By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The United States needs to compromise on its nuclear weapons policies if it wants to help strengthen the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s nonproliferation norms at a major review conference that begins Monday, U.S. nonproliferation experts said yesterday in congressional testimony (see GSN, April 6).
A senior U.S. official yesterday indicated no interest in compromising. “This notion that the United States needs to make concessions in order to encourage other countries to do what is necessary in order to preserve the nuclear nonproliferation regime is at best a misguided way to think about the problems confronting us,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker at a hearing of the House International Relations nonproliferation subcommittee yesterday, according to a Reuters account. The central U.S. message at the conference will be “to urge strong action to confront the threat posed by NPT noncompliance,” he said. Joseph Cirincione, director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, however, testified that nonproliferation and disarmament are linked in the minds of many treaty parties, and that the perception the United States is unwilling to compromise could undermine U.S. efforts to strengthen the treaty. “If this conference ends without a consensus document, if it is seen as a failure, then that is a serious blow to the confidence that all of the other nations have in the nuclear nonproliferation regime,” he said. “If the United States of America is seen as the reason for that failure, it will greatly set back our efforts to resolve the crisis of Iran, to resolve the crisis of North Korea, to change the rules of the road on the nuclear fuel cycle. … It makes all our work harder across the board,” he said. Non-nuclear parties to the treaty “remain unsatisfied with the emphasis that is placed by the United States [on disarmament],” said Jean du Preez, director of the nonproliferation program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute. “It would be important for the Untied States to seek compromises,” he said. Consensus Statement SoughtAn objective of the conference, Cirincione and du Preez said, should be a consensus statement on strengthening the treaty. The Bush administration, for its part, would like countries to agree on ways to reverse some existing cases of suspected proliferation, and measures for greater restrictions and controls over certain nuclear materials in civil programs. However, widespread support for pursuing such objectives could be undermined if legitimate nuclear weapons states appear to “cherry-pick” or “roll back” their disarmament commitments, du Preez said. He said, for instance, that Germany has stated that restrictions on peaceful nuclear energy should be accompanied by far-reaching disarmament measures. A concession the administration might consider, du Preez said, is signaling its willingness to negotiate a fissile material production ban with a verification mechanism. The administration has opposed such a procedure as potentially too intrusive. Cirincione recommended statements by administration officials that the United States would not develop new nuclear weapons. The administration maintains that the treaty’s requirement to work toward disarmament does not preclude developing new weapons capabilities and has indicated that such capabilities are being considered (see GSN, April 5). Other potential sources of friction at the conference, said ranking committee Democrat Brad Sherman (Calif.), include the administration’s 2002 withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, opposition to ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and suggestions it would consider using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. The United States should consider restraining civil nuclear power sales to certain countries of proliferation concern, said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. He cited a deal by Westinghouse to sell nuclear power plants to China and reported U.S. government discussions with India over reactors. “We need to clean up our act with respect to civilian nuclear power exports,” he said. Sokolski, though, played down any urgency to produce a consensus document at the conference. “Success of this conference, and ultimately of the NPT, is far less likely to turn on anything that might transpire up in New York in the next four of weeks, than it is on what we are prepared to do in the next five years,” he said. Rademaker, testifying prior to the experts, said finding consensus at the conference is unlikely, according to a Financial Times report. He noted that half of the previous five-year review conferences did not produce consensus statements. Cirincione said the treaty has never been in such jeopardy. Focus on ProliferatorsRademaker said the focus of the conference should be on nonproliferation. He listed four countries that he said “in recent years” had sought nuclear weapons in violation of their nonproliferation obligations: Iran, North Korea, Iraq, and Libya, adding that the latter two more recently changed course. A CIA-led team investigating the fate of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction last year, concluded Iraq abandoned its nuclear weapons program soon after the 1991 Gulf War, when U.N. investigators destroyed nearly its entire nuclear infrastructure (see GSN, Jan. 25). Greater emphasis on disarmament measures would be “dangerous,” and must be “vigorously countered,” Rademaker said. Linking progress on disarmament to strengthening the treaty’s nonproliferation provisions would weaken nonproliferation efforts because it would “excuse proliferation by blaming those who lawfully possess nuclear weapons under the NPT.” Critics have questioned whether the Bush administration’s policies and potential plans for developing new nuclear weapons capabilities run counter to the spirit of the treaty’s disarmament requirements. They also fault the administration for abandoning a 13-point commitment made by the Clinton administration and the four other approved nuclear weapons states at the last review conference in 2000. Commitments included ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and preserving the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, from which the United States withdrew in 2002. The commitment was made in exchange for member-state support to indefinitely extend the treaty. Rademaker has said the administration is not bound by the policy commitments of the previous administration. Nevertheless, many states believe the United States should abide by the 2000 commitment. The United States has made “significant strides towards the reduction of nuclear weapons, but many non-nuclear weapons states believe that the United States and other nuclear weapons states have not fully implemented the commitments of the treaty and as well as coming from the year 2000 review conference,” du Preez said. Rademaker said yesterday the administration would work to correct misunderstandings about its nuclear weapons policies, which include reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the field at a given time and supposedly cutting the number of warheads. Those efforts are “not drawing the attention and support they deserve,” he said.
