Today Rep. Ed Markey, the co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation, released the following statement on the press reports that the Bush administration has struck a deal with the Russian government to make it the de facto international marketplace for terrorists seeking nuclear materials:

"President Bush's foreign policy has become so hollow that his favorite bargaining position is to give everything away.  He is repeatedly rewarding bad behavior.  First, India refuses to stop building new nuclear weapons and Bush rewards them with a nuclear deal that blows a hole in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  Now, Russia insists on providing nuclear fuel to Iran's power reactors and refuses to put real pressure on Tehran, and Bush responds by proposing to give them billions of dollars for storing spent fuel.  Russia hasn't even been able to secure its own stockpiles of nuclear materials, and now the Bush administration is proposing to make Russia the world's nuclear waste dump.  It'll be one-stop shopping for nuclear terrorists and would-be proliferators. This is an ill advised proposal that the bush administration should reconsider immediately."