United States Secretary of State John Kerry addresses the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on April 27. The United States, along with the UK, and Canada, rejected the draft agreement. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 23 2015 (IPS)

After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies.

“The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS.“This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for leadership or action is futile." -- Ray Acheson

She said it contained no meaningful progress on nuclear disarmament and even rolled back some previous commitments.

But, according to several diplomats, there was one country that emerged victorious: Israel, the only nuclear-armed Middle Eastern nation, which has never fully supported a long outstanding proposal for an international conference for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

As the Review Conference dragged towards midnight Friday, there were three countries – the United States, UK, and Canada (whose current government has been described as “more pro-Israel than Israel itself”) – that said they cannot accept the draft agreement, contained in the Final Document, on convening of the proposed conference by March 1, 2016.

As Acheson put it: “It is perhaps ironic, then, that three of these states prevented the adoption of this outcome document on behalf of Israel, a country with nuclear weapons, that is not even party to the NPT.”

The Review Conference president’s claim that the NPT belongs to all its states parties has never rung more hollow, she added.

Joseph Gerson, disarmament coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) told IPS the United States was primarily responsible, as in the 2005 review conference, for the failure of this year’s critically important NPT Review Conference.

“The United States and Israel, that is, even if Israel is one of the very few nations that has yet to sign onto the NPT,” he pointed out.

Rather than blame Israel, he said, the U.S., Britain and Canada are blaming the victim, charging that Egypt wrecked the conference with its demands that the Review Conference’s final declaration reiterate the call for creation of a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.

But, the tail was once again wagging the dog, said Gerson, who is also the AFSC’s director of Peace and Economic Security Programme.

He said that Reuters news agency reported on Thursday, the day prior to the conclusion of the NPT Review Conference, that the United States sent “a senior U.S. official” to Israel “to discuss the possibility of a compromise” on the draft text of the Review Conference’s final document.

“Israeli apparently refused, and (U.S. President) Barack Obama’s ostensible commitments to a nuclear weapons-free world melted in the face of Israeli intransigence,” said Gerson.

John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, told IPS the problem with NPT Review Conference commitments on disarmament made over the last 20 years is not so much that they have not been strong enough. Rather the problem is that they have not been implemented by the NPT nuclear weapon states.

Coming into the 2015 Review Conference, he said, many non-nuclear weapon states were focused on mechanisms and processes to ensure implementation.

In this vein, the draft, but not adopted Final Document, recommended that the General Assembly establish an open-ended working group to “identify and elaborate” effective disarmament measures, including legal agreements for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear weapons free world.

Regardless of the lack of an NPT outcome, this initiative can and should be pushed at the next General Assembly session on disarmament and international security, this coming fall, said Burroughs, who is also executive director of the U.N. Office of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA).

Acheson told IPS that 107 states— the majority of the world’s countries (and of NPT states parties)—have endorsed a Humanitarian Pledge, committing to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.

The outcome from the 2015 NPT Review Conference is the Humanitarian Pledge, she added.

The states endorsing the Pledge now and after this Conference must use it as the basis for a new process to develop a legally-binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons.

“This process should begin without delay, even without the participation of the nuclear-armed states. The 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has already been identified as the appropriate milestone for this process to commence.”

Acheson also said a treaty banning nuclear weapons remains the most feasible course of action for states committed to disarmament.

“This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for leadership or action is futile,” she said.

This context requires determined action to stigmatise, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons.

“Those who reject nuclear weapons must have the courage of their convictions to move ahead without the nuclear-armed states, to take back ground from the violent few who purport to run the world, and build a new reality of human security and global justice,” Acheson declared.

Gerson told IPS the greater tragedy is that the failure of the Review Conference further undermines the credibility of the NPT, increasing the dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation and doing nothing to stanch new nuclear arms races as the nuclear powers “modernize” their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems for the 21st century continues apace.

He said the failure of the Review Conference increases the dangers of nuclear catastrophe and the likelihood of nuclear winter.

The U.S. veto illustrates the central importance of breaking the silos of single issue popular movements if the people’s power needed to move governments – especially the United States – is to be built.

Had there been more unity between the U.S. nuclear disarmament movement and forces pressing for a just Israeli-Palestinian peace in recent decades, the outcome of the Review Conference could have been different, noted Gerson.

“If we are to prevail, nuclear disarmament movements must make common cause with movements for peace, justice and environmental sustainability.”

Despite commitments made in 1995, when the NPT was indefinitely extended and in subsequent Review Conferences, and reiterated in the 2000 and 2010 Review Conference final documents to work for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, Obama was unwilling to say “No” to Israel and “Yes” to an important step to reducing the dangers of nuclear war, said Gerson.

“As we have been reminded by the Conferences on the Human Consequences of Nuclear War held in Norway, Mexico and Austria, between the nuclear threats made by all of the nuclear powers and their histories of nuclear weapons accidents and miscalculations, that we are alive today is more a function of luck than of policy decisions.”

The failure of Review Conference is thus much more than a lost opportunity, it brings us closer to nuclear cataclysms, he declared.

Burroughs told IPS debate in the Review Conference revealed deep divisions over whether the nuclear weapon states have met their commitments to de-alert, reduce, and eliminate their arsenals and whether modernisation of nuclear arsenals is compatible with achieving disarmament.

The nuclear weapon states stonewalled on these matters.

If the nuclear weapons states displayed a business as usual attitude, the approach of non-nuclear weapon states was characterised by a sense of urgency, illustrated by the fact that by the end of the Conference over 100 states had signed the “Humanitarian Pledge” put forward by Austria.

It commits signatories to efforts to “stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences”.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Angela Kane, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, addresses the 2013 session of the Conference on Disarmament. Credit: UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 13 2015 (IPS)

As she prepared to leave office after more than three years, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane painted a dismal picture of a conflicted world: it is “not the best of times for disarmament.”

The warning comes against the backdrop of a new Cold War on the nuclear horizon and spreading military conflicts in the politically–volatile Middle East, including in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen."The return to Cold War mindsets by the U.S. and Russia and the negative record of all the nuclear weapon states have converted the goal of a nuclear weapon free world into a mirage." -- Jayantha Dhanapala

“The prospects for further nuclear arms reductions are dim and we may even be witnessing a roll-back of the hard-won disarmament gains of the last 25 years,” she told the Disarmament Commission last week.

In one of her final speeches before the world body, the outgoing U.N. under-secretary-general said, “I have never seen a wider divide between nuclear-haves and nuclear have-nots over the scale and pace of nuclear disarmament.”

Kane’s warning is a realistic assessment of the current impasse – even as bilateral nuclear arms reductions between the United States and Russia have virtually ground to a standstill, according to anti-nuclear activists.

