On February 2, 2007, Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili and John Tefft, the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Georgia, signed a new bilateral agreement that will provide additional U.S. equipment and training for Georgian officials responsible for countering nuclear smuggling across Georgian territory. [1] As part of the deal, the United States will help strengthen Georgia’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency, along with its land, air, and naval border patrol forces. U.S. authorities also committed to assisting their Georgian counterparts in analyzing any intercepted nuclear materials, including nuclear forensic analysis. [2]

This agreement follows one of the most serious nuclear smuggling incidents in recent years. The previous week, on January 25, a court in the Republic of Georgia sentenced Oleg Khintsagov, a citizen from the Russian region of North Ossetia, to eight years in prison for attempting to sell 100 grams of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) on the local black market. Although the Georgian authorities had detained Khintsagov for almost a year following his arrest on February 1, 2006, they provided details about the case only after the court had reached its verdict. [3]

The revelation of this significant smuggling case highlighted the importance of recently strengthened
U.S.-Georgian efforts to prevent nuclear smuggling. A press release from the U.S. Embassy in Georgia described the signing of the February 2 accord, which had been under negotiation for several months, as “a crucial milestone in the cooperative efforts of the U.S. and Georgian governments to battle the threat of nuclear terrorism.” [4] Bezhuashvili said the agreement demonstrated that, “Georgia has shown enthusiasm, shown commitment, to be part of the group of countries that aggressively stands against proliferation.” [5] Also on February 2, Gela Bezhuashvili and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed over the telephone how Georgian and Russian law enforcement officials could cooperate better in investigating the Khintsagov case and any future nuclear smuggling incidents in the South Caucasus. Bezhuashvili later told the media that, “Georgia intends to closely cooperate with all neighboring countries in this area.” [6]

Several factors make the Khintsagov incident especially disturbing. First, Khintsagov believed the ultimate recipient of the uranium would be an Islamist extremist group. Second, he claimed he had much larger quantities of HEU for sale, perhaps two to three kilograms, stored at his apartment in the city of Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia. (International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations use 25 kilograms as the amount needed for a nuclear weapon.) [7] Third, Khintsagov had accomplices in Russia, Georgia, and the separatist region of South Ossetia, substantiating international concerns regarding transnational nuclear trafficking networks. Finally, experts have yet to establish the source of the diverted HEU.

Uncertain Origins of the Smuggled Uranium
Investigators have been unable to determine either the origin of the nuclear material or how Khintsagov acquired it. Georgian authorities indicate that Khintsagov initially told them that he had purchased the HEU in the Russian city of Novosibirsk, in Siberia, but later claimed he had obtained the material from an unidentified supplier. [8] Nonproliferation experts have long warned about the potential for unauthorized diversions of nuclear material from Novosibirsk, which hosts a major Russian nuclear facility possessing large amounts of HEU. [9]

Russian officials assert that the small size and poor quality of the sample of the seized uranium provided by the Georgian government for analysis made it impossible to determine the origins of the HEU (defined as uranium artificially enriched to 20 percent or more in the isotope uranium-235; natural uranium generally contains only 0.7 percent uranium-235). They also claim that Georgian authorities had not responded to their request for an additional sample.

According to Russian defense expert Pavel Felgenhauer, however, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) sent a confidential letter in May 2006 to the Georgian authorities confirming that the seized nuclear material "could have been produced by the Russian nuclear industry" ten years ago. [10] A separate story suggested that the analysis was conducted by specialists at the Russian Scientific Research Institute of Non-Organic Materials, who were also reported to have concurred with U.S. analysts that the sample consisted of nearly 90%-enriched uranium, a level considered optimal for weapons manufacture. [11]

The Georgian authorities have offered different reasons regarding why they delayed providing details about the case until now. Some Georgian officials said they needed time to investigate the incident thoroughly. At least one Georgian legislator said the United States had requested a temporary media blackout. [12] At a press conference announcing the verdict, however, Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili implied that his government had decided to publicize the case because it had lost patience waiting for greater Russian cooperation in investigating the incident. [13] Archil Pavlenishvili, the Georgian government’s lead investigator of nuclear smuggling incidents, claimed that Russia provided little assistance in the Khintsagov case. [14]

