The United States today submitted a draft treaty to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament under which nations would agree to halt production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2005).
Nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea have made it clear that the time has come for the 65-nation body to approve a pact forbidding development of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons, according to Stephen Rademaker, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control. “The treaty text that we are putting forward contains the essential provisions that would compromise a highly successful legally binding” fissile material cutoff treaty, Rademaker said in a statement to the conference in Geneva. “It bans … the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” A U.S. “draft mandate” calls for formation of an ad hoc committee to consider the draft treaty and to report to the conference at an unidentified date. The proposal would allow the conference to move forward with its work for the first time since it negotiated the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty a decade ago, Rademaker said. “The only possible avenue for progress in this conference is to concentrate its efforts on the one topic on which we most likely shall be able to take action,” he said (Alexander Higgins, Associated Press/Washington Post, May 18). The Bush administration might also be using the treaty proposal to allay fears over the planned U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, Reuters reported yesterday. Nonproliferation experts have argued that the deal would not prevent India from broadening its nuclear weapons program, including production of fissile material. “By putting this draft forward, at least some in the administration think it would have an effect on the congressional debate” on the agreement, one U.S. official said. India pledged last year to support a fissile material cutoff treaty under the agreement. That made little difference, critics argued at the time, given the lack of a formal draft treaty and the inability of the Conference on Disarmament to develop such a pact. Submitting the draft treaty makes “it harder for U.S. opponents of the India nuclear deal to argue that Washington and New Delhi were fighting this important document,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The treaty lacks verification provisions, officials told Reuters. That makes it “very low risk for the administration because without a verification mechanism, a treaty would be nice to have, but nobody thinks it will have any real impact,” Wolfsthal said. “No one that you need to make this happen is serious about approving anything,” said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Education Policy Center (Carol Giacomo, Reuters/Yahoo!News, May 17).
The European Union announced yesterday that it would push forward with preparing incentives to persuade Iran to end sensitive nuclear work despite an early rejection of the offer by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 17). “There can’t be any rejection if no offer has been made,” said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. “It’s better not to make too much of these remarks coming out of Tehran.” Gallach said the European Union would continue developing “a package that will be very substantial and audacious, and which should satisfy Iranian needs for nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes” (Agence France-Presse I/IranMania.com, May 17). An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman suggested yesterday that Tehran would make its own offer of incentives to the European Union, the Washington Post reported. “We are prepared to offer economic incentives to Europe in return for recognizing our right” to a nuclear energy program, said Hamid Reza Asefi. “Iran’s 70 million population market is a good incentive for Europe.” One European diplomat in Tehran, however, criticized Iranian officials for rejecting the EU offer out of hand. “Before rejecting it, it would be sensible to read it,” the official said (Karl Vick, Washington Post, May 18). Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that the world must engage with Iran to find a negotiated settlement to the nuclear standoff, AFP reported. “It’s necessary to concentrate on solutions that would engage Iran in dialogue,” Lavrov said. “Attempts to create a negative scenario will not lead to success” (Agence France-Presse II/IranMania.com, May 17). Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker said today that Iran’s investment in uranium enrichment technologies is economically illogical. Tehran’s assertion that its enrichment work is aimed at developing a civil nuclear power program is contradicted by the fact that it has no operational civilian reactors and lacks sufficient uranium reserves to support its claimed energy ambitions, Rademaker told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. “Iran’s known uranium reserves would provide less than one year’s worth of fuel for the nuclear power program that Iran says it intends to build,” he said. “Even if Iran’s unproven and speculative uranium reserves are also taken into account … Iran still would have no more than 10 years’ worth of fuel for its intended nuclear power program.” “Even if Iran had sufficient uranium reserves to support such a program, calculations show that the cost to Iran of indigenous fuel manufacture will far exceed the price at which reactor fuel could be purchased on the open market,” he added. Rademaker said that Iran could more efficiently promote its energy independence by investing in additional petroleum refinery capacity instead of spending “somewhere on the order of $1 billion to develop a uranium enrichment capability to protect against a relatively small energy dependence that may arise in the future” (U.S. release, May 18).