There are signs even of reversal of gains already made, for example, with respect to the longstanding U.S.-Russian Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

No multilateral negotiations on reduction and elimination of nuclear arsenals are in sight, and all arsenals are being modernised over the next decades.

And contrary to the promise made by the 2010 NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Review Conference, a proposed international conference on a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East never got off the ground.

John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LNCP), told IPS: “As the world heads into the NPT Review Conference, Apr. 27-May 22, is nuclear disarmament therefore doomed or at least indefinitely suspended?”

Not necessarily, he said.

The tensions – with nuclear dimensions – arising out of the Ukraine crisis may yet spark some sober rethinking of current trends, said Burroughs, who is also director of the U.N. Office of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA).

After all, he pointed out, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis served to stimulate subsequent agreements, among them the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco establishing the Latin American nuclear weapons free zone, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the 1972 US-Russian strategic arms limitation agreement and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Jayantha Dhanapala, former U.N. under-secretary-general for disarmament affairs, said the “Thirteen Steps” agreed upon at the 2000 NPT Review Conference and the 64-point Action Programme, together with the agreement on the Middle East WMD Free Zone proposal and the conceptual breakthrough on recognising the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, augured well for the strengthened review process.

“And yet the report cards meticulously maintained by civil society on actual achievements, the return to Cold War mindsets by the U.S. and Russia and the negative record of all the nuclear weapon states have converted the goal of a nuclear weapon free world into a mirage,” he added.

Unless the upcoming NPT Review Conference reverses these ominous trends, the 2015 Conference is doomed to fail, imperiling the future of the NPT, Dhanapala warned.

A stocktaking exercise is relevant, he added.

In 1995, he said, “We had five nuclear weapon states and one outside the NPT. Today, we have nine nuclear weapon armed states – four of them outside the NPT.

“In 1970, when the NPT entered into force, we had a total of 38,153 nuclear warheads. Today, over four decades later, we have 16,300 – just 21,853 less – with over 4,000 on deployed status and the promise by the two main nuclear weapon states to reduce their deployed arsenals by 30 percent to 1550 each within seven years of the new START entering into force.”

Another NPT nuclear weapon state, the UK is on the verge of renewing its Trident nuclear weapon programme, he pointed out.

Turning to the issue of conventional weapons, Kane said: “We are flooded daily with images of the brutal and internecine regional conflicts bedevilling the globe – conflicts fuelled by unregulated and illegal arms flows.”

It is estimated that more than 740,000 men, women, and children die each year as a result of armed violence.

“However, in the midst of these dark clouds, I have seen some genuine bright spots during my tenure as high representative,” Kane said.

The bitter conflict in Syria will not, in the words of the secretary-general, be brought to a close without an inclusive and Syrian-led political process, but Syria’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention, facilitated by the Framework for the Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons agreed upon between the Russian Federation and the United States of America, has been one positive outcome from this bloody conflict, she added.

“We have seen the complete removal of all declared chemicals from Syria and the commencement of a process to destroy all of Syria’s chemical weapons production facilities.”

Emerging from the so-called ‘disarmament malaise’, the humanitarian approach to nuclear disarmament, supported by a clear majority of states – as illustrated by the 155 states that supported New Zealand’s statement in the First Committee – has continued to gather momentum, Kane told delegates.

“This is not a distraction from the so-called ‘realist’ politics of nuclear disarmament. Rather, it is an approach that seeks to underscore the devastating human impact of nuclear weapons and ground them in international humanitarian law,” she said.

“This movement is supported by almost 80 percent of U.N. member states. The numbers cannot be ignored.”

One of the international community’s major achievements in the last year has been to bring the Arms Trade Treaty into force only a year and a half after it was negotiated.

This truly historic treaty will play a critical role in ensuring that all actors involved in the arms trade must be held accountable and must be expected to comply with internationally agreed standards, Kane said.

This is possible, she pointed out, by ensuring that their arms exports are not going to be used to violate arms embargoes or to fuel conflict and by exercising better control over arms and ammunition imports in order to prevent diversion or re-transfers to unauthorised users.

“To my mind, these achievements all highlight the possibility of achieving breakthroughs in disarmament and non-proliferation even in the most trying of international climates,” Kane declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) jointly addresses journalists with Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, in Jerusalem, on Oct. 13, 2014. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 2015 (IPS)

As the Iranian nuclear talks hurtle towards a Mar. 24 deadline, there is renewed debate among activists about the blatant Western double standards underlying the politically-heated issue, and more importantly, the resurrection of a longstanding proposal for a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Asked about the Israeli obsession to prevent neighbours – first and foremost Iran, but also Saudi Arabia and Egypt – from going nuclear, Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the Jerusalem-based Palestine-Israel Journal, told IPS, “This is primarily the work of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has built his political career on fanning the flames of fear, and saying that Israel has to stand pat, with a strong leader [him] to withstand the challenges.”"If Israel lost its regional monopoly on nuclear weapons, it would be vulnerable. So the U.S. goes all out to block nuclear weapons - except for Israel." -- Bob Rigg

And this is the primary motivation for his upcoming and very controversial partisan speech before the U.S. Congress on the eve of the Israeli elections, which has aroused a tremendous amount of opposition in Israel, in the American Jewish community and in the U.S. in general, he pointed out.

Iran, which has consistently denied any plans to acquire nuclear weapons, will continue its final round of talks involving Germany and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia (collectively known as P-5, plus one).

Last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani asked the United States and Israel, both armed with nuclear weapons, a rhetorical question tinged with sarcasm: “Have you managed to bring about security for yourselves with your atomic bombs?”

The New York Times quoted the Washington-based Arms Control Association as saying Israel is believed to have 100 to 200 nuclear warheads.

The Israelis, as a longstanding policy, have neither confirmed nor denied the nuclear arsenal. But both the United States and Israel have been dragging their feet over the proposal for a nuclear-free Middle East.

Bob Rigg, a former senior editor with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told IPS the U.S. government conveniently ignores its own successive National Intelligence Estimates, which represent the consensus views of all 13 or so U.S. intelligence agencies, that there has been no evidence, in the period since 2004, of any Iranian intention to acquire nuclear weapons.

“If Israel is the only nuclear possessor in the Middle East, this combined with the U.S nuclear and conventional capability, gives the U.S. and Israel an enormously powerful strategic lever in the region,” Rigg said.

He said this is even more realistic, especially now that Syria’s chemical weapons (CW) have been destroyed. They were the only real threat to Israel in the region.

“This dimension of the destruction of Syria’s CW has gone strangely unnoticed. Syria had Russian-made missiles that could have targeted population centres right throughout Israel,” said Rigg, a former chair of the New Zealand Consultative Committee on Disarmament.

