An environmental advocacy group yesterday called on President Bush to abolish the secret U.S. nuclear war plan directed against Russia, China and other potential enemies, saying it is "a recipe for unceasing arms requirements by the Pentagon and a continuing competition with Russia."

The Natural Resources Defense Council recommended reducing the U.S. arsenal to a few hundred nuclear weapons and transferring nuclear war planning to a civilian-military staff with congressional oversight.

The study is a reflection of the ferment taking place inside the Pentagon and among arms control groups since the Bush administration launched a major review of U.S. nuclear strategy. That review is expected to be completed this summer.

Some scientists at U.S. weapons laboratories have called for a resumption of underground nuclear testing and the development of new types of warheads. Other experts have argued for mutual reductions in the American and Russian arsenals.

Bush has held out the prospect of unilateral U.S. reductions, along with efforts to build missile defenses and to develop a new strategic framework for the post-Cold War era.

The nuclear war plan, known as the single integrated operation plan, or SIOP, was first developed in 1960 at the height of the Cold War. It called for thousands of warheads to be aimed at Soviet targets, including factories, command bunkers, and nuclear and conventional military forces.

Under the latest SIOP, approved by President Bill Clinton in 1997, more than 2,000 warheads are kept on constant alert on land- and sea-based missiles. They are able to respond within 30 minutes in the event of a surprise attack on the United States from Russia, China or another nation.

"At this stage in the disarmament process," the NRDC contended in a report released yesterday, "a U.S. stockpile numbering in the hundreds is more than adequate to achieve the single purpose of deterrence."

The organization's two-year study of simulated nuclear effects predicted that even a U.S. strike that avoided big cities but attempted to knock out Russian missile silos and other nuclear forces -- a "counterforce" attack -- would kill 8 million to 12 million Russians.

A separate NRDC study concluded that a single U.S. Trident missile submarine, which carries 192 nuclear warheads, could inflict "in excess of 50 million casualties" if the missiles were aimed at Russian cities.

Referring to Bush's repeated statement that Russia is not an enemy, the environmental group urged the administration to drop the SIOP and place nuclear targeting on a "contingency" basis.

This would mean the United States would "not target any country specifically, but create a contingency war planning capability to assemble attack plans in the event of hostilities with another nuclear state," it said.

Robert S. Norris, a senior analyst for the NRDC, said, "Any proposal by the Bush administration that does not abandon counterforce as the ruling assumption and strategy for the war plan is flawed and dangerous."

The process of developing the SIOP begins with formal guidance from the president on the broad goals of U.S. nuclear planning. The secretary of defense then produces a policy on the use of nuclear weapons.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff refine that into a document that sets targeting and damage criteria. Finally, the U.S. military's Strategic Command writes the SIOP, setting specific targets and the number and type of warheads aimed at them. The NRDC described the Strategic Command's war planners as "a self-perpetuating constituency that needs fundamental reform."

Noting that the SIOP "has its own level of classification" far above top secret, it said Congress "has been powerless" to affect or even scrutinize the war plans.

For example, former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) tried during his last two years in office to legislate a reduction in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons and limit those on alert, but was repeatedly denied access to information about the SIOP.

 3. From: Яблоков Ð?. Ð’. <yablokov@voxnet.ru> To: yablokov <yablokov@online.ru> Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 6:17 PM

KAZAKHSTAN MULLS STORING FOREIGN NUCLEAR WASTE Reuters, June 19 ASTANA. A senior Kazakhstan official said on Monday the vast but sparsely populated Central Asian state might boost revenues by burying imported low-radioactivity nuclear waste on its territory. Mukhtar Dzhakishev, head of the state nuclear firm Kazatomprom, told parliament that Kazakhstan might earn $30-40 billion in the next 25 to 30 years by storing foreign nuclear waste. Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe but has a population of only 15 million. ``This is a very lucrative business, and we may arrange deals under which the government receives annual bonuses worth $200-500 million,'' Dzhakishev told deputies. He said large amounts of waste could be buried in existing opencast uranium mines in the western Mangistau region and sophisticated storage technology would not be needed. ``Barrels with compressed low-radioactivity waste are received, put in pits and covered with soil, and there is no radiation on the surface,'' he said. Dzhakishev said Kazakhstan did not possess technology which would allow it to process and store high-radioactivity waste, but it could easily handle low-radioactivity waste like gloves, overalls, and other material from foreign nuclear power plants. It was not immediately clear whether or when the government would submit a draft law to parliament. Dzhakishev gave no time frame or details of possible deals with foreign nuclear plants. Earlier this month the lower chamber of the Russian parliament adopted a bill that is likely to open Russia to imports of spent nuclear fuel. Environmentalists and the public in Russia who say it could turn the country into a nuclear dump have given the bill, expected to be passed into law. Environmental concerns are also strong in Kazakhstan, whose northeastern Semipalatinsk region underwent hundreds of atmospheric, surface and underground nuclear tests in 1949-89. The Soviet-era tests are blamed by scientists for a rising number of cancer cases and birth defects among local people.