業や核兵器製造工場の平和産業への転換作業に従事する米国人技術者の身体保護や関係企業の損害補償などを巡って米ロ両国間で争いがあり、これが早急に解決しなければブッシュ政権は協力関係を打ち切らざるを得なくなるということです。同様な目的で対ロ原子力技術支援活動を行っている日本にとっても多少関係があるかもしれません。詳細は次の記事でどうぞ。どなたか、関連情報やコメントがあれば披露してください。--KK
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U.S.-Russia:
Legal Issues Threaten Nonproliferation Programs
By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON ? A
U.S.-Russian legal dispute is threatening to end two nonproliferation agreements
intended to help convert Russian nuclear weapons materials and facilities into
peaceful uses. U.S. officials say the
dispute centers around protecting U.S. personnel working in Russia, but critics
say the Bush administration policy could end these and other cooperative
programs.
One agreement is set to expire tomorrow, and the other will probably run out in September unless Moscow grants sweeping liability protections to U.S. workers and companies operating in Russia.
The Energy Department announced yesterday that it will not renew the 1998 Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement unless Russia accepts changes to the agreement, which is due to expire Sept. 22. Under the program, the United States has supported scaling back activities in Russia’s nuclear weapon research and production sites and converting some remaining facilities to peaceful purposes. According to the Energy Department’s Web site, the initiative “is the only U.S. government program whose primary aim is to help downsize the Russian nuclear weapons complex.”
Yesterday’s announcement, however, said that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has informed his Russian counterpart, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev, that the NCI agreement will not be renewed “until the Russian government approves legal provisions intended to protect American workers and companies working on projects in Russia.”
Abraham expressed hope that Russia will accept new liability language in time for the agreement to be renewed in September, but he said that if the agreement lapses, the two countries should nevertheless be able to continue existing projects. In such a case, Abraham said, “We look forward to reinstating the NCI agreement once broader issues of liability protection have been settled.”
The announcement came only one day after U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes said the NCI program “is not being canceled; it is not being stopped.”
“We fully support the program. … The secretary is not canceling the program,” Wilkes said Monday.
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Plutonium Science and Technology Agreement Runs Out Tomorrow
The Energy Department’s announcement yesterday may signal not only that the NCI program is in jeopardy, but also that other threat reduction efforts are threatened, as the Bush administration makes a priority of obtaining broad liability protections in all such agreements, according to congressional and nongovernmental organization observers.
Immediately threatened is another 1998 U.S.-Russian initiative, known as the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, that is set to expire tomorrow. The agreement provides for U.S.-Russian scientific and technical collaboration related to the withdrawal of plutonium from nuclear military programs.
Aspects of the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement are also covered by the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement, and activities carried out under the auspices of the 1998 agreement could conceivably continue under the 2000 text, according to Leonard Spector, who directs the Washington office of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
A planned liability protocol to the 2000 agreement has yet to be negotiated, while the language of the older plutonium agreement contains liability language similar to that of the NCI agreement ? language that the Bush administration has consistently sought to replace with provisions such as those in the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction “umbrella agreement,” Spector said.
Among other differences, the 1998 texts would exempt Russia from liability in cases of “premeditated” actions causing damage or injury, while the 1992 language contains no such references, leaving it entirely up to Russia to deal with all liability issues arising under activities governed by the agreement.
House Members Write Bush
Writing ahead of the Energy Department’s announcement on the NCI agreement, six Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday to express “deep concern that the United States is contemplating the possible nonrenewal of two key U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreements that provide the legal basis for important cooperative threat reduction efforts with Russia.”
Referring to the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, the representatives ? Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), John Spratt (D-S.C.), Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Chet Edwards (D-Texas) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) ? said they “understand that the administration may be prepared to allow” the agreement to lapse tomorrow.
“Beyond the national security and nonproliferation concerns of allowing the plutonium disposition program in Russia to stall or terminate,” the six lawmakers added, “there might also be significant negative domestic impacts on the activities associated with the plutonium disposition activities in the U.S. The U.S. plutonium disposition effort is a multibillion-dollar program that is designed to operate in tandem with the Russian plutonium disposal activities, and support for the effort could falter if the Russian program stalls.”
