Germany, Russia in Talks on Nuclear Smuggling

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s intelligence coordinator held talks in Moscow on Saturday to discuss ways to stop smuggling of nuclear materials from Russia--considered the main source of such substances.

State Secretary Bernd Schmidbauer took Germany’s highest espionage and counterintelligence officials with him to put pressure on Moscow to stop the leaks of nuclear material, together with the laboratory findings that Germany says prove the confiscated material stems from Russia.

After Saturday’s session, Russia said it was satisfied with the talks and that Schmidbauer and his side had made no “unfounded accusations” against Russia. The talks are scheduled to resume Monday.

Schmidbauer has dismissed Moscow’s protests that the nuclear material is not Russian and that the West is using such accusations to gain control over Russia’s nuclear industry.

Schmidbauer told Der Spiegel magazine that Germany’s intelligence agency should be given the “legal possibility” to set up sting-type deals abroad with would-be smugglers, something not likely to be accepted by Moscow.

Adding to the pressure on Russia to tighten its nuclear security, Theo Waigel, Germany’s finance minister, said Bonn should make its economic assistance to Moscow contingent upon how hard Russia tries to keep radioactive materials from falling into the wrong hands.

Waigel also said he has ordered German customs officials to intensify their searches for radioactive materials at the country’s airports and borders.

Meanwhile, German authorities said Saturday that they seized about two pounds of lithium-6, used in the making of hydrogen bombs, when they confiscated a consignment of contraband plutonium earlier this month.

A spokesman for the Bavarian regional criminal investigation department in Munich, where police on Aug. 10 caught couriers who flew in from Moscow with 10.5 ounces of plutonium, said laboratory tests showed that another vessel brought in by the couriers contained lithium-6.

The lithium-6 was not headed for a rogue country or terrorists planning to build a hydrogen bomb because the would-be buyers were undercover agents.