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While the LLRW processing problem may not be the most 

 serious Arctic environmental threat from the perspective of 

 environmental risk, it illustrates how effective partnering, team 

 building, and sharing of technical know-how can help solve this 

 and other more complex Arctic environmental security issues. 

 Norway has been and continues to be a strong leader and partner 

 in our efforts in this region. 



Successful completion of this Murmansk Initiative can 

 provide a bridge to addressing broader Arctic environmental 

 contamination problems. Many of the remaining problems facing 

 the Arctic nations are either direct or indirect consequences of 

 the era of the Cold War. The nature of the environmental 

 problems exceeds the ability of any one nation or any one 

 governmental agency to successfully address. As the Murmansk 

 Initiative has demonstrated, we need cooperative efforts between 

 governments and cooperative efforts by the agencies or ministries 

 of the participating governments to develop the processes by 

 which the broad range of environmental problems in the Arctic can 

 be solved. 



I thank the members of both subcommittees for the 

 opportunity to address these important matters. 



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