In May 1989, when
the Hungarian Ambassador in Bucharest first accused the Romanian Armed Forces of preparing to attack his country, Budapest began claiming that Bucharest was developing
nuclear warheads and acquiring missile systems in order to use
against Hungary.[i]
Although treated lightly by Western analysts, these allegations had deadly
serious implications under international law. After denying Romania
co-belligerent status in spite of its contribution of over 540,000
troops (incurring more than 169,000 casualties) during the last eight months of
World War II, Soviet authorities had
imposed a number of restrictions upon their new partner as former “ally of
Hitlerite Germany” in the 1947 Peace Treaty. Article 14 of that Treaty
specifically states that Romania “shall not possess, construct or experiment
with any atomic weapon, any self-propelled or guided
missiles or apparatus connected with their discharge.”[ii]
Thus, independent acquisition of a nuclear weapon or a medium-range missile to carry one,
by whatever means, unilaterally abrogated the Treaty,
including its second article returning northern Transylvania, which had been under
Hungarian occupation during 1940-1944, to Romania.[iii]
Almost
simultaneously with the Hungarian accusations, a sensational report was published in a popular West German
journal alleging that the Munich-based firm
Messerschmidt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) was constructing a “huge”
intermediate-range nuclear missile factory in Romania.[iv]
Appearing several weeks after Ceauşescu’s latest public declaration that “from
a technical standpoint, we have the capacity to manufacture nuclear arms,” the story exploited that comment as
proof of an alleged nuclear weapons development program, while
conveniently eliding over the immediately following restatement of his
country’s policy for nuclear disarmament and the destruction of nuclear weapons.[v]
 |
| Harriman and Gaston Marin, 1964 |
The American Intelligence Community had, in
fact, been aware that “Romania had the capacity to go nuclear” if it chose to do so since
at least 1964.[vi] However, Washington was not unduly concerned because Bucharest had already informed President Kennedy in October 1963 that Romania did not and would
not permit nuclear weapons on its territory, and had even invited
the United States to send its own teams to verify that fact.[vii]
The same insistence on Romania’s option to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear
power was expressed clearly to Averell Harriman by the president of Romania’s State Committee for
Nuclear Energy, Gheorghe Gaston Marin in May 1964. As Gaston Marin explained, his country had significant uranium deposits, “which it prefers to put into
electric power rather than in fissionable material.”[viii]
On this point Romanian declaratory policy and actual behavior showed remarkable
consistency.
A decade later, in
the mid-1970s, Ceauşescu made his first
public declaration regarding Romania’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon
if it so desired.[ix] In 1976 American analysts again
concluded without any particular concern that if Romania so desired it could
acquire the necessary expertise and equipment within a few years from either
Western suppliers like West Germany, Great Britain or France, or from the
People’s Republic of China.[x] Indeed, West Germany,
Great Britain and other NATO allies provided Romania with components for its
nuclear program under U.S. authorization; with Henry Kissinger personally
signing off on some of the transfers.[xi]
U.S. authorities
proceeded from three basic assumptions regarding Romanian nuclear aims. Two of
them, “to acquire technology necessary to ensure internal manufacturing
capability for all nuclear power requirements” and “to develop export capability
in field of nuclear power generation systems,” reflected accurately Bucharest’s
position as stated to Washington.[xii]
The third possible aim, never expressed as an intention by Bucharest, “to
preserve and strengthen option of producing nuclear weapons at some unforeseen
point in the future,” was an unverifiable but logical U.S. postulate – and
specifically noted as such in U.S. assessment, which also noted the pledge of
some Romanian authorities that their country would “never go this route.”[xiii]
Ceauşescu himself
very consistently underscored that he could guarantee Romanian policy only for
the foreseeable future, and that radical changes in the international
environment could always prompt corresponding modifications the policy of his
country under future leaders. Even with that hypothetical possibility, however,
the United States still considered support of Romania’s nuclear program worth
the risk. Driving that calculation in the late 1970s was more than 15 years of
responsible Romanian international behavior. According to the U.S. assessment
in 1976:
Considering these
Romanian objectives, including the possibility that GOR [Government of Romania]
may later elect to develop nuclear weapons, we still believe that our
assistance to GOR’s nuclear power program will on balance strongly promote our
bilateral and regional interests. … We judge from our assessment of Romanian
capabilities that, if Romania were to opt to produce nuclear weapon, it can
acquire necessary know-how and materiel over reasonably short span of years
from Western suppliers such as Germans, British, or French, or even Chinese.