For their part, Russian officials insisted they had cooperated fully with the investigation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that experts from the FSB and Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) had interrogated Khintsagov on February 14-15, 2006, but that he “could say nothing coherent.” At that time, Georgian authorities gave the Russians a sample of the seized uranium. [15]

Some Russians attributed the delay to a Georgian attempt to release the information at the most opportune time for embarrassing the Russian government. Indeed, Lavrov was quoted as saying, “I hope very much that this is not an attempted political provocation.” [16] Based on WMD Insights staff discussions with knowledgeable officials in the United States and abroad, however, it appears that the Georgian government decided to reveal additional details of the incident in late January 2007 because of the imminent publication of the annual report by the IAEA on trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials. The IAEA intended to cover the episode in this survey.

Questioning Georgian Motives
Timing issues aside, some observers speculated that the Georgian government was seeking to exploit the smuggling incident to reassert Tbilisi’s authority over the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [17] Publicizing the arrest of uranium smugglers operating in these breakaway regions supports the Georgian contention that neither the local authorities nor Russian peacekeepers have proven able to secure the territories from serious nonproliferation threats and dangerous criminal networks. [18] Georgian Foreign Minister Bezhuashvili said that the recent smuggling incident underscored the danger of “the transit of these dangerous materials through uncontrolled territories in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These territories are beyond the control of the central authorities; therefore, the threat of using these regions for nuclear smuggling is increasing.” [19]

A representative of the Office of the Russian Prosecutor General told the ITAR-TASS news agency that the Georgian Prosecutor General’s Office had asked for legal assistance in investigating Khintsagov. He claimed, however, that the Georgian authorities had failed to respond to the Russian government’s request for copies of the materials Russia needed to launch an investigation. [20] Under Russian law, it is illegal for unauthorized personnel to acquire, store, or sell radioactive materials. [21]

It has remained unclear whether Khintsagov disclosed to Georgian interrogators the location of the alleged cache of HEU and whether Georgian authorities shared this information with their Russian counterparts. This critical piece of information is absent from both Georgian and Russian statements concerning the incident. It is also unknown whether Russian authorities have checked the location, if its identity was provided, or whether they conducted an independent investigation.

One worrying possibility is that the sample seized by Georgian authorities came from the I. Vekua Institute of Physics and Technology, located in Sukhumi, Abkhazia. According to some sources, two kilograms of 90%-enriched uranium disappeared from that institute some time in the early 1990s during the civil war in that region. [22] Guram Bokuchava, the institute's former director who fled to Tbilisi during the civil war, recently acknowledged that Georgian authorities no longer know the status of the facility’s nuclear materials. He said that when IAEA inspectors went to Sukhumi in 2002 to examine the uranium stored at the institute, Abkhaz authorities would not let them visit the storage site. [23]

Representatives at the Russian Federal Customs Service also expressed skepticism that the material in Khintsagov’s possession came from Russia. They insist that the Russian government has installed very effective Russian-made “Yantar” radiation monitoring equipment along its southern borders and other trafficking routes that would have detected any smuggled radioactive materials. [24]

The limited effectiveness of radiation detection equipment must be kept in mind when evaluating such claims, however. U.S. investigators have found that both technical problems (e.g., improper use, inadequate maintenance, and unreliable access to electricity or to adequate communications capabilities) and corruption (e.g., bribes paid to border security officers) have impeded the effective use of U.S.-provided nuclear monitoring systems in the former Soviet Union. [25] A 2006 U.S. Government Accountability Office study, for example, reported that Georgian border guards were using radiation detectors that had not been calibrated since 1997, despite manufacturer specifications for annual recalibration. [26]

A related problem is that HEU emits a much lower radiation signal than plutonium, the second material that has been used as the core of a nuclear weapon, making HEU both difficult to detect and safe for Khintsagov to carry in his pockets. (Investigators have identified comparable problems with efforts to monitor the entry of radioactive materials into the United States. [27]) For these reasons, painstaking police and intelligence work, as in the Khintsagov case, provides an essential supplement to technical means for identifying and intercepting nuclear smuggling networks.

Richard Weitz – Hudson Institute