A question being asked by military analysts is: why is Israel, armed with both nuclear weapons and also some of the most sophisticated conventional arms from the United States, fearful of any neighbour with WMDs?

Will a possibly nuclear-armed Iran, or for that matter Saudi Arabia or Egypt, risk using nuclear weapons against Israel since it would also exterminate the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories? ask nuclear activists.

Schenker told IPS: “I believe that if Iran were to opt for nuclear weapons, the primary motivation would be to defend the regime, not to attack Israel. Still, it is preferable that they not gain nuclear weapons.”

Of course, he said, the fundamental solution to this danger would be the creation of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East.

That will require a two-track parallel process: One track moving towards a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the other track moving towards the creation of a regional regime of peace and security, with the aid of the Arab Peace Initiative (API), within which a WMD Free Zone would be a major component, said Schenker, a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament.

As for the international conference on a nuclear and WMD free zone before the next NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Review Conference, scheduled to begin at the end of April in New York, he said, the proposal is still alive.

In mid-March, the Academic Peace Orchestra Middle East initiative will convene a conference in Berlin, whose theme is “Fulfilling the Mandate of the Helsinki Conference in View of the 2015 NPT Review Conference”.

It will include a session on the topic featuring Finnish Ambassador Jaakko Laajava, the facilitator of the conference, together with governmental representatives from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Germany.

There will also be an Iranian participant at the conference, said Schenker.

Rigg told IPS Israel’s first Prime Minister Ben Gurion wanted nuclear weapons from the outset. Israel was approved by the new United Nations, which then had only 55 or so members. Most of the developing world was still recovering from World War II and many new states had yet to emerge.

He said the United States and the Western powers played the key role in setting up the U.N.

“They wanted an Israel, even though Israeli terrorists murdered Count Folke Berdadotte of Sweden, the U.N. representative who was suspected of being favourable to the Palestinians,” Rigg said.

The Palestinians were consulted, and said no, but were ignored, he said. Only two Arab states were then U.N. members. They were also ignored. Most of today’s Muslim states either did not exist or were also ignored.

“When the U.N. approved Israel, Arab states attacked, but were beaten off. They did not want an Israel to be transplanted into their midst. They still don’t. Nothing has changed. ”

Given the unrelenting hostility of the Arab states to the Western creation of Israel, he said, Israel developed nuclear weapons to give itself a greater sense of security.

“If Israel lost its regional monopoly on nuclear weapons, it would be vulnerable. So the U.S. goes all out to block nuclear weapons – except for Israel,” he added.

Not even Israel argues that Iran has nuclear weapons now.

“A NW free zone in the Middle East is simply a joke. If Israel joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it would have to declare and destroy its nuclear arsenal.”

The U.S. finds excuses to avoid prodding Israel into joining the NPT. The U.S. is effectively for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, but successive U.S. presidents have refused to publicly say that Israel has nuclear weapons, he added.

Because of all this, a NWF zone in the ME is not a real possibility, even if U.S. President Barack Obama and Netanyahu are at each other’s throats, said Rigg.

Schenker said Netanyahu’s comments come at a time when the 22-member League of Arab States, backed by the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have, since 2002, presented Israel an Arab Peace Initiative (API).

The API offers peace and normal relations in exchange for the end of the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and an agreed upon solution to the refugee problem.

This doesn’t mean that the danger of nuclear proliferation isn’t a problem in the Middle East, said Schenker.

“As long as Israel has retained a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and promised to use them only as a last resort, everyone seemed to live with the situation. ”

The challenge of a potential Iranian nuclear weapons programme would break that status quo, and create the danger of a regional nuclear arms race, he noted. Unfortunately, the global community is very occupied with the challenge of other crises right now, such as Ukraine and the Islamic State.

“So it is to be hoped the necessary political attention will also be focused on the challenges connected to the upcoming NPT Review conference, and the need to make progress on the Middle Eastern WMD Free Zone track as well,” he declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

While the resolution adds to the global WMD non-proliferation regime, there are concerns among several states about the instrumental use of the Security Council to bypass duly constituted multilateral negotiating forums. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2014 (IPS)

The United Nations claims that a key Security Council resolution adopted unanimously back in 2004 has been instrumental in keeping weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) from the hands of terrorists and insurgent groups worldwide.

At a meeting Wednesday to mark its 10th anniversary, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said resolution 1540 has helped make important inroads against the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons over the last decade.The five major nuclear powers have consistently asserted they don't want WMDs to fall into the "wrong hands" - a code phrase for terrorists and insurgent groups.

But that only tells part of the story, he said, expressing regrets over “the setbacks and disappointments”, including the recent use of chemical weapons in Syria.

“However, through multilateral agreement, over 90 percent of Syria’s chemical weapons have been removed from the country even as the conflict has intensified,” Eliasson added.

A U.N. team investigating the use of these deadly weapons in Syria last year found “clear and convincing evidence” of Sarin gas attacks against civilians, including children.

But the team was not mandated either by the General Assembly or the Security Council to probe whether the weapons were used by government military forces or armed insurgents – leaving the question of accountability wide open.

The mandate was only to determine whether chemical weapons had been used, not by whom.

Tariq Rauf, director Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the resolution was adopted a decade ago to close the gaps in the domestic legislation of member states.

The primary aim was to prevent the spread or access to WMD materials and technologies to non-state actors such as terrorist groups or criminals through the implementation of legislation providing for effective controls and criminal penalties.

He said the resolution does not duplicate nor impinge upon existing multilateral non-proliferation treaties and organisations, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Eliasson told Wednesday’s meeting it is critical for every country to implement the resolution.

“Terrorists and traffickers tend to target countries whose customs, borders, imports, exports, ports and airports are less well monitored or controlled,” he said.

One promising trend, he pointed out, is the preparation of voluntary national implementation action plans.

At the recent Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, 32 countries released a joint statement reaffirming a commitment to submit such action plans to the ‘1540 Committee’ coordinating the implementation of the resolution.

The Western powers have expressed concern that terrorist groups, specifically Al-Qaeda, may be attempting to acquire WMDs.

Still over the last 10 years following the adoption of the resolution, North Korea has gone nuclear while Iran is accused of trying to develop nuclear weapons (which it vehemently denies).

And Saudi Arabia has threatened to go nuclear if Iran joins the group of nine nuclear weapons states: including the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, namely, the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, along with India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

The five major nuclear powers have consistently asserted they don’t want WMDs to fall into the “wrong hands” – a code word for terrorists and insurgent groups.

But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says “there are no right hands for wrong weapons.”

