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Blix Report Urges U.S. to Lead Arms Control Efforts By Marina Malenic WASHINGTON — Former top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday unveiled a report by a 13-member panel of weapons and security experts warning of a loss of momentum in arms control efforts and recommending 60 steps for reducing the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Jan. 26). Blix, who led the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, said bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force (see GSN, Feb. 23) and concluding a fissile material cutoff treaty (see GSN, May 18) could re-energize nonproliferation and disarmament efforts. The report says the United States must exercise “decisive leverage” on these two central issues. After two years of work, the Swedish-sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission concluded that “there has been a serious, and dangerous, loss of momentum and direction in disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.” The experts said this trend could be attributed to failure of the declared nuclear-weapon states — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — to abide by disarmament commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, Sept. 26, 2005). “Treaty-making and implementation have stalled, and, as a new wave of proliferation has threatened, unilateral enforcement action has been increasingly advocated,” the report says. The commission recommended 60 measures, ranging from nuclear-armed states abiding by “no-first-use” policies for nuclear weapons (see GSN, May 24) to all countries agreeing on limiting the spread of nuclear weapons-related technologies. The report also urges countries to strengthen international agreements outlawing chemical and biological weapons and to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space. The commission said it “views all WMD as inherently dangerous, in anybody’s hands.” “So long as any state has such weapons — especially nuclear weapons — others will want them,” the report says. “Weapons of mass destruction cannot be uninvented,” it says. “But they can be outlawed, as biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made unthinkable.” The Arms Control Association welcomed the report as a call to action for eliminating the world’s deadliest weapons. “We urge the Bush administration not only to act on commission recommendations aimed at curbing the spread of WMD, but also to show greater leadership by significantly reducing U.S. nuclear forces and missions,” Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball said in a press statement.
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