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Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI)

Date: 01/20/2009 Description: Blue envelope icon, used for email subscriptions. State Dept Photo

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The Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI) is headed by Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller.  The Bureau's core missions are to ensure that appropriate verification requirements and capabilities are fully considered and properly integrated throughout the development, negotiation, and implementation of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements and commitments and to ensure that other countries' compliance is carefully watched, rigorously assessed, appropriately reported, and resolutely enforced. In this regard, the Bureau is responsible for preparing the President's annual report to Congress on Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments. The Bureau is further required to prepare verifiability assessments on proposals and agreements, and to report these to Congress, as required. The Bureau also prepares the President's semi-annual Iran, North Korea, Syria Nonproliferation Report to Congress, which identifies entities that engage in the transfer of controlled items to and from Iran, North Korea, and Syria and authorizes the imposition of sanctions against these entities.

As required by statute, the Bureau also is responsible for ensuring that U.S. intelligence capabilities to collect, analyze, and disseminate precise and timely information bearing upon matters of verification and compliance -- e.g., on the nature and status of foreign governments' Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and delivery system programs -- are effectively acquired, maintained, and enhanced. VCI is designated by law as the principal policy community representative to the Intelligence Community with regard to verification and compliance matters, and uses this role -- and the access to and interaction with the Intelligence Community that it entails -- both to promote, preserve, and enhance key collection and analytic capabilities and to ensure that verification, compliance, and implementation intelligence requirements are met.

Robust verification, compliance, and implementation are essential to maintaining and strengthening the integrity of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament regimes. In this regard, the Bureau leads the Department in all matters related to the implementation of certain international arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements and commitments. This includes staffing and managing treaty implementation commissions, creating negotiation and implementation policy for agreements and commitments, and developing policy for future arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament arrangements. The Bureau also leads the Department in providing sophisticated support to arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament policymaking, including information technology support and secure, near-real-time government-to-government communications linkages with foreign government treaty partners.

United States Statement on Verification and Compliance
Alexander Liebowitz, Advisor of U.S. Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, spoke at UNGA First Committee: Thematic Debate. Full Text

Secretary Clinton's Travel to Russia
In Moscow, the Secretary met with senior Russian officials to discuss progress on a successor agreement to START, cooperation on nonproliferation and counterterrorism, and next steps for the Clinton-Lavrov commission. More from Travel

START Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms
The data in this fact sheet comes from the most recent aggregate MOU data exchanged by the Parties no later than 30 days after the expiration of each six-month period following entry into force of the START Treaty. Full Text

The Long Road From Prague
Assistant Secretary Gottemoeller (Aug. 14):
"President Obama and Secretary Clinton both have made clear their views on nuclear weapons reductions and have made a commitment, a commitment that I share, to making future generations safe from the horrors of nuclear war." Full Text

Russia: Round of Post-START Talks Completed
Assistant Secretary Crowley (July 24): "Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller has completed a negotiating round with her Russian counterparts in Geneva...continuing to make positive progress, following up on the summit last month and working-–or this month, and working towards a replacement START agreement by the end of the year." Full Text 

The Legacy of START and Related U.S. Policies
The U.S. and the former Soviet Union signed the START Treaty in 1991. Pursuant to the provisions of that Treaty, due to expire in December of this year, the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus have destroyed hundreds of bombers and ballistic missiles and have removed thousands of nuclear warheads from their operational forces. Full Text