The anti-nuclear activists, who call for a total elimination of WMDs, say there are “no right hands or wrong hands” for nuclear weapons which should be removed from everyone’s hands.

Rauf told IPS the resolution adopted under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter is mandatory for all U.N. member states. It complements but does not replace nor is it a substitute for multilaterally negotiated arms control treaties.

A Security Council committee to promote implementation of 1540 has been set up to assist states in their implementation of the resolution. However, he said not all member states are reporting to the committee as the reporting format is considered quite complex and taxes the capacity of many states.

While the resolution adds to the global WMD non-proliferation regime, there are concerns among several states about the instrumental use of the Security Council to bypass duly constituted multilateral negotiating forums such as the Conference on Disarmament, and the U.N. General Assembly, where more or all states are represented.

He said the Security Council is not considered a globally democratic body as it has permanent members with a veto and a very small number of other states elected for two year terms.

In sum, the resolution is a useful instrument but it cannot be compared in importance or legitimacy to global WMD treaties since such treaties have been duly negotiated in open multilateral forums where member states have a say and thus have greater legitimacy and authority, he declared.

The U.N. General Assembly Hall. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2013 (IPS)

The upcoming event at the United Nations is being billed as something politically unique.

For the first time in its 68-year history, the 193-member General Assembly is holding a high-level meeting of world leaders on one of the most controversial issues of our time: nuclear disarmament."While the mirage of a nuclear weapon-free world is held aloft, the CTBT has not entered into force." -- Jayantha Dhanapala, former U.N. under-secretary-general for disarmament affairs

But expectations for the meeting are low, says Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. under-secretary-general for disarmament affairs.

Unless disarmament becomes a priority for possessor states, he told IPS, speeches and meetings alone are not going to change the stark dangers posed by this most destructive weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

“A decision to outlaw nuclear weapons in the same way as biological and chemical weapons is essential,” said Dhanapala, who is president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which jointly won the 1995 Nobel Peace prize for their efforts at nuclear disarmament.

“The time to start negotiations on a Nuclear Weapon Convention (NWC) is not tomorrow but now,” he said.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has consistently maintained that nuclear disarmament is one of his top priorities, is expected to call for “a world free of nuclear weapons” at the meeting scheduled to take place at the United Nations on Sep. 26.

Asked if the high-level meeting will be another exercise in futility, Alyn Ware, a member of the World Future Council and consultant to the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, told IPS, “It could be an exercise in futility if governments, including the non-nuclear governments, do not treat it seriously.”

He said non-nuclear governments should participate at the highest level, and make strong statements that they are more secure without nuclear weapons and that the security of all in the 21st Century requires the abolition of nuclear weapons, meaning that it is a “global good of the highest order”.

Ware said they should also pledge to dedicate greater resources and political traction to developing the building blocks for a nuclear weapons-free world through the Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) to which the nuclear weapons states (NWS) have an obligation to join.

Currently, there are five declared nuclear weapon states, namely the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, all five permanent members of the Security Council (P5), along with three undeclared nuclear weapon states, India, Pakistan, Israel.

Despite its three nuclear tests, North Korea still remains in limbo.

The three undeclared nuclear powers have all refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as against the five declared nuclear powers who are states parties to the treaty.

Dhanapala said nine countries – five within the NPT and four outside – possess a total inventory of 17,270 nuclear warheads today, 4,400 of them placed on missiles or located on bases ready to be launched in minutes.

The U.S. and Russia alone own 16,200 of these warheads, he pointed out.

And despite the lingering horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the risks of nuclear weapons being used again – by design or accident, by states or non-state actors – are huge, he added.

“The results would be catastrophic for all humankind,” Dhanapala warned.

Ware told IPS the role of nuclear weapons could be reduced in Northeast Asia through negotiations for a North East Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.

The U.S., he said, could exercise more effective diplomacy in the Middle East to move the Arab states and Israel to participate in good faith in the proposed U.N. Conference on a Middle East Zone Free from Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction. Arab States are demanding preconditions that are unacceptable to Israel, so both need to exercise some flexibility, he noted.

Non-nuclear countries could use the OEWG, as long as the mandate is renewed, to commence preparatory work on the building blocks for a nuclear weapons-free world (based on the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention circulated by the secretary-general) regardless of whether or not the nuclear weapons states join the OEWG in the near future.

Dhanapala told IPS the first Special Session of the General Assembly Devoted to Disarmament (SSODI) was held in 1978 as a direct outcome of the summit of world leaders of the 1976 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) held in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

It was a period of detente in the Cold War and a far-reaching Final Declaration was adopted.

No multilateral gathering has matched that remarkable consensus on fundamental concepts achieved 35 years ago, especially on the priority of nuclear disarmament, he added.

“Yet today, the multilateral disarmament machinery established by SSOD I is in grave disarray,” he said.

The sole multilateral negotiating body, the Conference on Disarmament, has neither negotiated treaties nor even adopted a programme of work since 1996, according to Dhanapala.

The Disarmament Commission has met ritualistically every year without any agreed texts in the last 14 years.

And the U.N.’s First Committee, dealing with disarmament, is still churning out resolutions with little impact, he added.

“While the mirage of a nuclear weapon-free world is held aloft, the CTBT has not entered into force, the promised conference on the Middle East as a WMD-free zone has not been held and bilateral U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament talks have not even started,” Dhanapala said.
The need for a radical change has been recognised by the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and their supporters have resisted NAM demands for a SSOD IV.

A one-day high-level meeting of the General Assembly is a compromise, he said.

The 2010 NPT Review Conference with its 64-point action programme and the increasing recognition of humanitarian disarmament are an inadequate basis for the non-nuclear weapon states, most of which are in legally recognised nuclear weapon-free zones, to trust the nuclear armed states to disarm.

The Sep. 26 meeting must be the beginning of a nuclear disarmament process, Dhanapala said.

Samantha Power (left), Permanent Representative of the United States to the U.N., speaks to journalists on the Syrian crisis Sep. 5, 2013. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2013 (IPS)

If Syria eventually agrees to relinquish its stockpile of chemical arms under the 1993 international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), what of the six other countries that have either shown reluctance or refused to join the treaty?

Currently, there are 189 states that have signed and ratified the treaty prohibiting the manufacture, use and transfer of the deadly weapons. But seven member states have been holdouts: Burma and Israel have signed but not ratified, while Angola, North Korea, Egypt, South Sudan and Syria have neither signed nor ratified.

If Syria agrees to accept the U.S.-Russia proposal to abandon its weapons under the CWC, it still leaves six others outside the treaty.

A meeting of the Security Council to discuss Syria, scheduled to take place Tuesday, was cancelled without explanation.