Duma Endorsement Sought for Broad Liability Provisions
Spector said the Bush administration is consistently championing what it sees as the “tried-and-true, clean approach of the CTR agreement.”
“Whether or not that is the good approach is not the issue any longer. The government has decided that that is the approach that they want,” he said.
According to Spector, the U.S. Defense Department views the liability language in the 1992 text as “perfection.” The Russian Duma, however, has never ratified the 1992 agreement or a later extension of the agreement, and it has been applied only provisionally. Meanwhile, some agreements signed in recent years ? including bilateral arrangements between Germany and Russia and the 12-country Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program for Russia (see GSN, May 22) ? do not match the 1992 umbrella agreement’s broad liability provisions.
In light of these developments, the desire to see the Duma ratify the liability provisions of the 1992 text is the key to U.S. insistence on similar language in the 1998 texts, according to Spector, who cited hopes the Russian legislature could ratify the umbrella agreement soon despite the fact that it is unlikely to sit for more than two months over the rest of this year.
“The Americans think that once the Duma acts” on the 1992 agreement, Spector said, “the Russian objections will die off.” Even critics of the Bush administration’s approach, he said, agree that Duma action on the older text would “kind of cut the Gordian knot,” allowing the United States to hold up the 1992 agreement as a model of what the Duma is willing to ratify in the hope that such language can become the standard for agreements such as the plutonium disposition protocol.
Spector and the Fridtjof Nansen Institute’s Douglas Brubaker wrote an article in the Monterey Institute’s Nonproliferation Review supporting reform of liability provisions in nuclear nonproliferation assistance agreements with Russia. Spector, a former assistant deputy administrator in the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said yesterday that he opposes terminating the NCI program but supports the principle of liability reform in the interest of facilitating future nonproliferation assistance to Russia.
“Whatever the next agreement is going to be, this is a humongously difficult headache every single agreement. And if you could get one of them locked in and endorsed, it would really streamline all future work,” Spector said.
Spector and Brubaker argued in their article that none of the existing liability language models for cooperative threat reduction agreements sufficiently addresses the question of victim compensation. While Russia may be fully liable under umbrella agreement-style provisions, they said, Moscow is unlikely to be in a position to actually pay out compensation.
The two researchers advocated two approaches to resolving the compensation problem. In the first approach, Russia would be liable for a certain amount of compensation, the cost of which could be covered by insurance taken out by Moscow for the purpose, and donor countries involved in nonproliferation aid programs in Russia would pay the rest of the compensation under a pooling system. The second approach envisions a bond issue in which bondholders would stand to make money on their investment unless a catastrophic accident occurred ? in which case their money could be used to compensate victims.
In announcing its stance on the NCI liability language yesterday, the Energy Department cited agreements reached last year at the Group of Eight summit in Canada, where the world’s leading industrialized countries and Russia launched the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. The department indicated it would seek the same liability protections in a wide variety of other agreements.
Critics Assail Focus on Liability Language
Critics said the administration’s liability focus could lead to a broader series of moves to shrink or end threat reduction programs.
“It’s entirely possible this is going to be a chain reaction over these issues of liability,” Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council Executive Director Kenneth Luongo said.
Luongo, who initially wrote top Bush administration officials July 2 to plead in favor of keeping both programs, said yesterday in a statement, “Allowing these agreements to expire is wrong and unnecessary at this time. It sends a terrible signal about the importance of securing the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on Earth as rapidly as possible.”
“This issue has been debated in the dark, without any public involvement,” he said, adding that an “impression is being left that arguments will be used to kill programs and not debate them publicly.”
“At a time when the president is running around the country talking about the intersection of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism,” Luongo said, terminating NCI activities “doesn’t make any sense.”
“The point is, this is a terrible decision from a policy perspective,” Luongo said. “If this was a new agreement … that’s a separate issue than, ‘These agreements have been in operation for five years and, in some cases, 10 years, and now we think the liability provisions are inadequate.’ Well, you have to show why they’re inadequate,” he added.
Rose Gottemoeller, senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said allowing NCI to lapse not only would concern the U.S. Energy Department and the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry, but also could damage U.S.-Russian relations more broadly at a crucial moment.
“It is a bigger issue than a DOE-Minatom issue,” Gottemoeller said.
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