26 May 2005
The media on NPT Conference
From: FOE Sydney
 
  1. UN Press release 26 May 2005
  2. Guardian 27 May 2005 Deadlock feared in nuclear treaty talks
  3. Reuters/Planet Ark 27 May 2005 A Nun Prays as Diplomats Bicker Over Nuclear Arms
  4. AP 26 May Nuclear Conference Approaches End
  5. Guardian 27 May 2005 America's broken nuclear promises endanger us all
  6. Arms Control Association 20 May 2005

26 May 2005
NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE HOLDS BRIEF OPEN MEETING;
SPEAKERS SAY CONSENSUS STILL POSSIBLE ON OUTCOME TEXT
 
UN Press release DC/2968
NPT Review Conference
20th Meeting* (AM)

When the Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) met briefly this morning to review the schedule for the Conference's conclusion tomorrow, speakers underlined the need for a consensus outcome text and expressed the hope that, despite divergent views, agreement was still possible.

Japan's speaker, highlighting once again the grave challenges facing the landmark Treaty, urged all States parties to deploy all possible efforts to convey a consensus message to preserve the Treaty.  Each State party was responsible for the Conference's success.  An agreed document was indeed achievable.

Similarly, Luxembourg's speaker, on behalf of the European Union, said he had imposed on delegations the same instruction to work towards consensus.  Egypt's representative, as Coordinator of the Arab Group, assured parties that the Group was fully ready to cooperate on a consensus outcome document.

Conference President Sergio de Queiroz Duarte explained that the Chairs of the three main committees would present their reports in a formal meeting tomorrow morning.  That would be followed, either in the morning or the afternoon, by consideration and adoption of final text(s) and concluding statements.

The agenda for the three main committees, adopted on 11 May, after the preparatory process and well into the Conference itself allocated the following substantive items, as follows: 

  • Main Committee I, nuclear disarmament and security assurances, led by the non-aligned movement;
  • Main Committee II, safeguards and regional issues, including the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East, under the helm of the Eastern European and Other States Group; and
  • Main Committee III, headed by the Western European and Other States, on implementation of the Treaty's provisions related to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

In connection with the agenda's adoption, the President had made a statement, as follows:  "It is understood that the review will be conducted in the light of the decisions and the resolution of previous Conferences, and allow for discussion of any issue raised by States parties".

In other business today, the Vice-Chairman of the Credentials Committee, Ivan Piperkov, said that, in two meetings, the Committee had been able to approve the credentials of 149 States parties.  The remaining credentials would be kept under review, and the Committee would meet again today in that regard at 5 p.m.

Four requests had been received from intergovernmental organizations wishing to address the Conference.  Those were the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Committee.

At the close of the meeting, Mr. Duarte announced the resumption of informal consultations for the remainder of the day.

The NPT Review Conference will meet again, in two meetings tomorrow, to hear the reports of its main committees and to conclude its review.

27 May 2005
Deadlock feared in nuclear treaty talks
Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian
 
A global conference to review the non-proliferation treaty is due to end today, almost certainly in deadlock, jeopardising what is seen as the best chance of containing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Observers at the month-long conference in New York said there was broad agreement on how to tighten the 35-year-old treaty but substantive agreement had been blocked by hardline positions adopted by the US and Iran.

The US rejected references in any final text to the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), which Bill Clinton was the first US president to sign, in 1996, but which was never ratified by the Senate.

The Bush administration has said it will stick to its moratorium on nuclear tests but would not accede to a global treaty outlawing them.

Iran has opposed all attempts to constrain or even mention its nuclear programme, which it says is purely for peaceful purposes but which many countries fear could be a front for a weapons programme. "Why this conference matters is that it is a chance for all the member countries to come together and breathe new life into the treaty," said Joseph Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "What you see is that the vast majority of the countries are in basic agreement ... but they have been blocked by an uncoordinated but parallel action by the US and Iran."

The first two weeks of the conference were bogged down in disagreements about its agenda. On the eve of the final session, two out of three working committees had failed to agree on a final draft text and the third - on disarmament - produced a draft most of which had not been agreed.

