/IPS ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN/ DISARMAMENT: U.N. Meet Wil Test Nuclear Commitments, Groups Say

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 5 1997 (IPS) - A two-week meeting to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be a key test of how nations intend to fulfill the treaty’s obligations, disarmament groups say — yet there is no guarantee that the talks will succeed.

Instead, says Dan Plesch, director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), recent statements by the governments of the world’s five declared nuclear powers — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States — indicate that they are not seriously considering eliminating their nuclear arsenals.

That, in turn, could make the NPT Preparatory Committee meetings that kick off next Monday a frustrating battle between nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” that could derail the current nuclear disarmament process, he warns.

“What we will see next week is whether or not there is a commitment by the nuclear weapons states to take their commitments seriously,” Plesch says. Those include the agreements in the ‘Principles and Objectives’ that accompanied the indefinite 1995 extension of the NPT, which established “the ultimate goal of eliminating (nuclear) weapons.”

However, recent events, including the March summit between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki, indicate that this goal is far from either government’s mind, Plesch argues. “There is no reference (in the Helsinki final document) to nuclear elimination,” he notes.

The nuclear “haves” can be expected to argue that they have fulfilled some of the key commitments agreed to in th Principles and Objectives — notably the conclusion of a nuclear test ban treaty last year and the start at Helsinki of U.S.-Russia talks for the framework of a ‘Start III’ nuclear reduction treaty.

But the “have-nots” are still smarting over the arm-twisting that led to the NPT’s indefinite extension by all 174 states party to the treaty two years ago. Shortly after the nuclear treaty was extended, developing nations were angered further that France and China quickly conducted nuclear tests, breaking an unofficial understanding to avoid such testing.

Those nations may now try to bring further pressure to bear on the five declared powers to work toward nuclear elimination. A ruling last year by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that any use of nuclear arms could be illegal by international law has especially inspired some nations which want to use the decision to prod the five powers into further commitments to reduce their arsenals.

“I would expect Malaysia in particular to bring up the ICJ ruling, and I think there would be a lot of support for it among the non-aligned states,” says one Asian ambassador, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity.

That may not be the only split between North and South at the NPT meetings. Western nations have nominated Ambassador Pasi Patokallio to chair the two-week meetings, Plesch says, but many developing nations want to see a Southern candidate in that spot. Diplomats have mentioned Ambassador Isaac Ayewah of Nigeria as a possible candidate from the developing world.

Other procedural issues — including whether or not the preparatory talks yield a report, and what form it would take — could easily bog down the meetings, Plesch says. If that happens, he warns, “it would be an extremely damaging start, and the treaty would be damaged.”

Yet even as the nuclear powers ignore the issue of nuclear elimination, experts and polls alike in major nuclear nations show growing support for such elimination.

In one poll released Thursday by the non-governmental group ‘Abolition 2000’, the Lake Sosin Snell and Associates polling firm found that 84 percent of U.S. respondents said they would feel safer in a world without nuclear arms. Eighty-seven percent of those polled wanted the United States to negotiate an agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and 77 percent said that the nuclear arms budget is too high.

The firm found that support for nuclear elimination was hig among men and women, and Republicans and Democrats. “Rarely do we see such a broad consensus on this type of public policy issue,” says Celind Lake, president of Lake Sosin Snell and Associates. “The great nuclear public-policy divide of the post-Second World War era has gone the way of the Cold War.”

In fact, some old Cold Warriors, including Gen. George Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of U.S. Strategic Command, have also joined the camp arguing that elimination is possible and needed.

Butler, a member of the steering committee of the Committee on Nuclear Policy, joined a statement by the Committee in January that the United States should “restate forcefully its commitment to the ultimate goal of eliminating nuclear weapons by verifiable international agreements.”

But the Pentagon, and the Republican-led U.S. Congress, are unlikely to heed that advice in the current climate in Washington, which has seen almost no consideration of nuclear elimination, says Plesch. Nor is Russia likely to do better. Sergei Karaganov, an arms control advisor to Yeltsin, said recently that he is “deeply sceptical that the Duma (Russian parliament) will ratify the Start II (arms reduction) treaty.”

With Britain in the throes of an eletion campaign, that state of affairs indicates that most of the nuclear powers are unlikely to adopt any major commitments toward nuclear reduction now, Plesch argues.