…[And] we would argue that we should provide equipment and technology to
Romania under conditions no more rigorous nor restrictive than we apply to
other non-nuclear weapon states, in other words that we do not discriminate
against Romania.[xiv]
The American gamble paid
off. Throughout the rest of the Cold War Romania never faltered in its
militancy for the reduction and destruction of all nuclear weapons, and it
never acquired the bomb. Moreover, Romanian archives confirm that the
anti-nuclear militancy of the regime was not only pursued “for show,” in
international forums like the United Nations. Bucharest’s campaign for the
halting, reduction and elimination of nuclear arms was consistently evident in
senior leadership discussions with Europeans on both sides of the curtain, with
China, with the Soviet Union, with the North Americans, and with the leaders of
the developing world.[xv] Thus, Ceauşescu’s very
clear statement in July 1984 that "if we wanted to
manufacture a nuclear weapon today, we could do so,” provoked very
little concern in Washington.[xvi]
As usual, the Romanian leader immediately followed up that statement with a
reaffirmation of his country’s policy against the acquisition and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, for their reduction globally and for their complete withdrawal from Europe.
Romanian
declarations on this point remained highly credible because Bucharest had shown no interest in acquiring Soviet
nuclear missiles after the Cuban Missile Crisis, nor had it hosted any Soviet
nuclear devices ever since it first called for
de-escalation and disarmament at the January 1965 summit of the Warsaw Pact. The veracity of its public
positions is attested in Communist-era archives of the other alliance members,
which demonstrate Bucharest’s persistent and singular campaign for nuclear de-escalation and disarmament within Warsaw
Pact councils from the 1960s through the 1980s.[xvii]
Likewise, there
was no claim of intent in Ceauşescu’s August 1988 declaration to Karoly Grosz,
Hungary’s communist party leader and Prime Minister, that Romania had the know-how “to produce and manufacture anything, even nuclear devices.” [xviii]
Nor was such intent expressed in his April 1989 statement to the Plenum of the
Democracy and Socialist Unity Front that: “From the technical perspective, we have
the capacity to build nuclear arms.”[xix] Only
through the most egregious “cherry-picking” and deliberate misrepresentation
could Ceauşescu’s speech be interpreted as indicating an intent to pursue or
acquire a nuclear weapon. A fuller citation from that speech makes this clear.
According to the Romanian leader:
We can produce any
kind of equipment. There is, however, a single domain in which we do not want
to produce anything: the domain of nuclear armament. Yes, we have the
technological capacity; but we will not set out upon this path because we are
firmly opposed to nuclear weapons whose use would mean the destruction of life
on our planet; and we seek the elimination of nuclear weapons from all states
of the world and we want a world without weapons and war.[xx]
In fact, every one
of Ceauşescu assertions regarding Romanian ability to produce a nuclear weapon
also stipulated that his country would not do so because it opposed their very
existence. Privately with other world leaders, and with the Canadian firm that
was building the CANDU reactor in Romania, Ceauşescu was even more frank. The
policy of his country, like that of any other state, was conditioned by
international circumstances and leadership preferences. Consequently, one could
not swear the same policy would hold from one millennium to the next. As
Ceausescu phrased it: “We do not have that intention now. But what will happen
in the year 2000 is hard to say. No one can give guarantees regarding what will
be in the year 2000.”[xxi]
At the same time,
the Romanian leader very clearly pledged to the Canadians that they would never
have to worry that their nuclear technology was used to produce a Romanian
nuclear weapon:
I can guarantee
that you will never face the accusation that due to this reactor, Romania has
obtained a nuclear bomb. … Nuclear
energy is not used by Romania for other than peaceful purposes.[xxii]
In 1992, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a finding of “non-compliance” against
Romania following discovery of 100 milligrams of unreported plutonium at its Nuclear Research Institute in Pitesti. That finding placed it among the ranks of the rogue states (consisting
at the time of Iraq, and later of North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria as well). It
appears, however, that the finding of non-compliance was issued only at the
insistence of Romanian officials for evidently political purposes. [xxiii]
The plutonium, one-tenth the amount (1 gram) that required mandatory reporting
to the IAEA, had been separated from spent fuel in December 1985 and then
apparently forgotten until it was discovered by the new nuclear program
authorities in April 1992.
 |
| Mohammed ElBaradei |
According to Mohammed ElBaradei, then legal advisor to the IAEA Secretariat and future IAEA director general, "following Ceauşescu’s ouster, the new government requested a special inspection to show that, under Ceauşescu’s rule, Romania had reprocessed one hundred milligrams of plutonium without informing the IAEA."
