Kittrie testifies before Congress

04/16/2008

Kittrie testifies before Congress on sanctions

Orde Kittrie 
Orde Félix Kittrie
     Orde Félix Kittrie, an associate professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, testified recently before the United States Senate Committee on Finance about sanctions against Iran detailed in the Iran Counterproliferation Act.
     At the April 8 hearing, Kittrie addressed public international law, trade law and humanitarian implications of the Act, which would significantly increase U.S. sanctions. The Act is designed to both directly impact Iranian policy and persuade other countries to lessen their ties to Iran in light of Iran's nuclear program and support for terrorism. 
      Kittrie, who teaches both criminal law and international law, has written several law review articles on the use of sanctions as a tool for deterring and containing illicit international behavior. He often applies criminal law theory and principles to the international arena.
     In recent months, Kittrie has worked on nuclear nonproliferation legal issues. In March, he traveled to Vienna, Austria, to speak on legal aspects of various proposals to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program. The symposium in which Kittrie participated was organized by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the Carnegie Moscow Center, and included participation by officials from the United States, Russia, Iran, Sweden, Egypt, Syria, China and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
     In February, Kittrie wrote the legal chapter for a new report produced by the National Academies of Science, in coordination with the Russian Academy of Sciences. The report is titled "The Future of the Nuclear Security Environment in 2015," and Kittrie's chapter analyzes critical legal issues necessary for future U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation.
     Prior to joining the ASU law faculty in 2004, Kittrie served for 11 years at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked extensively on both sanctions and nuclear issues.For three years, Kittrie served as an attorney specializing in trade controls, in which capacity he was a principal drafter of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, U.S. Executive Orders, and U.S. regulations imposing and implementing embargoes on terrorism-supporting and other outlaw regimes. After that, Kittrie served for 3½ years as the State Department's senior attorney for nuclear affairs.  In that capacity, Kittrie negotiated five nuclear non-proliferation agreements between the United States and Russia over the course of 16 trips to Moscow and served as counsel for the U.S. government's sanctions and other responses to the 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests.  Kittrie also helped negotiate at the United Nations the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, a treaty designed to thwart terrorist acquisition, use or threat of use of nuclear material.
     A video of Kittrie's testimony is available at http://www.senate.gov/~finance/sitepages/hearings.htm .  

 

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