North Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ri Yong Ho (AFP/Getty). North Korea Says “Nuclear Deterrent” Is Ready to Use North Korea yesterday moved one step closer to declaring it has usable nuclear weapons, Reuters reported (see GSN, Nov. 6)...Full Story

U.S. Lawmakers Agree to End Ban on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons Research U.S. congressional negotiators yesterday agreed to overturn a 1993 ban on the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons (see GSN, Oct. 20)...Full Story

Russia Proposes Creating International Spent Nuclear Fuel Centers By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev Wednesday proposed a new international effort to help improve the security of spent nuclear fuel throughout the world, which could be attractive to terrorists seeking to build a “dirty bomb” (see related GSN story, today)...Full Story

Washington-Area Postal Facilities Close After Anthrax Alarm By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service announced today that testing is being conducted at a number of postal facilities in the Washington area for possible anthrax contamination after sensors at a U.S. Navy mail-handling facility here detected anthrax Wednesday (see GSN, Oct. 28)...Full Story

	Friday, November 7, 2003

No U.S. Terrorism Threat Alerts Issued in Six Months The U.S. Homeland Security Department has gone nearly six months without raising the terrorism threat alert level, USA Today reported today (see GSN, Sept. 15). In the first eight months of the color-coded system’s existence, the department issued four terrorism threat alerts, according to USA Today. Currently, the threat level stands at yellow, representing an “elevated risk” of attack. Department officials said they have improved at examining and dealing with information related to possible threats against specific regions or industries, thus reducing the need to raise the national alert level. Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that increases in police overtime and other costs have also caused a need for more focused alerts. “We are not doing away with the system,” Roehrkasse said. “The process has become more refined, and information is being passed on more efficiently to the people who need it, in the places where it is needed,” he added (Kevin Johnson, USA Today, Nov. 7). Back to top

White House Says It “Exhausted” Peaceful Opportunities to Avert War With Iraq The Bush administration “exhausted every legitimate and credible opportunity” to peacefully compel former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and to step down before resorting to Operation Iraqi Freedom, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 6). McClellan’s remarks came in response to a New York Times report yesterday that senior Iraqi officials tried to invite U.S. experts to come to Iraq before the war to search for weapons of mass destruction. The Times reported that the Iraqi offer was rebuffed. While refusing to say if U.S. President George W. Bush was aware of the Iraqi offer, McClellan said that if there had been a credible attempt to resolve the conflict peacefully, “we would have pursued it.” Hussein “had any number of channels available to him through which he could have communicated with the United States or members of the coalition,” McClellan said. “There simply was no need for backdoor contacts. The front door was wide open.  If people wanted to communicate with us, they knew how to do that,” he added. “He [Hussein] chose a final act of defiance with the international community, and the result was that the coalition, the international coalition, was forced to act and follow through on what (U.N. Security Council Resolution) 1441 called for, which was serious consequences if Saddam Hussein continued, after 12 years, to defy the international community,” McClellan added. The former Iraqi leader also “could have gone to the world and said he was leaving his country and averted this military action,” McClellan said (U.S. State Department release, Nov. 6). Back to top

