Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary General from 1997 to 2007 and 2001 Nobel Peace Prize-winner, who died on Aug. 18, seen together with Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello (left), one of his right-hand men and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who died in Baghdad in 2003. Credit: Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Aug 21 2018 (IPS)

Kofi Annan’s stature as a global leader grew after he finished his second term as United Nations Secretary-General in 2006. Time confirmed his excellence in defending the principles and values of multilateralism, which is currently on the decline and subject to all kinds of attacks.

Some of the crucial actions carried out by Annan, who died on Aug. 18, such as condemning the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, had the key backing of two Brazilian diplomats.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003, was U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Annan’s right-hand man in dealing with conflicts and rebuilding shattered nations.

He was sent to Iraq as the secretary-general’s special representative in May 2003, two months after the invasion, a spectacle of violence and bombings instantly reported by the global media.

A truck bomb destroyed the Canal Hotel used as a U.N. office in Baghdad.

Vieira and 21 other U.N. officials were killed in the suicide attack by the Al-Zarqawi organisation, the seed of what would later call itself the Islamic State (IS), according to Carolina Larriera, Vieira’s Argentine widow and a member of his team who survived in the rubble.

In memory of the victims, the U.N. General Assembly decided in 2008 to designate Aug. 19 as World Humanitarian Day, dedicated to all those who risk their lives to assist people affected by armed conflicts and other crises.

Vieira, a Brazilian who worked at the U.N. since he was 21, died at the age of 55 as a hero of humanitarian and peace operations in the most dangerous situations, in Bangladesh, Sudan, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru and Iraq.

He mediated conflicts in Cambodia, Lebanon, Rwanda and other countries, while in Kosovo and East Timor he supported the “building of new nations.”

Between 1999 and 2002 he led the U.N. peacekeeping forces that oversaw the transition to independence of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony occupied by Indonesia since 1975.

The son of a Brazilian diplomat, Vieira rose through the ranks of the United Nations, occupying positions in its refugee and human rights agencies.

He reached the peak of his career in the missions commissioned by Annan, such as the operation in East Timor. Many even pointed to him as a possible successor to the secretary general because of his proven capacity and extensive experience.

“Annan was a giant at the United Nations,” the last great promoter of multilateralism, which has recently lost momentum, overtaken by the current wave of nationalism,” said Clóvis Brigagão, a political scientist who headed the Centre for the Study of the Americas at a university in Rio de Janeiro.

Born in Ghana 80 years ago, Annan was the first black U.N. secretary-general. He held the position from 1997 to 2006.

He was recognised as perhaps the last global head of state that the powers-that-be allowed the world and as a leader who promoted human rights as a priority and strengthened the mechanisms of peace, democratisation and development.

One of his triumphs was to achieve a consensus on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that set 17 targets to reduce poverty, hunger, child and maternal mortality, among other scourges of humanity, from 2000 to 2015.

Expanded and renewed, 169 targets now make up the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDOs), the heirs to the MDGs, seeking to promote social, human, environmental and economic advances by 2030.

For his work, Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the U.N. in 2001.

But it was the tragedy in Iraq that marked his two terms at the General Secretariat, as the first career staffer to be promoted to the top post in the U.N.

During that crisis, in addition to Vieira he also had the support of another Brazilian diplomat, José Mauricio Bustani, in adopting a position against the invasion by the U.S.-led coalition that also included Great Britain, Australia and Poland.

Bustani had led the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) since it was created in 1997 to enforce the international convention that seeks to eradicate these weapons worldwide.

His reports were key to the U.S. government’s decision to attack Iraq under George W. Bush (2001-2009), in what was known as the second Gulf War (2003-2011) after the one that took place between 1990 and 1991.

The pretext for the attack was the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction, mainly chemical weapons, in the hands of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In 2001, Bustani was negotiating Iraq’s accession to the OPCW, which would allow for inspections and would prove, according to him, the absence of such weapons in the country.

This was a challenge to the U.S. government, which exerted pressure that led to Bustani’s removal from the organisation in 2002. A year later, Iraq was bombed under a justification that was never proven, which reinforced Annan’s condemnation of the Iraq war, which he deemed “illegal”.

Bustani shared his experience in the article “Brazil and OPCW: Diplomacy and Defence of the Multilateral System Under Attack,” published in late 2002, and continued his career, as Brazil’s ambassador to Britain and France, before retiring in 2015.

Every nuclear power is spending millions to upgrade their arsenals, experts say. Credit: National Nuclear Security Administration/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2015 (IPS)

As a new cold war between the United States and Russia picks up steam, the nuclear threat is in danger of escalating – perhaps far beyond political rhetoric.

