Sioux City Journal

U.S. welcomes Russia's pledge to join anti-proliferation push

Posted: Tuesday, June 01, 2004

KRAKOW, Poland (AP) -- The United States welcomed Russia on Monday as a key partner in fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction, after Moscow said it was joining a year-old U.S. initiative to track and seize weapons components worldwide.

Moscow's announcement came as countries taking part in the Proliferation Security Initiative met in Krakow to review progress, a year after President Bush launched the initiative in the Polish city.

It calls on nations to cooperate to stop the trafficking of missiles and other components of weapons of mass destruction at sea, in the air and on land.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who visited Moscow in May to win over Russia, said that country's participation was "a critical development."

"This is a development that the United States has been working on almost since the beginning," he told reporters at the Krakow meeting. "We look forward to active participation by Russia in ... interdiction activities globally."

U.S. officials have said that Russia's joining would be especially significant because it would encourage China to follow suit, and because Moscow could bring its influence to bear on other former Soviet republics that have weak export controls.

Washington has been eager for Russia to join up before Group of Eight leaders meet in June in Sea Island, Georgia, where the United States wants the anti-proliferation initiative to be a major topic.

"We expect that our intelligence sharing and law enforcement and military assets working with the Russian Federation will make a major contribution to our efforts to interdict WMD trafficking worldwide," Bolton said.

Moscow had expressed doubts over the initiative, with officials saying they were unsure whether the plan met international legal standards and would be in Russia's national interest.

But the Foreign Ministry said Monday that "Russia today joined with the group of founding states of the Proliferation Security Initiative."

Its biggest success so far was the interception last October of a German freighter loaded with an illegal shipment of uranium enrichment equipment bound for Libya, Bolton said.

The seizure -- said to have involved cooperation by U.S., British and German intelligence -- sealed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's December decision to dismantle his nuclear weapons program, Bolton said.

Bolton renewed U.S. concerns about North Korea's weapons programs, accusing the reclusive communist country of being "one of the most extensive proliferators in the world," especially of ballistic missile technology.

"There's fear that if they develop sufficient quantities of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium that they ... would be prepared to sell that or actual weapons to other rogue states or terrorist groups," Bolton said.