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NPT: Commitments Against the Use of Nuclear Weapons Still a Distant Goal By Jim Wurst This issue was one of the key concerns during the annual meeting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which ended here on Friday (see GSN, May 9). The treaty is regularly described as a bargain in which the non-nuclear states promise to forgo the nuclear option and the nuclear states promise to work towards nuclear disarmament. Implicit in the idea of renouncing nuclear weapons is the desire by these states for an unequivocal, legally binding commitment by the nuclear powers not to be threatened or attacked with nuclear weapons. In other words, protection can be found in the treaty, not in possessing nuclear weapons. Such commitments are called negative security assurances since the promise is not to do something. Positive security assurances are the commitments to come to the assistance of an attacked victim. At the Geneva meeting, New Zealand’s Ambassador Tim Caughley said unequivocal negative security assurances “would surely be an incentive to all non-nuclear weapon states to avoid taking the option of developing a nuclear weapons program.” Such assurances “would be a concrete advantage to non-nuclear weapon states to have this assurance provided by the nuclear weapons states,” he added. Caughley spoke for the New Agenda Coalition of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden. The coalition is an ad hoc group working to persuade the nuclear powers to embark on a series of steps leading to nuclear disarmament. Historically, achieving negative security assurances has been difficult because four of the five nuclear weapons states that belong to the NPT — the United States, Russia, United Kingdom and France — have always attached conditions to assurances, such as retaining the right to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state aligned with a nuclear power. China is the only country to give an unequivocal commitment not to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. The three other nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and Israel — are not parties to the treaty. The Nonaligned Movement and the New Agenda Coalition have lobbied for years for legally binding negative security assurances. The New Agenda submitted a working paper to this year’s meeting that includes a draft protocol on security assurances that could be added to the NPT. If the world had such commitments, “it would narrow down hugely the potential dangers of a larger range of countries developing nuclear weapons,” Caughley said in an interview with Global Security Newswire last week. “We see this as a way of addressing both nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation issues. It is a tool open to us that we believe is capable of delivering that very same objective,” he added. However, events are moving in the opposite direction with new strains developing over North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT and charges, leveled largely by the United States, that Iran is illegally developing a nuclear weapons program. How these questions are resolved will have an effect on the security assurances debate. In addition, new U.S. policies, including the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, that envisions numerous scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons, is moving Washington even further away from the non-nuclear states’goal of an unequivocal commitment. The current standoff over North Korea presents a special dilemma. North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT and is threatening to resume a program that can produce nuclear weapons. The committee sidestepped the issue last week, not wishing to be seen as interfering with the talks between the United States and North Korea. Jean du Preez of the Monterey Institute of International Studies said, “There is an irony in the whole debate” on how to deal with North Korea. One of the reasons North Korea uses to justify a weapons program is “retaliation to the U.S. threatening it with nuclear weapons,” he said. But if North Korea can be coaxed into giving up its nuclear ambitions, “the North Koreans are likely to get some kind of an assurance from the United States that it will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons as an incentive to halt or freeze its program,” said du Preez. “The irony is that state parties to the treaty need to threaten to develop nuclear weapons in order to get security assurances” while states in compliance get no such guarantees. “There’s a message in that,” he added. If the United States “is willing to do that to get the North Koreans back into the fold of the nonproliferation regime, they surely should be willing to give a legally binding commitment to those states that in full compliance with their treaty obligations,” said du Preez, a former South African diplomat. A similar situation may be developing with Iran. The United States has charged, including during this NPT meeting, that aspects of the Iranian nuclear program are more in keeping with a weapons program than an energy program. Like North Korea, du Preez said, “The Iranians could also argue that they feel threatened by the United States.” Together with Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran and North Korea were called the “axis of evil” by U.S. President George W. Bush. The key difference from North Korea is that Iran is a member of the NPT and as such is regularly inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “If they can prove to be in compliance with the treaty’s provisions” through IAEA inspections, du Preez said, “The Iranians also deserve the security such a protocol or legal instrument would provide. That would strengthen the treaty regime as a whole because that would show that a state has decided to prove to the international community that it does not want to pursue nuclear weapons … but as an incentive for that they deserve to get an assurance that it will not be threatened or that nuclear weapons will not be used against it.” The United States is insisting that Iran sign an IAEA protocol that allows the agency more latitude in conducting inspections. In Vienna on May 6, Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh told the IAEA his government “has no difficulty accepting this protocol,” but “at the same time, it doesn’t intend to ratify and enforce the provisions of this protocol without any conditions.” Because conditions cannot be imposed on protocol negotiations, this was interpreted to mean conditions reached with the United States. If Iran agrees to tougher inspections, du Preez said, “The United States and others need to be encouraged to, once the IAEA has given it a clean bill of health, refrain from continuing to threaten Iranians. It would be in the spirit of the treaty.” The New Agenda wants to see any negotiations to take place in the context of the NPT, rather than the Conference on Disarmament, the Geneva-based body mandated to negotiate arms control treaties. Some nonaligned countries and Russia have suggested placing the issue on the CD’s agenda. Caughley told the NPT meeting that negotiations within the NPT “would provide a significant benefit to the treaty parties and would be seen as an incentive to those who remain outside the NPT. Security assurances rightfully belong to those who have given up the nuclear weapon option as opposed to those who are still keeping their options open.” Du Preez said CD negotiations, where India, Pakistan, and Israel are members, “would give these states the recognition they do not deserve as nuclear weapon states” thus “you would lose the incentive that the treaty provides. Why would you need to join the treaty if you could negotiate issues of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation outside of the treaty?” Beside, he said, the CD has been deadlocked for several years; adding security assurances to the agenda would only add to the deadlock.
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