WASHINGTON -- President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia pledged last week to work together to lock up vulnerable nuclear material, biological agents, and other deadly weapons.
But even before their meeting in Slovakia was complete, the agreement to expand US-Russian cooperation that was begun in 1993 rang hollow to many leading nonproliferation specialists. Virtually nothing has been done, they said, to overcome the legal liability disagreements, US and Russian refusal to open up some of their facilities, and other red tape that has kept tons of weapons at risk of theft since the end of the Cold War.
''I still worry whether there is enough of a management structure in place to make this happen," said Graham Allison, director of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and author of ''Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe." ''This is not something you can do simply by signing a piece of paper."
Indeed, the dozens of projects that make up the Cooperative Threat Reduction program -- securing nuclear facilities, destroying stocks of chemical weapons, and safeguarding bioweapons labs -- remain mired in bureaucracy in both the United States and Russia.
The Russians have not been forthcoming on many aspects of their vast weapons complex, while US legal restrictions have delayed many of the efforts, specialists said.
There have been nettlesome conflicts over the liability of US personnel given access to Russian weapons sites, delaying many programs. ''Failure to resolve this legal issue has prevented construction of key facilities in the United States and Russia to dispose of 68 tons of weapons-grade plutonium," according to the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a Washington think tank.
At the same time, some of Russia's most prized nuclear and biological research centers, where the Soviets are believed to have genetically engineered the most deadly and resistant pathogens, remain off limits to international nonproliferation specialists.
''It is unfortunate that there were no major breakthroughs on the impediments that are hobbling the realization of their nuclear security goals," Ken Luongo, executive director of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, said of the Bush-Putin meeting. These include ''the disputes over access to facilities, transparency, and liability protections," he said. ''Deadly terrorists are seeking [weapons of mass destruction] and they are not waiting."
Meanwhile, despite repeated calls to name a nonproliferation chief on each side to oversee and coordinate the efforts, successive US and Russian administrations have failed to give the undertaking the high-level attention it deserves, according to a variety of specialists on the subject.
In the United States, the result has been a collection of overlapping threat reduction programs spread across a variety of agencies.
The Government Accountability Office reported last month that five federal departments -- Defense, Energy, State, Homeland Security, and Commerce -- all implement a variety of threat reduction programs.Bush and Putin, meeting in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, pledged to ''bear a special responsibility for the security of nuclear weapons and fissile material, in order to ensure that there is no possibility such weapons or materials would fall into terrorist hands."
They agreed to share ''best practices" for improving security at nuclear facilities; lock up nuclear reactors and material around the world that were initially designed by US and Russian scientists; create joint response plans in the event of a nuclear or radiological incident; and work to ensure that portable, shoulder-fired missiles that can shoot down civilian aircraft are kept away from terrorists.
The two leaders also set up a ''senior interagency group" to oversee implementation of cooperative efforts and to report back on a regular basis on their progress.
But while welcoming the high-level attention given to the problem in Slovakia on Thursday, many specialists fear the momentum will quickly dissipate unless strong action is taken to break through the many obstacles that have held some of the efforts hostage.
Former Democratic senator Sam Nunn, who along with Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, authored the legislation that began the $1.6 billion Cooperative Threat Reduction program, said a variety of issues that remain ''missing in action."
He said liability and access obstacles must be removed. ''There must be an increased measure of reciprocal transparency on both the US and Russian side and an enhanced effort to foster a true partnership to achieve this imperative security agenda," said Nunn, now cochairman of the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington.
Retired Army Lieutenant General Robert Gard, a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said a major shortcoming has been the failure to appoint threat reduction chiefs whose sole job would be to manage each nation's efforts and report directly to Bush and Putin.
''Both presidents should designate top officials to be accountable to them for leading these efforts to keep nuclear weapons and the materials out of hostile hands, and to ensure that their new commitments are implemented effectively," he said.
Bipartisan pressure is building in Congress to elevate and accelerate the efforts. At least four bills are pending -- including one authored by Lugar -- that would lift some of the legal restrictions and allow the United States to spend some of the threat reduction money more freely.
Representative Heather Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Republican Policy Committee's national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, coauthored a report last month calling for a dramatic increase in US efforts and creation of a single set of goals and priorities to be used by all the threat reduction programs.
''Treaties alone will not protect us from this threat," she said.
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.