Key U.S. Official Discusses Arms Verification, Compliance

(Sheaks says arms control reviews will conclude within a year) (3650)

A key State Department arms control official says the Bush
administration's multiple reviews of arms control and nonproliferation
positions will be completed in the coming year on the biological
weapons, nuclear testing, and strategic nuclear agreements.

Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance Owen
Sheaks says that "all programs that have to do with weapons of mass
destruction are under review."

In a March 9 interview with Washington File Security Affairs
Correspondent Jacquelyn Porth, Sheaks said the Verification and
Compliance Bureau's job is to "establish rigorous processes that sort
through information to answer the real questions about our arms
control concerns." This may involve conducting demarches and other
diplomatic activities. It involves what he describes as "compliance
diplomacy" to try to collect information about U.S. concerns regarding
various arms control commitments and agreements.

Sheaks said the 1992 Open Skies Treaty
(http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/openski1.html) is
receiving close attention these days because it will soon enter into
force - a decade after it was signed by the States Parties. "We're
waiting for Russia to ratify," he said. Open Skies was negotiated
between members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
former members of the Warsaw Pact to establish a program of unarmed
aerial observation flights extending from Vancouver to Vladivostok.
The confidence-building treaty is designed to promote security and
stability among participants through greater transparency and openness
of military forces and activities.

Asked if the issue of verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT) is dormant, the assistant secretary said: "No, it's not.
In fact, right now the really critical question relates to the fact
that we are paying $20 million a year to the CTBTO (CTBT Organization
in Vienna http://www.ctbto.org/), which is putting together an
International Monitoring System."

He said his Bureau is working "very closely with the intelligence
community to see what the benefits are of the utilization of the
International Monitoring System to collect data which is relevant to
nuclear testing monitoring."

Asked if his Bureau's opinions had been solicited regarding possible
future modifications to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM),
Sheaks said, "In fact, yes....Since we are, by law, required to do
compliance judgment on both U.S. and foreign behavior with respect to
the treaty, we will be engaging in the process of determining what is
compliant with the ABM." If an ABM verification regime were required
in the future, he said, "we would be designing and working on that."

Following is the transcript of the Sheaks interview:

(begin transcript)

QUESTION: The Bureau of Verification and Compliance (VC) is one of the
newer bureaus organized under the Under Secretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security. How did the Bureau's creation come
about behind the scenes, politically and structurally?

SHEAKS: Two years ago there were four bureaus of the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency (ACDA), one of which was called the Intelligence
Verification and Information Management (IVI) Bureau. When the State
Department reorganization moved ACDA into State, the decision was made
that of those four bureaus, three would be formed. The old IVI Bureau
was put under a deputy assistant secretary of state (DAS) within the
Arms Control Bureau.

Politically the question has always been, at what level should there
be an independent voice describing the verification and compliance
aspects of arms control and nonproliferation agreements. The level of
that voice is important to Congress, mostly the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Members of both committees from both parties sent letters to the
president and the secretary of state that said we think verification
and compliance is so central to arms control and nonproliferation
agreements that we believe the voice that speaks for VC should be at
least at the assistant secretary level. So verification and compliance
was then established, by authorizing legislation [in February 2000],
as an independent bureau within the State Department with certain
mandates.

There has also been a question about compliance. Treaties are not
always specific. There are a lot of ambiguities. Even though treaties
are suppose to be legally-binding, there are many details you can't
accommodate in treaty text at the time of signing. You put those
details aside until after entry-into-force (EIF) and then as things
come up, you negotiate on more or less new arrangements under the
treaty that were not clarified before entry-into-force.

So there is an ongoing compliance and verification process. Maybe 90
percent of the work we do after treaties enter into force has to do
with verification and compliance.

Q: How many arms control treaties do you oversee and what is the scope
of topics?

A: There are four strategic treaties right now that are entered into
force: START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty); START II is pending.
It hasn't been finished yet. There is the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile)
Treaty and the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) Treaty. In
addition, there are new treaties coming up like, potentially, START
III.