Some Romanian
officials and media then extrapolated an entire “secret” nuclear weapons
program from this incident, insisting that the former regime – in fact, Romania
– be condemned for it.[xxiv]
In another uncharacteristic demonstration of voluntary transparency, Russian
intelligence declassified its report of a vast Romanian covert weapons
acquisition program that allegedly began in 1985 and would have achieved a bomb
by 2000.[xxv]
Russian intelligence (and a part of the Romanian media) then insisted that the
alleged “secret program” had been made possible only because the United States had supplied the reactor and the highly
enriched uranium fuel (HEU) at the end of the
1970s.[xxvi]
However,
subsequent research at the IAEA has revealed that Bucharest’s experimentation
was not nearly so covert as claimed by authorities in 1992. In fact, the
Romanians had gone about it in exactly the right way, formally requesting a
safeguards exemption for experimentation on a specific quantity of spent fuel.[xxvii]
And the IAEA had granted that exemption.[xxviii]
In addition, the spent fuel used in the experiment had no connection whatsoever
to the HEU provided by the United States, as Russian intelligence insisted. [xxix]
Romania had neither gone about its experimentation with spent fuel covertly, in order to hide its actions from the IAEA, nor had it misused any of the HEU provided by the United States. The spent fuel was, in fact, provided by the Soviet Union, and its transfer had been officiated by the IAEA itself.
Moreover, the
experiment that yielded 100 milligrams of plutonium was conducted only once.[xxx]
It was not repeated. Nor was there any continued acquisition of plutonium by
other means that would have signaled the existence of a nuclear military
program. The production of what experts considered a "tiny" amount of plutonium in December 1985 was
not the “beginning of a covert program” to acquire the bomb; it marked the end of
an experimental cycle whose results were left to be forgotten on a shelf for
the next seven years.[xxxi]
 |
| SVR: Russian Foreign Intelligence |
In addition, it
appears that the IAEA was made aware of the experiment that resulted in the
separation of the plutonium at the time.[xxxii]
There are only two reasons why that information would not have caused the IAEA
to react more forcefully, at least to the extent of implementing continued
monitoring. The Romanians may have heeded an informal caution from the IAEA to cease and desist at the time. Or the incident was considered merely a “technical”
transgression, given the quantities produced were so inconsequential as to
belong to the gray zone of reporting requirements. [xxxiii] The plutonium, for example, may have been the by-product of one of the advanced fuel experiments to increase the "burn rate" of fuel that researchers frequently carried out in Pitesti.
 |
| General Stănculescu |
According to General Victor Stănculescu, a
senior officer responsible for military technology at the time (and later defense minister), his department did prepare feasibility studies on nuclear, biological and chemical deterrent options
during the late 1970s.[xxxiv]
However, on submitting the completed study on
“developing nuclear capacities for the defense of the country,” the military was
ordered not to pursue the nuclear option further and it remained “the least
advanced” of all three potential deterrent options under study.[xxxv]
What “least
advanced” meant can be gleaned from the fact that the Romanians did not produce
either of the two other deterrent options once they had ascertained that they could. After cultivating possible viral components in the Army's research laboratories, the biological option was dropped from consideration, although studies did continue of the best responses to feared
biological attacks on Romanian water supplies and population centers.[xxxvi]
And once the technical challenges of producing sufficient material for a chemical weapon were resolved that program was also halted, with no chemical agents stockpiled
or chemical warheads produced; their absence confirmed by post-1989
international monitors.[xxxvii]
It would appear
that Romanian consideration of a nuclear weapon never left the initial stages of exploration, qualifying it neither as 'military' nor even as 'program.'[xxxviii]
Indeed, the closer one looks at Romania’s alleged nuclear weapons program, the
less there is to see. Hans Blix, the IAEA director general in 1992, chose the
most informal of methods to argue for the finding of non-compliance that some authorities in Bucharest seemed to desire so ardently. He delivered a
“single, oral report” to the IAEA Board of Governors, and explicitly acknowledged that the safeguards agreement with Romania was not designed to deal with such
“very small quantities of nuclear material.”[xxxix]
 |
| Hans Blix |
Although not formally described as such, the IAEA considers Romania one of the less serious of the non-compliance cases, along with those of Egypt and South Korea. Only Egypt and South Korea were not found to be non-compliant at all. And of eight cases brought before the IAEA's Board of Governors as of 2016, only the Romanian has the distinction of having had no written report regarding it submitted to the IAEA. Even Egypt and South Korea did.
