Barack Obama

Obama-Lugar proposal targets stockpiles of conventional weapons

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
By Jeff Zeleny
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Two months after walking amid piles of munitions haphazardly scattered at a decrepit plant in Ukraine, two Midwestern senators introduced legislation Tuesday designed to keep conventional weapons from terrorists by eliminating stockpiles throughout the former Soviet Union.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and one of the panel's newest members, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said shoulder-fired missiles, abandoned land mines and other weapons could be as dangerous as a nuclear threat. The legislation seeks to add conventional weapons to the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has been eliminating nuclear arms in Russia for more than a decade.

"The security around these weapons is minimal, particularly when the weapons are no longer being used by the nation's military," Lugar said. "But as we have seen in Iraq, even obsolete weaponry and explosives can be reconfigured with deadly results."

In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations here, Obama and Lugar recounted their summer tour of Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. While their trip focused on inspecting former Cold War weapon sites, they said the large masses of unsecured conventional weapons underscored the need for U.S. intervention in helping to destroy the stockpiles.

The government of Ukraine is making progress, Obama said, but funding is so limited it could take up to 60 years to destroy the weapons.

"We've all seen how it could take far less time for these weapons to leak out and travel around the world, fueling insurgencies and violent conflicts from Africa to Afghanistan," Obama said. "By destroying these inventories, this is one place we could be making more of a difference."

Lugar, along with former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, established the Nunn-Lugar Act in 1991 to begin dismantling weapons in the former Soviet Union. Since then, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has focused on nuclear arms, but under the Lugar-Obama proposal the program would be expanded to conventional weapons as well as interdicting weapons of mass destruction shipped by sea.

Among conventional weapons stirring the most concern, Lugar said, are the stockpiles of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that Al Qaeda has attempted to acquire. He said the weapons "could be used by terrorists to attack commercial airliners, military installations and government facilities here at home and abroad."

The legislation calls for the State Department to devote 25 percent of its annual budget of financing foreign militaries to countries that show improvement in their ability to detect the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

I.M. "Mac" Destler, program director of international security and economic policy at the University of Maryland, said he didn't doubt that conventional weapons were serious. He expressed skepticism at expanding the Nunn-Lugar program, though, asking the senators whether it was as critical as the threat from nuclear weapons.

"What I worry about in trying to broaden this," Destler said, "there is a danger that you might try to divert resources and become spread too thin."

Lugar said the dismantling of the nuclear program is already under way, but the conventional weapons are another threat.

"There is a gap in our defense that needs to be filled," he said.