09 December 1999
(Year 2000 efforts to include push for CTBT, START III) (530) By Susan Ellis Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- This year has been one of continued progress despite some "all too apparent" setbacks, John Holum, the State Department's senior adviser for arms control and international security, told reporters at the Foreign Press Center in Washington December 9. The most prominent setback of 1999, he said, was the failure of the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), "which had profound reverberations both here in the United States and around the world." The administration will continue its efforts next year, Holum added, "to engage with the Senate to ratify CTBT" and meanwhile the United States continues to refrain from testing nuclear weapons. He also pointed out that, in "a profoundly important process in disarmament," the United States has completely eliminated a total of 13,000 warheads since 1988, and approximately "60 percent of all the nuclear weapons from the peak of the Cold War have gone out of existence." As warhead numbers plummet, the United States is "also pressing to make the resulting materials, the highly enriched uranium and plutonium, more secure both in the United States and in the states of the former Soviet Union," Holum said. In other successes, the arms adviser pointed to recent negotiations in adapting the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty to bring it into line with post-Cold War realities and allow it to continue as a strong security instrument for all European countries. Holum also cited U.S. regional non-proliferation efforts, including small arms initiatives in Latin America and Africa, attempts to deal with the nuclear potential in India and Pakistan, and "looking for opportunities in the new positive environment in the Middle East to advance the arms control cause there." On next year's arms control agenda, he said, the United States will continue its efforts to make the biological weapons convention enforceable by strengthening the compliance process and providing for on-site challenge inspections. "We need to break the logjam in the Conference on Disarmament and we're hoping we can do that in January with a work program that will include the cutoff on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes," Holum said, adding that the United States will also continue discussions on START III and encourage Russian ratification of START II . There is also the challenge of dealing with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), he said, adding that while the ABM Treaty "remains a cornerstone of our arms control efforts, the world has changed dramatically since the treaty was negotiated in 1972." However, "the threat of weapons of mass destruction and missiles to carry them from a few rogue states is growing, it's real, it's unpredictable, and it's in the near-term," he said. "And so we're considering the possibility of deploying a National Missile Defense, which would require changes to the ABM Treaty while still preserving its essential purpose. And we're engaged in discussions with Russia on that front." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)