U.S. Rips Disarmament Committee at U.N. General Assembly

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — While most governments addressing the General Assembly’s disarmament committee yesterday and Monday made veiled criticisms of U.S. policies of unilateral actions and interest in doctrines that call for greater use of nuclear weapons, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker yesterday criticized the committee, repeatedly characterizing its agenda as “old Cold War-era thinking.”

“In these dangerous times, too many nations still orient themselves by the anachronistic coordinates of the past; the results have been years of disappointing drift and growing irrelevance,” he said.  The committee “must reshape itself into an effective multilateral body — one that is relevant to the security threats of today and of the future,” he added.

Rademaker said, “As we face together the many new challenges to international peace and security, the question is whether the U.N. and the international disarmament machinery can still make a contribution, or will be left behind.” The United States “would not view favorably yet another year of desultory debate and rote reaffirmation by this committee of the same tired and divisive resolutions of years past,” he said.

Two of the “premier threats” that the committee should address are noncompliance with treaty obligations and preventing weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, Rademaker said.

The committee should “name names” of treaty parties who violate their obligations, such as North Korea and Iran over the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he said.

The prospect of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction “must be challenged on every front and defeated in an effective, hopefully multilateral, way,” he said.  “The international community has no time to spare and no margin for error in this endeavor,” Rademaker said.

The United States “does not believe in multilateralism for its own sake. … Rather, the United States is committed to an effective multilateralism, properly targeted at today’s security threats,” he said.  As examples of Washington’s commitment to multilateralism, Rademaker pointed to efforts to strengthen the verification processes of the NPT, and the Chemical and Biological Weapons conventions and the cuts in the nuclear arsenals it has made on its own or with Russia, such as 80 percent cuts in tactical weapons and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty commitments to reduce deployed warheads by two-thirds.

China, the only other nuclear power to speak yesterday, followed the pattern of most other nations, calling for the strengthening of multilateral systems as the best route to nonproliferation and disarmament.

“We should vigorously promote multilateralism and bring the leading role of the United Nations into full play,” Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi said.  “We should maintain the international legal system and promote the rule of law in international relations.  Undermining this legal system will jeopardize the stability of international relations.  Only terrorists and extremists will benefit from such an outcome.”

In an obvious reference to U.S. policies, Hu said, “It is against the trend of the times to lower the threshold of nuclear war by developing new types of nuclear weapons which are easier for use in actual combats; to refuse undertaking, in a legally binding manner, no-use or threat-of-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states; or even to list other countries as targets of nuclear attack.”

Japan and South Korea called on North Korea to renounce its nuclear weapons program and promised to provide aid to a nuclear-free North Korea.  South Korean Ambassador Kim Sam-hoon said, “North Korea’s nuclear weapons program can not be tolerated under any circumstances.  Moreover, there is no substitute for North Korea’s complete, irreversible and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear-weapons program.”

He added, “North Korea has nothing to gain and everything to lose by pursuing its nuclear ambitions.  On the contrary, once North Korea abandons its nuclear program, my government will spare no effort in helping North Korea to overcome its economic difficulties and to join the mainstream of the international community.”

Japanese Ambassador Kuniko Inoguchi said she was “deeply concerned” about North Korea's intention to withdraw from the NPT.  “Any development, acquisition or possession, test, and transfer of nuclear weapons by North Korea must never be tolerated,” said Inoguchi.  “Japan once again urges North Korea to immediately and completely dismantle all of its nuclear development programs in a verifiable and irreversible manner,” Inoguchi added.

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Nations Advocate Multilateralism as U.N. Disarmament Committee Opens

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — The annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee opened yesterday with key non-nuclear weapons states and U.N. officials defending multilateral efforts on disarmament and security despite increasing cases of nations ignoring such instruments. Many nations also said nuclear proliferation can never be halted without progress in nuclear disarmament.

The new undersecretary general for disarmament, Nobuyasu Abe, opened the committee meeting, saying, “Given the urgent concern about the imminent spread of deadly weapons, it would not suffice merely to recite the norms of prohibition. But we need urgently to explore practical ways to strengthen international peace and security through multilateral cooperation.”

“As in any system of law, the various multilateral instruments and institutions in the fields of disarmament, nonproliferation, and arms control depend upon three essential conditions,” he said. The first condition is that instruments must be accepted as legitimate, he said, and second, “there must be compliance with the most vital norms and ways to monitor it.” The third condition is that “there must be some credible means of enforcing such norms if and when they are violated,” he added.

“If any one of these conditions has not been adequately satisfied, we will continue to face difficulties in promoting multilateral cooperation and limiting the resort to unilateralism,” Abe said.

Committee chairman Ambassador Jarmo Sareva of Finland said some of the proliferation problems include more states acquiring nuclear weapons or allegations of states trying to acquire them, the development of new weapons that do not fall under any existing international regime, such as space-based weapons, and nuclear weapons states not eliminating their stocks.

These problems have “both contributed to and been exacerbated by a crisis of confidence in multilateralism and the rule of law in international relations,” he said.

While there is no single solution, said Sareva, it is “a challenge that will require many tools.”

“We must neither turn a blind eye to the very real shortcomings in some existing multilateral approaches to international peace and security, nor — be it out of frustration or out of design — cast aside longstanding multilateral norms and security frameworks simply because a tiny minority of states has chosen to flout them,” he said.

Ambassador Sergio Queiroz Duarte of Brazil, speaking for the New Agenda Coalition, said, “To attain a nuclear weapon free world, it is vital to prevent nuclear proliferation, and at the same time it is imperative to promote nuclear disarmament.”

The New Agenda Coalition is an ad hoc group of seven states — Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden — promoting steps toward nuclear disarmament, in terms of commitment made in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Duarte said the coalition was concerned that India, Pakistan and Israel remain outside of the NPT and that North Korea has announced its withdrawl from the treaty. While not criticizing the United States by name, Duarte listed several policy concerns that were clearly directed at Washington.

He said one “disturbing development” is the trend toward creating a “broader role of nuclear weapons as part of security strategies, including the rationalizations for the use and development of new types of weapons.”

The United States is scheduled to address the committee today.

Ambassador Nugroho Wisnumurti of Indonesia said he was concerned about the “declining role” of multilateralism since it is “a guarantor of legitimacy and democracy in tackling the global problems confronting us.” He was also “concerned over a new, untenable doctrine of preemption even against non-nuclear states,” Wisnumurti added.

In contrast, Ambassador Carlo Trezza of Italy, speaking for the European Union, placed much of his emphasis on nonproliferation, especially in the context of the NPT. “The EU regards the [NPT] as the cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime and the essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament.”

He called on India, Pakistan and Israel to adhere to the NPT, urged North Korea to “reconsider its course of action,” and said the Iranian nuclear program “remains a matter of grave concern.”

At a forum later in the day sponsored by the Middle Powers Initiative, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, Duarte said, “The stress on just the nonproliferation aspect of the agenda tends to unbalance the agenda.” The focus on the possibility of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of other states or terrorists is “a challenge to the future, but we also have to recognize that the lack of progress and setbacks we have experienced in the field of disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament, are no less challenging,” he said.

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