Sound crazy? Unfortunately, it's true.

Top Senate Republicans already have pushed through a measure that will allow U.S. weapons labs to begin studies on a so-called ``mini-nuke,'' intended not to deter a potential enemy but for use in small, regional wars. The measure is expected to pass when Congress debates the defense budget bill later this month. And even though the Pentagon says it ``has no requirement'' for such a new weapon, no one in President Clinton's lame-duck administration is expected to take on the issue.

Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Wayne Allard, R-Colo., ensured that the Senate version of the Defense Authorization Bill for fiscal year 2001 contains a provision to allow initial development studies on a nuclear weapon with an explosive yield of less than five kilotons. The senators acted in answer to an Air Force request for permis sion to explore creation of an earth-burrowing nuclear warhead that could be used in regional wars, such as the Gulf War or Kosovo, to destroy underground bunkers.

The aim would be to kill national leaders such as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, or to destroy stocks of biological/chemical weapons held by so-called ``rogue'' states. The thinking -- detailed in a recent paper, ``Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century'' by Stephen Younger, associate director for nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory -- is that such bunkers are often in urban areas, where use of a ``normal'' nuclear weapon would cause unacceptable damage and casualties to the civilian population. A ``mini-nuke,'' proponents argue, would be a sure way of killing a dictator, or wiping out stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, with little or no release of those agents into the environment.

Obviously, the development and deployment of a weapon with a relatively small explosive yield -- the Hiroshima bomb, regarded today as tiny, was a 15 kiloton weapon -- would be extremely dangerous, precisely because the military would regard it as ``usable.'' The negative political ramifications of launching a nuclear war apparently go unheeded by Younger and others promoting such a new weapon.

It is also absurd to assert that such a weapon could be employed without en dangering civilians. A mini-nuke dropped on San Francisco might only destroy Twin Peaks, not the entire city. But, even a small nuclear weapon would kill thousands of people and bring appalling suffering to thousands more victims of burns, radiation sickness, blindness and other injuries. Eventually, thousands more would suffer as the result of genetic deformities -- exactly as has happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And even with today's precision weapons, accurate delivery cannot be ensured. The accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy during NATO's Kosovo air war is a case in point.

War aside, a number of immediate negative consequences can be expected if the United States pursues ``mini-nukes.''

In the near term, nuclear weapons design and development activity at Department of Energy labs would be intensified. Eventually, there would be strong pressure to resume nuclear testing, as the weapon scientists seek to prove to the military that their new designs work. This would wreck the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, already weakened by its rejection by the Senate last year. In fact, there already is strong pressure from the U.S. nuclear labs, and members of Congress such as Sen. Allard, to abandon the test ban treaty and the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing. The United States' move to develop mini-nukes has the potential to spur proliferation. The refusal of the ``nuclear-haves'' to live up to obligations under the Non- Proliferation Treaty to pursue nuclear disarmament already has piqued India and Pakistan to acquire nuclear capability.

How can the world take seriously Washington's pledge, made during the May Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Review Conference, to make an ``unequivocal undertaking'' to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons, when at the same time U.S. officials are promoting new, more usable bombs?

Moreover, the United States has signed so-called negative security assurances -- promising not to launch a nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries. Doesn't the development of a ``mini-nuke'' make a mockery of those promises?

Is the U.S. government really ready to overthrow the international consensus that nuclear war would be the ultimate disaster, just for the chance to drop a bomb on Saddam Hussein? Does such a policy make strategic sense for a peaceful 21st century?

Those touting the use of battlefield nuclear weapons need to look up from their blueprints and recognize the potentially frightening results of their laboratory experiments.

Martin Butcher is director of security programs at Physicians for Social Responsibility. Theresa Hitchens is research director at the British American Security Information Council.

©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

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