PART I: Delays, politics, underfunding stymie struggle against nuclear...

[QuietStorm]

PART I: Delays, politics, underfunding stymie struggle against nuclear, other doomsday arms

EDITOR'S NOTE -- At their Millennium Summit three years ago, world leaders pledged to "strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction." This is the first in a three-part series taking stock of that effort at this critical moment, as the world awaits word of the truth about Iraq.
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The global machinery for confronting the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- the machinery of treaties and sanctions, inspectors and detectors -- is sputtering and stalling, just as the dangers seem more real by the day.

In Vienna, a U.N. agency struggles through its 19th year with a frozen budget as it works to keep nuclear bombs from spreading worldwide. In a neighboring glass tower beside the Danube, experts hired to detect secret nuclear tests close up shop over weekends. Their treaty is on hold.

Plans to burn thousands of tons of fearsome chemical weapons, in the United States and Russia, have quietly slipped years into the future. The U.N. chemical inspector corps, meanwhile, is understaffed and politically handcuffed.

As for biological arms, negotiators recently labored for seven years on an enforcement regime -- inspectors -- for the 1975 treaty banning germ weapons. But the United States has now shut down those talks.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/08/16/international1303EDT0526.DTL