The process by
which the discovery of the Romanian transgression and the finding of noncompliance came about, and the manner in which it has been recorded by the
IAEA, suggests that something was not quite right. It appears as though the
Agency may have been leveraged by Romanian officials into doing something it
might otherwise not have done. As one researcher observed:
Little publicity
was given to the case at the time or subsequently. Unlike other non-compliance
cases, Romania does not have a special section on the IAEA website explaining
the case. The Safeguards Statements for 1992 and 1993, incorporated in the
Agency’s annual reports for those years, make no mention of it. Nor does the
comprehensive verification chronology for 1992 compiled by the London-based
non-governmental organization (NGO), the Verification Research, Training and
Information Centre (VERTIC). The Secretariat was pre-occupied with the Iraq,
North Korea, and South Africa verification cases at the time, but it is still
puzzling that little publicity was given to the Agency’s use of a special
inspection, even if only for demonstration purposes.
One senses a certain reluctance to draw attention to
the case. Mohamed ElBaradei says bluntly the aim of the new Romanian government
in seeking the special inspection was “to further discredit the former
Communist president.”[xl]
[i]
See e.g. Nepszabadsag, 17 May 1989; János
Juhani Nagy, “Bonn-Bucharest Missile Business,” Budapester Rundschau, 29 May 1989; MTI in English, 5 June 1989.
[ii] The Treaty of Peace with Romania was signed
on 10 February 1947 and entered into force on 15 September 1947. Treaties and Other International Agreements
of the United States of
America 1776-1949, Volume 4, Compiled under the direction of Charles I.
Bevans LL.B., Washington, DC : Government Printing
Office, 1969.
[iii]
Article 2 of Treaty of Peace with Romania
in Bevans (1969). Presumably, Moscow turned a blind eye to the SCUD-B and FROG-7 missiles it had
supplied Romania with earlier. Romanian SCUDs were part of its contribution to
the Warsaw Pact and were deployed according to Pact strategy, for possible
future use against an invading, presumably NATO force coming northward through
Bulgaria and or Yugoslavia. They were not deployed as part of Romania’s
national territorial defense strategy.
[iv] “‘Dieselbe Fabrik entsteht’ in Rumänien” [The Same [Missile]
Plant is Under Construction in Romania], Der
Spiegel, No. 19, 8 May 1989, pp. 166-168, translated in JPRS Arms Control,
May 17, 1989, pp. 54-55. Intermediate-range ballistic missiles have an
operating range of 1,000 to 3,000 km. The reach of short-range missiles is
between 300 and 1,000 km. Missiles with operating ranges 300 km and below are
considered tactical.
[v] Vladimir
Socor, “Ceauşescu Claims That Romania Could Make Nuclear Weapons,” Romanian
Situation Report/4, RFER, 4 May 1989, item 4; Mihail E. Ionescu and Carmen Rîjnoveanu, “Percepţia României
asupra descurajării nucleare” [Romania’s Perception On Nuclear Discouragement],
Revista de Istorie Militară, vol. 5,
no. 6 (2007), p. 6.
[vi] Francis J. Gavin, “Same As It Ever Was. Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War,” International Security, vol. 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009/2010), p. 17; R. Eliza Gheorghe,
“Romania’s Nuclear Negotiations Postures in the 1960s: Client, Maverick, and
International Peace Mediator,” Romania
Energy Center, 2012, pp. 21-22. Gheorghe’s basic premise is
that Romania was a Soviet Trojan horse and its independence a sham (e.g. “if there
was a maverick leader in Europe, it was de Gaulle and not
Ceauşescu.” (p. 24)). Caution is advised in that Gheorghe’s claims of a
Romanian nuclear weapons program, and of Ceausescu’s desire to acquire a bomb,
are not supported by the archival documents she cites.
