MOSCOW — Joint U.S.-Russian efforts to boost security against potential terrorist attacks on Russian storage sites for nuclear warheads have accelerated in recent months, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said here Friday.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) credited the stepped-up pace of activity to a new commitment by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin after a February summit with President Bush in Bratislava, Slovakia.
"We've had an agreement for inspections at the warhead storage sites that has broken the logjam of misunderstanding there," Lugar said at a news conference. "This is an important breakthrough."
Under the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the United States has spent billions of dollars to help dismantle nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles, bombers, submarines and other weapons in former Soviet states.
But joint efforts to prevent terrorists from raiding Russian storage facilities and obtaining nuclear weapons largely have faltered. The U.S. sought to monitor how its funds would be used to upgrade security, something Russia had been unwilling to allow, Lugar said at the news conference and in a subsequent interview.
In June, however, Russia presented the United States with a list of 25 to 30 nuclear warhead storage sites and said that three U.S. inspections would be allowed at each, Lugar said.
"Terrorists have become tougher," Lugar said. "This is a Russian-American response to toughen the targets too. We're not asleep either."
Lugar said that until the February summit, "things were ... certainly not going very fast in this area."
"I think that President Bush and President Putin, taking a look at the war on terror -- and this is the point we're making anecdotally about how terrorists sometimes are becoming more proficient in their craft -- I think the two presidents recognized we needed to upgrade so we were more proficient in our protection," Lugar said.
"The Russians in the past had placed severe limitations upon inspection of the storage sites, so this was an important breakthrough," he added. "The Russians in essence are saying, 'Your privileges to inspect are not unlimited, but at least you have three opportunities.' "
