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United Nations Security Council Members Worry About Application of Antiterrorism Resolution By Jim Wurst UNITED NATIONS — In their first public meeting to discuss the implementation of a resolution on keeping weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists’ hands, some U.N. Security Council members yesterday expressed concern that the code would be enforced unevenly by developed nations against developing countries (see GSN, Nov. 19). Resolution 1540, adopted unanimously by the Security Council in April, requires states to “adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws” to deny weapons of mass destruction, their components and “means of delivery” to any “nonstate actors.” Council members agreed that more needs to be done to ensure that terrorists and other nonstate actors do not acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, since it is an obvious security concern and existing treaties deal only with relationship among states. However, there were worries that the resolution would be not be applied fairly among all states and that the council was creating arms-control law that should be properly done through treaty negotiations. Those divisions surfaced again yesterday. Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram said that actions to prevent proliferation first and foremost should come from the governments themselves, rather than international enforcement. “It is important to note … that as explicitly agreed in Resolution 1540, these measures have to be achieved by member states though national measures,” he said. It was revealed earlier this year that the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, ran a clandestine nuclear technology market that supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea. The Pakistani government has refused to allow international officials to interview him. A problem with judging countries’ compliance with the resolution, Akram said, is that “there are no agreed international standards in areas in which the [resolution monitoring] committee will be examining the actions to be taken by member states. There are various levels of adherence, acceptance and implementations of regimes pertaining to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and means of delivery.” Delegates from Brazil and Algeria expressed similar concerns. British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said the council has “demonstrated a common determination to take concrete steps to mitigate the risk. That required an effort by all states to adopt robust national legislation … and to establish and enforce national controls to catch those who tried to evade the law.” “I’d be less than frank, though, if I didn’t wonder why it’s taken us so long to get to where we are this morning. The rapidity with which we have responded to the adoption of this resolution doesn’t actually do much credit to all of us,” he said. “The need to expedite progress … is quite apparent.” Resolution 1540 required governments to report within six months on their national measures to comply with the resolution. The deadline was Oct. 28. The chairman of the Security Council committee monitoring compliance with the resolution, Ambassador Ioan Motoc of Romania, said yesterday that only 86 of the 191 members states of the United Nations filed reports. “I had quite a few opportunities to learn of difficulties experienced by member states … in compiling these first reports,” he said. “It is our joint responsibility to support all those who are willing to engage in good faith on that path and to uphold nonproliferation objectives.” The responding countries include the five official nuclear powers that make up the permanent Security Council membership, as well as the other known or suspected nuclear powers: India, Pakistan and Israel. The reports have not been published. After the council meeting, Motoc said the reports would be released once they were translated into the six official U.N. languages. At the beginning of December, the committee selected four experts from Brazil, Germany, Russia and the United States to help evaluate the national reports. Now that the experts have been named, Motoc said, the committee was ready to begin examining the documents. There are plans to add more experts; delegates from developing countries including Angola and the Philippines said those experts should come from their part of the world. “Such a decision,” Akram said, “would help dispel the widely held perception outside the council, perhaps if not inside, that the whole process of drafting the resolution … is being led by the developed countries, to the exclusion of a large number of developing [countries].” Jones Parry said the appointments should be of experts “with the necessary expertise — with the emphasis please on expertise — people who can actually do the job. That must be the priority.”
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