[vii]
Raymond L. Garthoff, “When and Why Romania Distanced itself from the Warsaw
Pact,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (Spring
1995), p. 35; “Convorbiri neterminate cu Corneliu Mănescu” [Unfinished
Conversations with Corneliu Mănescu] in Lavinia Betea, Partea lor de adevar [Their Side of the
Truth], Bucharest, Compania, 2008, pp. 499-501.
The United States found
Romania’s repeatedly stated policy and consistent behavior against nuclear weapons persuasive. Consequently, it was
“seldom” concerned that “Romania would divert its civilian program to military
purposes.” Gheorghe (2012), pp. 21-22. Given the lack of evidence for any
military nuclear program after the collapse of Communism in
Romania, American faith seems to have been well-placed.
[viii] Memorandum of Conversation between Gheorghe Gaston-Marin and Averell Harriman, Washington, May 18, 1964, Document 142 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Vol. XVII, Eastern
Europe, p. 392; Gheorghe (2012),
p. 19. After noting, in 1964, that Romania, along with
Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Yugoslavia, was either building or
“considering the construction of nuclear power reactors which could be used to produce
plutonium,” and that therefore “might
reach a stage where they could initiate a weapons program in the next decade,”
the U.S. intelligence
community declared its belief that “none of them will do so.” National Intelligence Estimate: Prospects for a Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons Over the Next Decade (NIE 4-2-64), 21 October 1964, p. 14, History
and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, CIA Mandatory Review Appeal.
Obtained and contributed by William Burr. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115994.
[ix] U.S.-Romanian Nuclear Cooperation, SecState Washington D.C. to AmEmbassy
Ottowa, 3 February 1976, Margaret P. Grafeld, Declassified/Released U.S. Department of State EO Systematic Review, 4
May 2006, pp. 2-3, NARA, Access to Archives Database, http://aad.archives.gov/aad/createpdf?rid=106853&dt=2476&dl=1345.
[x] Ibid; Gheorghe (2012), p.
35.
[xi] E.g., German Reactor Components to Romania, SecState Washington D.C. to USMission
OECD Paris, 8 March 1976, and German Uranium to Romania, SecState Washington D.C. to USMission
OECD Paris, 10
April 1976, Margaret P. Grafeld, Declassified/Released
U.S. Department
of State EO Systematic Review, 4 May 2006, pp. 2-3, NARA, http://aad.archives.gov/aad/createpdf?rid=106853&dt=2476&dl=1345.
[xii] U.S.-Romanian Nuclear Cooperation (1976), http://aad.archives.gov/aad/createpdf?rid=106853&dt=2476&dl=1345.
[xiii] Ibid.
According to the assessment, “We postulate but cannot verify a third goal of
GOR policy,” namely that of keeping the nuclear weapon option open. This U.S.
postulate, along with Romania’s support of Chinese nuclear weapon acquisition
in order to counterbalance the Soviet nuclear monopoly within the communist
bloc, has been misinterpreted as representing an aim Romania actually
sought for itself. For example, absent the “trigger” indicators of a weapons program (actual plans, budgeting, weaponizing of
fissile materials, military involvement, etc.), one author simply asserts
“that Romania had a nuclear weapons program in the late 1970s and 1980s.” Not
surprisingly, the claim is unsourced. See Gheorghe (2012), pp. 3, 13-14, 21-22,
35. See also Eliza Gheorghe, “How to Become a Customer: Lessons from the Nuclear
Negotiations between the U.S., Canada and Romania in the 1960s,” Nuclear
Proliferation International History Project, Issue Brief #2, 24 April 2013, p.
