- Washington - The Clinton administration
has quietly changed U.S. nuclear-weapons policy to permit for the first
time targeting Iraq with tactical atomic warheads, according to U.S. officials.
-
- The top-secret directive, signed by President
Bill Clinton in November, is part of the administration's contingency plan
to possibly use atomic bombs on Iraqi weapon sites if President Saddam
Hussein launches a major biological attack on Israel or other neighboring
countries, said White House and Pentagon officials.
-
- Administration officials said the policy
shift involving tactical nuclear weapons and so-called "rogue states,"
such as Iraq was made as part of the most extensive overhaul of U.S. policy
regarding both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons since the administration
of Ronald Reagan.
-
- "It is U.S. policy to target nuclear
weapons if there is the use of weapons of mass destruction" by Iraq,
said a senior Clinton adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Whether
we would use it is a another matter."
-
- The new policy was part of Presidential
Policy Directive 60, which Clinton approved after consultation with Defense
Secretary William Cohen and Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The United States is the only country to have used atomic
weapons in war, dropping bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in 1945. Through the Reagan administration, U.S. policy promised massive
retaliation to prevent nuclear confrontations with the Soviet Union and
China.
-
- With the end of the Cold War, the threats
changed from long-range strategic nuclear weapons targeted against major
nations to new, more flexible weapons of mass destruction that could be
used by smaller rogue states such as Iraq.
-
- Administration officials said they fear
the Iraqi president might use a handful of Scud rockets to spread a powdered
version of anthrax spores over Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Israel, killing
thousands and making parts of Riyadh, Kuwait City and Tel Aviv uninhabitable
for decades.
-
- During the Persian Gulf war in 1991,
President George Bush threatened to retaliate with nuclear force if Hussein
used biological weapons, but his administration never formally adopted
a policy, officials said. But it was Bush's warning that has evolved into
Clinton's directive.
-
- Until November, first use of nuclear
weapons on Iraq would have violated U.S. pledges never to make such an
attack on a signer of the Nuclear Nonprolif- eration Treaty, which includes
Iraq. But U.S. officials say Hussein's efforts to develop nuclear weapons
would forfeit Iraq's treaty protection.
-
- "They [Iraq] are hardly members
in good standing of the pact," said a senior Clinton adviser.
-
- Clinton's threat has been deliberately
vague. Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said last week the United States refused
to "rule in or rule out" the use of tactical nuclear warheads.
Bacon's words have caused rumblings abroad and among the arms control community.
-
- "It's a mistake to threaten Hussein
with nuclear weapons because it will not deter him," said William
Arkin of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. "It didn't deter him during
the gulf war, and it won't stop him now."
|