Dr. Randy Rydell, a former senior political affairs officer with the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) told IPS he pities the general public.

“Nuclear strategy has become a cockpit of rogue regimes and regional foes jostling with the five original nuclear weapons powers (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia), whose own dealings are infected by suspicion and rivalry.” -- The Economist
“They’re being fed two competing narratives about nukes,” Dr. Rydell said, in a realistic assessment of the current state of play.

“Oracle 1 says everybody’s rushing to acquire them or to perfect them.”

Oracle 2 forecasts a big advance for nuclear disarmament, as the bandwagon for humanitarian disarmament continues to gain momentum, said Rydell, a former senior counsellor and report director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Commission.

“The irony is that if Oracle 2 is wrong, Oracle 1 will likely win this debate – and we’ll all lose,” he grimly predicted about the nuclear scenario.

In a recent cover story, the London Economist is unequivocally pessimistic: “A quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the world faces a growing threat of nuclear conflict.”

Twenty-five years after the Soviet collapse, it said, the world is entering a new nuclear age.

“Nuclear strategy has become a cockpit of rogue regimes and regional foes jostling with the five original nuclear weapons powers (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia), whose own dealings are infected by suspicion and rivalry.”

Shannon Kile, senior researcher and head of the Nuclear Weapons Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) told IPS he agrees with the recent piece in The Economist that the world may be entering a “new nuclear age”.

“However, I would not narrowly define this in terms of new spending on nuclear weapons by states possessing them. Rather, I think it must be defined more broadly in terms of the emergence of a multi-polar nuclear world that has replaced the bipolar order of the cold war,” he added.

Kile also pointed out that nuclear weapons have become core elements in the defence and national security policies of countries in East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East, where they complicate calculations of regional stability and deterrence in unpredictable ways.

This in turn raises risks that regional rivalries could lead to nuclear proliferation and even confrontation that did not exist when the nuclear club was smaller.

Meanwhile, the signs are ominous: the negotiations to prevent Iran going nuclear are still deadlocked.

Saudi Arabia has signed a new nuclear cooperation agreement, presumably for “peaceful purposes”, with South Korea; and North Korea has begun to flex its nuclear muscle.

Last week Hyun Hak Bong, North Korea’s ambassador to the UK, was quoted by Sky News as saying his country would use its nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack by the U.S.

“It is not the United States that has a monopoly on nuclear weapons strikes,” Hyun said.

“If the United States strike us, we should strike back. We are ready for conventional war with conventional war; we are ready for nuclear war with nuclear war. We do not want war but we are not afraid of war,” Hyun said.

The Economist also pointed out that every nuclear power is spending “lavishly to upgrade its atomic arsenal.”

Russia’s defence budget has increased by over 50 percent since 2007, a third of it earmarked for nuclear weapons: twice the share of France.

China is investing in submarines and mobile missile batteries while the United States is seeking Congressional approval for 350 billion dollars for the modernization of its nuclear arsenal.

Kile told IPS a subsidiary aspect of the “new nuclear age” is more technical in nature and has to do with the steady erosion of the operational boundary between nuclear and conventional forces.

Specifically, he said, the development of new types of advanced long-range, precision guided missile systems, combined with the increasing capabilities of satellite-based reconnaissance and surveillance systems, means that conventional weapons are now being given roles and missions that were previously assigned to nuclear weapons.

“This trend has been especially strong in the United States but we also see it in [the] South Asian context, where India is adopting conventional strike systems to target Pakistani nuclear forces as part of its emerging limited war doctrine.”

Kile also said many observers have pointed out that this technology trend is driving doctrinal changes that could lead to increased instability in times of crisis and raise the risk of the use of nuclear weapons.

“What these developments suggest to me is that while the overall number of nuclear warheads in the world has significantly decreased since the end of the cold war (with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989), the spectrum of risks and perils arising from nuclear weapons has actually expanded.”

Given that nuclear weapons remain uniquely dangerous because they are uniquely destructive, “I don’t think anyone will dispute that we must redouble our collective efforts aimed at reaching a world in which nuclear arsenals are marginalised and can be eventually prohibited,” he declared.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

When the white apartheid regime in South Africa kept the overwhelming majority of blacks under military repression, the country’s security forces were armed with weapons originating mostly from a highly-developed domestic armaments industry.

The wide-ranging locally-made weapons – some of which were categorised as crowd-control equipment – included transport and attack helicopters, armoured personnel carriers, military trucks, internal security vehicles, assault rifles, hand guns and tear gas canisters.