2. Gheorghe also claims Ceausescu expressed the desire and intention to procure
a nuclear weapon in conversation with John S. Foster, the President of Atomic
Energy of Canada, Ltd, and Vice-President A. M. Aiken, in June 1976. However,
the transcript of that meeting (at the Romanian National Archives: ANR,
Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 79/1976, f. 10) indicates the
very opposite, reaffirming Romanian commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear
power while warning that nonproliferation was bound to fail unless the nuclear
powers stopped accumulating more weapons and moved to their reduction and
elimination. Eliza Gheorghe, “Frenemies, Nuclear Sharing, and Proliferation:
The Eastern Bloc, 1965– 1969,” paper prepared for the Nuclear Studies Research
Initiative workshop, Warrenton, Virginia, April 30 to May 2, 2015 available at www.academia.edu/14848234/Frenemies_Nuclear_Sharing_and_Proliferation_The_Eastern_Bloc_1965-1969.
[xiv] U.S.-Romanian Nuclear Cooperation (1976), http://aad.archives.gov/aad/createpdf?rid=106853&dt=2476&dl=1345.
[xv] The
Romanians repeatedly expressed to the Chinese that non-proliferation would work
only “if it is tied to a general process that encompasses non-proliferation,
nuclear disarmament, the interdiction of the use of nuclear weapons, and the
destruction of nuclear weapons.” But if it was “not tied to an entire process
of halting and destroying nuclear arms” then it would create a monopoly,
allowing those possessing them to keep them, “increase their number and develop
them further” without restriction, and granting a “political preponderance” to
“whoever has such a powerful club in hand” that could be imposed on non-nuclear
states. In consequence “every country that can build a nuclear weapon and that
considers it necessary to possess one will do so.” See e.g. the discussion
between Romanian Vice-President Emil Bodnaras and the Chinese Ambassador,
January 28, 1965, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 4/1965, f.
43-58. Ceausescu explained this in even greater detail to former Vice-President
Richard Nixon on March 22, 1967, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar
15/1967, f. 4, 16-20. For the USSR see Ceausescu’s conversation with the
President of the Soviet State Committee for Nuclear Energy, Andronik
Petrosiants, May 16, 1981, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar
53/1981, f.3, 7-12. For India see Ceausescu’s discussion with Indira Gandhi,
October 19, 1967, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 88/1967,
f. 4-6. For North Korea see the official Romanian-North Korean talks, May 20,
1978, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 66/1978, f. 2, 51-52
and Ceausescu’s discussion with Kim Il Sung, May 10-11, 1980, ANR, Fond CC al
PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 62/1980, f. 1, 26-27, 29-32. For Libya see
Ceausescu’s conversation with the Libyan Secretary for Nuclear Energy, Abdel
Magid Al-Kaud, December 2, 1981, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar
91/1981, f. 3-5.
[xvi] Nicolae
Ceauşescu in Hearst Interview and British Broadcasting Company (BBC), 9 July
1984.
Vladimir Socor, “Soviet-Romanian
Programs in Nuclear Energy Development,” RAD Background Report/129, RFER, 18
November 1985, pp. 1-2. Socor specified that all of his information came from
Soviet sources.
[xvii] See
e.g. Ceausescu’s statements in Minutes of
Discussion of Report by the Supreme UAF Commander at the PCC Meeting,
December 1978; Speech by the General
Secretary of the PCR (Nicolae Ceausescu), 4 January 1983; and Records of the PCC Meeting in Bucharest:
Speech by the General Secretary of the PCR (Nicolae Ceauşescu), 7 July 1989,
all Courtesy of PHP, www.php.isn.ethz.ch,
by permission of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich on behalf of the
PHP network.
[xviii]
Reuters (Budapest), 15 November 1988.
[xix]
Ceauşescu’s declaration was made before a Plenum of the Democracy and
Socialist Unity Front in Bucharest. Ionescu and Rîjnoveanu (2007), p. 6. On the other
hand, as former Romanian Foreign Minister Stefan Andrei observed, Ceausescu’s
statements on this point proved to be a major diplomatic “gaffe” since they
were easily spun as affirmations of dangerous intent and then used against
Romania by Moscow and Budapest. Lavinia Betea, I Se Spunea Machiavelli: Stefan Andrei in Dialog cu Lavina Betea [The
Call Me Machiavelli: Stefan Andrei in Dialogue with Lavina Betea], Bucharest,
Adevarul 2011, p. 254.
[xx] Radio
Bucharest, 14 April 1989, 2100 hrs. See
also Romania Situation Report/4, RFER, 4 May 1989, item 4.
