There are front-burner issues and back-burner issues. The problem is that nothing is cooking on the front burners these days. That's the way it is with old stoves.
On the Washington stovetop, those front-burner issues are all the controversial ones that you see on the nonstop news. They're the ones where Republicans and Democrats attack each other and block each other especially in the deadlocked Senate, which is why nothing gets done on the front burner.
The back-burner issues are the ones that you almost never hear about on the news. They seem too complicated or not sufficiently controversial for the politicos to demagogue. They also are too complex for the media to tell you about easily and too dull for the ratings-crazed TV news.
But don't despair. We have found a big story that sounds at first like one of those boring back-burner issues. But it is so important that when it gets cooking, you will look back upon it as a major front-burner issue that just might defuse one huge nuclear bomb crisis.
Officially, its title has back-burner written all over it: The "Lugar-Bayh Nuclear Safeguards and Supply Act of 2007." But before it is all over, we may all be labeling it the "Call Iran's Nuclear Bluff Act of 2007."
Now that we have everyone's attention, let's look at the plan and the problem and what it just might be able to accomplish.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's universally esteemed former chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and his home-state counterpart, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have teamed up to sponsor this bill that would make it possible for all of those non-nuclear nations to obtain the nuclear fuel they require to build at last the nuclear-power installations they say they need. And it can be done in a way that can assure the rest of the world that they cannot divert the nuclear fuel to make a nuclear bomb.
The Lugar-Bayh plan would have the United States take a leading role in creating a nuclear fuel bank that would be run by the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations. And it would provide a pittance - $10 million - to modernize the IAEA's antiquated 1970s-era equipment. The IAEA would provide nations that seek to develop nuclear-power facilities with the enriched uranium they need to run the reactors that will produce nuclear power. But the rest of the deal is that the IAEA - the same U.N. outfit that inspects to determine if nations have clandestine nuclear-weapons programs - would be in charge of collecting the nuclear fuel to make sure it doesn't get diverted into bomb-making. The world remembers how India used President Dwight Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program to join the nuclear-bomb club.
In introducing his bill, Lugar praised the IAEA for having successfully halted the nuclear ambitions of many industrialized states over the years. Then he added: "Unfortunately, this regime has failed to keep pace with the increase in the global availability of nuclear-weapons technology ... Now the road to nuclear weapons can be traveled by determined countries with only a minimal industrial base."
As in North Korea and now Iran.
"... The spread of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities will dangerously increase the chances that new nations will develop nuclear weapons and that terrorists might obtain fissile or radiological materials for crude devices," said Lugar.
President Bush supported the concept in 2004. But he's been otherwise occupied of late. So you've heard nothing about it from his administration. That's how it is with back-burner issues. Iran assures us that its nuclear program is only for producing electric power. The world thinks otherwise, and Russia has got itself in the now-uncomfortable position of aiding Iran and providing its nuclear fuel. The question now is whether sanctions alone can halt Iran's march toward membership in the nuclear club.
But the Lugar-Bayh Act would tell Iran, in effect: If you mean what you say, here is a way you can get all the nuclear power you crave and do it at rock-bottom prices. So Lugar and Bayh are calling on the Bush administration to lead the world - perhaps in order to save the world.
No one can argue with Lugar's bottom line: "The construction of facilities for the enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in new states, even for ostensibly peaceful purposes, poses an unacceptable long-term risk to the national security of the United States."
Martin Schram can be reached by e-mail at martin.schram@gmail.com.)
