DISARMAMENT: Geneva Conference May End in ‘Sweet Nothingness’

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 11 2000 (IPS) - The United Nations Conference on Disarmament (CD) began its final period of sessions for this year by reinstating the inactivity that has plagued the international forum for more than three years – the result of its failure to adopt a “programme of work.”

Since the beginning of this year, the CD has had an agenda with three controversial issues: a ban on production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, the prevention of an arms race in outer-space and nuclear disarmament.

As in previous years, the forum has been paralysed by the inability of delegates to agree on negotiating mechanisms to advance discussion on these three points.

Apathy, evident in the continued decline in the number of speakers in previous sessions, reached its worst levels Thursday as the session lasted only 15 minutes because not one delegation had signed up to speak.

The climate at the CD stands in sharp contrast to the promising commitments achieved in May by another important international disarmament forum, the conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

At the New York meeting of the NPT, the five recognised world nuclear powers – China, France, Great Britain, Russia and the United States – agreed to begin eliminating their nuclear arsenals.

But, despite that precedent, the atmosphere in Geneva is sober. Since it finished drafting the text of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1997, the CD has not recorded progress on any substantive issues.

After the advances of the NPT, now more than ever the Conference on Disarmament can consider itself an organisation of ‘dolce far niente’ (sweet inactivity), said Sergey Martynov, the delegate from Belarus who served in the rotating presidency for May’s CD sessions.

The president of the current sessions, Celso Amorim, from Brazil, is also concerned about the consequences of the forum’s stagnation, saying it could undermine confidence in the future of disarmament and of efforts against nuclear proliferation.

But Amorim, Brazil’s former foreign affairs minister, points out that the CD has overcome other similar situations and he prefers to focus on the fact that a sense of crisis or urgency has not yet developed.

In the two remaining weeks of his CD presidency, Amorim proposes to combine the texts of the proposals that have not been approved after being presented by his two predecessors, Martynov and Belgian delegate Jean Lindt.

He also plans to continue consultations with the various delegations to seek suggestions to get the programme of work back on track.

Earlier this year, the Martynov had proposed taking up each of the issues separately until the forum could establish a formula for understanding.

Lindt’s idea was more precise, as he outlined negotiation mechanisms and their jurisdictions. He recommended creating a special commission to co-ordinate talks for a ban on production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

For nuclear disarmament, he proposed a working group, with a somewhat limited mandate, for sharing information and points of view on the practical steps necessary to reach the objective.

Lindt also proposed a special committee or working group for the single purpose of identifying aspects or initiatives that could serve as the foundation for eventually drafting a treaty to prevent a nuclear arms race in outer-space.

China, which is pushing for action on the weapons in space issue, rejects any proposal that does not include talks about a legal instrument to regulate this area of disarmament.

The nuclear arms race in space is an issue the CD debated from 1985 until 1996, as a consequence of former US president Ronald Reagan’s plans known as “Star Wars.”

The issue resurfaced when the United States began studying plans to create a national anti-missile defence system, an idea Washington justified as necessary to prevent the development and use of long-range missiles by what are now known in US diplomatic parlance as “states of concern,” and include North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

On the point of nuclear disarmament, Lindt’s proposal ran up against opposition from non-aligned countries, which demand concrete steps towards disarmament and non-proliferation.

But the nuclear powers prefer to keep such negotiations among the five countries that possess the 35,000 nuclear warheads in existence today.

The United States, with the support of European countries, favours immediate negotiations for the treaty on fissile material in order to control production of potential nuclear weapon inputs, especially plutonium, which is thought to be available on the underground market after the fall of the Soviet Union.

A legal instrument for a ban on fissile material production would also likely stop future development of the three nascent nuclear powers: India, Pakistan and Israel.