Global Security Newswire

Nuclear-armed states must shed their arsenals to reduce the risk of a devastating attack or accident involving the weapons, says a report released today by the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (see GSN, Dec. 14).

Leaders in Russia and the United States are dedicated to moving toward a nuclear weapon-free world, offering the first opportunity to take serious disarmament steps since the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, says the report, which includes 76 policy recommendations toward that end.

The report recommends a worldwide nuclear arms rollback to 2,000 weapons, roughly 10 percent of today's stockpile, by 2025.

The document calls on nuclear powers to further limit circumstances in which they would consider use of their arsenals, guarantee that they would not consider a nuclear strike against any nation that does not possess nuclear weapons and revise their "extended deterrence" policies.

While encouraging the development of civilian nuclear energy capabilities, the international community should stress the development of technologies to discourage nuclear proliferation while implementing policies that would deter countries from establishing enrichment and reprocessing sites (International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament release, Dec. 15).

The report calls on all countries to "accept the application" of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol, which enables U.N. inspectors to access additional information on the nuclear work of signatory states and allows snap audits of their nuclear facilities. "To encourage universal take-up, acceptance of it should be a condition of all nuclear exports," the report states.

The commission also offered a number of recommendations for bolstering the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It advocated "much more information sharing" between the agency and member states in order to verify nations' compliance with the pact.

"The U.N. Security Council should severely discourage withdrawal from the NPT by making it clear that this will be regarded as prima facie a threat to international peace and security, with all the punitive consequences that may follow from that," the report adds. "A state withdrawing from the NPT should not be free to use for nonpeaceful purposes nuclear materials, equipment and technology acquired while party to the NPT. Any such material provided before withdrawal should so far as possible be returned, with this being enforced by the Security Council" (Diane Barnes, Global Security Newswire, Dec. 15).

Whether the disarmament plan succeeds or fails depends largely on the cooperation of Russia and the United States, said former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, co-chairman of the commission.

The work of Washington and Moscow is "critical because between them they have 95 percent of the world's nuclear warheads," Evans said after the report was formally released in Japan, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "It means the Russians coming down from 13,500, the Americans coming down from 9,000 to 500, and everybody else not increasing from where they are at the moment" (Mark Willacy, Australian Broadcasting Corp., Dec. 15).

The commission's proposed nuclear weapons cuts are achievable, he said.

The number of nuclear weapons around the world "came down quite rapidly after the Cold War," he told the Australian Associated Press. "It can be done."

"It's realistic not to set a date on when we can move from that minimization point to zero," he said, noting that the recommendations are "premised really on fundamental changes to the geopolitical environment, neighborhood squabbles in the Middle East and south Asia, psychological problems countries are going to have in giving up their security blanket" (Australian Associated Press I/Epoch Times, Dec. 15).

Some activists, though, said the report should have called for complete nuclear disarmament.

The panel's recommendations "would still leave about 20 times the number of nuclear weapons capable of causing massive climate change and trigger a catastrophic famine in the world," said Dimity Hawkins, an activist with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

"If we give permission or are seen to be endorsing any nuclear-weapon state to maintain an arsenal, then those questions will be raised by those other states who will ask 'well, why can't we have one as well?'" he said (Willacy, Australian Broadcasting Corp. News).

"Any expanded civil nuclear industry means a linked and increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and in allowing existing nuclear weapons states to retain their weapons status. This report sends a dangerous message to both the nuclear weapons haves and hopefuls," AAP quoted David Noonan, with the Australian Conservation Foundation, as saying.

"The goal is not a world with fewer nuclear weapons. The goal must be zero, through a nuclear weapons convention," said Australian lawmaker Scott Ludlam (Australian Associated Press II, Dec. 15).

Roughly half of the world's nuclear weapons are prepared for delivery while about 2,000 U.S. and Russian weapons are on "dangerously high alert," the report says, according to Agence France-Presse.

The United States holds around 9,000 nuclear weapons, Russia possesses roughly 13,000 weapons, China is believed to have around 240 nuclear warheads and Pakistan and India are each estimated to possess between 60 and 70 of the weapons, according to the commission.

Israel, which has not officially admitted possessing a nuclear arsenal, holds between 60 and 200 such weapons, the report states (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Dec. 15).