NPT Meeting Opens; Nuclear Powers Defend Reductions

The United States and Russia yesterday defended their progress toward nuclear disarmament on the opening day of a two-week international meeting in Geneva to discuss the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, April 25).

Many non-nuclear nations have criticized the two Cold War rivals for acting too slowly in meeting their treaty commitments to completely disband their nuclear arsenals.  The treaty, signed 40 years ago, calls on the five nuclear powers of that era to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

U.S. delegation leader Christopher Ford yesterday addressed the notion that the United States was dawdling.

Some countries have said that nuclear-armed nations have “backtracked on their commitment to the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament, and that they were in violation of their obligations,” Ford said in his statement to the meeting.  “With respect to United States nuclear posture and policy, any such beliefs are patently false.”

The United States today has fewer than 3,000 operationally deployed strategic warheads, Ford said, and the rate of dismantling retired warheads has accelerated.

In addition, “We continue to:  reduce the number of delivery systems (see GSN, Sept. 20, 2005); eliminate entire classes of weapons such as intermediate-range missiles and nuclear artillery shells; remove many hundreds of tons of fissile material from our weapons programs (see GSN, Sept. 19, 2007); maintain our moratorium on underground nuclear testing; help peacefully dispose of hundreds of tons of fissile material from former Soviet nuclear weapons (see GSN, Feb. 20); fulfill our promises to slash nonstrategic nuclear forces; build a new plant to convert large quantities of plutonium from former U.S. nuclear weapons into nuclear reactor fuel (see GSN, April 4); refrain from producing new uranium or plutonium for nuclear weapons; and work to bring about the complete, global prohibition of fissile material production for use in nuclear weapons,” he said  (see GSN, Feb. 12). 

Russian delegate Anatoly Antonov also emphasized his nation’s nuclear reductions — reporting that Russia had 4,200 nuclear warheads deployed on fewer than 900 strategic delivery vehicles — but said more time was needed to “break the stalemate in this field.”

“It should be clear to everyone that complete elimination of nuclear arms can only be achieved through a gradual, phased movement,” he said in his statement.

Antonov reaffirmed Russia’s desire to negotiate “a legally binding arrangement” to succeed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire late next year.

Both countries expressed concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

Antonov argued that an internationally controlled nuclear fuel supply could allay Tehran’s desire to produce its own nuclear fuel, a technology that U.S. officials have said would be used to produce nuclear weapon materials. 

Ford took a more aggressive stance on Iran, saying “the world has become appropriately alarmed about Iran’s rush to produce fissile materials for reactors it does not have in order to prevent an ‘energy crisis’ it does not face.”

He called on treaty members to develop “swift and effective responses to [NPT] violations. … It is clear that we need to develop more effective approaches so that the delay between detection and reaction is minimized, the cost to the violator is increased, and the anticipated benefits of noncompliance to the violator are reduced” (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, April 29).

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