North Korea Says “Nuclear Deterrent” Is Ready to Use North Korea yesterday moved one step closer to declaring it has usable nuclear weapons, Reuters reported (see GSN, Nov. 6). Asked if North Korea had a nuclear bomb, Pyongyang’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ri Yong Ho said in an interview, “What we are saying is, a nuclear deterrent capability.” In earlier statements North Korea had suggested that it would demonstrate its nuclear capability at some point in the future (see GSN, Oct. 17), but yesterday’s remarks were the first time North Korea has said its deterrent is now available, according to Reuters. Ri said the “deterrent” is made of plutonium, and is ready to use if the United States attacks North Korea. The North Korean ambassador also said that if six-nation talks on the nuclear crisis are to resume, Washington must commit to “peaceful coexistence” and “simultaneous action.” “If the U.S. proposal is truly based on simultaneous actions then we could hold a new round of talks. If the U.S. insists on denying this simultaneous actions, it will only increase the suspicions on our side,” he added. Ri also addressed the suspension of international work on two nuclear power plants in North Korea, saying that the move would have a “very negative impact on the dialogue process. … This is why we can’t talk about dates (for talks) yet” (Reuters/CNN.com, Nov. 6). The United States, meanwhile, might offer a two-stage nonaggression assurance to North Korea, one for the duration of six-nation talks and a longer-term deal that would take effect after Pyongyang ends its nuclear activities. Washington is currently discussing the proposal with the four other nations involved in the talks, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea (Toshiyuki Ito, Daily Yomiuri, Nov. 7). Back to top       U.S. Lawmakers Agree to End Ban on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons Research U.S. congressional negotiators yesterday agreed to overturn a 1993 ban on the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons (see GSN, Oct. 20). The provision was included in a compromise version of the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill that House and Senate conferees completed yesterday. While the lawmakers repealed the ban on researching nuclear weapons with yields below five kiltons, they ordered that Congress would need to approve any development or production activity (Representative Duncan Hunter release, Nov. 7). “The secretary of energy may not commence the engineering development phase, or any subsequent phase, of a low-yield nuclear weapon unless specifically authorized by Congress,” says the conference committee’s report on the bill (Mike Nartker, GSN, Nov. 7). The compromise bill would also fully authorize the Bush administration’s $15 million request to research the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and its $6 million request to study advanced weapons concepts. Yesterday, however, House and Senate negotiators agreed to cut those requests in the fiscal 2004 energy appropriations bill (see GSN, Nov. 6; Hunter release). Back to top       Russia, U.S. Pledge to Conclude HEU Return Agreement By Joe Fiorill and Greg Webb Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Russia and the United States today pledged to conclude a broad agreement governing their cooperation on the retrieval of highly enriched uranium (HEU) of Russian origin from Eastern European and former Soviet countries (see GSN, Nov. 5). The two countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency have been cooperating since 1999 to recover weapons-usable HEU from research sites in 17 countries and to convert those facilities to use low-enriched uranium. Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev and U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham signed a joint statement today at the Energy Department here that Abraham, speaking before the signing, said signals their intention to conclude an overall government-to-government agreement on such returns, replacing the current “case-by-case” approach. Abraham and Rumyantsev said in the statement that their agencies “recognize the great significance of transferring high-enriched uranium (HEU) research reactor fuel of Russian origin to the Russian Federation as a mutual contribution to the reduction of global stockpiles of weapons-usable nuclear materials and, therefore, to reducing the threat of international terrorism and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” Today’s joint statement indicates that “completion” of the agreement is “in its final stages.” Abraham said the “governments have completed negotiations” on the agreement and that “this agreement will soon be finalized and signed.” Abraham and Rumyantsev added in the statement that “by the end of the year,” their agencies “intend to conduct bilateral consultations … to develop a schedule for all remaining potential shipments of fresh and irradiated HEU fuel.” The two officials praised the growing U.S.-Russian cooperation and cited the transfer of Russian-origin fuel to Russia from research reactors in Romania and Serbia (see GSN, Sept. 22). Preparations are under way for removing HEU from two countries, including Uzbekistan and an unnamed country which wil have its material removed by the end of the year. Abraham and Rumyantsev said they would invite other nations to join the pending agreement, for which “more than a dozen other countries will become eligible.” “This goal of minimizing international commerce in HEU,” said Abraham in his speech, “has long been a pillar of U.S. nonproliferation policy, and this program exemplifies the strength of the U.S.-Russian Federation partnership to reduce the threat of terrorism and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, this program inaugurates an important initiative to close a major gap in previous efforts to consolidate HEU dispersed around the world.” Rumyantsev said before the signing that the statement is “a very important step.” “I would like that the nuclear power would lead us only to progress and not to some tragic event against which we are fighting for,” the minister said through an interpreter. About Half of U.S.-Origin Fuel Repatriated, Says Abraham As the United States promotes efforts to repatriate Russian-origin HEU, Washington has recovered about half of the U.S.-origin fuel it has exported in past decades, Abraham said yesterday in a press briefing with Rumyantsev. As for the remaining facilities that use U.S.