Top Bush administration officials have recommended opening negotiations on a permanent peace treaty with North Korea, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, May 17). Aides said President George W. Bush is likely to approve the plan, crafted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and department counselor Philip Zelikow, if North Korea resumes the stalled six-nation nuclear negotiations. Concerns over Iran’s nuclear program might have helped spur the move, said one senior Asian official familiar with the deliberations. “There is a sense that they can’t leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure,” the official said. It remains to be seen whether Pyongyang would be open to talks that could touch on other sensitive subjects such as human rights and terrorism, the Times reported. Two papers produced by Rice and Zelikow on seeking a new approach to the talks underwent what was labeled “a blizzard of debate” within the White House that ultimately included Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. “I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult,” said one official who has participated in the internal debate. “So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war” that has existed for 53 years. North Korea agreed in September in principle to give up its nuclear arms and to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The agreement also includes a provision declaring that “the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum.” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to discuss the possible new approach, saying, “The most important decision is with North Korea — and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program.” Officials said U.S. financial sanctions, which North Korea has named as the reason for its continued boycott of the talks, would continue whether or not peace treaty discussions open. National security adviser Stephen Hadley said last month that the sanctions were “the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention” (David Sanger, New York Times, May 18). A top South Korean official today dismissed the report as “absolutely nothing” new, Agence France-Presse reported. “The headline was big but the content was not,” said the Foreign Ministry task force chief Lee Young-joon. “The main theme of the New York Times piece is that the Bush administration is planning to include peace treaty negotiations in talks with North Korea. But that is already the case. Everybody knows,” Lee said. “Peace treaty negotiations are just one part of a series of implementation points. In order to start implementing the agreements we must first have a new round of six-party talks,” he said (Agence France-Presse I, May 18). Meanwhile, experts expressed skepticism about quick resumption of talks, AFP reported. “Clearly, I don’t believe that there is going to be progress,” said Charles Pritchard, former top U.S. negotiator with North Korea. Pritchard said the “high point” of the talks was “just prior” to the announcement in September that Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees and aid. “Everything has gone downhill since then,” he said. Pritchard added that, at that time, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill had “great deal of flexibility and authority to actually negotiate in a serious manner.” The “serious lack of cooperation” among factions in the Bush administration is hampering diplomacy, said Yang Bojiang, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. A group of experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report released Wednesday that, given the harsh rhetoric the Bush administration has employed against North Korea, high-level diplomacy is needed to convince Pyongyang that Washington is not seeking regime change. “Such an approach is highly unlikely given that the Bush administration appears to have judged that there is little likelihood that North Korea will negotiate away its nuclear weapons capability no matter what the incentives or pressures might be,” the report says (P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, May 18).
The U.S. Strategic Command hopes that a planned international missile launch notification system would allay fears among lawmakers here of plans to arm submarine-launched ballistic missiles with conventional warheads, Kyodo News reported today (see GSN, May 18). Replacing some sea-based nuclear warheads with conventional tips would boost the U.S. ability to destroy enemy WMD facilities or other sites in a matter of hours during a crisis, Strategic Command has claimed. However, some experts and legislators fear that another nuclear power might mistake a ballistic missile carrying a conventional warhead as a nuclear weapon and initiate an atomic strike. The Senate Armed Services Committee this month approved $127 for the conversion program in fiscal 2007, but restricted spending to $32 million until the Defense Department prepares a report on “nuclear ambiguity issues,” Kyodo reported. Gen. James Cartwright, head of Strategic Command, said confidence-building measures between the atomic powers could help prevent an unintended nuclear exchange. Russia and the United States already conduct mutual inspections of their respective ballistic missile deployments and maintenance. The two countries have also pledged to establish a Joint Data Exchange Center under which they would provide early notification of ballistic missile tests or other launches. “We have what we call confidence-building measures,” Cartwright said. “And they are a set of things that really go from how you train, demonstrating to people other than yourself exactly what a particular weapon does, how it flies, or how it targets, and then what happens when it does, so they can see it and understand it.” The United States hopes that China and other nations would join the center, Cartwright said. Beijing already receives advance notice of U.S. ballistic missile launches, he said. “We don’t have a treaty, but we tell them so that they know,” he said. The Chinese “don’t tell us, they don’t tell the Russians, but we want to make sure” (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, May 18).
The U.S. House Appropriations Committee yesterday made further cuts to the White House fiscal 2007 funding request for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported (see GSN, May 12). An Appropriations subcommittee last week cut funding from the requested $250 million to $150 million. The full panel slashed another $30 million from the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing initiative. Under the program, the United States and other countries would lease reactor fuel to nations and retrieve spent fuel for reprocessing. Scientists would also study proliferation-resistant forms of reprocessing. The Bush administration says the plan would increase international availability of nuclear power and reduce the threat of proliferation (see GSN, Feb. 9). Critics argue that it would make it easier for terrorists to obtain nuclear material for weapons. “Reprocessing spent fuel is dirty, dangerous and expensive,” Stephen Young, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a press release. “GNEP would only succeed in making it easier for terrorists to obtain the material needed to make a nuclear weapon. The administration’s plan got the rebuke it deserves” (Union of Concerned Scientists release, May 17).
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan today warned that the world is at a crossroads and must choose between a situation in which nuclear arms are restricted and one in which all countries will feel compelled to acquire them, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 16). “The international community seems almost to be sleepwalking down the latter path — not by conscious choice but rather through miscalculation, sterile debate and the paralysis of multilateral mechanisms for confidence-building and conflict resolution,” he said during a speech at the University of Tokyo. Annan also expressed regret that the international community in two meetings last year could not improve the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, Sept. 22, 2005). “This sent a terrible signal,” he said, adding that the treaty pillars have been “put into doubt.” “While some progress toward disarmament has taken place, nuclear weapons worldwide still number in the thousands, many of them on hair-trigger alert,” he said. “To these old challenges have been added new ones, above all the vulnerability exposed by the extensive trafficking in nuclear technology and know-how by the scientist A.Q. Khan and others,” Annan said, referring to former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who led a widespread nuclear black market. “Perhaps most damaging of all, there is also a perception that the possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction offers the best protection against being attacked,” he said. He praised Japan for demonstrating that a country can be influential without possessing a nuclear arsenal. “You have shown that a state does not need nuclear weapons to be normal. Nor does it need to be armed to the teeth in order to exercise influence,” Annan said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 18).
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