Global Anti-WMD Drive Notches Up Successes - (Bush launched program in '03 - getting results!)

GOPUSA.COM ^ | JUNE 1, 2005 | PATRICK GOODENOUGH

[CHARLITE]

On 11 occasions over the past nine months, the U.S. and allies cooperating in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) have successfully prevented the spread of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or related items.

At least two of those incidents involved Iran, two involved North Korea and another involved an unidentified third country, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed.

Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the PSI, a project launched by President Bush during a 2003 visit to Krakow, Poland.

With a focus on stopping and searching ships, planes, trains or trucks, the PSI aims to prevent terrorists and rogue states from getting hold of weapons of mass destruction-related items.

Supported initially by a core group of 10 other founding nations, the U.S. initiative has since then enjoyed the cooperation of more than 60 countries, according to the department.

The U.S. has identified only one specific episode in which it credits the PSI for stopping a dangerous cargo -- the Oct. 2003 interception of the "BBC China," a German-owned vessel carrying Malaysian-produced uranium centrifuge equipment destined for Libya.

At a PSI anniversary function in Washington Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the BBC China incident played a "major role" in Libya's decision to shut down its WMD programs, and in unraveling a global nuclear black market run by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

For the first time, she also announced that there had been other successes -- 11 in total over the past nine months.

One involved stopping a shipment of materials and equipment bound for ballistic missile programs in Iran and other "countries of concern," she said. Others have prevented Iran from securing items to support its missile and WMD programs, "including its nuclear program."

Elaborating later Tuesday, Boucher said there had also been two efforts involving North Korea, the reclusive Stalinist country engaged in a lengthy standoff with the U.S. and international community over nuclear weapons.

"Bilateral cooperation with several governments prevented North Korea from receiving materials used in making chemical weapons, and cooperation with another country blocked the transfer to North Korea of a material useful in its nuclear programs," he said.

Making it clear that only limited information could be released for intelligence reasons, Boucher said apart from the two North Korean incidents and "at least two" involving Iran, PSI had also been effective in stopping "another country in another region" from getting hold of propellant for ballistic missiles.

Widening support

The PSI original core members were the U.S., Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Later arrivals included Canada, Denmark, Norway, Singapore, Turkey and Russia.

Since the PSI's inception they and other supporting countries have taken part in 14 interdiction training exercises, aimed at enhancing the interoperability of the participating personnel and assets.

An exercise currently is underway in Central Europe, involving Polish, Czech and other authorities stopping a simulated rail shipment of chemical weapons bound for the Middle East.

Under the PSI, the U.S. has also signed agreements with the world's two largest shipping registries, Panama and Liberia, establishing a procedure for the U.S. Navy to board and search any vessel sailing under their flags that it suspects is carrying WMD-related cargo.

North Korea has bristled at the prospect of the U.S. and other countries intercepting its vessels. Last October Pyongyang called a PSI exercise underway off Japan an "undisguised hostile act" against North Korea.

At Tuesday's event, Rice said the initiative had made it "increasingly difficult for proliferators to ply their nefarious trade."

Welcoming the latest countries to endorse the effort -- Georgia, Iraq and Argentina -- she said the more countries actively involved, "the safer people everywhere will be."

A number of countries have been reluctant to participate in the PSI, for various reasons. China and South Korea, for example, are loathe to be seen as ganging up against North Korea, while others don't want to upset Iran.

Some are worried about legal or sovereignty issues, or may simply not want to cooperate with what they regard as a U.S. initiative.

Strengthening Washington's argument that the PSI is a broad, multilateral effort rather than a U.S.-dictated one, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during a anti-terrorism summit in Spain last March encouraged all states to join PSI.

Earlier, a panel of experts tasked by Annan to examine U.N. reforms also praised the PSI, saying the exposed Khan proliferation network demonstrated "the need for and the value of measures taken to interdict the illicit and clandestine trade in components for nuclear programs."

Although most of the PSI founding members are close allies of the U.S., not all have been supportive in recent years of U.S. policies abroad. France and Germany, notably, opposed the war in Iraq, yet both are core PSI members and have moreover hosted exercises.

One of several foreign ambassadors attending Tuesday's event, Singapore's Chan Heng Chee, says her nation is actively trying to win over some of its South-East Asian neighbors and has invited them to observe a PSI exercise Singapore is hosting in August.

"We hope this first-hand experience of how an actual PSI operation will take place will help allay their concerns about the legal and operational aspects of the PSI and bring them on board," she said in comments released by the embassy.

Chan said countries in the region were generally supportive of the objective of countering WMD proliferation.

"However, they have indicated that they would need some time to sort out the legal and operational details in their inter-agency processes."

She did not name the countries, but neither Indonesia nor Malaysia is a PSI participant. The two Muslim nations are both located adjacent to some of the world's busiest but least secure shipping routes.

[Just A Nobody]

successes -- 11 in total over the past nine months.

So, when PRESIDENT Bush's opponent was whining and complaining last fall about how "this President has no non-proliferation program, blah blah blah," he was lying?