-origin HEU, the United States will continue to supply them with fuel until they can be converted to use low-enriched fuel. For example, the United States continues to provide HEU to a Canadian reactor that produces medical isotopes under an understanding that the reactor will convert at an undetermined point in the future (see GSN, Oct. 6). “We have set the objective of converting them to low-enriched fuel,” said Paul Longsworth of the National Nuclear Security Administration at the briefing. Rumyantsev added that some types of nuclear research require HEU and cannot be conducted with lower enrichment levels. Citing his own physics research experience in “neutron scattering,” Rumyantsev said HEU provides the maximum neutron flux of any fuel on a pound-for-pound basis. “I’m not sure how to achieve the highest flux and use LEU at the same time,” he said. Back to top       No Sign Yet of China Expanding Its Nuclear Arsenal, Expert Says By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The latest evidence shows no signs that China is significantly expanding its long-range nuclear weapons capabilities to counter the United States and its planned national missile defense system, according to a private U.S. nuclear weapons analyst. Natural Resources Defense Council analyst Hans Kristensen drew that conclusion from a new assessment of Chinese nuclear weapons capabilities he coauthored for the November/December issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The assessment questions “some of the assumptions behind China’s expected buildup,” he said, citing Defense Department and CIA reports that China might expand its arsenal and perhaps put multiple warheads on missiles to counter U.S. plans for a long-range missile defense system (see GSN, July 15, 2002). He acknowledged that his conclusions about China’s intentions might be premature. Other analysts see China working aggressively to counter potential U.S. missile defense capabilities. “All of that depends on things we have not seen yet,” Kristensen said. Replacements and Development Beijing has been replacing its aging force of approximately 20 DF-5 missiles with an upgraded model, according to the NRDC report, an analysis of U.S. government reports and other sources. The number of those 13,000-kilometer-range missiles is believed to have remained fixed at around 20 since the 1980s. The report also says that China has not yet armed its ICBMs with multiple warheads, but would be able to within several years, according to a CIA estimate. China has, however, been developing DF-31 missiles, including an 8,000-kilometer-range version that could be deployed as soon as 2005 and a 12,000-kilometer-range version for deployment around possibly by 2010, the study says. “At maximum range, the [shorter-range] DF-31 may be able to hit Hawaii and Alaska, but not the continental United States,” the study says. Kristensen said it is not clear whether those missiles would replace or supplement the existing DF-5 missiles. He said China could also increase its strategic capability by arming missiles with multiple warheads. To deploy multiple-warhead missiles, however, would require China to “get over the technical and financial hurdles” it has encountered so far, he said. China lacks a sufficient command-and-control system for accurately targeting multiple warheads launched from mobile platforms and that could be difficult to overcome, he said. His report says the CIA “predicts that by 2015, ‘most’ of China’s missile force will be mobile.” Another Expert Dissents Another expert disagreed that China might not be trying to expand its arsenal. Richard Fisher, a Chinese military expert at the Jamestown Foundation said in an e-mail that he is not certain that China has only 20 DF-5 missiles. Furthermore, he said if China chooses to supplement its DF-5s with DF-31s, the deployed force could climb to 60. He said China’s four to six strategic submarines also have a capability of deploying 16 missiles each against the United States. “So at a minimum we are potentially looking at … 124 missiles that can hit us,” he wrote. Fisher also disputed Kristensen’s judgment that China is not headed toward deploying multiple warheads, saying that China displayed a re-entry vehicle at an air show last November that Chinese engineers told him could carry three satellites. “From that one can reasonably conclude the [longer-range] DF-31 may carry up to three warheads,” he said. He said China also might put multiple warheads on its upgraded silo-based DF-5 missiles. “So, sum total, in my minimum estimation, [China could deploy] 160 multiple warheads plus another 84 single warheads, for a possible future total of 244 nuclear missile warheads that could hit us,” Fisher said. Fisher conceded as Kristensen did, though, that his forecasts were simply speculative about what China might do. Chinese Strategy China has deployed ICBMs since the early 1980s and has had technical capability for deploying multiple warheads for nearly as long, according to the NRDC report. Experts are uncertain why Beijing apparently decided to limit its ICBM deployment at about 20. “Zillions of trees have been sacrificed on the alter of this question.  Ultimately we can’t know its answer because [China] is loathe to allow any transparency in things nuclear and missile, and, consistent with historic Chinese military doctrine, it prizes secrecy and deception above all else to help deter enemies,” said Fisher. Kristensen and other analysts suspect that China has limited its missile force to a minimum number capable of deterring the United States and Russia. China “may have concluded that 20 is enough,” he said. Chinese officials could change that strategy in the future, though, he said. If U.S. missile defenses “ever work, then they might rethink the number of missiles,” Kristensen said. Fisher said China might consider an expanded arsenal of up to 244 warheads to be a minimum force to counter working U.S. missile defenses. Back to top       Lost Keys May Force U.S. to Replace 100,000 Locks at Nuclear Weapons Lab Officials at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have misplaced a dozen important keys to the nuclear weapons facility, according to a report released yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman (see GSN, Sept. 10). The loss of nine master keys and three magnetic key cards will require the laboratory to replace 100,000 locks in 526 buildings at a cost of $1.7 million, Friedman said. According to the report, officials could not explain how some of the keys were lost or how long they have been missing. The laboratory also does not have a system in place to quickly identify and address security lapses such as these, the report says. Lawrence Livermore officials disputed Friedman’s figures and said that they would only have to change 1,300 locks at a cost of $330,000. The locks are currently being changed. “We regret that the events covered in the report were very unfortunate,” said laboratory spokesman David Schwoegler. “But once we were made aware of this, our senior management acted aggressively to correct both the key and card issues,” he added. The lost keys, Schwoegler said, caused “minimal increased risk to classified information” (Brian Faler, Washington Post, Nov. 7). Back to top