So we would look at all of those strategic treaties. There were a
couple of side agreements on ABM - although they have never been
submitted to Congress and they may not ever be because this is a new
administration.

There is the Chemical Weapons Treaty. There were other earlier
chemical weapons activities - a bilateral agreement with the Russians
and other minor agreements, but basically, the structure of chemical
weapons is now under the CWC, Chemical Weapons Convention.

We looked at the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), another major
treaty, and there's an ongoing negotiation presently on a new protocol
on compliance for BWC.

There are three (nuclear) testing treaties that we look at. There is a
Limited Test Ban Treaty. It prevents explosions in the atmosphere and
space. There is the Threshold Test Ban Treaty with the Russians that
prohibits explosions over 150 kilotons and there are the CTBT
(Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) negotiations.

Then there is the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. We
look at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe)
documents that have to do with confidence-building measures: the
Vienna Documents Agreements.

Open Skies is another treaty that we are looking at closely; it is
about to enter into force, we think, after 10 years. We're waiting for
Russia to ratify. It is very close - within a month or two of being
ratified.

Another treaty we look at is the Antarctica Treaty, on which we work
with OES (Office of Environmental Security). In fact, we just got back
from a joint inspection with OES of some of the bases in Antarctica.
It was the first treaty that had on-site inspection provisions. We
continue today to do both joint arms control and environmental
inspections. It's the oldest arms control treaty where we have on-site
inspections.

We also, by law, are required to report on the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. There are new upgrades of protocols for
safeguards that we look at because the safeguards form the
verification structure for the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It's run by
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In addition, there are a number of other agreements that the last
administration got into, like Plutonium Disposition for Nuclear
Warheads.

Q: And that relates primarily to Russia?

A: These are agreements with Russia. Under that rubric of nuclear
agreements, there is the IAEA-U.S.-Russia trilateral agreement that
has to do with putting material that comes out of weapons - at least
a portion of that material - under a safeguards regime.

There is a treaty on HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium) that comes from
weapons: a blend-down agreement where we purchase, basically, LEU
(Lightly Enriched Uranium) that has come from highly enriched uranium
that's spent for weapons and the Russians are no longer using for
weapons. We look at the verification regimes for that.

By law, we are required to report on compliance with the Missile
Technology Control Regime (MTCR). That's actually very loose, it's not
a legally-binding treaty. Each country agrees to abide by certain
norms of behavior. Each country decides on its own, but we are asked
to look at how we think countries are living up to their commitment to
abide by the norms that the MTCR documents set out. It's a little
different kind of commitment than we've looked at in the past, but the
Congress wanted us to look at that. So they included that in the
legislation.

Q: Is it possible to verify treaty compliance with a 100 percent
degree of certainty?

A: Absolutely not. In fact, for most treaties that's a dream. INF is
probably the best example of a treaty that is more easily verified
because it was a very simple treaty. It got rid of an entire class of
missiles (Russian SS-20s and U.S. Pershing IIs and ground-launched
cruise missiles). And START is a little like INF, although it's more
complicated, with broader scope, and a lot more provisions.

But with what we call non-proliferation agreements, like the CWC and
the BWC, it becomes even more difficult to verify because of the
dual-use nature of the technology; bio material is used for
pharmaceuticals as well as for (toxic) agents. The same thing is true
for the chemical industry.

When you get into things that are not so clear cut, it becomes very
difficult to have a high degree of confidence in your compliance
judgment. It's very hard to get information, particularly when
programs are designed to keep you from getting information. It's
called "denial and deception." The Libyans and Iraqis undertake
methods of covering up their programs so that you can't find them or
won't even know that they have them.

A lot of the time people will say we don't have any information that
Iraq is violating their chemical commitments. We respond, yes, because
they're really good at covering it up. It doesn't mean they don't have
it. So absence of information is not always an indication that you
should give them a clean bill of health. A lot of it depends on the
history of a program.

Q: What are some of the current arms control, nonproliferation, and
disarmament initiatives either underway or about to be launched?

A: Big questions in this administration are, right now, the Biological
Weapons Convention Protocol and compliance. That's been an ongoing
negotiation. It's nearing conclusion. The viability of that
negotiation is under review right now.

