 US government scientists and Pentagon
officials will gather today behind tight security at a Nebraska air force
base to discuss the development of a modernised arsenal of small, specialised
nuclear weapons which critics believe could mark the dawn of a new era
in proliferation.
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- The Pentagon has not released a list of the 150 people
at the secret meeting, but according to leaks, they will include scientists
and administrators from the three main nuclear weapons laboratories, Los
Alamos, Sandia and Livermore, senior officers from the air force and strategic
command, weapons contractors and civilian defence officials.
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- Requests by Congress to send observers were rejected,
and an oversight committee which included academic nuclear experts was
disbanded only a few weeks earlier.
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- The purpose of the meeting, at Offutt air force base,
only became known after a draft agenda was leaked earlier this year, which
included discussions on a new generation of low-yield "mini-nukes",
"bunker-buster" bombs for possible use against rogue states or
organisations armed with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
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- The session will also debate whether development of the
weapons will require the White House to end the US moratorium on nuclear
testing declared in 1992.
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- Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We
need to change our nuclear strategy from the cold war to one that can deal
with emerging threats."
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- He said the administration remained committed to the
test moratorium (the US has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
but has pledged to observe it). But he said: "The meeting will give
some thought to how we guarantee the efficacy of the [nuclear] stockpile."
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- While insisting that it has no plans to resume testing,
the administration has asked Congress for funds for a project that would
cut down the amount of time it would take for the cold war-era test site
in Nevada to start functioning again.
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- Yesterday, a steady stream of men in summer suits and
uniforms arrived at Omaha airport, to be met by welcoming parties of air
force officers and taken to the Offutt base, 10 miles to the south in the
small town of Bellevue.
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- The lushly-landscaped base, where the grey shell of a
B-52 bomber has been mounted behind a screen of fruit trees, sits atop
a labyrinth of high-tech bunkers from where strategic command is poised,
24 hours a day, to fight a nuclear war. It inspired the setting for the
1964 film Dr Strangelove. It is where President George Bush was flown on
September 11 2001, when it was thought that the terrorist attacks could
be part of a sustained onslaught on the US.
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- The place and time of the Offutt meeting is infused with
apparently unintended historical irony. The visitors arrived on the anniversary
of the Hiroshima bombing and the last will be leaving on Saturday, the
anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. The B-29 planes which dropped those
nuclear bombs, Enola Gay and Bock's Car, were both built at Offutt.
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- The use of those weapons marked the beginning of the
cold war and the first nuclear age. Today's meeting, many observers believe,
could mark the start of a second.
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- "This is a confab of Dr Strangeloves," said
Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, a national non-partisan
membership organisation dedicated to working for arms control.
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- "The fact that the Pentagon is barring the public
and congressional staff from this key meeting on US nuclear weapons policy
suggests that the administration seeks to discuss and deliberate on its
policies largely in secret."
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- The uncanny echoes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not
go unnoticed by a handful of Catholic protesters from Iowa who have gathered
at Offutt to mark the anniversaries for the past 25 years.
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- Blasphemy
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- Father Frank Cordaro, the leader of the protest group,
said: "This is an American blasphemy to life and to God. They are
going to violate another treaty by developing small nuclear weapons. We
had made the promise not to do these weapons, but this sole superpower
is just ignoring the non-proliferation treaty. That's madness."
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- Today's meeting traces its origins to a report by the
National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) published in January 2001 as
the Bush administration took office. The report argued for a "smaller,
more efficient, arsenal" of specialised weapons. Some deeply buried
targets, it argued, could only be destroyed by "one or more nuclear
weapons". Only by developing these new weapons could the US maintain
its deterrent, it said.
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- Paul Robinson, the head of the Sandia weapons laboratory,
who is attending the Offutt meeting, believes that America's new adversaries
would be more successfully deterred if the line between conventional and
nuclear weapons was blurred.
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- Senior jobs
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- He argued in a recent commentary in the Albuquerque Tribune
that "military strategy is evolving to consider combinations of conventional
and/or nuclear attacks for pre-emption or retaliation."
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- Many of the NIPP report's authors went on to take senior
positions in the administration, including Linton Brooks, head of the national
nuclear security administration which oversees new weapons projects, Stephen
Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and Stephen Cambone, undersecretary
of defence for intelligence.
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- The report became the basis for the administration's
Nuclear Posture Review in late 2001 which contemplated the use of nuclear
weapons pre-emptively against rogue states, to destroy stockpiles of nuclear,
chemical or biological weapons.
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- The officials involved in compiling both documents will
play a prominent role at Offutt, but scientists and officials with dissenting
views have not been invited.
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- "I was specifically told I couldn't come,"
a congressional weapons expert said.
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- Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group, a
watchdog organisation, said: "There will be tonnes of contractors
there from the weapons labs and the weapons plants. Contractors can come,
but Congress can't."
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- The Pentagon insists that today's meeting is technical
rather than policy-making, but critics are concerned that it is being used
to build up momentum behind the development of the weapons, despite opposition
from Congress.
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- "I'm suspicious that further down the road, they're
going to say 'this was decided at Offutt', or 'this comes out of the recommendations
at Offutt', a congressional staff member said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1013652,00.html
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