Washington-Area Postal Facilities Close After Anthrax Alarm By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service announced today that testing is being conducted at a number of postal facilities in the Washington area for possible anthrax contamination after sensors at a U.S. Navy mail-handling facility here detected anthrax Wednesday (see GSN, Oct. 28). A preliminary test of a routine air sample obtained Wednesday at the Naval Consolidated Mail Facility resulted positive for anthrax, the Postal Service announced yesterday. The sample was taken to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. for additional tests, which also came back positive, postal spokesman Gerry McKiernan told Global Security Newswire today. The Associated Press reported today that a Navy spokesman has said the Fort Detrick tests indicated more than 130 anthrax spores present. Further tests are being conducted on the Navy mail-handling facility sample, and the results of those tests are expected later today, McKiernan said. Law enforcement official have said that the initial Fort Detrick tests were conducted by contractors, not by Army scientists, raising suspicion of a false positive result, according to the Washington Post. U.S. Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson was reported today by Reuters as saying that he believed further testing would indicate that the Navy mail-handling facility was free of anthrax. “Our preliminary analysis is, ‘Underwhelmed,’” Thompson said while attending a health ministers’ conference in Berlin. As a result of Wednesday’s preliminary test, the Postal Service closed 11 postal facilities in the Washington area that send mail to the Navy facility. Postal Service Vice President Azeezaly Jaffer said yesterday in a press statement that the facilities were closed “out of an abundance of caution.”  The Postal Service announced today that the 11 closed facilities are undergoing environmental testing involving air sampling and surface testing, and those tests are expected to be completed by the end of the day. “[You] got to take these things seriously,” McKiernan said. The closed facilities include a mail-handling center on V St. in Washington that processes mail addressed to the U.S. government. The V St. facility was briefly closed early this year after initial tests detected the presence of anthrax DNA in a small batch of mail (see GSN, Jan. 16). Further testing, however, later came back negative for anthrax. McKiernan said today that there have been no reports of suspicious symptoms among postal employees and that they have received no health guidelines “at this time.” Five contract workers at the Navy mail-handling facility, however, were reported to have been offered the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. Back to top

