EXPERT: RUSSIA MAY HAVE LOST SUITCASE NUKES

BY Andrei Khalip

Special to The Japan Times
Monday January 10, 2000

MOSCOW (Reuter) - President Boris Yeltsin's former environmental safety adviser said in remarks published on Monday that some of Russia's portable nuclear bombs might indeed be missing, as asserted by another former Yeltsin aide.

"The statement by Alexander Lebed concerning suitcases with nuclear bombs is definitely not groundless," academician Alexei Yablokov wrote in a letter to Novaya Gazeta weekly.

The letter was written on Sept. 9, days after Lebed, former presidential security adviser, told the CBS News "60 Minutes" program that the Russian military had lost track of some of its nuclear weapons.

He mentioned more than 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs, any one of which could kill up to 100,000 people. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev insisted on Monday that Russia's nuclear arsenal was under firm control.

"There are no concerns over this issue," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. "The nuclear weapons are under permanent control." The minister appeared to be making a general remark and did not mention Yablokov or Lebed.

Nuclear experts with international think-tanks have said in the past that Russia has strict control over its military nuclear sites and that they viewed nuclear bomb and missile theft as extremely unlikely. But they said there had been cases of theft of nuclear materials from power plants and scientific laboratories.

Yablokov said the military might simply have no record of some of the portable nuclear bombs, which he said were made in the 1970s for the Soviet KGB for "terrorist purposes." "These nuclear charges were not registered by the Defense Ministry and as a result could have been dropped from the list of nuclear devices under international disarmament negotiations," Yablokov said.

Yablokov, an outspoken advocate of environmental protection, also did not exclude that Russia carried out a nuclear test at its Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya last month. The United States said then it had detected a seismic event "with explosive characteristics" near the Novaya Zemlya test site, but Russian officials flatly denied any nuclear tests.

They said Russia had voluntarily given up testing in 1992 and was sticking to this position. Yablokov's charges come at an embarrassing time for Russian officials, who are hosting U.S. Energy Secretary Federico Pena and Vice President Al Gore for wide-ranging talks due to include nuclear safety issues.

Washington has more than once expressed concern over nuclear safety in Russia and what it called a possible transfer of Russian nuclear technologies to other countries, primarily Iran, which it views as a sponsor of international terrorism. Moscow says it is adhering strictly to its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

Yablokov was sacked from Yeltsin's administration earlier this year. He had been in charge of environmental issues at top bodies of the former Soviet Union and Russia since 1989 including Chairman of Greenpeace-Soviet Union

END

Special to The Japan Times
Monday January 10, 2000

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EXPERT: RUSSIA MAY HAVE LOST SUITCASE NUKES

Special to The Japan Times Monday January 10, 2000

Special to The Japan Times
Monday January 10, 2000