By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire
MEXICO CITY — Nations that are parties to nuclear weapon-free zones concluded a three-day conference yesterday calling on all countries to strengthen the disarmament and nonproliferation commitments in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to take these commitments to the logical conclusion of abolition of nuclear weapons (see GSN, April 27). Taking place on the eve of the treaty conference review beginning Monday in New York, the declaration was designed to help frame the debate for the session, especially in promoting the issues of the zones and of security guarantees for states within the zones. The declaration said the establishment of zones and the respect of the zones by the nuclear powers constitute “an important nuclear disarmament measure.” Development of the four nuclear weapon-free zones covering the entire Southern Hemisphere “strengthens world and regional peace and security, reinforces the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and contributes to the achievement of nuclear disarmament,” the declaration states. The declaration repeats a key demand of the nations in the zones that, in exchange for their renunciation of nuclear weapons, the nuclear powers should provide those states with guarantees that they will not threaten or use nuclear weapons against them. The conference called for “a universal, unconditional and legally binding universal treaty on security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states.” Since the zone parties negotiated this document without input from the nuclear-weapon states, the declaration went much further than any consensus document that could be produced by an NPT conference in condemning nuclear weapons and the military policies of the nuclear states. “The continued existence of nuclear weapons constitutes a threat to all humanity and … their use would have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth,” the declaration states. It also expressed “deep concern” over “the lack of progress” by the nuclear powers in fulfilling the disarmament obligations and over “new strategic security doctrines, which assign a broader role to nuclear weapons.” Creation of a nuclear weapon-free zone gives its members “the moral and legal authority to demand compliance with the nuclear disarmament obligations contained in the” Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico said Wednesday. He called for the zones to press measures to eliminate nuclear weapons. “Achieving nuclear disarmament is not an option, but a legal obligation contained in the NPT and that it has never been more urgent to apply nuclear disarmament measures,” the ambassador said. All nuclear weapon-free zones treaties have protocols attached that request the nuclear powers to respect the zone and refrain from threatening countries in the zone with nuclear attack. As such, the protocols are legal instruments restraining the use of nuclear weapons. Eighty-nine governments attended the conference: 53 from countries included in the zones and 36 from outside the zones, mostly from Europe and Middle East. The five treaty nuclear powers — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States — attended as observers. The known or suspected nuclear states outside the treaty — India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan — were not invited. Zone treaties ban nuclear weapons from some 100 countries in four regions: Latin America and the Caribbean; the South Pacific; Southeast Asia; and Africa. The United Nations recognizes Mongolia as a single-nation zone. While the conference framed its work in forward-looking terms, there are aspects of the existing four zones that remain unfinished. Only 19 countries have ratified the African zone treaty, but 28 are needed for entry into force. The treaty for a Central Asian zone, which was concluded in February, has come under criticism from the western nuclear powers because they were not included in the negotiations (see GSN, Feb. 10). A unique difficulty for the South Pacific zone is that it is the only one to cover more water than land, and as such there is a debate over the restrictions imposed by the zone versus the rights of passage on the high seas. Due to this controversy, none of the nuclear-weapon states have signed the treaty’s protocols. Malaysian Ambassador Rastam Isa said the treaty “includes not only territories but also the exclusive economic zones and the continental shelves of the states parties to the treaty.” Member nations say they want the ability to protect the seas from ocean dumping of nuclear waste and other environmental hazards, and that an expansive zone makes the entire Southern Hemisphere free of nuclear weapons. For their part, the nuclear states argue that the treaty extends a security arrangement into economic areas, infringing on the rights of free passage. Frederic Journes of the French Foreign Ministry said France “favors the principle of nuclear weapon-free zones provided that they are the result of the unanimous agreement of the states for the region, that they have geographic