Several in this administration have been on record opposing the CTBT.
We will be in a process of reviewing the administration's views on the
future of CTBT. That's a big one.

For strategic agreements, there is a huge review going on right now
sponsored by the NSC (National Security Council), but all agencies are
participating in what our strategic future should be. What types of
agreements should we have? Should we do unilateral reductions? Should
we continue with the agreements that we have like ABM? Should we try
to renegotiate the ABM Treaty or just say that it's no longer a valid
treaty?

All of these questions in the strategic area are under review and
there is no indication of where they're going. They may stay the way
they are. Most likely they will change somehow. We don't know. That
review is supposed to be completed within a few months.

Certainly, over this next year, working these new ideas will be
important in this administration.

Q: So there is a series of reviews that are going on simultaneously?

A: Yes, they are all going on more or less simultaneously with limited
staff and resources, and they're trying to get them all done as soon
as possible. That's why I'm saying over the next year I think you will
see this administration's position coming out on the BWC, on strategic
agreements, and on testing agreements. Those are the three big areas.

Of course, there is a whole assortment of other nonproliferation
activities we're doing with the Russians involving Comprehensive
Threat Reduction (CTR) money, ISTC (International Science and
Technology Centers), and MPC & A (Material, Protection, Control, and
Accounting). Those are exercises we have going on with Russia where we
are paying to help make their weapons systems more secure.

All programs that have to do with weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
are under review in this administration - not to say that they
necessarily will be changed, but they are under review.

Q: What are the arms control threats that worry you most from a
verification and compliance standpoint? And how are they best
addressed?

A: I think the highest level is strategic, because when you are
defining your own policy on how many weapons, warheads, missiles,
defenses are needed, you have to make assumptions about the other
side. You need reliable information about what the other side's forces
are.

Legally-binding agreements - or even agreements that have information
about what the other side is doing that you can rely on to make your
assumptions - can help set the limits that you need in order to
accommodate what you think the other side has.

But the concept of verification is not just what we get in an
agreement. It's about any source of information that we can use to
measure the progress of other countries against the norm that we have
established. If the norm is getting down to lower levels of strategic
forces, we have to have information about the other side's strategic
forces. You can provide that type of information. It's not difficult
to find. So that's something that allows for verification, either
through open source information, through intelligence, or through
legally-binding arrangements.

The bio-terrorism threat is real, as is the threat from infectious
diseases coming into the United States. I think those are important
issues that we may not be able to get at through treaties, but we need
to get at through information sources about what the threat really is
and whether or not a treaty environment, like the BWC, is the right
environment to handle that.

The chemical weapons threat by terrorists, of course, is also there.
Nuclear testing limitations are also important because that's part of
our strategic dialogue in order to understand the types of weapons on
the missiles that other countries have. You look at testing
operations. That's where we first get information about the types of
nuclear weapons other countries may have.

We look at testing practices - the types of tests and the types of
yields of tests. So getting information on the countries that could be
or would be conducting tests is very important, either under a CTBT,
if they decide to go that way, or outside of a CTBT.

Q: You have been a participant in the field of arms control for over
20 years now. What are some of the lessons you've learned?

A: I guess I've learned that things aren't always what they seem. Some
things seemed innocent when they weren't and some things seemed not
innocent when they were.

So what I've learned, and why I like my job, is that we try to
establish rigorous processes that sort through information to answer
the real questions about our arms control concerns. Is it a real
concern or not? If we can't tell, how do we go about getting
information, mostly through diplomatic activity, that will help
resolve that concern?

We do demarches on our own. And so we have a new effort in "compliance
diplomacy," is what I call it, trying to collect information about
concerns that we have on various commitments and agreements.

Q: With which countries does the United States share verification or
compliance data?

A: We have a very close relationship with the United Kingdom because
we are both nuclear weapons states. Then there are the Canadians and
the Australians. We have very close relationships with them. Then, of
course, the Europeans and the Japanese, the OECD Forum and EU
countries. We're building stronger bridges to Asia - with South
Korea, in particular, and Indonesia. In verification of technology,
South Korea is a leader. They actually have a verification unit there.
So we talk to them, routinely.

