US embassy cable - 05AMMAN1725

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 AMMAN 001725 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAID, PREL, JO, IZ, TI 
SUBJECT: ENGAGING JORDAN ON REDIRECTION OF IRAQI WMD 
SCIENTISTS 
 
Summary 
-------- 
1. (SBU) Anne Harrington, Deputy Director of the Office of 
Proliferation Threat Reduction (NP/PTR), Richard Jarvis, 
PTR's Iraq Program Manager, and Amman's ESTH Hub Director 
visited several Amman-based NGOs to discuss their possible 
collaboration with State's program to redirect Iraqi WMD 
scientists to civilian, non-weapons work.  Accompanying the 
State Department team was Dr. Esmail Shubber, an Iraqi 
biologist who had previously worked on Iraqi bio-weapons 
programs and is now an active participant in State's 
redirection program.  End Summary. 
 
Meeting Goals: 
-------------- 
2. (SBU) A primary goal of the Amman meetings was to 
identify potential partners for projects currently being 
proposed by former Iraqi WMD scientists which would employ 
those and other scientists in tackling problems in the 
areas of the environment, water, public health and 
agriculture.  With the relative ease of access to Amman 
from both Iraq and the U.S., the Jordanian capital is a 
convenient venue for the interaction of Iraqi scientists 
and their western counterparts in the effort to utilize 
Iraqi scientific and technical expertise on the many tasks 
of national reconstruction.  The team was also seeking to 
identify possible venues to host redirection workshops and 
training programs, including facilities that could support 
laboratory-based training. 
 
Meeting Highlights 
------------------ 
3. (SBU) The State team visited the Jordanian Royal 
Scientific Society (RSS), the Cooperative Monitoring 
Center (CMC), and the World Conservation Union 
(aka IUCN) on January 31, and the Amman headquarters 
of the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) on February 1. 
 
Royal Scientific Society (RSS) - www.rss.gov.jo 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
4. (SBU) Royal Society President Dr. Sa'ad al-Hijazi, 
and senior RSS staff received the State team on RSS's 
85-acre research campus in Amman.  Hijazi has been 
active in the Jordanian and regional scientific 
community and was formerly a university president in 
Jordan for 15 years.  He offered to work with the 
redirection program to help meet any Iraqi and 
regional training needs. 
 
5. (U) RSS is a non-profit NGO established in 1970. 
Its income is derived from a number of 
revenue-generating activities, including quality 
assurance testing and other technical services, 
studies, research projects and training.  It also 
receives some funds from the Jordanian government and 
local governmental organizations, and by providing 
technical services to other governments, and regional 
and international organizations.  The research staff 
numbers just over 600 and at the end of 2003, RSS had 
assets valued at USD 28 million, which includes a USD 
2.8 million endowment.  RSS has 38 laboratories, 18 of 
which are internationally accredited, and works with 
an extensive number of U.S., European and regional 
universities, accreditation programs and scientific 
centers. 
 
6. (U) The Society's chief fields of expertise include: 
building technology; environmental assessment studies; 
water harvesting; hazardous and solid waste management; 
water quality assessment; air quality management and 
control; information technology; chemical analysis; 
testing and calibration; non-destructive assay; radiation 
monitoring; physical, chemical and mechanical 
characterization of metals, plastics, food materials and 
products; quality control and product certification; 
design and manufacture; and maintenance and repair of 
medical equipment.  Dr. al-Hijazi highlighted RSS's role 
in providing all quality assurance testing for the 
government (quality assurance lab certified according to 
ISO 9002:2000) and that RSS is responsible for maintenance 
and repair of all Ministry of Health equipment.  RSS has a 
close working relationship with the Japanese and under 
their assistance arrangement, the Japanese will be 
upgrading the quality assurance labs in the next four 
months.  In addition to working with Japan, RSS also works 
with Germany. 
 
7. (U) RSS conducts a lot of training, particularly in 
environment, building sector issues, information 
technology, engineering, chemical analysis, and quality 
assurance.  The National Calibration center works with 
technical centers on primary and secondary testing and 
analysis equipment. 
 
8. (SBU) Hijazi indicated his strong willingness to work 
with the redirection program and agreed to meet with 
State's Baghdad-based Program Director, Dr. Peter 
Smallwood in the near future to continue discussion and to 
work out specific details of ways RSS could assist with 
training programs, workshops and conferences. 
 
Cooperative Monitoring Center, Amman (CMC) - 
www.cmc-amman.gov.jo 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
9. (SBU) CMC director General Mohamed Shiyyab was out of 
town and the team was briefed by Head of Administration 
Amani Abu Ruqa'a, system engineer Iyad Aldasouqi, and 
assistant engineer Tareq Shridah, who explained the CMC 
programs and gave a tour of the cooperative monitoring 
technology demonstration area.  The CMC is housed in the 
RSS administration building and can draw on the RSS 
expertise and facilities. 
 
10. (U) CMC's main activities include workshops, research 
and analysis, and technology development and collaborations 
for monitoring security situations.  CMC also serves as a 
data gathering center for several regional programs that 
may be relevant to the redirection program.  For example, 
its Middle East Meteorological System (MEMS) could add 
meteorological sentinel stations in Iraq to the existing 
sub-regional system and share resulting MEMS regional data 
with Iraq.  CMC also does some sub-regional disease 
reporting data collection that might be able to include 
Iraqi inputs. 
 
