KEY POINTS:
The arrests last week of three men allegedly trying to sell enriched uranium should be a wake-up call for the Bush Administration and its hopelessly misdirected war on terror.
While the US media focuses unrelentingly on the war in Iraq and hostilities with Iran, the White House blusters about fighting terrorists abroad so Americans don't have to fight them at home, and presidential candidates split hairs over their Iraq policies.
But arguably the greatest threat to world safety lies largely forgotten. Little is said these days about the unsecured Russian nuclear material that, during the 2004 presidential race, both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry agreed was the number one threat to American security. But those loose nukes are still out there, just one buyer and one seller away from catastrophe.
The two Hungarians and one Ukranian arrested were allegedly trying to sell just under half a kilogram of weapons-grade uranium in powder form - enough, police say, to build a dirty bomb.
Police don't know who the potential buyer was, but say the deal was to have been closed earlier last week. The men were hoping to earn $1 million from a sale - a decent incentive in any part of the world, but especially in Eastern Europe.
Although some experts have expressed doubts about just how deadly this consignment was, that doesn't change the fact that enriched uranium is far too readily available in former Soviet-bloc countries.
In the midst of many of the stories written about the arrests, journalists dutifully noted long-standing concerns about the security of nuclear material around the world, especially in states that belonged to the former Soviet Republic.
They added that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, last year recorded 252 cases of radioactive materials that were stolen, missing, smuggled or in the possession of unauthorised individuals - a 385 per cent increase since 2002.
It's fair to note that spike is due in large part to better reporting and law enforcement, and that many of those cases involved materials not suitable for use as a weapon.
But it must be of serious concern that so much nuclear material is on the loose. Even the atomic agency spokesman conceded "there are far too many incidents of material not being properly controlled. If we can do a better job, we can help keep these materials from falling into terrorist hands."
That's a pretty big if, especially considering Al Qaeda's assertion that they see it as a religious duty to get their hands on some loose nukes.
While speaking at UC Berkeley last month, retired Lieutenant General Robert Gard jnr, Senior Military Fellow at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, was asked if America was lucky to have avoided a terrorist nuclear attack thus far. Gard simply replied - "Very."
He described the effect of a terrorist carrying a ten kilotonne device into Times Square: within half a kilometre everyone is vapourised, within eight-tenths of a kilometre 500,000 people are killed, another half million killed by collapsing buildings, and the city is uninhabitable for decades.
That may be at the high end of potential destruction. Most dirty bombs would not be that big or deadly. Yet the amount of nuclear material unaccounted for leaves plenty of opportunities for people willing to use a nuclear attack to further their political goals. Gard told the audience in Berkeley that in Russia alone there are 445 metric tonnes of highly-enriched uranium in 52 buildings, a third of which lack even the most basic security. Highly-enriched uranium exported by Russia and the US is now in as many as 140 locations in 52 countries, many with minimal security. This week he told me the arrests were graphic and sobering evidence that there are stocks of highly enriched uranium, which can be fashioned rather easily into a crude but powerful nuclear explosive insufficiently secured to prevent theft or purchase by terrorists.
The Baker-Cutler report released in January 2001, commissioned by now-presidential candidate Bill Richardson, called the prospect of stolen Russian nuclear weapons or materials used by terrorists the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today, and said the pace of efforts to eliminate the threat left an unacceptable risk.
It recommended the Bush Administration spend $3 billion a year over the following eight to 10 years exclusively to shore up Russia's nuclear material programme. Instead, the Administration has requested a little over $1 billion a year for its entire non-proliferation programme worldwide, and the loose nukes remain loose.
The Bush Administration has wasted several trillion dollars in Iraq chasing weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, and now threatens to spend billions more out of concern that Iran may develop a nuclear weapon. Yet it has skimped on dealing with the threat from nuclear weapons that actually exist.
The news from Slovakia last week is a reminder that countries such as New Zealand need to demand urgent action from the US on the real threats facing the world - and not settle for more rhetoric and distractions in the so-called war on terror.