We have, in the past, had discussions with China on verification
technology, but the last few years they've been dormant, mostly
because of the security problems at the U.S. national weapons
laboratories.

We have close connections with the Russians on technology discussions;
particularly, how it relates to verification treaties. A lot of the
technology we use in verification involves consensus-building between
the Russians and us.

We work closely with international organizations like the IAEA and the
OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). We work
with them on the technology that the inspectors use to do the chemical
weapons inspections.

We have a number of bilateral relationships in which we're working on
IT - with the Japanese and the Canadians and the Australians and the
European Union.

Q: You touched on this, but how much international outreach does your
office do to inform or educate counterparts about the breakthroughs in
verification - or the successes?

A: I think we will do more of that in the future. We have some limited
discussions, mostly with our closer allies. But as we have
multilateral treaties like the CWC being implemented, we need a
broader understanding of compliance and technologies relevant to
compliance and how you gather information. With Asia, with South
Korea, and with Japan - maybe even with Russia - I think there does
need to be a dialogue as we expand the types of commitments, and not
just arms control and nonproliferation agreements, but other
agreements that have to do with areas like environmental monitoring.

We might want to have more open dialogue on verification and
compliance. These are things for the future. The past has seen very
limited discussions about compliance, and mostly in closely-held
circles where we're trying to focus on WMD issues, which are sensitive
from an information perspective. So we have to be careful with whom we
share information about our sources and methods.

Q: How much involvement did your office have in the issue of CTBT
verification, and is the effort dormant?

A: No, it's not. In fact, right now the really critical question
relates to the fact that we are paying $20 million a year to the CTBO
(Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization), which is putting
together an International Monitoring System. We're working very
closely with the intelligence community to see what the benefits are
of the utilization of the International Monitoring System to collect
data which is relevant to nuclear testing monitoring.

They are separate exercises. The intelligence community has its own
set, but the International Monitoring System is another set of data
which is validated. It's high-standard data that does have some
validity. And the question is what would happen if CTBT went away and
you lost the International Monitoring System? What impact would that
have on the United States' ability to collect that information about
nuclear testing worldwide? That's a study that's under way right now.

What the International Monitoring System does is give everyone the
same data. They may not analyze it like we do, and if they don't, we
just say: "Look at this little glitch here that happened at this time
yesterday, that we think is a nuclear test and here's why we think
it's a nuclear test." So it provides information that we can take
action on a compliance concern or a concern about use of WMD
somewhere. So international information is good because it doesn't
have to be sanitized. It generally is not as good as our intelligence,
but it may be good enough. Or, we can point to it and say: "See that
little squiggle there, we've got other sources of information about
that, but trust us, that was a nuclear test." A dialogue like that is
useful. It provides an open-source bit of information that we can use
as we try to bring the world community together to address the
compliance concerns.

Just knowing about it is only one step. What you try to do is fix it
somehow. And usually it's going to take lots of discussions with
allies and friends, and trying to get international attention focused
on that concern. That is why open source data is very helpful and
that's what treaties do for you. They provide open source data to
allow you to address compliance concerns more readily.

Q: Has your office been asked to render any opinions about possible
future modifications to the 1972 ABM Treaty?

A: In fact, yes. Since we are, by law, required to do compliance
judgment on both U.S. and foreign behavior with respect to the treaty,
we will be engaged in the process of determining what is compliant
with the ABM. We would also look at any verification regime. If there
were to be a modified agreement on ABM, and it was decided that a
verification regime would benefit both the United States and Russia,
we would be designing and working on that. We would be principle
players in any verification regime that may come out of a future ABM
agreement.

Q: How has advancing technology aided the mission of arms control
compliance and verification over the past decade?

A: It's absolutely essential. Without technology you can never measure
progress against the norm, which is what I call verification.

Even inspectors, when they show up and can see things, have to take
pictures of what they see. You have to take measurements about what
you see. So the measurement technologies and the sensing technologies
are absolutely the foundation of all arms control agreements and
commitments.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)