and military relevance and that they do not contravene the existing international universal law, in particular the Law of the Sea.” In February, the five Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan concluded a nuclear-weapon free zone for their region. However, there is ambiguity over the treaty since the text was negotiated without input from the nuclear powers and it has not been published. As part of the 1995 bargain to extend the NPT indefinitely, the parties to the pact endorsed the concept of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, the only state in the region not a party to the treaty, agrees with the concept, but says political normalization with its neighbors must precede negotiations on the zone. Such a stand “is a sure recipe for failure,” said Egyptian Ambassador Ahmed Fathalla. Negotiating a zone “is, and of itself, an important confidence-building measure and an act of political reconciliation,” he said. “The argument that full-scale peace with all of Israel’s neighbors and fully developed political and economic relations between all the states of the region are necessary prerequisites for the commencement of negotiations on the establishment of a NWFZ is clearly untenable,” Fathalla said. “If such an argument were correct, it is unlikely that the [Latin American zone] or even the [African zone] would ever have materialized.”
North Korea has developed the capability to arm a missile with a nuclear weapon, a top U.S. intelligence official said yesterday (see GSN, April 27). In response to a question from Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) asking whether “North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device,” Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, replied, “The assessment is that they have the capability to do that.” This was the first time a U.S. official had indicated that North Korea possessed such a capability, the Washington Post reported (Graham/Kessler, Washington Post, April 29). Clinton further asked, “Do you assess that North Korea has the ability to deploy a two-stage intercontinental nuclear missile that could successfully hit U.S. territory?” “Yes, the assessment on a two-stage missile would give capability to reach portions of U.S. territory and the projection on a three-stage missile would be that it would be able to reach most of the continental United States. That still is a theoretical capability in a sense that those missiles have not been tested,” Jacoby said (John Lumpkin, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 29). The agency later issued a statement portraying the testimony as old hat, according to the Post. Some DIA and CIA officials suggested that Jacoby misspoke. Several Senate aides who witnessed the testimony and have access to U.S. intelligence, however, indicated that Jacoby’s comments corresponded to some recent intelligence. “He may not have meant to say it in a public forum,” said one staffer. Another Senate official familiar with the intelligence said it is possible that North Korea may have miniaturized a nuclear warhead for a missile. He added, however, that the information he had seen was inconclusive. “There is a difference between believing something is true and having evidence that something is true,” he said. Senators Clinton and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), meanwhile, urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a letter “to engage in bilateral diplomatic efforts with North Korea to address this serious threat” (Graham/Kessler Washington Post, April 29). Elsewhere, Japan wants the U.N. Security Council to consider a resolution urging Pyongyang to resume six-party negotiations, but is not yet willing to push for a debate on sanctions, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday. Japan, the United States and South Korea are set to hold a high-level meeting next month over the process of referring North Korea’s case to the United Nations., according to the Yomiuri. Japanese Foreign Ministry official Kenichiro Sasae and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill agreed Wednesday on the need to consider an “alternative” to talks if Pyongyang remains opposed to resuming negotiations, the Yomiuri reported (Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomiuri, April 29). Hill today called “troubling” the possibility that North Korea may be removing spent fuel for a nuclear weapon from its Yongbyon reactor and preparing for a nuclear weapon test, Reuters reported. “To go ahead and have a nuclear test at a time the six-party talks are in abeyance I think would be very troubling for the talks,” he said. “Efforts to harvest plutonium at a time the North Korean side is simply boycotting the talks would also be very problematic for the talks,” he said (Jon Herskovitz, Reuters, April 29). South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is expected to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao in May in Moscow to discuss North Korea’s nuclear arms program, Roh’s office announced today (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, April 29).
