[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 43, Number 35 (Monday, September 3, 2007)]
[Pages 1140-1141]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 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 Putin of Russia.

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