If a resolution, inspired by Western nations, is adopted by the Council later in the week, Syria is expected to agree to hand over all of its chemical weapons for storage and destruction by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Asked what progress the Security Council has made on the proposal, the president of the Council, Ambassador Gary Francis Quilan of Australia, told reporters it was premature to speculate.

“It’s a step by step process,” he said.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), singled out two other Middle Eastern nations, Egypt and Israel, as either having developed or used chemical weapons.

He pointed out that Israel is widely believed to have produced and stockpiled an extensive range of chemical weapons and is engaged in ongoing research and development of additional chemical weaponry.

“The insistence that Syria must unilaterally give up its chemical weapons and missiles while allowing a powerful and hostile neighbour to maintain and expand its sizeable arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is simply unreasonable,” Zunes told IPS.

No country, whether autocratic or democratic, could be expected to accept such conditions, he added.

Egypt was the first country in the region to obtain and use chemical weapons, using phosgene and mustard gas in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen’s civil war.

“There is no indication Egypt has ever destroyed any of its chemical agents or weapons,” said Zunes.

The U.S.-backed regime of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak continued its chemical weapons research and development programme until its ouster in a popular uprising two and a half years ago, and the programme is believed to have continued subsequently, he noted.

Asked whether the United Nations has the capacity to handle the weapons, U.N. associate spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS, “The secretary-general has consistently called for Syria to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention and to fully abide by its responsibility to maintain the physical security of any chemical weapon stockpiles in its possession.”

The OPCW, which oversees the CWC, has considerable experience storing and destroying chemical weapons.

In a statement released Tuesday, Amnesty International USA said it welcomes steps that would lead to the removal or destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, given that they are internationally banned and their use is a war crime.

“Taking this initiative to the U.N. Security Council offers an opportunity for the international community to take other concrete action to stop the flow of conventional weapons that have caused the vast majority of civilian deaths, refer the situation for criminal investigation, and demand unfettered access for the U.N.-mandated Commission of Inquiry,” said Amnesty’s Deputy Executive Director Frank Jannuzi.

Asked about the proposal to transfer Syria’s chemical stocks to international control, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters Monday, “I think that would be proper [thing] for Syria to do, to agree to these proposals.

“Then I am sure that the international community will [take] very swift action to make sure that these chemical weapons stocks will be stored safely and will be destroyed. I do not have any doubt and worry about that. First and foremost, Syria must agree positively to this,” he added.

Harking back in history, Zunes told IPS Syria’s chemical weapons programme was established in response to Israel’s development of a chemical and nuclear arsenal.

The Syrian government has long expressed its willingness to give up its chemical weapons as part of a regional disarmament agreement as called for in U.N. Security Council resolution 687, which stated that Iraqi disarmament was the first step in establishing a regional disarmament regime.

When it had a non-permanent seat on the Security Council in December 2002, Syria introduced a draft resolution to this effect, but it was not tabled due to a threatened U.S. veto, he added.

Zunes said for more than 45 years, the Syrians have witnessed successive U.S. administrations provide massive amounts of armaments to a neighbouring country with a vastly superior military capability which has invaded, occupied, and colonised Syria’s Golan province in the southwest.

In 2007, the United States successfully pressured Israel to reject peace overtures from the Syrian government in which the Syrians offered to recognise Israel and agree to strict security guarantees in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian territory, he noted.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses a Sep. 3, 2013 press conference on the latest developments related to the crisis in Syria. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2013 (IPS)

When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was South Korea’s foreign minister during 2004-2006, his answers to reporters were so predictably evasive the press corps in Seoul affectionately dubbed him “the slippery eel”.

Even at the United Nations, where he succeeded Kofi Annan as U.N. chief in 2007, Ban has continued to cultivate the art of dodging questions – notably during the current Syrian crisis where the United States has threatened to attack Syria without Security Council authorisation.

At a press conference Tuesday, Ban continued to reiterate the importance of both the U.N. charter and the Security Council, the only international body with the power to declare war and peace.

But he refused to answer a pointed question about whether a U.S. attack on Syria without Security Council endorsement would be an “illegal” act committed by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Ban would only say, “I have taken note of President Obama’s statement. And I appreciate his efforts to have his future course of action based on the broad opinions of American people, particularly the Congress, and I hope this process will have a good result.”

In contrast, his predecessor Kofi Annan of Ghana went out on a limb describing the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as “illegal” and in “violation of the U.N. charter” – later paying a heavy political price for his outspokenness.

Ban spoke to reporters Tuesday hours before his departure to the summit meeting of the G20 industrialised countries, scheduled to take place Thursday in St. Petersburg, Russia.

He said the G20 summit is meant to focus on economic issues, including the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and sustainable development.

“But I will use the opportunity of this gathering to engage with world leaders on this [Syrian] tragedy, including humanitarian assistance for the more than two million refugees and 4.2 million Syrians who have been displaced internally. It is imperative to end this war,” he said.

Since the alleged poison gas attacks in Syria last month, and the subsequent threat of a U.S. military strike on Damascus, Ban has continued to dwell on the primacy of the Security Council.

“As I have repeatedly said,” he told reporters Tuesday, “the Security Council has primary responsibility for international peace and security.”

He said any future course of action – depending upon the outcome of the scientific analysis by a U.N. team on the use of chemical weapons – will have to be considered by the Security Council for action.

“That’s my appeal that everything should be handled within the framework of the United Nations Charter,” Ban stressed.

He also pointed out the use of force is lawful only when in the exercise of self-defence, in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter and/or when the Security Council approves such action.

“That is the firm principle of the United Nations,” he said – still avoiding the two politically-sensitive words: “illegal” and “violation”.

Since the poison gas attacks, Ban has briefed the five permanent (P5) members of the Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – about the status of the U.N. team which was sent to investigate whether or not chemical weapons were used.

The team does not have a mandate to identify who may have used such weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) – whether the Syrian security forces or the rebels battling to oust the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“I have called for the U.N. mission to be given every opportunity to complete its task. The United Nations investigation is uniquely placed to independently establish the facts in an objective and impartial manner,” Ban said.

Its work will be conducted strictly according to internationally recognised standards, he added.

The team has worked around the clock following its return from Syria to prepare the materials it gathered for analysis.

“I am pleased to announce that all biomedical and environmental samples will have arrived at the designated laboratories [all of them in Europe] by tomorrow,” Ban said, although he did not provide a deadline as to when the results would be ready.

“We are doing our utmost to expedite the process. At the same time, I need to stress the importance of not jeopardising the scientific timelines required for accurate analysis.”

As soon as the team has arrived at findings, Ban said, he will “promptly report” the results to member states and to the Security Council.

After the submission of the report, the team will return to Syria to complete its second investigation of other alleged attacks in Syria – and then to prepare its final report.

