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Bush Administration Official Appeals for Multilateralism in Fight Against WMD Proliferation
“Effective multilateralism” and “zero tolerance” for nonproliferation treaty violations are essential in the struggle to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, a senior State Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 22). U.S. experts are working with governments around the world to help strengthen export controls, said Stephen Rademaker, assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation. Washington also works with Russia and other former Soviet states through threat reduction programs to secure and eliminate WMD-related facilities and materials, he said during a conference in Indonesia. The U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a series of bilateral interdiction agreements, aims to prevent illicit transfers of WMD-related materials on the high seas. PSI partners have cooperated on 11 successful interdictions in less than three years, Rademaker said. The initiative includes 70 states that are “cooperating as never before to interdict shipments, disrupt proliferation networks, and to hold accountable the front companies that support them,” he said. Rademaker encouraged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to press their nonproliferation efforts and called for a “zero tolerance” policy for nonproliferation treaty violations. “We cannot allow rogue states that violate their commitments and defy the international community to undermine the fundamental role of these treaties in strengthening international security,” he said (U.S. State Department release, Dec. 14).
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