U.S. Defense Department Returns Johnson Atoll to Nature The U.S. Defense Department is restoring Johnson Atoll to a natural state after almost 70 years of military control and a huge chemical weapons incineration effort, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported yesterday (see GSN,). Officials are scheduled to finish removing almost all man-made structures from the four-island Pacific Ocean atoll by next summer. The incinerator, the facility’s security fences and the armed guards are already gone, according to the Star-Bulletin. After the U.S. Army took two years to build an 80,000-square-foot chemical weapons disposal facility, it took “only two months to demolish it,” said Gary McCloskey, site manager for the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System. The U.S. Air Force is now charged with completing the atoll’s return to nature. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will monitor the islands for the military. “Our job is to monitor the wildlife resources there,” said Don Palawski, refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. “That allows them to focus on their main mission,” he added (Gregg Kakesako, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Nov. 6). Back to top

Russia Proposes Creating International Spent Nuclear Fuel Centers By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev Wednesday proposed a new international effort to help improve the security of spent nuclear fuel throughout the world, which could be attractive to terrorists seeking to build a “dirty bomb” (see related GSN story, today). In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee, Rumyantsev described the threat posed by ever-growing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel created by civilian nuclear power plants and research reactors around the world. Citing data prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rumyantsev said that more than 200,000 metric tons of spent fuel has been created since the beginning of the civilian nuclear power industry and that 10,000 metric tons are created every year. “It is for a number of years already that specialists have been paying attention to the need for ... a rational and safe way (or ways) of spent fuel management,” Rumyantsev said. “As of today, this objective, due to its scale and outstanding nature for virtually all regions, has passed to the rank of global priorities,” he added. Rumyantsev proposed the creation of several “big” international spent nuclear fuel management centers to be operated under IAEA oversight. Such facilities would be equipped with “state-of-the-art technologies and appropriate physical protection” to ensure spent fuel safety and to help strengthen the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, Rumyantsev said. Nonproliferation expert Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Global Security Newswire today that Rumyantsev’s proposal could help combat nuclear proliferation by providing a destination for spent fuel produced by nuclear programs in countries of concern, such as Iran and North Korea. The creation of spent fuel centers could also help to expand the use of civilian nuclear power by alleviating waste management concerns, she said. While saying that Moscow is “prepared” to cooperate with such a project, Rumyantsev did not say during his U.N. address whether he envisioned that one or more of the proposed spent fuel management centers would be built in Russia. The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry has long proposed that such centers be constructed in Russia, Gottemoeller said. She added that some experts believe that such an approach would be the most economical option in the near term. A major hurdle to basing a spent fuel center in Russia, however, is U.S. policy concerning spent fuel of U.S. origin, Gottemoeller said. Currently, the United States has the authority to determine the final disposition of such fuel, she said. The United States has opposed sending such material to any spent fuel centers to be based in Russia, according to Gottemoeller, in part because of concerns surrounding Moscow’s nuclear assistance to Iran. Rumyantsev’s proposal this week appeared to complement remarks made earlier this week by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, who suggested that the processing of weapon-grade materials and the production of new nuclear materials should be limited to facilities under multilateral control (see GSN, Nov. 4).  In a separate tactic to improve spent fuel security, the IAEA has also called for more countries to join the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, according to reports (see GSN, Nov. 5). To date, only 33 countries have joined the convention. Back to top       Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation Steer U.N. Committee’s Debate By Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire UNITED NATIONS — Threats of terrorism and the tensions between the advocates of nuclear disarmament versus proliferation helped shape the General Assembly’s disarmament committee debate, which ended its work for the year yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 4, 2002). Little new ground was broken in the committee on issues of eliminating and controlling weapons of mass destruction, regulating the flow of conventional arms and promoting new disarmament negotiations. However, as was the case last year, the specter of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons — as opposed to focusing on the stockpiles of the nuclear weapons states — increased in resonance. A resolution sponsored by the United States captured both aspects of this debate. The draft on “Enhancing the contribution of the First Committee to the maintenance of international peace and security” reads like a procedure plan to improve the methodology of the disarmament committee, but all the delegates understood this to represent an attempt to shift the committee’s emphasis from disarmament to nonproliferation. The reference in the draft to “the emergence of new threats to international peace and security” was a particular focus of the debate. U.S. Ambassador Sherwood McGinnis said the draft was “not revolutionary. ... It is [meant] to focus people on how they can better use this body.” In an interview with Global Security Newswire, he said, “We are not trying to redo the First Committee to make it a nonproliferation committee, we are saying let us use the time here to focus people’s attention on the way we do our work.” “Let’s come