DISARMAMENT-UN: Move to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 11 1998 (IPS) - Ireland and Sweden are spearheading a move at the United Nations for a resolution calling for measures leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

“We are looking for a millennium free of nuclear weapons,” says Michael Hoey of Ireland.

If the 185-member General Assembly adopts the proposed resolution by the end of this year, it will be the first time that the United Nations has called for the abolition of nuclear weapons. But the move appears destined to encounter opposition – or only lukewarm support – from the world’s five major nuclear powers, the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

All five countries hold the power of veto as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and traditionally have cold- shouldered any proposals to eliminate nuclear weapons from their arsenals.

Ireland and Sweden took the initiative Tuesday in announcing a the joint declaration “towards a nuclear-weapons-free world.” The declaration also bears the signatures of the foreign ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia and South Africa.

Hoey says the declaration was planned long before the recent nuclear tests by India and Pakistan although he notes that the series of underground tests by the two South Asian countries t adds urgency to the declaration.

The ministers are calling on the governments of the five nuclear weapon nations and the three nuclear-weapons-capable states – India, Pakistan and Israel – to commit themselves “unequivocally” to the elimination of their respective nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons capability.

The declaration also calls on these eight countries to start work immediately on the practical steps and negotiations required for its achievement.

“We agree tha the measures resulting from such undertakings leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons will begin with those states that have the largest arsenals,” the declaration says.

The ministers also point out that disarmament measures alone will not bring about a world free from nuclear weapons. “Effective international cooperation to prevent the proliferation of these weapons is vital and must be enhanced through, inter alia, the extension of controls over all fissile material and other relevant component of nuclear weapons.”

The declaration calls for other measures pending the total elimination of nuclear weapons: “Legally binding instruments should be developed with respect to a joint no-first-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states, the so-called ‘negative security assurances’.”

The ministers admit that the maintenance of a world free of nuclear weapons “will require the underpinnings of a universal and multilaterally negotiated legally binding instrument or framework encompassing a mutually reinforcing set of instruments.”

Last year the Canberra Commission – consisting of a group of international nuclear experts – said that “the proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility.”

“The only complete defense is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again,” the Commission said.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times this week, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that U.S. national security strategy is built around nuclear weapons; “yet the rhetoric of the (U.S.) administration stigmatizes them in such absolute terms as to come close to undermining our policy.”

Kissinger said the government is right in resisting nuclear proliferation, “but it must not in the process disarm America psychologically…Nuclear weapons cannot be abolished; no inspections system could account for them all. We have every duty to resist the acquisition of nuclear weapons by rogue nations and guarantee our own security.”

Kissinger believed U.S. nuclear disarmament would be viewed by hostile powers as further incentive for their nuclear efforts and as a strategic opportunity.