[xxi] Transcript of Reception by Comrade Nicolae
Ceausescu, President of the Socialist Republic of Romania, of the President of
Atomic Energy Canada, Ltd (AECL), John S. Foster and of the Vice-President of
the Agency, A. M. Aiken, June 16,
1976, ANR, Fond CC al PCR, Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 79/1976, f. 1-15.
Presumably, the already ailing 82 year-old Ceauşescu was referring to the fact
that he would no longer be determining policy.
[xxii] Ibid.
[xxiii] Mohamed
ElBaradei, The Age of Deception: Nuclear
Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011, p. 42.
[xxiv] See Petre T. Frangopol, Mediocritate Si
Excelenta: O Radiografie a Stiintei si Invatamantului din Romania [Mediocrity
and Excellence: An X-Ray of Science and Education in Romania], volume II,
Cluj-Napoca, Casa Cartii de Stiinta, 2005, pp. 125-126. See also “Baietul’ lui
Ceausescu, Mort in Fasa” [Ceausescu’s ‘Little Boy,’ Dead in the Womb,”
Evenimentul Zilei, December 10, 2002, http://www.evz.ro/articole/detalii-articol/513785/Baietelul-lui-Ceausescu-mort-in-fasa/.
[xxv] Russian
Federation Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), The Nuclear Potential of Individual
Countries, 6 April 1995, at http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/svr_nuke.htm.
The SVR made its disclosure in 1995, when Romania suddenly appeared as a viable
candidate for first-round NATO admission.
[xxvi] Ibid.
See also “Officer Died at Explosion of Nuclear Object in Romania,” Omkpытaя Элekтproнная Газeтa [Open
Electronic Newspaper], February 25, 2009, http://forum-msk.org/english/material/eng_news/769077.html and “Ceausescu Effort to Build Nuclear Bomb Reported,”
Bucharest, Evenimentul Zilei, May 19, 1992, in FBIS-EEU-93-092, May 14, 1993,
p. 14. (A synopsis of this article appeared as “Romania Planned Atom Bomb”, Rompres,
26 May 1993.). See also “Baietul’ lui Ceausescu,
Mort in Fasa,” Evenimentul Zilei,
December 10, 2002.
[xxvii] As
one authority reported, the Romania’s Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA provided “for
material up to certain quantities to be exempted from safeguards” and the “Romanians
had asked the IAEA to exempt a small quantity of spent fuel and had then
conducted plutonium separation experiments in a hot cell.” Trevor
Findlay, “Proliferation Alert! The IAEA And Non-Compliance Reporting,” Project
On Managing the Atom, Report #2015-04, Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2015, p. 5,
footnote 87. Under the Safeguards Agreement (INFCIRC/180) reporting the
presence of one or more grams of plutonium was mandatory (at the time 8 kg were
thought necessary for a bomb). In its “definitions” section of the
agreement on transferring spent fuel to Romania for experimentation, the IAEA
identified the “units of account” as “grams of contained plutonium” and
“kilograms of contained thorium, natural uranium or depleted uranium.” See the
agreement concerning the IAEA's “Assistance to Romania for the Transfer of
Enriched Uranium for Irradiation Studies in a Research Reactor,” INFCIRC/307,
December 1, 1983, article 98, point d., pp. 10, https://www.iaea.org/publications/documents/infcircs/text-agreement-1-july-1983-concerning-agencys-assistance-romania. The
December 1985 experiment produced only one-tenth that amount (100 milligrams),
granting more room for interpretation then the finding of non-compliance
suggested. Moreover, INFCIRC/307 allowed that Romania could remedy any
determinations of non-compliance – “take fully corrective action within a
reasonable time” – before the IAEA Board would “take other measures.” See
article VI “Safeguards,” point 4, in Ibid, pages 3-4. Hans Blix signed
INFCIRC/307.
[xxviii]
Ibid; Findlay (2015), p. 5.
[xxix]
According to the preamble, “arrangements have been made between the Agency and
the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (hereinafter called
the “Soviet Union”) for the provision of uranium dioxide powder containing
enriched uranium for use in the project.” See also Article II, 1. & 2.,
INFCIRC (1983), p. 2.