“As I have stressed repeatedly, if confirmed, any use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances would be a serious violation of international law and an outrageous war crime,” Ban said.

In a statement last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said rather bluntly: “The U.N. cannot tell anything… we don’t already know.”

A U.S. strike on Syria could be launched from navy destroyers in the Mediterranean. Credit: Official US Navy Imagery/CC by 2.0

By Lawrence Wilkerson
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 2013 (IPS)

Now that we have heard Secretary of State John Kerry’s emotional plea for us to believe the still rather ambiguous intelligence on chemical weapons use in Syria, there are far more substantive answers to be sought from the Obama administration.

Putting aside the remaining ambiguities as well as all the experience those of us over 60 years old have with any administration’s unequivocal assurances preceding its use of military force, the basic context surrounding that use against Syria still requires intense analysis.

Forget about those prematurely-born babies stripped from their cradles in the maternity wards in Kuwait, later demonstrated as a figment of war advocates’ vivid imaginations; forget about the utter certainty with which every principal in the G. W. Bush administration assured Americans of Saddam Hussein’s WMD; and forget about for a moment John Kerry’s overly emotional remarks about Syria. Just examine some pertinent facts.

First, tens of thousands of North Koreans have died from hunger imposed by at least two of the latest DPRK dictators.  Is dying of hunger somehow better than dying of chemicals?  Or might it be that the DPRK has no oil and no Israel?  Of course, there are other examples of dastardly dictators and dying thousands; so where does one draw the line of death in future?

Second, how does one surgically strike Syria, as the Obama administration asserts it wishes to do?  That is, to use military force without becoming a participant in the ongoing conflict, simply to send a signal that chemical weapons use will not be tolerated?

Kosovo is a lousy example – where the promised three-days-of-bombing-and-the-dictator-will-cave turned into 78 long days and a credible threat of ground forces before he actually did cave. Not to mention all the death and destruction wrought by Serbia while much the same was being hurled at it.

Libya is a lousy example because Libya is now a haven for al-Qaeda and next-door-neighbour Mali is destabilised because of it.  Libya itself is hardly stable – except in the eyes of those who no longer want to look at it. Of course the light sweet crude seems to be getting out and to the right people…

Egypt is dissolving; Iraq is returning to civil war; Lebanon is becoming destabilised by the refugees pouring into it from Syria; Jordan is looking dicey having absorbed countless Iraqis from that country’s war-caused diaspora and now taking on Syrians.

How are cruise missiles and bombs and whatever else we choose to send to Syria short of ground forces, going to ameliorate this mess?

Moreover, what do we do when President Bashar al-Assad ignores our missiles and bombs and continues right on with his war?  Even, perhaps, uses chemical weapons to do so? Hit him again? Remember, we are not going to become participants in the civil war, we are not going to own Syria.

The man or woman who believes that he or she can be surgical with military force is an utter fool. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. No use of military force is surgical. It is blunt, unforgiving, tending to produce results and effects never dreamt of by the user. In for a penny, in for a trillion.

Go ahead, President Obama. Strike that Syrian tarbaby. If your hands, feet, and head are not eventually stuck in its brutal embrace – if you stop, reconsider, back out and are allowed to get away with it – what have you accomplished?  Preserving your credibility?

U.S. credibility in this part of the world is shot to hell already – largely by the catastrophic invasion of Iraq (not Obama’s fault, to be sure; but just as surely, America’s fault – foreigners do not differentiate presidents.) Credibility has been further shredded by continued drone strikes, by a failure to take any actions against the flow of arms from Saudi Arabia into Syria; by tacit support of the Saudi reinforcement of the dictatorship in Bahrain; and most powerfully by the failure to remain balanced – and therefore of some use – in the issue of Israel and Palestine.

When I survey that long, sunken black granite wall near the Lincoln Memorial and consider the over 58,000 names etched on it, and the two and a half million Vietnamese who, if they had such a wall, would be similarly inscribed, I get angry.

I know that President Johnson’s team, notably his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, assured the President that U.S. prestige was at stake in Vietnam. LBJ’s team knew they could not win the war, but they thought they could preserve U.S. prestige.

I just wish they had had to tell that to the families of every name on that wall – and every Vietnamese who would be on that country’s wall if it had one: you all died for prestige.

*Lawrence Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army infantry. His last position in government was as secretary of state Colin Powell’s chief of staff. He currently teaches government and public policy at the College of William and Mary.

When the United States invaded Iraq back in March 2003, one of its primary objectives was to track down and destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) reportedly stockpiled by the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

By its own definition – and by U.N. standards – the United States was frantically searching for WMDs constituting three of the world’s most lethal armaments: nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons."Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous." -- Dr. Natalie J. Goldring of Georgetown University

The search, apparently based on faulty U.S. intelligence, proved futile. But the acronym “WMD” became an integral part of military jargon worldwide as characterising NBCs.

Since last April’s bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, however, both the administration of President Barack Obama and the mainstream news media have offered a new definition of WMDs: shrapnel-packed, homemade pressure cooker bombs that killed three and wounded more than 250 during a marathon in that U.S. city.

That bomb has repeatedly been described as a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the weapons used in the Boston bombings were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), not weapons of mass destruction.

Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are commonly grouped together as weapons of mass destruction, she said. Combining these weapons in a single category makes it seem as though all three types of weapons are equivalent to one another. They’re not, said Goldring.

WMD hazard symbols, arranged vertically. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Nuclear weapons are by far more destructive than existing chemical or biological weapons. Even so, all three types of weapons have the capability to be massively more damaging than the weapons used in Boston,” she said.

“Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

According to some military experts, the IEDs used in the Boston bombings are no different from the IEDs widely used against U.S. armed forces by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, told IPS, “If you want to confuse people, you blur the lines of distinction between things and also situations.”

She said an improvised explosive device as a “weapon of mass destruction” is just such an example, as is the broad use of “terrorist” and “terrorism” in the aftermath of Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“We also have the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ – a tad broad, to say the least,” said Williams, who led a highly successful global campaign that resulted in a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines.

She said it is easier for the U.S. government to continue to prosecute its borderless “war on terror” if people don’t quite understand or see distinctions. It’s all “too confusing” and best left in the hands of the “experts” in Washington, she added.

Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the use of the term WMD to describe the Boston bombs has been perceived as “weird”.

He said most people would think WMDs are the serious mass killer weapons – nuclear, biological, chemical, and potentially radiological. However, said Wezeman, the term WMD has been used loosely from the time it was probably first coined in 1937 to describe more or less every weapon.

There seem to be in the U.S. official terminology some 50 different definitions, he said.