World Conservation Union, aka 
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
11. (SBU) IUCN (www.iucn.org) is an international 
organization devoted to biodiversity conservation.  It 
tries to enhance governance and civil society through 
environmental conservation.  The Amman office, IUCN 
WESCANA, covers 26 countries in three regions:  Central 
Asia, West Asia, and North Africa.  The team met with 
Regional Director Dr. Odeh al-Jayyousi and Simon Anstey, 
Senior Advisor responsible for the Central Asia region. 
 
12. (U) IUCN programs in West Asia include working with 
Yemen and Oman to develop National Biodiversity 
Strategies and Action Plans; protected areas programs in 
Saudi Arabia and Lebanon; biodiversity capacity building 
in Kuwait; and water resources management in Jordan. 
 
13. (U) Iraq was an IUCN member in the early '80s with 
the Academy of Sciences, University of Baghdad, and 
government offices being involved.  IUCN would like to 
see Iraq involved again, but that would require some 
official entity being able to assume responsibility 
for paying annual dues.  Dr. Shubber undertook to pass 
materials to officials in Baghdad and encourage their 
consideration of renewing Iraq's membership.  In the 
meanwhile, IUCN would be happy to participate in 
workshops and other activities that are consistent 
with its mandate. 
 
14. (U) Of particular interest to IUCN is its special 
project for post-conflict countries that currently 
covers Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Palestine and 
Afghanistan.  For obvious reasons, IUCN can't do one 
project for all and is planning several projects, but 
would like to look at whether it is possible to have 
a Kuwait-Iraq project.  Kuwait already is working on 
the issue and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific 
Research (KISR) has already done some good work, 
according to the IUCN representatives.  IUCN was 
sensitive to the political issues involved, but hoped 
that a collaboration on the scientific level might be 
possible.  This would be a 4-year plan to study the 
ecological impact of war on those two countries. 
 
15. (U) IUCN also can help Iraq develop a national 
biodiversity action plan, has knowledge-learning 
modules (distance-based), and is interested in a 
medium-term project on water governance focusing on 
the Tigris-Euphrates, potentially involving also 
Turkey and Syria. 
 
A question on Tajikistan 
------------------------ 
16. (SBU) Mr. Anstey brought to the U.S. team's 
attention a situation he came across during a 
recent visit to the Tajik 'handle,' near Uzbekistan. 
The town of Khojand was a center for uranium 
extraction during the Soviet period.  According to 
Antsey there still are direct flights between 
Khojand and Moscow.  He heard rumors that there is 
a massive underground uranium mining and processing 
facility there, which is no longer managed by 
anyone.  The townspeople are very concerned about 
the situation, including possible health effects, 
and that there may be attempts by others to obtain 
either material or expertise.  Anstey asked if we 
could look into whether the Science Centers program 
(redirecting former Soviet scientists) was aware of 
the situation and if anything might be done to 
investigate and/or remediate the situation.  (NOTE: 
On consulting with NP/PTR, we established that there 
is a recent Science Center proposal for uranium 
contamination assessment in Tajikistan that may 
relate to the reports IUCN brought to our attention.) 
 
UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) - 
http://postconflict.unep.ch 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
17. (SBU) Henrik Slotte, Head of the Post-Conflict 
Assessment Unit in Geneva, flew to Amman to join 
Koen Toonen, the Iraq Program Manager for the 
meeting with the State team.  After a brief 
history of the post-conflict unit and description 
of some of the environment work done in the Balkans, 
Slotte and Toonen described Iraq as their largest 
project to date, receiving support from Japan, 
the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and others.  The 
Iraq activities are funded primarily through the 
Iraq Trust Fund, which currently supports two 
projects:  USD 11 million for marsh rehabilitation 
(Japan) and USD 2.7 million for capacity building. 
The latter has supported a number of workshops to 
support environmental law and governance, 
environmental impact assessments, environmental 
management, and environmental site assessment 
training.  Training has been done in Geneva, 
Spiez (Switzerland), and other locations for small 
groups of scientists who went back to Iraq to do 
field collection work.  The UNEP representative 
gave no details on who the scientists were or 
where they are working.  They did clarify that 
they work only with the Iraqi Ministry of 
Environment, which is responsible for nominating 
all candidates for UNEP's training programs. 
 
18. (SBU) The U.S. team described the Iraq 
redirection efforts, emphasizing an interest in 
steering project funding to environmental issues 
and offering to work with UNEP to provide the 
scientific and technical capability needed to 
carry out field work.  Dr. Shubber presented his 
proposal on assaying health and environmental 
risks in the Tuwaitha area.  The UNEP response 
was lukewarm at best.  Slotte spoke at length 
about a new project for which there is no funding 
yet, but for which he indicated substantial 
support, to look at the depleted uranium 
situation in southern Iraq.  He spoke of previous, 
similar efforts in the Balkans and said that 
Baghdad has asked UNEP to do this work and that 
UNEP, while acknowledging that the seriousness of 
the problem posed by depleted uranium has not yet 
been determined, considers it a priority. 
 
19. (SBU) The U.S. team asked if UNEP would be 
interested in being involved in the Tuwaitha 
project, noting its potential for addressing a 
possibly important problem.  Slotte responded 
that he understood that Greenpeace had done a 
study that might cover the issue.  On the matter 
of convening a workshop to look at the issue and 
review the current status of assessments, UNEP 
encouraged us to accelerate the timing and find 
a date earlier than August for the workshop, but 
was otherwise non-committal.  (NOTE:  Subsequent 
to the visit, UNEP followed up with direct 
contact with Drs. Shubber and Smallwood in 
Baghdad, indicating interest in remaining in 
contact.  END NOTE) 
 
20. (U) Baghdad minimize considered. 
HALE