[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 14 (Thursday, February 10, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H568-H569]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




WHY WE NEED THE OMNIBUS NONPROLIFERATION AND ANTI-NUCLEAR TERRORISM ACT 
                                OF 2005

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, this morning the North Korean Government 
acknowledged publicly for the first time that it has nuclear weapons. 
In a statement issued by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, Pyongyang 
also said that it will boycott the six-party talks designed to end its 
nuclear program.
  North Korea's surprising declaration has again reminded us of the 
most pressing national security challenge that we face: the 
proliferation of nuclear weapons and the possibility that a terrorist 
group will acquire a nuclear bomb and use it against the United States.
  Earlier this week, my colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. 
Shays) and I introduced the Omnibus Nuclear Nonproliferation and Anti-
Nuclear Terrorism Act of 2005 to better enable the United States to 
prevent what Graham Allison of Harvard University has termed ``the 
ultimate preventable catastrophe.'' I am pleased that we were joined as 
original cosponsors by 11 of our colleagues.
  Over the past several months, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. 
Shays) and I have consulted with a range of experts to produce a set of 
policies that we believe will be effective and which can be implemented 
quickly. Our bill will do the following:
  It creates an Office of Nonproliferation Programs in the White House 
to centralize budgetary and policy authority. Since nonproliferation 
programs are spread across the U.S. Government, it makes sense to have 
one office overseeing all of it, signing off on budgets and developing 
a coordinated strategy.
  The bill enhances the Cooperative Threat Reduction, CTR, program by 
streamlining and accelerating Nunn-Lugar implementation and granting 
more flexibility to the President and the Secretary of Defense to 
undertake nonproliferation projects outside the former Soviet Union. 
Our bill does this by removing conditions on Nunn-Lugar assistance that 
in the past have forced the suspension of time-sensitive efforts.
  In 2002, President Bush was unable for the first time to certify that 
Russia had met all of its program-wide conditions, resulting in a halt 
to all CTR funding until he was able to obtain and use authority to 
waive the certification requirement in early 2003.
  The conditions have also provided CTR opponents within Russia with an 
excuse to blame the United States for delays caused by a lack of access 
and transparency on the part of Moscow.
  We also ask for the President, in our bill, to catalog impediments to 
renegotiation of the CTR umbrella agreement and other bilateral 
programs with Russia. The hope is that by identifying them all, the 
Congress and the administration can better solve them quickly.

[[Page H569]]

  The bill asks the President to address the issue of unresolved 
liability protections for U.S. firms doing nonproliferation work in 
Russia.
  This bill will enhance the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, 
announced by former Secretary Abraham last May, to accelerate the 
global clean-out of the most vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material. 
At its current pace, it will take more than a decade to clean up the 
most vulnerable nuclear sites around the globe.
  The bill also urges the President to expand the Proliferation 
Security Initiative beyond its current members and to engage the U.N. 
Security Council to provide the specific legal authority to interdict 
WMD material. It also provides funding for training and exercise with 
our PSI partners, especially the new members.
  At present there are no international standards regarding the 
securing of nuclear weapons. The Schiff-Shays bill urges the President 
to develop a set of internationally recognized standards and to work 
with other nations and the IAEA to get such standards adopted and 
implemented.
  Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal is considered the most likely place 
from which a nuclear weapon would be stolen and sold or given to 
terrorists. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and I authorize 
U.S. assistance to Russia to conduct an inventory of tactical and 
nonsecured weapons. Our bill also requires the DOD to support a report 
on past U.S. efforts to help Russia account for and secure its tactical 
and nonsecured nukes and to recommend ways to improve such efforts.
  We also deal with the problem of scientists in the former Soviet 
Union and work to prevent them from selling their services to North 
Korea, Iran and al Qaeda.
  We also encourage the President to deal with the problem of the NPT's 
loophole that allows nations like Iran to pursue nuclear weapons 
through the guise of a nuclear energy program. Our bill asks the 
President to submit a report outlining strategies to better control 
fuel cycle technologies and possible ways to close the loophole in 
Article IV without undermining the overall integrity of the treaty.
  These are common-sense approaches to combating the nuclear threat. 
The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and I are committed to 
working together on a bipartisan basis to do whatever we can to reduce 
the danger of a nuclear attack on the United States, and we hope that 
all of our colleagues will join us in that effort.

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