DISARMAMENT: UN Conference Minimises Import of US Missile Stance

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Sep 8 2000 (IPS) - The irreconcilable differences between the world’s nuclear powers, for the third consecutive year, have frustrated the work of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, which was not able to establish an agenda of activities during this year’s period of sessions now drawing to a close.

The discord revolves around the United States project to build a National Missile Defence system (NMD). China, Russia and other nuclear capable countries reject the initiative.

It made no difference that US President Bill Clinton announced Sep 1 he would leave the final decision on installing the controversial NMD to his successor, who will be elected in November and take office in January 2001.

Of the candidates with a chance at winning the US presidential seat, the Republican Party’s George W. Bush openly supports the missile plan, while Democrat Al Gore agrees in principle but conditions implementation on the adequate management of this war technology.

The UN Conference on Disarmament received Clinton’s announcement with indifference during its current period of sessions in Geneva. Only Washington’s ambassador to the conference, Robert T. Grey, seemed to give it any importance.

“There are no more excuses for not getting down to work,” he said.

A Latin American diplomat acknowledged the weight of Clinton’s announcement, but observed that Bush could win the elections, a possibility that would give Russia and China an excuse to obstruct the Conference’s work.

NMD, say its critics, would alter global strategic stability and lead to a new arms race in outer space as well on the earth’s surface.

To counterbalance the system, Russia and China are promoting negotiations among the Conference’s member states on a treaty known as the Prevention of the Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS).

The United States has agreed to discuss the issue but flatly refused to engage in formal negotiations.

This difference of opinion has been the principal cause behind the stagnation of work in this multilateral forum because it also blocks progress on other pending issues.

The Conference has achieved consensus on the mechanism for negotiations on a treaty to ban the production and export of fissile material destined for the manufacture of nuclear warheads, the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

Russia and China are blocking formal approval of this mechanism, however, because they want it to be negotiated simultaneously with PAROS.

The dispute between the nuclear powers also conspires against the nuclear disarmament question, an issue that is of particular interest to the world’s developing countries.

The five recognised nuclear powers (United States, Russia, China, Britain and France) want bilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament, without the participation of other countries, not even others that possess nuclear weapons, such as India, Israel and Pakistan.

Under pressure from developing countries and international peace organisations, the five powers ultimately agreed to discuss, though not negotiate, nuclear disarmament. But the issue is also a hostage to the dispute on weapons in outer space.

The Conference concludes its annual sessions this month without approving mechanisms to examine the three principal issues – a ban on production of fissile material, the prevention of an arms race in outer-space and nuclear disarmament – or other questions, such as negative security assurances, anti-personnel landmines and transparency in armaments.

The only honourable way out of this stagnant situation, commented diplomats at the Conference, would be if the report the forum must present yearly to the UN General Assembly indicates hope for positive developments during the next period of sessions, to begin in January.

The weakening of the Conference mostly jeopardises non-nuclear countries, especially those that have decided to renounce these weapons entirely, observed Brazilian ambassador Celso Amorim.

Nuclear powers, meanwhile, do not need this negotiating arena, turning instead to bilateral talks in attempts to balance their arsenals.

With the Conference’s failure, said Amorim, developing countries lose the forum where they have been able to debate the control and reduction of other types of weapons that are of greater interest to them, such as smaller arms, which have dominated regional conflicts in recent years.