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US and China collaborated to move nuclear material from Nigeria, despite their rising rivalry

The United States and China reportedly collaborated to remove nuclear material from Nigeria last year " even at a time of growing military rivalry between the two countries " to minimise the risk of having the material fall into the hands of terrorists.

Nuclear experts from the US, China, British and Norway, as well as Czech and Russian contractors worked together to remove highly enriched uranium from a research reactor in Kaduna region of Nigeria that was increasingly believed vulnerable to a terrorist attack, the US-based Defence News website reported this month. China played a crucial role to transport and store the uranium.

The operation in October took place just hours after US President Donald Trump made an explicit threat to China about expanding the US nuclear arsenal.

Trump suggested that China's growing nuclear arsenal had contributed to his decision to pull out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the US and Russia, which banned short and medium-range nuclear and conventional missiles. Withdrawing from the pact would allow the US to deploy missile systems in Asia to counter China, military experts said.

Trump targets China by pulling out of missile deal with Russia

Speaking with reporters on October 22, Trump said "until people come to their senses, we will build [the nuclear arsenal] up. It's a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game."

Regardless of those tensions, Elsa Kania, an adjunct fellow specialising in US-China relations and Chinese military modernisation at the Centre for a New American Society, said, "the two countries clearly have deep understanding and alignment in pursuing mutual interest in nuclear safety."

Removing nuclear material from Nigeria has been an increasingly important goal for the United States and non-proliferation advocates in recent years.

The rise of militant groups, particularly Boko Haram, a jihadist militant organisation based in northeastern Nigeria, has become a growing threat. The Pentagon has labelled the group a major terrorist concern in the region.

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According to Defence News, China had provided technical support and backing in the development of the Nigerian Research Reactor 1 in Kaduna, which opened in 2004.

The reactor is a miniature neutron source reactor (MNSR), designed for scientific research and training, among other activities " powering experiments, not the local electrical grid.

The reactor, though, used highly enriched uranium, or HEU " that is, weapons-grade uranium used in nuclear weapons. But a global programme overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency has been replacing HEU with lightly enriched uranium (LEU), which is unusable for weapons. The operation in Kaduna had the approval and support of the Nigerian government.

The removal of the HEU was completed in one day, but it took six weeks before all logistics and security clearances were obtained to fly the material out to China.

By the time the material departed Nigeria on December 4, there were two more dust-ups in US-China relations: the meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina over trade issues that resulted in a 90-day "truce in the nations' tariff wars; and the arrest of Huawei Technologies chief finance officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada, at the request of the US on charges of violating sanctions against Iran.

New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran and Syria

Yet, despite their growing rivalry on economic, political and military fronts, Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military observer, said that China and the US recognise they have common ground in nuclear non-proliferation.

"China and the US share the interest in preventing nuclear materials from falling in the hands of terrorists," Song said. "This is an important area of non-proliferation cooperation."

"Both countries are hoping to maintain the global nuclear balance," he added.

The multinational collaboration to remove the HEU from the Nigerian plant was a result of a dialogue on nuclear security cooperation in February 2016, when China and the US agreed to support the conversion of miniature neutron source reactors (MNSR) in Nigeria and Ghana.

In a statement released by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Shen Lixin, deputy director general of the department of business development and international cooperation at the China National Nuclear Corporation, said that the HEU removal project "manifests the determination and joint effort of several governments and organizations in preventing nuclear proliferation."

"This is also a demonstration of the China National Nuclear Corporation's (CNNC) meeting its social responsibilities and the commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear energy," Shen said.

"CNNC is more than willing to work together and cooperate wholeheartedly with relevant parties to facilitate other MNSR conversion projects."

Richard Weitz, director of the Centre for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, said that while China and the US "have a good record" of keeping dangerous nuclear materials from non-state actors, there was a risk that they might not give enough attention to Africa and other less pressing cases.

"I am worried that they spend a lot of time yelling at each other on trade and IPR [intellectual property rights], but won't spend time on areas that they could cooperate", he said.

"I am hoping once we resolve the issues of trade, Taiwan and South China Sea, we will spend more attention on these areas.

"It is also good if the two presidents of the two countries to continue to meet to because they will try some areas for cooperation even when they disagree."

Kania said the operation was a reminder that US-China relations were stronger than recent frictions might suggest. "It is remarkable and encouraging that the US and China were able to cooperate at the time the relationship is deteriorating in trade," she said.

"This could hopefully provide a paradigm for the two countries on how to engage in future concerns."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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