Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

As has been true from the beginning, Congress appropriates no funds to the Commissionitself. The committees pursue their agendas and develop programs with fundsappropriated to the U.S. departments and agencies for the specific purposes of assistingRussia and conducting international activities.On the U.S. side, the evolution of the Commission strongly reinforced the importance ofsustaining interagency representation on the various committees. As the U.S. sidedemonstrated the benefits of interagency consultation and cooperation, the U.S.committee chairs noted a growing interest among the highly “stovepiped” Russianministries to work together. Still, the general reluctance of one Russian ministry to acceptthe participation of another in its area of responsibility remained a problem for theCommission, and was clearly evident in discussion of some matters related to proliferation.The one-on-one meeting has also evolved in several ways.• First, and most important, the success of the Vice President and the PrimeMinister in developing an effective working relationship led PresidentsClinton and Yeltsin to add new and increasingly difficult issues to the Gore-Chernomyrdin agenda. By resolving the question of the Russian sale ofmissile technology to India at their first one-on-one meeting in September1993, for example, the Vice President and the Prime Minister demonstratedthat they could take on and solve thorny problems related to proliferation.But they also found it necessary to devote more time to one-on-onemeetings, with the unintended consequence of appearing to diminish theimportance of the committees’ work.• Second, as the complexity of the issues given to Gore and Chernomyrdingrew, they decided on occasion to add selected experts to their privatediscussions, thus sometimes altering their one-on-one character butexpanding the degree of expertise brought to bear on a given problem. Thishas happened most frequently for the discussion of macroeconomicquestions, but sometimes occurs for discussions of security mattersinvolving highly technical details.• Third, the two presidents, recognizing the effectiveness of the Gore-Chernomyrdin process, soon began tasking the Vice President and thePrime Minister to prepare the agenda for Clinton-Yeltsin summit meetings.On several occasions this required Gore and Chernomyrdin to meet outsidethe Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission setting in order to coordinate theirdiscussions with the timing of presidential summits. It also focused the VicePresident and the Prime Minister ever more closely on security issues, suchas Russian nuclear cooperation with Iran.18