ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 9, 1996 TAG: 9601100121
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
RICHARD LUGAR, Republican presidential candidate from Indiana, is talking a lot on the campaign trail about the threat of nuclear terrorism. Though his speeches are widely ignored, and he stands little chance of winning his party's nomination, the issue he has raised is no less important for that.
As a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar's is a long-respected voice on foreign policy. It deserves to be heard and respected now, when he asks: What if the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center or the Oklahoma City federal building had had nuclear devices?
Indeed, even with extremist nationalists' and former communists' recent electoral advances in Russia, the greater threat now to America's security isn't the possibility of war with an established nuclear power. It is rather, as Lugar suggests, the prospects of criminal diversion of nuclear materials, leading to their use in terrorist attacks or blackmail.
The rise of organized crime and the decline of the military in Russia, and near-chaos in several of the former states, all increase the odds of ex-Soviet nuclear stockpiles being plundered and smuggled to an enemy nation, such as Iraq or Iran, or to terrorist groups.
In 1994, Germany reported several seizures of plutonium of the sort used in making nuclear weapons. Other attempted transfers also have been found out, but that is hardly reassuring. Who knows how many smugglers have gone undetected? The existence of a nuclear mafia lacking in scruples and prepared to deal with any moneyed party is widely assumed.
Moreover, although the recipe has been a (poorly kept) official secret, it seems that building a nuclear device requires less plutonium or uranium than many people realize. And the toxicity of plutonium - a tiny amount can poison a major city's water supply - makes it a weapon much coveted by terrorists.
It isn't that America has been passive in the face of this threat. The United States is buying nuclear materials from the Russians, while helping to fund their nuclear clean-up. The FBI has opened an office in Moscow. The U.S. government has pushed for international inspections and vigilance against criminal countries like Iraq and North Korea that are itching to get the bomb.
Even so, neither the United States nor the international community is doing enough, in concert, to reduce the danger. Against the isolationist trend, increased awareness might help focus more of Washington's attention on nuclear-materials proliferation and terrorism. That is why Lugar's campaigning on the issue is valuable.
LENGTH: Short : 50 linesby CNB