[xxx]
Findlay (2015), p. 53; Ann MacLachlan, “Romania Separated Tiny Amount of
Plutonium in Secret in 1985,” Nucleonics Week, Vol. 33, No. 26, June 25,
1992, p. 16.
[xxxi] MacLachlan,
“Romania Separated Tiny Amount of Plutonium” (1992), p. 16
[xxxii]
Suzanna Van Moyland, Sustaining a
Verification Regime in a Nuclear Weapon-Free World, Research Report No 4,
London, Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), June 1999, pp.
14-15, http://www.vertic.org/media/Archived_Publications/Research_Reports/Research_Report_4_Van_Moyland.pdf;
Leonard S. Spector, Mark G. McDonough with Evan S. Medeiros, Tracking Nuclear Proliferation, New
York, Carnegie Endowment, 1995, pp. 83, 86.
[xxxiii] Van
Moyland (1999), pp. 14-15. Van Moyland’s third hypothesis, that the IAEA
remained silent in order to protect a source, is improbable. The IAEA
would have monitored the country more closely or, at the very least, recorded its
suspicions. It would not have ignored the transgression.
[xxxiv] Alex
Mihai Stoenescu, In sfirsit, adevarul …
General Victor Atanasie Stanculescu in dialog cu Alex Mihai Stoenscu
[Finally, The Truth … General Victor Atanasie Stanculescu in Dialogue with Alex
Mihai Stoenescu], Bucharest, RAO, 2009, pp. 210-214.
[xxxv] Ibid.
[xxxvi]
Stoenescu (2009), pp. 210-211. According to Stanculescu, “the Unit in Bacau,
the 404th Reconnaissance, was designated and instructed to handle a
bacteriologic attack against our major cities and in case the large water
reservoirs were hit.”
[xxxvii]
Author’s interview with General Ioan Talpes, former Director of Romanian
Foreign Intelligence (SIE) during 1992-1997, June 16, 1995.
[xxxviii] Proliferation specialists are divided on how to
classify Romania. On the one hand, Russian intelligence sources and Romanian
media insist that Ceausescu was pursuing and on the verge of acquiring a bomb. On the other, there is a thorough-going lack of concrete evidence to that effect. Some place Romania in the same category
as Sweden, Switzerland, West Germany, Italy, Norway, Australia, Japan,
Argentina, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia and Taiwan, all states that seriously
studied the possibility and desirability of acquiring a nuclear weapon and then
renounced the project as not worth the cost. See for example, Matthew Kroenig, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons
and Nonproliferation: Is There A Link?” Georgetown University, October 30,
2014, p. 22, footnote 14, p. 38, http://www.matthewkroenig.com/Kroenig_U.S.%20Nuclear%20Weapons%20and%20Nonproliferation.pdf. See
also Sonail Singh and Christopher Way, “The Correlates of Nuclear
Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict
Resolution, vol. 48, no. 6 (2004): 859-885. Others, relying on the authority of the Romanian
media and/or Russian intelligence and/or the defector Ion Mihai Pacepa (who
admits that he was a Soviet agent working for the KGB while deputy head of
Romanian foreign intelligence), classify it along with those pursing a nuclear
bomb, even while acknowledging that details of the program are woefully
“incomplete.” See e.g. Jacques E. C. Hymans, “Estimating the DPRK’s Nuclear
Intentions and Capacities: A Comparative Foreign Policy Approach,” EAI Working
Paper Series #8, East Asia Institute, April 2007, p. 23. And some start out
citing Romania as a case study of non-compliance only to consign it to a mere footnote
because of the lack of evidence or identifiable logic behind such an alleged
program. See e.g. Nuno P. Monteiro and Alexandre Debs, “The Strategic Logic of
Nuclear Proliferation,” International
Security, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 21, 23 and footnote 28. Compare also Hymans (2007) with Jacques Hymans, Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 67, 241.
[xxxix]
Findlay (2015), pp. 24, 37-38; IAEA, Record of GOV/OR Meeting 780, Tuesday,
June 16, 1992, 10:05 a.m.
[xl] Findlay (2015), p. 38. See also J.B. Poole and R.
Guthrie, editors, Verification 1993:
Peacekeeping, Arms Control and the Environment, London, Brassey’s/VERTIC,
1993, pp. 11-22.
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