Proving the resilience of its arms industry, South Africa was quick to respond to a United Nations request last October for three attack helicopters and two utility helicopters to strengthen the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).South Africa has the unique distinction of being the only country to have abandoned its nuclear weapons programme voluntarily - setting an example to other nuclear-armed states.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence, told IPS “the South African military industry really took shape in the 1980s and got to the point where its technical capability and design and production abilities were among the most advanced in the world.”

After the 1994 election, when Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) assumed power, industry developments slowed, notably due to the decrease in defence spending and the lack of immediate security threats, she added.

Still the South African arms industry is considered one of the most advanced in the non-Western world today, and very much in the company of its IBSA partners, India and Brazil.

The industry dates back to the apartheid regime when its rapid development was necessitated by two key factors: battling a domestic insurgency and circumventing a 1977 mandatory arms embargo imposed by the U.N.

Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher, Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told IPS the South African arms industry is advanced in a few niche areas such as certain light armoured vehicles and anti-tank missiles.

“But overall, it has become increasingly a part of the global arms industry acting as subcontractors and supplying military components for complete systems elsewhere.”

He said South Africa currently supplies weapons and other military equipment to many countries throughout the world, from the United States to China, and from Sweden to Zambia.

The U.S. was a one-time major client because it urgently needed mine-protected armoured vehicles for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

South Africa was the world leader in the production of such vehicles, he added, including the Casspir. This dated back to the apartheid regime when the South African armed forces had to learn how to fight guerrilla forces in Zimbabwe and Namibia, which were then known as Rhodesia and South-West Africa, respectively.

South Africa was also on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power with its well-developed clandestine programme to produce weapons of mass destruction – even while it remained ostracised by the global community.

South Africa’s nuclear weapon programme was successful in producing seven weapons which were eventually destroyed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, told IPS that South Africa has the unique distinction of being the only country to have abandoned its nuclear weapons programme voluntarily – setting an example for other nuclear-armed states.

In 1991, South Africa joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state after destroying the weapons it had developed in a clandestine programme during 1974-1990, allegedly with Israeli collusion, he pointed out.

“President [F.W.] de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the late Nelson Mandela, told me he was kept in the dark about the nuclear weapons programme until he became president when he decided to halt the programme,” said Dhanapala, one of the world’s best-known authorities on nuclear disarmament.

He said it was fitting the treaty declaring the whole continent of Africa a nuclear weapon free zone should be named the Treaty of Pelindaba, named after the place where the South African nuclear weapon programme was located.

Auger told IPS the U.N. arms embargo was one of the defining drivers for the South African defence-industrial base.

Before the embargo, defence firms would only acquire licence-production agreements from other countries so there was minimal drive to develop its own fully indigenous weapons.

But the 1977 arms embargo provided the incentive for South African firms to research and develop its own weapons so that it could become self-sufficient, she added.

The South African arms industry was led by Denel and the government’s arms procurement organisation, ARMSCOR.

Prior to the embargo, South Africa produced most of its military equipment under licence-production agreements with countries such as France, Germany, Israel and Italy.

Wezeman said arms exports were an issue of debate during the 1990s with some people questioning the morality of selling tools of repression created by the former apartheid regime.

“I am not sure what Mandela’s role was in this, but I think he was critical,” he noted.

“In any case the new ANC government quickly set out to support the industry for the same reason as other arms-producing states: as a source of income, a catalyst for technological development and even hoped it could be used as a foreign policy instrument, in particular in Africa,” said Wezeman.

It never became the latter, he said, because South Africa is a rather minor player as an arms supplier on the continent.

As Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and nuclear talks on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme continue, a unique international conference, “A Middle East without Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)”, was held in Jerusalem.

The topic is taboo because Israel maintains a veil of “studied ambiguity” on its alleged nuclear arsenal.

At the Notre Dame hotel in Jerusalem, the singular get-together took place: Ziad Abu Zayyad, former head of the Palestinian delegation to the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) multilateral talks; Dan Kurtzer, former peace mediator and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt; and young and veteran activists against the proliferation of WMDs.

Mordechai Vanunu, also present, is forbidden to speak to foreigners or leave Israel.“The nuclear issue is Israel’s last taboo.”

Invoking his opposition to WMDs, the former nuclear technician revealed in 1986 details of his country’s alleged nuclear weapons programme to the British Sunday Times. Abducted by Mossad intelligence agents, the Israeli whistleblower spent 18 years in an Israeli jail, including more than 11 in solitary confinement.

“Ten years ago, we couldn’t even have a conference disembodied from reality,” notes an enthused Kurtzer.

This is no longer pie in the sky, but a very public event on an issue forcibly kept out of the public eye in Israel.

