Global Security Newswire

U.S. President Barack Obama is preparing significant measures aimed at reducing nuclear-weapon threats, the co-chairman of the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament said Sunday (see GSN, Feb. 17).

"I got a very, very positive impression of serious commitment from President Obama to really do some game-changing things in this area," former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said after meeting with Vice President Joseph Biden and other senior administration officials. The international commission, led by Evans and former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, is working to set the agenda for the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference (see GSN, Oct. 21, 2008).

Evans identified five potential U.S. nonproliferation moves he said would be "very, very important ... in changing the psychological landscape internationally and reinvigorating the momentum for both disarmament and nonproliferation": ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; adopting a no-first-use nuclear weapons policy; launching "serious, wide-ranging strategic dialogues" with China and Russia on missile defense and other issues; reviving talks on a worldwide ban on production of weapon-usable fissile material; and working with Russia to negotiate a "continuation or replacement or extension" of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

"It's fair to say that we are pushing at a reasonably open door on all these issues," Evans said. "Everything we heard was extremely encouraging, and it's extremely important in global terms, because in this, as in frankly so many other areas, U.S. leadership is absolutely critical and has been somewhat missing over the last eight years."

One nuclear expert urged the international commission to focus on nonproliferation issues that the international community is not yet addressing.

The group was "pushing very hard on issues where national governments are already focused like a laser beam. They should be putting a spotlight on things that national governments are not paying so much attention to. ... That is where they can add value," said Nonproliferation Policy Education Center head Henry Sokolski.

Sokolski raised concern about "how there can be a growth in the number of states with large nuclear [power] reactors without a growth in the numbers of nuclear (weapons) ready states."

"They have done great work in lifting the carpet on the growing nuclear capabilities of Pakistan, India and China and the threats that poses," he said of the commission. "We need to see more detail as to what might be done to counter those threats."

The panel was "still a work in progress,", he said (Shaun Waterman, United Press International, Feb. 18).