Fight on WMDs boasts global backing

The war in Iraq has set the United States at odds with some allies, but the international community is strongly supporting a U.S.-led initiative to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

More than 60 nations — including Russia and France, two key opponents of the Bush administration’s policy toward Iraq — are supporting the 19-month-old Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). The global effort to halt arms proliferation has also gained favor from the United Nations.

So far, details about the small number of boarding operations of ships and seizures of illicit cargo under PSI remain secret, according to Bush administration officials.

The one action made public was the Oct. 4, 2003, seizure of the German-flagged ship BBC China that was on its way to Libya with equipment for Moammar Gadhafi’s covert nuclear-arms program.

A U.S. warship forced the ship to divert to Italy. On board, investigators found containers of uranium-enrichment equipment. That discovery led to the unraveling of the covert nuclear supplier network headed by Pakistani Abdul Qadeer Khan that stretched from Germany to South Africa to Malaysia.

The network had supplied nuclear-weapons materials to Libya, Iran, North Korea and others.

PSI, launched by President Bush in May 2003, was an outgrowth of the administration’s effort to prevent weapons of mass destruction from reaching terrorists.

Its core participants include the governments of the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand and Britain.

But more than 40 other states have signed on to its principles and have chosen to keep their participation secret or limited.

The initiative is hoped to be the first step in creating a new global system to control the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile systems.

One key element of PSI is the landmark agreement reached with Liberia and Panama that allows PSI operations — carried out by navies or coast guards — to conduct seizures andboardings of suspect merchant ships sailing under the flags of those nations.

Vessels flagged from Liberia and Panama account for about 50 percent of all shipping around the world.

“PSI is an activity, not an organization,” said John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for international security and one of the key officials involved in the initiative.

“Our goal is based on an equally simple tenet — that the impact of states working together in a deliberately cooperative manner would be greater than states acting alone in an ad hoc fashion,” Mr. Bolton said during a speech in October following a PSI ship-boarding simulation near Tokyo harbor.

Another major official involved in starting PSI is Robert Joseph, until recently the White House National Security Council staff official in charge of dealing with arms proliferation.

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