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Experts Call for “Universal Compliance” With Improved Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — U.S. nonproliferation experts have called in a report set to be released this week for a new international strategy of “universal compliance” to help strengthen the global nuclear nonproliferation regime (see GSN, Feb. 24). “The present nonproliferation regime needs fixing,” says the report, prepared by experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is a time that demands systemic change: a new strategy to defeat old and new threats before they become catastrophes.” The report, an advance copy of which was obtained yesterday by Global Security Newswire, sets out about 100 recommendations for improving the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. It was prepared over an 18-month-period involving consultations with more than 150 officials and experts from a number of countries. Many of the report’s recommendations were included in a draft version released last summer (see GSN, June 28, 2004). The report comes as members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the linchpin of international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, prepare to meet in May for the treaty’s fifth review conference. The report’s authors selected 20 recommendations as being among the “top priorities” for improving the nonproliferation regime. These include making nonproliferation decisions irreversible, such as by restricting uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technologies to those countries that already posses them in exchange for affordable nuclear fuel for civilian plants; an end to the production of highly enriched uranium; and a temporary pause in plutonium separation. The report also calls for new measures to prevent countries from withdrawing from the treaty, such as North Korea is believed to have done. The report recommends that the U.N. Security Council pass a resolution holding countries that withdraw from the treaty responsible for any violations they might have conducted as a member; and that the council bar those countries that withdraw from using the nuclear assets they obtained as treaty members. In addition, all countries should agree to suspend nuclear cooperation with those states that the International Atomic Energy Agency cannot verify are in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations, the report says. To help devalue the role of nuclear weapons, the five recognized nuclear weapons-states — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — should disavow the development of new nuclear weapons, agree to maintain their moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the report says. Of the five nations, only China and the United States have not ratified the test ban treaty. In addition, all nuclear weapons states should produce a “detailed road map” of the measures needed to verifiably eliminate their nuclear arsenals, the report says. Only the United Kingdom has begun to examine such a disarmament effort, the report states. The report calls on Russia and the United States specifically to increase the time officials would need to make a decision to launch nuclear weapons and to make their respective nuclear reductions, such as those carried out under the 2002 Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty, “irreversible and verifiable.” The Carnegie experts encouraged development of new measures to secure nuclear materials around the world, including the creation of a high-level contact group to prepare new standards for the protection of nuclear weapons, facilities and materials. In addition, the United States, Russia and other countries should seek to secure and remove vulnerable nuclear materials around the world within four years, the report says. It also recommends enhanced measures to prevent the illegal transfers of nuclear-related technologies, such as those conducted by the international network formerly headed by top Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. To do so, the report says, all countries must fulfill their obligations under Security Council Resolution 1540 to implement national measures to prevent proliferation. In addition, all countries should be required to ratify the Additional Protocol to their IAEA safeguards agreements, which gives the agency increased authority to monitor a country’s nuclear activities, the report says. The report further calls on the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a multilateral export-control regime that governs trade in nuclear-related technology, to make the Additional Protocol a “condition of supply” for all transfers. A senior U.S. State Department official said last month that the Bush administration believes the group will do so by the end of the year. The report also recommends that group members expand their voluntary data sharing with the International Atomic Energy Agency and require it for transfers of all controlled items, thereby making undeclared transfers “illegal on their face.” The experts also encouraged private corporations to block trade, loans and investments with those countries illegally seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Noting that many countries use regional conflicts are reasons for seeking nuclear, along with biological and chemical weapons, the report calls on the “major powers” to aid in the resolution of such disputes. In addition, the report seeks to address the so-called “three-state problem” — the possession of nuclear weapons by India, Israel and Pakistan, none of which have joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The experts recommended an end to the “unrealistic” demand that three countries give up their nuclear weapons and join the treaty as non-nuclear states. Instead, the three countries should be persuaded to accept the same obligations as those held by the recognized nuclear weapons-states, the report says. “The goal of persuading India, Israel and Pakistan to abandon their nuclear weapons would not be dropped, rather these three states would be expected to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as and when the United States, China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom eliminate theirs,” the report says. The report is set to be formally released Thursday during an event at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.
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