back and get a little more balance in the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], because the threat right now is not [a] nuclear battle” between the United States and Russia, he said, it is “the fact that certain states and nonstate actors may acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them, and that’s what we mean by ‘new threats.’” The draft was approved unanimously on Wednesday. Brazilian Ambassador Sergio Queiroz Duarte said it is “important to have specific treatment of some multilateral issues. In that respect, [the U.S. resolution] is not a procedural issue at all and I think everyone understood it.” Duarte told GSN, “All of us agree this must be looked into very seriously.” He added that the threats mentioned by the United States are “very dangerous, but we look at proliferation from a wider perspective.” Duarte said the United States does have “reasons to believe that, but many of us believe nonproliferation has many facets. We think the increase and improvement of weapons and the doctrines of certain kinds of weapons, in our view is also proliferation. They tend to limit the concept of proliferation only to new countries acquiring them or worse than that, nonstate actors.” Brazil is a member of the New Agenda Coalition, an ad hoc group of seven states — Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden — promoting steps toward nuclear disarmament, in terms of commitments made in the NPT. During the debate over the U.S. draft on Wednesday, Pakistani Ambassador Shaukat Umer said he found it “odd” that other threats — such as the development of new weapons, foreign occupation, unilateralism and the improper use of pre-emptive military force — were not mentioned in the text. According to McGinnis, “Yes you can disarm, but you don’t want to get to the point where, while you are in the process of disarming, you do not realize or recognize that countries may be using the development of nuclear energy to put themselves in a position where they can break out of the treaty and develop nuclear weapons.” On Wednesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev made a joint presentation on the same theme. “The nonproliferation regime’s weaknesses become woefully apparent when a state joins the NPT, professes peaceful intentions, and then abuses the treaty by using it as a cover to build up a nuclear weapons capability which it then publicly declares through abrogation of or withdrawal from the treaty,” Abraham said, citing in particular North Korea (see GSN, Nov. 6). “No states should be able to pursue nuclear weapons under the guise of pursuing so-called ‘legitimate’ nuclear programs for peaceful purposes,” Abraham said. “Hence we need to tighten constraints that prevent the acquisition of materials and supplies that could contribute to nuclear weapons programs. And we must insist upon strong enforcement of international controls when such programs come to light.” A resolution sponsored by India on “Measures to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction” was adopted unanimously. The resolution calls on states to strengthen measures to control nuclear and other materials that could be used by terrorists. Finnish Ambassador Jarmo Sareva chaired the six-week session. In his concluding remarks, he said he was troubled by “the persistence of deep divisions on some very important issues on the global agenda for international peace and security.” Such divisions, Sareva said, were not evidence of any failure, but rather they symbolized the need to expand “the common ground on which everyone stands.” There was disagreement over most of the major nuclear disarmament resolutions. Drafts favored by the New Agenda Coalition and the nonaligned states were often opposed by the nuclear weapon states as too radical or failing to take into account progress made, especially by the United States and Russia, on reducing their stocks of nuclear weapons. Resolutions more favorable to the nuclear powers were criticized by some countries as watering down the disarmament commitments made by the nuclear powers at the 2000 Review Conference for the NPT. India and Pakistan objected to references to the NPT. The United States objected to any reference to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. There was a direct correlation between the ambition of the resolution and the divisions in the voting. In other words, the more ambitious the goals, the less support the resolution had. Three resolutions illustrate this pattern. A nonaligned resolution on “Nuclear disarmament,” which contained a long list of disarmament steps including taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, calling for a halt in the qualitative improvements in nuclear weapons and negotiating a legally binding commitment against the first use of these weapons, was adopted 101-43, with 18 abstentions. It was basically a North-South split with European countries and U.S. allies such as Australia and Japan voting against the resolution or abstaining. The New Agenda resolution, which also contained a number of disarmament steps but stuck closer to the mandate of the NPT, garnered more support. The vote was 121-6, with 38 abstentions. The six negative votes were all from nuclear-armed states — France, India, Israel, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States. China was the only nuclear power to vote for the resolution. Russia abstained.  Most of the abstentions came from European countries. Brazil’s Duarte said the debate showed a “stalemate rather than any indication that whatever positions we strive for are losing any force.” The New Agenda did not try to expand its support, he said. “The positions we defend are apart from the positions they [the nuclear powers] defend,” Duarte said. “We did not try to get any closer to the nuclear weapon states, neither did they make any effort to come closer to us.” A Japanese-sponsored resolution on “Path to the total elimination of nuclear weapons” was approved 146-2 with 16 abstentions. India and the United States voted against the resolution. The New Agenda countries were among the abstainers, arguing that the resolution would weaken the commitments made in 2000. India objected to the support in the resolution for the NPT and the United States rejected the reference to the CTBT. Resolutions supporting the Biological and Chemical Weapons conventions and calling for improving verification of the treaties were both approved by consensus.   Back to top

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