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Former High-Level Officials Push for Stronger NPT By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Twenty-one prominent former policy-makers called yesterday on countries to recommit themselves to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to strengthen implementation of the pact (see GSN, April 5). Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball, an organizer of the effort, expressed doubts about U.S. support for the agenda even as he called for its implementation. Washington focuses on proliferation elsewhere, rejects calls for quicker disarmament and “apparently is not likely to help build agreement on such a program of action,” Kimball said as he presented the statement to the press yesterday at the National Press Club here. “The 2005 review conference is shaping up to be a lost opportunity,” he said. The international group, whose U.S. members included former secretaries of state and defense and directors of the former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said countries should also “clarify” the pact to prevent parties from withdrawing — as North Korea has done — after setting up civilian nuclear programs with military potential. “Today’s security environment requires an even more comprehensive and robust global nonproliferation strategy,” they wrote in the statement. “The NPT’s future success depends on universal compliance with tighter rules to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, more effective regional security strategies and renewed progress toward fulfillment of the nuclear weapon states’ NPT disarmament obligations.” Cases such as North Korea and Iran, new terrorism and wars, the nuclear network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, inadequate stockpile security, and concerns on nuclear weapon states’ commitment to disarmament have created “rising doubts about the sustainability of the nonproliferation regime,” the ex-officials said. Next month’s review meeting is “an essential opportunity,” they said, “for the parties to demonstrate their political will to make further tangible progress to meet all of the treaty’s objectives.” U.S. Bipartisan Security Group Director Robert Grey, a signatory of the statement, expressed concerns at yesterday’s event about a failure of “American leadership” on nonproliferation and disarmament. “What we’re facing here,” Grey said, referring to U.S. stances ahead of the review conference, “is a radical departure from past American practice.” Other signatories included former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and defense secretaries Robert McNamara and William Perry; former U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency General Counsel George Bunn, who represented Washington in the original treaty negotiations, and two former agency directors, Ralph Earle and John Holum; former Russian State Duma Deputy Alexei Arbatov; U.S. Sept. 11 commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton; and the secretary general of the international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Henrik Salander. U.S. Representatives Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and John Spratt (D-S.C.) plan to sponsor a resolution this week espousing goals similar to those laid out in the ex-officials’ statement. “The NPT embodies one of the best security bargains ever struck,” Spratt said at the Press Club event. “The NPT marshals the world — 186 countries — against nuclear weapons with a collective force that the United States could not muster on its own and provides a framework and forum for handling the problems that continually arise. The United States has plenty of nonproliferation programs. We need nonproliferation partners, and the NPT helps supply them.”
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