DISARMAMENT: South Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in Jeopardy

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 1998 (IPS) - India’s five underground nuclear tests this week, and the threat of a matching response from Pakistan, have all but ended a longstanding U.N. proposal for a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in South Asia.

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala admits it is unlikely that the proposed South Asian NWFZ will be a reality, particularly following the Indian tests.

Currently, Europe, Middle East and South Asia are the only three geographical regions without NWFZs, although there are several proposals before the 185-member General Assembly for the creation of such zones in each of the three regions.

“A basic tenet in the establishment of nuclear-weapons-free zones is that they must be freely arrived at on the basis of arrangements among all states in the region,” Dhanapala told IPS.

“In both South Asia and the Middle East, despite resolutions in the General Assembly over several years, it is well known that there is no consensus among the states in the region,” he added.

Dhanapala said the role of the United Nations was ultimately that of a “facilitator or a catalyst” after the states in a particular region have agreed on creating a non-nuclear weapons zone.

The U.N. Department for Disarmament Affairs, he said, has moved swiftly to assist five Central Asian states which are currently planning to set up an NWFZ in the region. In February 1997, the five countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – declared in Almaty their agreement to establish a Central Asian NWFZ.

“We have to await the forging of a similar consensus in other regions for the United Nations to act, but our advice and assistance is available at all times,” Dhanapala added. Such zones, he argued, not only prevent nuclear proliferation in the regions in which they are established but also shrink the area in which nuclear weapons can be stationed.

When nuclear weapons states have signed protocols respecting NWFZs, the under-secretary-general noted, they confer assurances on neighbouring states that they will not be attacked or threatened with nuclear weapons.

Currently, there are 114 states signatories of treaties establishing NWFZs. With the addition of Antarctica, demilitarised under the Antarctic Treaty, the regions cover more than 50 percent of the earth’s land mass.

The February 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (also known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco) was the first NWFZ, which has also served as a model for the promotion of other similar zones. The 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga has set up an NWFZ in the South Pacific, while the 1995 Bangkok Treaty and 1996 Pelindaba Treaty have done the same in Southeast Asia and Africa, respectively.

Meanwhile, Mongolia has initiated the establishment of a single- state nuclear weapon-free zone covering its entire territory. A proposal by Belarus to establish “a nuclear-weapon-free space” in the centre of Europe is still in the initial stages of consideration. In December 1991, South and North Korea signed a Joint Declaration on the Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, which is yet to be implemented.

South Asia is not the only region where political conflict has frustrated efforts to eradicate nuclear weapons. Although most Arab states have proposed an NWFZ in the Middle East, Israel is seeking certain “prerequisites” before it could agree to such a zone.

The Israeli government argued in a letter to U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan last year that “some regional states still refuse to forswear war as a means of settling disputes and attempt, directly or indirectly, to impede the peace process – including by means of terror.” As a result, the government said, the prerequisites for meaningful discussions about a Middle East NWFZ “are still missing.”

Similarly, diplomats here agree that any chance of significant progress toward a South Asian NWFZ has been dimmed by the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan since Monday, when India’s right-wing coalition government conducted the nation’s first nuclear tests since 1974.

U.N. Under-Secretary-General Vladimir Petrovsky, Secretary- General of the Conference on Disarmament, underscored last year that there are still “uncertainties and serious challenges” in eliminating both nuclear and conventional weapons. “A new international security agenda must be agreed that takes account of our rapidly changing world,” he said.