“Considering the U.S. official terminology, WMD would more or less cover every type of slightly larger explosive weapon – IEDs, hand grenades, artillery shells, small cannon – as used daily by ‘terrorists’ as well as armed forces,” he added.

“Of course for most people and for normal usage, WMD remains just the nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological (CBRN) weapons,” Wezeman said.

Goldring told IPS, “As horrific as the Boston bombings were, the number of casualties caused by those bombings was a tiny fraction of the likely casualties if one or more nuclear weapons were exploded in a city.”

She pointed out that scientists estimate that if even a relatively small (10 kilotonne) nuclear weapon were exploded in a city, the entire area out about a mile in every direction would be largely destroyed.

“Calling the Boston bombs weapons of mass destruction is a political statement. It makes no sense from a substantive perspective,” she said.

If the Boston bombs are weapons of mass destruction, Goldring asked, “Does that mean all of the improvised explosive devices used in Afghanistan and Iraq are also defined as weapons of mass destruction?”

That simply makes no sense, she said, adding, “IEDs have caused enormous damage to military personnel and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are not weapons of mass destruction.”

The world’s nuclear environment has increasingly turned politically toxic, replete with threats, accusations and open defiance of Security Council resolutions.

A long outstanding international conference on a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, to be hosted by Finland, is still far from reality. So is a proposed Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) aimed at eliminating weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

And last week, a renegade North Korea defied the United Nations by conducting its third nuclear test, while Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reserved his country’s right to nuclear weapons in a region where Israel’s nuclear arsenal has the implicit blessings of the Western world.

“We believe nuclear weapons must be eliminated,” said Khamenei, “We don’t want to build atomic weapons.” But if Iran was forced to do so, he warned, “No power could stop us.”So long as these weapons exist, there is a very real possibility that they will be used, either by accident or design.

As the ultimate goal of a nuclear-weapons free world keeps receding, the leader of a Tokyo-based lay Buddhist non-governmental organisation (NGO) launched a global campaign last week for a nuclear summit of world leaders in 2015.

Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), says the annual G8 Summit in 2015 could be an “expanded summit” focusing on a nuclear weapons-free world and marking the 70th anniversary of the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“This would be an appropriate opportunity for such a nuclear summit,” he adds.

Tim Wright of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) told IPS his organisation supports the call by Ikeda and others to begin a process in 2013 aimed at achieving a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

“We urge all nations, including those which are part of a nuclear alliance, to participate constructively in such a process,” he said.

The involvement of NGOs will also be essential, Wright pointed out. “And a global ban on nuclear weapons is feasible, necessary and urgent.

“So long as these weapons exist,” he argued, “there is a very real possibility that they will be used, either by accident or design. Any such use would have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.”

In his 2013 Peace Proposal ‘Compassion, Wisdom and Courage: Building a Global Society of Peace and Creative’ released last week, Ikeda offers three concrete proposals.

First, to make disarmament a key theme of the U.N.’s post-2015 economic agenda, including Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Specifically, he proposes halving world military expenditures relative to 2010 levels and abolishing nuclear weapons and all other weapons judged inhumane under international law.

These should be included as targets for achievement by the year 2030.

Second, initiate the negotiation process for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, with the goal of agreement on an initial draft by 2015. Japan, as a country that has experienced nuclear attack, should play a leading role in the realisation of a NWC, he asserts.

Further, it should undertake the kind of confidence-building measures that are a necessary predicate to the establishment of a Northeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and to creating the conditions for the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

“To this end, we must engage in active and multifaceted debate cantered on the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons to broadly shape international public opinion,” says Ikeda.

“If possible, Germany and Japan, which are the scheduled G8 host countries for 2015 and 2016, respectively, should agree to reverse that order, enabling the convening of this meeting in Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” Ikeda notes.

Third, an expanded G8 summit in 2015 which could double as a nuclear summit of world leaders.

In past peace proposals, he has urged that the 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) be held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a vehicle for realising a nuclear abolition summit.

Nevertheless, he says, the logistical issues involved in bringing together the representatives of almost 190 countries may dictate the meeting be held at the U.N. headquarters in New York, as is customary.

“In that event, the G8 Summit scheduled to be held several months after the NPT Review Conference would provide an excellent opportunity for an expanded group of world leaders to grapple with this critical issue,” according to Ikeda.

Ikeda says SGI’s efforts to grapple with the nuclear weapons issue are based on the recognition that the very existence of these weapons represents the ultimate negation of the dignity of life.

“At the same time, nuclear weapons serve as a prism through which to perceive new perspectives on ecological integrity, economic development and human rights,” he says.

This in turn, he says, “helps us identify the elements that will shape the contours of a new, sustainable society, one in which all people can live in dignity.”

Twenty-five years ago, on Dec. 8, presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This historic agreement eliminated a modern class of land-based “theatre” weapons – the SS20s, cruise and Pershing missiles – that had been brought into Europe in the early 1980s.

Credit: Empty cruise missile silo at Greenham Common. RJohnson2012

The breakthrough surprised most mainstream military and political analysts, but was hailed by European peace activists whose efforts to achieve this outcome had been derided by experts right up to the Reykjavik Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev in October 1986.

Gorbachev, however, has paid tribute to the role of civil society. Asked a few years ago what made him “trust” Reagan, the former Soviet leader said that he didn’t trust Reagan at all; he took the risk to go to Reykjavik and propose nuclear disarmament because he trusted the European peace movement and Greenham Common women to make sure that the U.S. would not take unfair advantage if he took the first step.

Gorbachev also spoke about being moved to act after reading about studies by Russian and American scientists that showed how life on Earth could be obliterated by the “nuclear winter” aftermath of a nuclear war.

Such a thorough understanding of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons has been missing from mainstream debates since then. Groupthink among government officials, arms controllers, funders and security experts have served to perpetuate the realpolitik notion that nuclear disarmament is an extraordinarily difficult military-technical process that only the nuclear-armed states can take forward.

Such an attitude has given increased power to the nuclear states, forcing nuclear-free countries into the supplicant role of calling for disarmament while simultaneously being marginalised as cheerleaders on the sidelines of the real game.

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ­ the jewel in the crown of cold war arms control ­ has long been in trouble, but its adherents keep hoping that enough band-aids can be applied to keep the NPT regime and review process going. Squandering the opportunities created by the end of the cold war, diplomatic gesture politics have failed to address the major nuclear threats in the real world, while the NPT paradoxically reinforces a prominent role for nuclear weapons in the security policies of a handful of governments.

It came as little surprise, therefore, to hear from the U.S. Department of State on Nov. 23 that the much heralded conference on a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) “cannot be convened because of present conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference”.

