U.N. Panel Recommends Nonproliferation Reforms

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — While the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has restrained the demand for atomic weapons, the world is “approaching a point at which the erosion of the nonproliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation,” according to a new report on reforming the United Nations to meet new threats (see GSN, Nov. 29).

Without a strong nuclear nonproliferation regime, the reports says, the approximately 40 countries that have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons may be tempted to do so.

Controlling the global stocks of highly enriched uranium is fundamental to both preventing breakouts from the treaty by nations and keeping bomb-grade material out of the hands of terrorists, according to the report. Strengthening the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency is integral to this strategy. The Additional Protocol that gives the agency greater inspection rights should be “today’s standard for IAEA safeguards” against proliferation and a new agreement should be drawn up “which would enable [the] IAEA to act as a guarantor for the supply of fissile material to civilian nuclear users,” the report says.

Halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially to terrorists, is one of the elements of the report commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan one year ago to make the United Nations more effective in addressing the evolving threats to international security. 

The 16-member High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Changes was created in the aftermath of the deeply divisive debate in spring 2003 over the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq by the United States. The refusal of the Security Council to endorse the invasion, the U.S. disregard of the will of the majority of U.N. members, and the ensuring chaos in Iran prompted this U.N. evaluation, said a senior official involved in the panel yesterday, briefing journalists prior to the release of the report. 

The report will be presented tomorrow to Annan and the U.N. General Assembly. The panel’s 101 reform recommendations covering nonproliferation and other areas are likely to be incorporated in a proposal Annan will present in the spring that will be the focus of a summit at the United Nations in September 2005, prior to the start of the next General Assembly.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is under stress both from the failure of the nuclear powers to disarm and from non-nuclear states parties suspected of exploiting treaty provisions that allow for peaceful nuclear work to develop weapons technology. 

“Lackluster disarmament by the nuclear weapon states weakens the diplomatic force of the nonproliferation regime and thus its ability to constrain proliferation,” the report says. On the other side of the coin, there is the concern that some NPT states “will covertly and illegally develop full-scale weapons programs or that — acting within the letter but perhaps not the spirit of the treaty — they will acquire all the materials and expertise needed for weapons programs with the option of withdrawing from the treaty at the point when they are ready to proceed with weaponization.” 

To address this possibility, the panel recommends that if a state announces its intention to withdraw from the treaty, the Security Council should require “immediate verification” that the nation is not violating the pact by developing nuclear weapons. 

The panel said the five nuclear powers that are party to the treaty — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China — “must honor the commitments … to move towards disarmament and be ready to undertake specific measures in fulfillment of those commitments,” including promises not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. 

“It would be valuable if the Security Council explicitly pledged to take collective action in response to a nuclear attack or the threat of such attack on a non-nuclear weapon state,” the report says. In addition, the United States and Russia “should commit to practical measures to reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war, including, where appropriate, a progressive schedule for de-alerting their strategic nuclear weapons.” All countries should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, negotiate a fissile material cutoff treaty that “ends the production of highly enriched uranium for nonweapon as well as weapons purposes,” and make greater efforts to create nuclear weapon-free zones in the Middle East and South Asia.

The terrorist threat has taken on greater urgency because of two recent developments, the report says. First, terrorist organizations have demonstrated greater “global reach and sophisticated capacity,” and secondly terrorists now “will seek to cause mass casualties” through the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. 

“If you wanted to have a comprehensive defense against nuclear terrorism, what it would mean is, first of all, cleaning up all of the highly enriched uranium in the world. Secondly, strengthening the Nonproliferation Treaty to create incentives to reduce the amount of highly enriched uranium that is produced,” the U.N. official said.

Like nuclear weapons, it is vital to keep the materials for biological and chemical munitions out of the hands of terrorists, according to the report. However, these other weapons present a different set of problems. 

Advances in biotechnology mean that many people will be able “to create designer pathogens” in small, undetectable laboratories, the official said. “In such a world, the ability to create a robust treaty that could monitor [and] verify the creations of such pathogens is extremely difficult.” 

On the other hand, “you can defend against [biological attacks with] a robust public health capacity,” he said. There is therefore a need for “a major initiative to strengthen global public health,” including greater World Health Organization monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. He said such a policy would have a “dual benefit” of addressing infectious disease — the leading killer in the developing world — along with bioterrorism. The report suggests that the Security Council “consult with the WHO director general to establish the necessary procedures for working together in the event of a suspicious or overwhelming outbreak of infectious disease.”

The report recommends that the parties to the Biological Weapons Convention return to negotiations over a verification protocol for the treaty and that they “should also negotiate a new biosecurity protocol to classify dangerous biological agents and establish binding international standards for the export of such agents.” 

The United Nations, and the Security Council in particular, is not fully using its authority in combating terrorism, the report says.   “The report is critical of the United Nations that it has not taken advantage of its normative strength to put forward a strong vision of a principled effective counterterrorism strategy that would protect human rights and the rule of law,” the official said at yesterday’s briefing.

The panel said the United Nations should promote “a comprehensive strategy” that includes “working to reverse the causes or facilitators of terrorism,” including the lack of social and political rights, poverty and “state collapse”; creating “better instruments for global counterterrorism cooperation,” such as strong human rights instruments and more effective intelligence-sharing; tighter controls on terrorist financing; and greater use of the Geneva Conventions, the International Criminal Court and the Security Council’s counterterrorism directorate.

Defining terrorism is another issue hampering an effective U.N. role, the report says. “The United Nations’ ability to develop a comprehensive strategy has been constrained by the inability of member states to agree on an antiterrorism convention including a definition of terrorism,” according to the panel. Blocking agreement on a definition are two controversies: whether a definition should include the use of force by states against civilians and whether people living under foreign occupation have the right to use violence that targets civilians. The panel seeks to resolve these issues by flatly stating, “Attacks that specifically target innocent civilians and noncombatants must be condemned clearly and unequivocally by all.”

The panel — working from language contained in the incomplete draft terrorism convention and in Security Council Resolution 1566 — defines terrorism as “any action … that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

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