Focus Urged on Ex-Soviet Nuclear Arms

Warning that uranium already may have been smuggled from Belarus, two influential senators Wednesday urged President Bush and President-elect Bill Clinton to coordinate U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union and give nuclear non-proliferation top priority during the transition.

“We do not have the luxury . . . of declaring a recess while we change administrations,” said Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).

Nunn and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said they will recommend the immediate appointment of a senior official to coordinate American policy toward Russia and the other former republics during the transition and beyond. They also urged the outgoing Administration to complete work on the second strategic arms reduction pact and other arms control agreements.

“President Bush and Clinton have to work together. . . ,” said Nunn, who, with Lugar, had just returned from a visit to Russia and four other former republics. The two senators appeared at a news conference to discuss their meetings with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and other officials.

Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an oft-mentioned candidate for secretary of state or defense in the Clinton Cabinet, noted that critical events are unfolding in Russia and the other former republics at a time when the Bush Administration seems to have disengaged from foreign policy.

Nunn also suggested that the President-elect needs to rethink his refusal to interject himself into the conduct of foreign policy while Bush is still in the White House.

Nunn said that he and Lugar, a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and one of the Senate’s leading experts on the former Soviet Union, were told by officials in Belarus that enriched uranium may already have been smuggled across the border into Poland.

At the State Department, officials questioned about Nunn’s report said they are trying to monitor smuggling reports. But the only verified reports involved “depleted uranium,” of little or no value in weapons building.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this report.