The Bush administration is to discuss building a new generation of small nuclear weapons that could be used against hard-to-reach targets like underground bunkers, according to documents released by a nuclear disarmament advocacy group.
The Los Alamos Study Group posted on its Web site the minutes from a January 10 Pentagon meeting it said was called to plan a secret conference "to discuss what new nuclear weapons to build, how they might be tested... and how to sell the ideas to Congress and the American public."
According to the leaked documents, the conference of military officials and nuclear scientists would be held at US Strategic Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, possibly the week of August 4, 2003.
The Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Los Alamos group did not say how it obtained the documents which it said demonstrated the administration's "bold sweep of nuclear weapons planning."
"It's very rare that so many details about the nuclear weapons agenda of the Bush administration would appear in the same documents, in the same place," spokesman Greg Mello said in an interview on Tuesday explaining why the group had made the material public.
A spokeswoman for the Pentagon could not immediately confirm the meeting.
The release of the documents come as critics are questioning whether President George W. Bush's administration is contemplating lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in wartime.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, noted the administration's request for funds to study nuclear weapons that could be used against deeply buried targets.
"If the United States sends signals that we're considering new uses for nuclear weapons, isn't it more likely that other nations will also want to explore greater use or new uses for nuclear weapons?" Levin asked while questioning Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld said other countries were engaging in underground tunnelling to develop, manufacture and store weapons. He said that "not having the ability to penetrate and reach them creates a very serious obstacle to US national security."