Mr. Van Diepen and Mr. Billingslea, thank you again for being here this afternoon and for your statements. There is no question that it will be a big help to this Committee.

As your testimony indicates, without help from states with weapons of mass destruction, terrorists will have significant difficulty in acquiring a WMD capability. We need to work on both ends of the problem: discouraging state WMD programs as well as destroying terrorist organizations.

We also need to strengthen current non-proliferation regimes. As Mr. Van Diepen indicated, an activist agenda must use a broad range of tools to limit proliferation. I like the description of it being a "tool kit". These tools include our bilateral assistance programs. We must be careful about the impact that weakening one of these tools will have on our overall non-proliferation goals. For example, the Administration froze funding for all Cooperative Threat Reduction programs because of Russian non-compliance to the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Is America more secure after several months of stalled projects in the former Soviet Union? Is Russia more open to U.S. pleas to end their assistance to Iran's nuclear power plant?

These issues are linked and must be answered. Press reports indicate that Russia is proposing to construct five additional nuclear power plants in Iran.

Where our bilateral efforts are insufficient, we should strengthen multilateral regimes. A fully funded IAEA is a good way to ensure a new Iranian nuclear reactor is not being used to advance a weapons program.

Preventing terrorists from acquiring WMD is a complicated task. However, it is easier than the alternative of responding to a WMD terrorist attack.