Plan to Bury Soviet Nuclear Arms Prepared

Tactical nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union would be put in special boxcars under bulletproof blankets--both provided by the United States--and shipped to secret sites in Russia for entombment in a plan being devised by defense officials from America and the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Bush Administration said Wednesday.

Administration officials added that U.S. military personnel could be teamed with Commonwealth soldiers to form emergency response units in the event of accidents or terrorist attacks involving nuclear weapons.

Such teams--still a “complex” and distant prospect, U.S. officials said--could put American service personnel on duty in Russia and other former Soviet republics.

The plans are being devised in response to the West’s gnawing concern about the security of tactical nuclear weapons as they are being moved throughout the former Soviet republics.

Officials outlined the proposals to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, at a time when the Bush Administration is under mounting pressure to spend the $400 million Congress has appropriated to help move and destroy nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union.

Several lawmakers, including committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), complained Wednesday that U.S. officials have been slow to draw up a plan to accomplish the goal.

In response, Undersecretary of State Reginald Bartholomew blamed “wariness” on the part of military officials in the Commonwealth for delaying some of the efforts.

But he added that there is now “some enthusiasm” for U.S. aid and accelerated progress in consolidating the short-range nuclear weapons that are most in danger of going astray.

Officials said that the former Soviet military has moved all of its tactical nuclear weapons from the outlying republics into Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. At the same time, they said, the warheads have been taken out of the hands of all combat units, except those inside Russia.

They suggested Wednesday that those accomplishments--achieved earlier than many had believed possible--have lessened the danger that the former Soviet Union’s tactical nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

“I can report that a large-scale process is under way” to consolidate the short-range nuclear weapons under Russian control, said Bartholomew, who recently led an Administration team to meetings throughout the Commonwealth. “We can take some satisfaction from that fact.”

But the safety and security of the consolidated nuclear stockpiles--and the efficiency of their destruction--has become a more critical concern, with growing numbers of stored weapons awaiting destruction.

Russia has proposed that the United States use its aid money to build a 20,000-square-meter storage facility, Assistant Defense Secretary Stephen J. Hadley told lawmakers. But U.S. officials have balked at the suggestion, instead urging the Commonwealth to consider putting weapons and their components in existing nuclear weapons storage facilities.

Hadley and Bartholomew acknowledged that U.S. experts had proposed the storage of nuclear weapons material in the deep underground bunkers built to shelter Communist Party and military leaders in a nuclear war. But Bartholomew said leaders of the republics rejected that idea.