|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Iran Should Receive Security Guarantee, Blix Says By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — The United States should join negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program by adding a U.S. security guarantee to other carrots offered Tehran in exchange for limiting its nuclear program, former top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday in a speech here (see GSN, Jan. 25). “There have been some carrots,” the Swedish diplomat said at an event hosted by the Arms Control Association. “But what has been missing, I think, in this package has been the security aspect of it,” Blix said, noting a guarantee against attack and full diplomatic relations the United States has offered to North Korea in an attempt to eliminate its suspected capability. He noted that the United States in support of European negotiations has offered support for Iranian membership in the World Trade Organization and spare parts for aging civil airliners. The United Kingdom, Germany and France reportedly have offered Iran recognition of a right to produce civil nuclear power, improved trade, and guaranteed nuclear fuel supplies. Iran late last year ended an agreement with the European negotiators by resuming uranium conversion activities following a voluntary suspension. The European countries this month joined the United States in pressuring the International Atomic Energy Agency in February to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council possibly for sanctions. Last month, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei also said the United States should propose a security guarantee. Iran’s top negotiator reportedly responded that Iran did not need a guarantee to ensure its security. European negotiators in November 2004 originally proposed economic incentives and security guarantees in exchange for a verifiable guarantee that Iranian nuclear activities are directed for peaceful purposes. The security component was dropped when the United States proved unwilling to cooperate, according to Selig Harrison, director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy, who wrote in a Financial Times commentary last week. Blix is the former head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which conducted the prewar search for Iraqi unconventional weapons, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He now heads the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission created by Sweden in December 2003 to analyze and report on ways to reduce the dangers posed by unconventional weapons and terrorism. U.S. Policies CritiquedBlix criticized U.S. arms control and nonproliferation policies developed by the Bush administration and its predecessor. He described as “casualties” failed efforts in the late 1990s to negotiate a follow-on pact to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty abandoned by the United States in 2001, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that remains unratified by the United States, and multilateral efforts to negotiate a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Blix also criticized the terms of the 2002 U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty that calls for reducing nuclear arms deployments, but contains no verification provision. “It seems to me that the United States has become less keen on arms control and less keen on verification, at least for itself. The very term ‘arms control’ seems to have disappeared in the latest reorganization of the State Department, which only talks about nonproliferation and security,” he said. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had a “tremendous influence” on such polices, he said. Rather than creating arms control, he said, “perhaps we’re going in reverse.” The administration’s pursuit of a national missile defense system is “new, problematic in the international context,” Blix said, as is military discussion of stationing weapons in outer space. Such actions combined with British discussion of replacing its submarine-based nuclear weapons, French President Jacques Chirac’s suggestion that nuclear weapons could be used in response to terrorism (see GSN, Jan. 19), “widened” options for nuclear use in doctrines developed by Russia and other nations, and Bush administration study of an improved earth penetrating nuclear weapon, he said, “has the feeling of expanded militarization by the big states.” Some countries “feel cheated” by the agreed nuclear powers’ alleged failure to honor some commitments made in the 1995 agreement to indefinitely extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “We’ve had a reverse, I think, in the field of arms control and disarmament,” Blix said, but added that he though that such trends would only provide some encouragement to nuclear proliferation worldwide. Proliferation, he said, would chiefly be driven by countries’ assessments of their particular security needs. Blix added though, “If the U.S. would seek to extend its domination to become what the French call the ‘hyper-power,’ I fear there will be increasing” tensions with other countries, China in particular. Blix questioned supposed successes of the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative, a program designed to intercept WMD-related shipments on the high seas. He said the administration has claimed 11 interdictions, but “I’ve only seen one case.” Blix said the initiative should be more international and more transparent. ‘Spin and Hype’Blix complained of government “hyping and spinning that takes place in international affairs,” conducted by “public relations gurus” who manage the media. He noted that there was little U.S. reporting on ElBaradei’s claims before the invasion of Iraq that a document alleging an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium was forged. The Bush administration used the document to make its case against Iraq, but after the war conceded that ElBaradei was correct. There was substantial information contradicting U.S. assertions about Iraqi weapons, Blix said. “We carried out 700 inspections at 500 different sites … and said to the Security Council, and said to the United States and the Brits that we find no weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Out of these places that we visited, there were about three dozen places or sites that were given to us by intelligence agencies in different countries and in none of them could we find any weapons of mass destruction.” “My belief is that if we had been allowed to continue to carry out inspections for a couple of months more, we would then have been able to go to all the sites which were given by intelligence, and since there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction we would have reported that there weren’t any,” he said. Even with such a report, though, he said, war probably would not have been averted as “there was a certain momentum behind it.” “Today, I think I worry about the spin and momentum on Iran,” he said. U.S. officials have insisted that evidence uncovered so far of Iranian nuclear activities, including some not reported as required to the ElBaradei’s agency, indicates Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Blix said the U.N. nuclear watchdog has not yet concluded that Iran at this time intends to develop nuclear weapons, but said the question is not particularly important. What is, he said, is “to induce Iran to forgo enrichment” in the event it has decided to build the weapons. Inducement, Blix said, requires stronger incentives. “I think that the packages, the offers that have been made on the Western side have been very meager, particularly compared to the offers that have been made vis-…-vis the North Koreans,” he said. Economic and military threats against Iran could strengthen hard-liners there and reduce any prospects for agreement, he said. Debating Iran’s nuclear program at the U.N. Security Council, which the administration has pushed for, could make compromise more difficult, he said. “It’s very much a matter of prestige” for Iran, Blix said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
