DISARMAMENT: China and US Clash Over Arms Race in Outer Space

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 15 2001 (IPS) - The discrepancies between the United States and China regarding the question of an arms race in outer space have once again blocked the work of the Disarmament Conference.

The chairman of the conference, Canada’s Christopher Westdal, said the lack of agreement on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) had made it impossible to achieve a consensus on a working programme.

The work of the conference has been paralysed for three years due to the failure to reach agreement. The central points on the conference’s agenda are PAROS, nuclear disarmament and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), otherwise known as the Prohibition of Production of Fissile Material Used in Nuclear Weapons and Other Nuclear Explosive Devices.

The problems crop up when the 66 members of the conference begin to discuss a working programme for the sessions to take place over the coming year, which consists of assigning the debates on each issue to special committees or coordinators.

The Group of 21, comprised of members of the non-aligned movement, proposed a “balanced” annual working plan that would keep the conference from limiting its discussions to questions of interest to the nuclear powers.

But in the past few years, several countries have conditioned their approval of the working plan on obtaining benefits in the discussions of questions of greater interest to their disarmament strategy.

Thus, countries that are keen on further developing their nuclear capacity, like China, India and Pakistan, have blocked the debate on the FMCT, which would keep them from producing the plutonium needed to build more nuclear warheads.

Meanwhile, the five big powers – the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain – are opposed to negotiating nuclear disarmament within the conference, and want bilateral talks instead.

But the staunchest opposition to any progress in multilateral talks on nuclear disarmament comes from France, according to an expert close to the conference, who preferred not to be identified.

While nearly all of the countries agree on the question of preventing an arms race in outer space, the United States is studying the possibility of putting a national missile defence system in place.

Washington is not interested in discussing the question of outer space because in that area it is 30 years ahead of the other powers, said the source.

The differences in views regarding the question of outer space were highlighted in the last session of the conference Thursday, when China expressed concern over reports on space war exercises recently staged by the United States.

Hu Hiadoi, China’s chief disarmament negotiator, said “we are seriously concerned about the report of a space war exercise that took place late last month. The exercise used the outer space as the battlefield, and its scenario was set to happen in 2017.”

The United States maintains that the treaties in effect since 1967 on an arms race in outer space are sufficient to guarantee peace and security on that front.

The Chinese and U.S. delegations, meanwhile, mutually accuse each other of blocking the negotiations. According to U.S. ambassador Robert T. Grey Jr., China has been using “diplomatic tactics which have the net effect of blocking discussion of the very issues they say they care about.”

Westdal, meanwhile, warned that “the linkages in our long- pending proposal threaten to preclude any unprogrammed treatment whatever of any of its subjects, leaving us in the awkward position of wanting to treat substance credibly – without touching fissile material, nuclear disarmament or the prevention of an arms race in outer space,” the key points on the agenda.

Westdal’s term as chairman of the conference ended this week, and as of next week, the new chair will be Chilean ambassador Juan Enrique Vega, after which the post will go to China’s Hu.

But the last chance for keeping this year’s period of sessions from turning into a failure lays with Vega, said the source.

Given the fact that he is an active party to the stand-off, China’s representative will have a hard time creating the conditions essential to achieving the climate of consensus necessary to pull out of the deadlock, he said.