Iran, which only agreed to participate in the conference a few weeks earlier, predictably seized the high ground and castigated the U.S. for holding the conference – that had been mandated by the 2010 NPT Review Conference – hostage “for the sake of Israel”.

Nabil Elaraby, the Arab League’s secretary-general, warned that failure to convene the conference “would negatively impact on the regional security system and the international system to prevent nuclear proliferation”.

As Israel bombs Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis are being frightened and hurt by missiles on buses that are being fired in retaliation. Nuclear weapons bring no security, but their deployment in volatile regions like the Middle East, South Asia, North-East Asia and also Europe distract from genuine security requirements and add a massive additional threat to peace.

The nuclear possessors make the situation worse by talking about preventing nuclear terrorism while hiding behind the voodoo of nuclear deterrence ­ as if by wearing the weapons they can avoid having to worry about anyone using them.

Recent initiatives by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the Red Cross and a growing number of governments have begun to arouse global interest in the humanitarian effects of nuclear weapons.

On Nov. 22, Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide invited all United Nations governments to send senior officials and experts to participate in an international conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons on March 4-5, 2013, in Oslo.

The aim of the conference is “to provide an arena for a fact-based discussion of the humanitarian and developmental consequences associated with a nuclear weapon detonation. All interested states, as well as U.N. organisations, representatives of civil society and other relevant stakeholders are invited to the conference.”

This conference aims to bring together not only scientists and doctors to talk about the immediate blast, flash-burns, fires and radiation that would incinerate and contaminate millions, but also agencies that deal with refugees, food insecurity and the medical needs of millions of homeless, starving people, all of which will be compounded by predicted longer term effects such as nuclear winter and global famine that the detonation of less than one percent of today’s nuclear arsenals would cause.

Leaders have to think in humanitarian and environmental terms, as Gorbachev did.

The nuclear free countries have to stop behaving like passive supplicants, giving veto powers to their nuclear-armed neighbours. Unlike traditional arms control, humanitarian disarmament approaches recognise that everyone has the right and responsibility to take steps to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The best way to do this is to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons. Once the nuclear-free countries acknowledge their own power and responsibility, they will find that a nuclear ban treaty can be far quicker and simpler to achieve than they thought. By changing the legal context, such a treaty would be a game changer, draining power and status from the nuclear-armed governments and hastening their understanding of their own security interests, increasing the imperative for concerted nuclear disarmament rather than perpetual proliferation.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Rebecca Johnson is executive director and co-founder of the Acronym Institute and vice chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Despite a rash of new U.S. charges accusing Iraq of hiding its weapons of mass destruction, the 15-member U.N. Security Council remained divided Wednesday over the need for a military attack on Baghdad.

Armed with data from Iraqi defectors, spy satellites and telephone intercepts, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a theatrical presentation of his case against Baghdad in his unprecedented 80-minute address to the Security Council.

But he convinced very few members that a U.N.-sanctioned war on Iraq is justified. Britain, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, was one of the few countries to remain a steadfast supporter of the United States.

French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin maintained his country’s tough line: continue with arms inspections but avoid war because of its possible devastating consequences.

France has already made it clear that it will exercise its veto on any U.N. sponsored resolution urging a military attack on Iraq – until and unless all peaceful options are exhausted.

”If this path were to fail and take us into a dead-end, then we rule out no option, including in the final analysis, the recourse to force as we have said all along,” said de Villepin.

But in such a case, he argued, several answers will to have to be clearly provided to all governments and to all peoples of the world to limit the risks and uncertainties.

”To what extent do the nature and scope of the threat justify the recourse to war?” de Villepin asked, and, “How do we make sure that the considerable risks of such intervention are actually kept under control?”

Of the 12 foreign ministers who addressed the Council on Wednesday, only de Villepin made concrete proposals to strengthen U.N. arms inspections, which resumed late last year following a U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution to send inspectors back to the country after they were expelled by President Saddam Hussein in 1998.

The French ambassador said the number of inspectors should be doubled or tripled and the United Nations should open up more offices inside Iraq. Currently, there are more than 200 U.N. arms inspectors operating in the country..

De Villepin also called for the creation of a new U.N. body to keep under surveillance the sites and areas already inspected.

”Let us substantially increase the capabilities for monitoring and collecting information on Iraqi territory. France is ready to provide full support and it is ready to deploy Mirage V observer aircraft,” he added.

Asked about the French proposals, German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said they were ”interesting” and ”worth considering”.

Germany, which has said it will not participate in any military action against Iraq, is the current president of the Security Council but unlike the five permanent members – France, Russia, China, the United States and Great Britain – it does not hold a veto.

Asked about Powell’s presentation, Fischer said, ”I am not an expert on intelligence. The experts will have to look at it. We can then make up our minds. Political decisions should be based on facts and evidences.”

In a demonstration reminiscent of a high-powered courtroom drama, Powell not only accused the Iraqis of hiding their biological and chemical weapons but also warned delegates that if the United Nations did not act against Saddam, the world body would place itself in ”danger of irrelevance”.

”Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option,” he said.

Security Council resolution 1441 unanimously adopted in November last year was clearly the one last chance for Iraq, added Powell.

”We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and responsibility to the citizens of the countries that are represented in this body,” he said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw echoed Powell’s sentiments when he told the Security Council that ”this is a moment of choice for Saddam and the Iraqi regime à but it is also a moment of choice for this institution, the United Nations.”

In his rebuttal, Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri said Powell’s presentation was ”full of assumptions and presumptions”.

”Weapons of mass destruction are not like an aspirin pill which you can hide in your pocket, ” he said. ”They are weapons that cannot be concealed easily.”

The telephone excerpts provided by Powell – allegedly recorded conversations of Iraqi military officials talking about ways to conceal weapons – could be easily concocted in this age of high technology, by ”any person, any time, anywhere”, al-Douri added.

Referring to the photographs of what Powell called weapons sites and mobile weapons factories, al-Douri asked why the information had not been given to U.N. arms inspectors for verification. The inspectors should have the chance to investigate the new charges when they visit Iraq next weekend, he added.

”They have already taken samples of plants, soil, air and factory remnants from vast areas, including cities, villages, factories and universities. But after an analysis of the samples, the inspectors have concluded there are no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq,” said al-Douri.

One expert called Powell’s speech “a dog-and-pony show”. U.S. officials have admitted that some of their ”evidence” comes from interrogation of detainees held incommunicado at Guantanamo Bay, said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

She said the Washington Post had quoted U.S. officials suggesting that detainees held in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, some of whom may now be in Guantanamo Bay, have been tortured or threatened with being sent to countries that routinely practice torture.

”Any information resulting from torture (or threat of torture) is not only illegally obtained but also of questionable veracity,” Bennis told IPS.