If a new round of negotiations with the European Union beginning today is unsuccessful, Tehran could resume uranium enrichment, a top Iranian official said yesterday (see GSN, April 28). If the London talks fail, “negotiations will collapse and we will have no choice but to restart the uranium enrichment program,” said Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi. A European diplomat characterized the comment as posturing, the Associated Press reported. Discussions between senior officials are to begin tonight at dinner, according to AP. Iranian negotiator Sirus Naseri said the talks could produce an agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program. “The way I describe the situation is that we have covered all the elements to lay the basis for an agreement,'” he told AP. “Tonight I think we have the opportunity to go through the remaining elements and therefore beyond this it would be reasonable to expect that we move to a decision and a stage-by-stage implementation.” (Associated Press/TheStar.com, April 29). There is not much time left for negotiations, Naseri said. “Time is much shorter than the Europeans think,” he told Agence France-Presse. “Our point is we simply do not have much time. We have a fuel program and we can’t hold it much further,” Naseri said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, April 29). Some diplomats said they expected little to be resolved in London as both sides wait for the Iranian presidential elections in June, AFP reported. “It is still not the end game. Look to June,” a European diplomat close to the talks told AFP. “With wider support from the mullahs, [a new president] might be able to take moves,” a diplomat said. One Iranian negotiator said yesterday, however, that slow movement by France, Germany and the United Kingdom left him “very pessimistic.” “Up until now and from the start of the process (in December), especially since the Paris meeting (March 23), the Europeans have not undertaken any serious step to bring it to a close,” said Hossein Mousavian. “If this tendency is confirmed and the Europeans do not change their attitude, I am very pessimistic,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 28). Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Iran should make a greater effort to reassure the world it was not pursuing nuclear arms, Reuters reported. Iran’s agreement to return spent nuclear fuel to Russia from the Bushehr reactor “does not seem to be enough,” Putin said. Iran should also “abandon all technology to create a full nuclear cycle and also not obstruct their nuclear sites from international control,” he said (Maria Golovnina, Reuters, April 28). Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said yesterday that Russia is selling Iran components that can be used to make weapons of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported. “[Putin’s] deal with Iran is not just an arms deal,” Olmert said. “He also supplies Iran with components that could be used for possible production of unconventional weapons” (Associated Press, April 28). Crane ShipmentMeanwhile, the United States is seeking details from Germany on the reported shipment of a crane to Iran for possible use in ballistic missile development, a senior State Department official said yesterday (see GSN, April 25). “It’s something we’re following, something we’re talking about,” the official said. “We’re in contact with the Germans about it” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 28). A Western diplomat said the United States was monitoring the case as a possible test for the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led multilateral effort to interdict WMD-related shipments on the high seas, Reuters reported. “The Americans are monitoring it closely at a very high level in Washington. They see it as a test case for the PSI,” the diplomat said. This ship was expected to arrive this week in Iran. A U.S. official said Washington was discussing the shipment with Berlin and that the German government would take any necessary action. “It’s something we’re talking about and it’s something that others — not us — will be acting on,” said the official, adding that he was not certain that any action would be taken (Mark Trevelyan, Reuters, April 28).
Global Security Newswire yesterday incorrectly described a National Research Council report as specifically finding that earth-penetrating nuclear weapons could destroy deeply buried stocks of chemical or biological weapons (see GSN, April 28). The report does conclude that such nuclear weapons could destroy many deeply buried targets and that chemical and biological weapons could be destroyed if a nuclear weapon exploded in their storage chamber. However, the report finds that nuclear weapons are unable to burrow all the way down to a deeply buried chamber. GSN regrets the confusion and welcomes all reader response to our news stories.
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