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Nunn Urges G-8 to Remember Nonproliferation Vows By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — A little more than a week before a Group of Eight summit in Scotland, a founder of the U.S.-Russian threat reduction program said here today that G-8 countries should focus on implementing their existing commitments on proliferation and not only on taking new steps (see GSN, April 27). Launched in 2002 at a summit in Canada, the G-8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction included an initial plan to spend $20 billion on nonproliferation programs. The effort was most recently marked by a broad “action plan on nonproliferation” announced at the G-8 summit last year in the United States. “The job now is to get the G-8 to live up to its commitment,” former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, co-founder of the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction program, said this morning at a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars discussion on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Nunn said progress toward the countries’ agreed nonproliferation goals has been insufficient. He said G-8 members’ specific pledges toward the overall commitment of $20 billion over 10 years — so far, about $17 billion — have for the most part not yet been translated into actual spending. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he intends to make climate change and debt relief the central subjects of next week’s summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland. London’s nonproliferation agenda for its G-8 presidency, laid out on the official Web site for the Scotland summit, indicates that on the subject of the Global Partnership, the “main theme will be transforming pledges into progress.” “The aim is results on the ground, increasing international security,” the Web site reads. The country’s G-8 agenda also includes pledges to “work towards an agreed approach to constraining the spread of nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technology” and to seek “ways to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and to increase preparedness for responding effectively to outbreaks of disease.” At this morning’s discussion, Nunn also stressed the importance of a liability dispute that is threatening work on the U.S.-Russian programs he helped to create (see GSN, June 20). Recent reports have pointed to the possibility — following the departure of the White House nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, from his influential post at the State Department — of a thaw in negotiations on the stalemate. The dispute, which centers on how much protection from legal liability should be extended to U.S. employees and contractors participating in threat-reduction activities, threatens the future of programs such as the Nuclear Cities Initiative and the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement. “That liability issue has got to be solved,” Nunn said. “It is not that hard an issue. Common sense can solve it. Leadership can solve it.” U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nunn said, should “solve it in the next 30 days — announce it at Gleneagles.” “It’s imperative that Bush and Putin get it done, and I think if those two individuals say they want it done, it’ll get done,” he said. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]
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