Soviet-era stockpile moved to secure site

ROSSENDORF, Germany — U.S., Russian and German officials on Monday moved nearly 600 pounds of abandoned, Soviet-made nuclear material from a former East German research lab to a protected site in Russia.

U.S. officials considered the highly enriched uranium a top target for terrorists. The cache, moved out under heavy guard in a pre-dawn convoy, included enough weapons-grade material to build several rudimentary atomic bombs.

"This is the stuff we worry about most — it's readily useable for a weapon, and you can handle it with bare hands," said Andrew Bieniawski, who led the operation for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The mission was the latest conducted under the U.S. Global Threat Reduction Initiative to secure and return Soviet-made nuclear material that was left around the world after the Soviet Union's dissolution.

The enriched uranium will be stored in a facility just south of Moscow — one of two storage sites where security has been upgraded with $62 million in funding from the United States. Russia must turn the material into low-enriched uranium, suitable for fueling nuclear-power reactors, but not useable in weapons.

Most of the material at the German site, now known as the Rossendorf Research Center, was brought by the Soviets in the 1960s and '70s to fuel a secret research reactor. The Germans shut down the reactor soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the material has been stored in vaults at the site since then.

U.S. says Iran making progress toward weapon

WASHINGTON — Iran is making headway in building nuclear weapons, the Bush administration said Monday as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to iron out differences with Russia over a U.N. resolution designed to stop the program with economic sanctions.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Iranians were trying to perfect technology to enrich uranium. Iran has denied an effort to build nuclear weapons and says its work is for energy development.

The United States and its European allies have proposed offering Iran economic concessions in exchange for halting its enrichment of uranium, a key part of the process of building nuclear weapons.

Russia, which has close economic ties with Iran, has favored diplomacy over punitive sanctions, but the Bush administration is hoping Russia may be prepared to approve a watered-down resolution at the U.N. Security Council.

"We are hopeful that we can get a vote in the very near future. It is time for a vote," McCormack said. U.S. and other diplomats met Monday at the United Nations in an effort to narrow differences over a draft text.

Little headway seen in North Korea talks

BEIJING — The top U.S. negotiator in nuclear-disarmament talks with North Korea sounded pessimistic today after the first day of negotiations.

"I think I would be hard pressed to say any progress was made," Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill said.

Monday's opening meeting of envoys from the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia was the first of its kind in more than a year, and follows North Korea's first atomic test on Oct. 9.

North Korea's envoy Kim Kye-gwan spelled out sweeping demands in return for scrapping its nuclear weapons, starting with the lifting of U.N. sanctions and U.S. financial curbs and a new nuclear reactor.

The U.S. and the other countries at the talks want to see North Korea move toward implementing a joint statement agreed upon in September 2005 in which North Korea agreed in principle to give up nuclear weapons in return for aid and security guarantees.

Seattle Times news services