A group of nuclear nonproliferation experts are calling on Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) to hold a hearing about the Obama Administration’s decision to not require countries involved in future civilian nuclear cooperation deals to foreswear their rights to develop enrichment and reprocessing technologies. The Administration touted the 2009 nuclear cooperation deal with the United Arab Emirates as the “gold standard” of 123 deals because it prohibited the UAE from developing enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, but earlier this year it said it will take a “case-by-case” approach to developing future trade deals, including those with Jordan, Vietnam and South Korea. “We believe that it is important to maintain a consistent principle that discourages the proliferation of indigenous enrichment and reprocessing,” the 16 experts wrote in a March 7 letter to Kerry. “The proliferation of these technologies is potentially destabilizing and dangerous whether it occurs in the Middle East, Asia, or anywhere else. The search for additional profits for the U.S. nuclear industry that are unlikely to be forthcoming should not come at the expense of U.S. nonproliferation objectives.”
The letter was signed by former Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners Peter Bradford and Victor Gilinsky, former Pentagon official Jack David, retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, Bipartisan Security Group Director Robert Gray, Council for a Livable World Executive Director John Isaacs, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Distinguished Fellow Eric Edelman, Federation of American Scientists President Charles Ferguson, Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie Fly, Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball, the American Physical Society’s Jodi Lieberman, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control Director Gary Milhollin, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Henry Rowen, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Executive Director Henry Sokolski, former NNSA nonproliferation chief William Tobey, and Stanford University’s Len Weiss.