The conference was organised by the Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ), a joint civil society publication dedicated to the quest for peace in the region.

“Track-Two diplomacy will have an effect on Track One, formal diplomacy,” explains the diplomat who is now a professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University. “If not this year – next year or the year after.”

The conference was held just a few days prior to the start of Round Two on Thursday Nov. 7 between Iran and the P5+1 group of six major powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United State, plus and Germany). Round One ended on a positive note.

Notwithstanding the persistent suspicion that Iran is racing towards nuclear arms, the only major player in the Middle East which, allegedly, possesses a nuclear arsenal is Israel.

Allegedly, because reports on the issue – all from foreign sources – have neither been confirmed nor denied by Israel. Maintaining its veil of “studied ambiguity”, Israel hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel’s nuclear policy is defined in one sentence: ‘Israel won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.’

“If Israel won’t be the first, it won’t be the second either,” quips Israeli non-conventional weapons expert Reuven Pedatzur.

Vanunu knows well the consequences of breaking the strict censorship code on the issue. Public debate is nonexistent. “The nuclear issue is Israel’s last taboo,” says Pedatzur.

A presentation on “Fissile Material Controls in the Middle East” by Princeton University’s Senior Research Physicist Frank von Hippel proposes a ban on plutonium separation and use; an end to the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel; an end to enrichment of uranium above six percent; and no additional enrichment plants.

It’s only natural that Israel’s nuclear programme would take centre stage. The Dimona nuclear plant is scrutinised. “Freeze, declare, and then step-by-step reduction of Israel’s stocks of plutonium and HEU,” is what Israel must give in return for von Hippel’s global proposal.

Yet despite across-the-board harmony on the need to free the world’s most volatile region from the most volatile weapon, the speakers failed to reach a consensus on the practicality of focusing on the region’s one and only country believed to have nuclear arms.

“This excellent proposal is premature,” comments Pedatzur. “Dealing with Israel’s nuclear programme is a non-starter. If the U.S. will exert pressure on Israel, maybe; unfortunately, I don’t see any U.S. incentive.”

Kurtzer chimes in: “The U.S. is specifically interested in stopping nuclear weapons proliferation. Regarding Israel, we’re back to the question of non-declared status, and the U.S.’ strong bilateral relationship, a fact of life.”

Following the Madrid Peace Conference (1991), Israel participated in the ACRS multilateral talks.

Israel focused on the regional security component; Arab states (led by Egypt) on the arms control component – that is, on controlling Israel’s suspected nukes. The talks collapsed in 1995.

Secure in its don’t-talk-about-it comfort zone, Israel is ready to discuss a WMD-free zone and thus forgo the ultimate deterrent against its so-called eternal enemies, but only within a comprehensive peace settlement with all of its neighbours, including Palestine, Syria and Iran.

That’s a state of affairs as hypothetical as it is improbable.

“Israel wants the international community to agree de facto to its nuclear status,” bemoans Abu Zayyad. “Assuming it’s out of it, Israel isn’t against a nuclear-free Middle East. That’s ridiculous.”

Abu Zayyad reflects the traditional Palestinian position. Both the nuclear weapons issue and the peace vision must be approached “correlatively, not sequentially.”

Is there a linkage between or amongst these issues?

“The formal answer of diplomats is ‘No’,” says Kurtzer. “But surely, as the debate takes place in a civil society forum like this one without being cut off – here’s the linkage.”

Israel rejects any linkage between its nuclear programme and the nascent regional détente.

“A Russian-American agreement to move the chemical weapons from Syria; Iranian and U.S. presidents speaking for the first time since 1979; Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,” enumerates Hillel Schenker, PIJ co-editor with Abu Zayyad. “This creates a constructive background for moving forward toward a WMD-free Middle East,” he concludes.

Eager to pour cold water on the conference’s optimism, Pedatzur enumerates inversely: “Chemical weapons use in Syria’s civil war; failure till now to resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis; Israel’s continued possession of nuclear weapons and occupation of Palestine. A WMD-free Middle East can’t be established any time soon.”

Kurtzer says “To the extent the U.S. is ready to exercise its influence and power, a regional security breakthrough can occur which will ease the way for us not only to have a discussion on the possibility of a WMD-free Middle East, but to actually start engaging on these issues.”

Abu Zayyad advocates a global arrangement. “When you speak about Israel, Israel speaks about Iran; Iran about Pakistan; Pakistan about India, etc.” – the nuclear chain.

The conference may have succeeded in breaking through the censorship surrounding Israel’s assumed nuclear weapons, but not the taboo on Israel effectively creating a WMD-free Middle East.