    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book II)]
    [August 29, 2007]
    [Pages 1133-1134]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Statement on the 15th Anniversary of the Cooperative Threat Reduction
    Program
    August 29, 2007

        Today is the 15th anniversary of the Cooperative Threat Reduction
    (CTR) Program, established in 1992 under the leadership of President
    George H.W. Bush and Senators Richard
    Lugar and Sam Nunn. CTR programs are a critical tool used to address one of
    the gravest threats we face: the danger that terrorists and
    proliferators

    [[Page 1134]]

    could gain access to weapons or materials of mass destruction.
        Under the CTR Program, thousands of nuclear warheads have been
    deactivated, and thousands of delivery systems--including missiles,
    strategic bombers, and strategic ballistic nuclear submarines--have been
    eliminated. Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine are free of nuclear weapons
    and strategic delivery systems. The CTR Program is working to complete
    security upgrades to Russian nuclear warhead storage sites under the
    Bratislava Nuclear Security Cooperation Initiative announced by
    President Putin and me in 2005. To date,
    over 75 percent of the Russian warhead sites and 160 buildings
    containing hundreds of metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear material
    have been secured. Work is underway at the balance of the warhead and
    material sites, to be completed on an accelerated basis by the end of
    2008 under the Bratislava Initiative.
        We have also achieved nearly 75 percent completion toward our goal
    of shutting down two of the last three remaining Russian weapons-grade
    plutonium production reactors by the end of 2008 and nearly one-third
    completion toward shutting down the last reactor by the end of 2010,
    thus eliminating approximately 1.2 metric tons of weapons-grade
    plutonium per year. Through the CTR Program, several large-scale Soviet
    biological and chemical production facilities have been safely
    dismantled in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia.
        By working to secure, eliminate, and account for weapons and
    materials of mass destruction, the CTR Program supports the National
    Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction and remains the
    cornerstone for U.S. funding of the G-8 Global Partnership Against the
    Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.
        Another important accomplishment of CTR is the redirection of
    thousands of former weapons scientists in the former Soviet Union,
    Libya, and Iraq into commercial or other nonmilitary pursuits. In
    addition, the CTR Program has helped Albania destroy all of its chemical
    weapons.
        As the threat continues to evolve elsewhere, U.S. CTR efforts are
    expanding to include the work of securing dangerous biological
    pathogens, rapidly detecting disease outbreaks, and improving export
    controls and border security to stop the movement of materials of mass
    destruction worldwide.

    Note: The statement referred to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.