http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040504/D82BPLR00.html

Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror

May 4, 9:30 AM (ET)

By PAUL AMES

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European officials conducted a simulation
showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent
into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO
headquarters in Brussels.

"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," said former
Sen. Sam Nunn, who helped organize the exercise, dubbed Black Dawn.
"To win this race, we have to achieve cooperation on a scale we've
never seen or attempted before."

Nunn spoke to reporters Tuesday, a day after the closed-door war games
attended by top officials including the European Union's security
chief, Javier Solana, and his new counterterrorism czar, Gijs de
Vries.

In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they
would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly
enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb.

In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and
video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the
device at NATO's headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels,
immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with
hundreds of thousands of injured, spreading panic through Europe and
plunging the world economy into turmoil.

"Once you are in this phase, there are no good options," said Michele
Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, who helped prepare the exercise.

More than 50 people from 15 countries and a dozen international
organizations attended the exercise, mostly EU ambassadors but also
civilian and military officials from NATO, the International Atomic
Energy Agency, Interpol and other bodies.

Nunn appealed for the Europeans to step up funding for increased
protection at sites where weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are
stored - particularly in former Soviet states.

He said preventing al-Qaida from getting its hands on such material
was the best chance of stopping it from building a bomb.

"It's well within al-Qaida's operational capabilities to recruit the
technical expertise needed to build a crude nuclear devise," he said.
"The hard part is getting the nuclear material, but we do not make it
nearly hard enough."

Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia and former chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, helped push through a $10 billion program in 1991
to destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction in Russia and
other former Soviet republics. But he said at least 60 percent of
sites still must be secured.

He said European leaders should make good on pledges made two years
ago as part of a $20 billion commitment by the Group of Eight to
provide more funding for that program over 10 years.

They should also push President Bush and Russian President Vladimir
Putin to do more when the G-8 group of world leaders meets next month
in Georgia, he said.

Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer convened the
exercise to show the extent of the danger.

"The threat of catastrophic terrorism is not confined to the United
States or Russia or the Middle East," Solana said. "The new terrorist
movements seem willing to use unlimited violence and cause massive
casualties."

Nunn urged increased protection for weapons-grade uranium kept at
research sites, which are often poorly guarded university facilities;
accelerated destruction of tactical nuclear weapons by both the United
States and Russia; enhanced international intelligence sharing; and
more help to find new jobs for poorly paid Russian nuclear scientists.

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( W W P D ) - What Would Patton Do?

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