Even the five acknowledged nuclear powers, the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, failed to agree a common position, principally because of US opposition to the CTBT.

Mr Cirincione said US intransigence had undermined the suggestions its delegation made on how to stop other countries following North Korea's example of withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty.

"The US shot itself in the foot at this conference," he said. "It came in with very useful ideas on compliance but it was unable to build a consensus ... because it was unwilling to give weight to the views of other countries."

The conference's chairman, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte, will be faced today with the choice of ending the meeting without a resolution or formulating a vacuous joint statement which all countries can agree on.

Three out of the six non-proliferation treaty conferences have ended without agreement, but this failure comes at a time when several countries are considering breaking free of the treaty and developing their own weapons.

"The worry is that countries will start hedging their bets and looking at ways of turning civilian nuclear programmes into options of making weapons," said Rebecca Johnson, of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, an arms control advocacy group.

27 May 2005
A Nun Prays as Diplomats Bicker Over Nuclear Arms
Story by Louis Charbonneau
Reuters/Planet Ark
 
UNITED NATIONS - A thin Japanese woman beats a prayer drum for peace day after day in front of UN headquarters while diplomats from 188 nations bicker about the future of the world's 30,000 nuclear weapons.

"Why do we keep destroying this earth?" asked Jun Yasuda, a 56-year-old Buddhist nun born in Tokyo.

For the past month, diplomats from states that signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have been taking stock of the landmark pact against the spread of atomic weapons. They have been unable to agree on any measures that could strengthen the treaty.

"It's basically a failure," said one senior diplomat at the conference.

Hundreds of delegates from across the globe have heard the steady beat of Yasuda's drum as they entered the United Nations every day since the NPT review meeting began on May 2.

Yasuda has friends who suffered in the US atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But she says her presence outside the UN building is a "peace vigil" in support of the NPT, not a protest.

Yasuda's drumming will cease on Friday, the last day of the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

Inside the United Nations, diplomats use words like "failure," "collapse," and "disaster" to describe the conference. Participants had hoped to agree on steps to stop countries with nuclear weapons ambitions from getting sensitive technology and to persuade the five NPT members with nuclear arms to scrap their stockpiles of the world's deadliest weapons.

Diplomats from developing countries and nuclear activists place the burden of the blame on the United States, which they accuse of reneging on previous disarmament commitments.

Several diplomats said France was Washington's main ally in blocking references to the disarmament pledges the weapon states made at the last NPT review meetings in 1995 and 2000.

Under the treaty, the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain pledged to eventually disarm, while the other signatories agreed to pursue only peaceful nuclear technology.

US SAYS BELIEVES IN NPT

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denied the conference had been a failure and said Washington was committed to nonproliferation.

"The United States has shown by its actions and by its efforts ... we do believe in the (NPT), and we're focused on the specific steps to carry it out," he said.

"I suppose pointing fingers at the United States is a popular thing to do," Boucher said. A recent arms reduction agreement with Moscow showed Washington was committed to reducing its weapons arsenal "down to very low levels," he said.

Participants said Egypt and Iran also helped prevent the conference from accomplishing much of anything.

Iran did not want any critical statements about its own NPT breaches, while Egypt wanted the conference to demand Israel sign the NPT and give up its assumed nuclear arsenal.

Israel, like nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, has never signed the treaty. It has an estimated 200 nuclear warheads. North Korea, which says it has the bomb, withdraw from the treaty in 2002.

Since Cairo could not achieve its goal, it forged what one arms expert called an "unholy alliance" with Tehran, Washington and Paris to block any hard outcome from the review.

Failure of the conference "doesn't mean the NPT has failed or that the process has failed," the senior diplomat said. "It means people don't have the political will."

The Buddhist nun said the world could only get rid of nuclear weapons by building more trust.

"Where does this nuclear bomb come from? From fear, not trust," Yasuda said. "You have to trust."

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington)

 

26 May 2005
Nuclear Conference Approaches End
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
 
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- All but paralyzed on its next-to-last day, the global conference on the nonproliferation treaty was reduced Thursday to quibbling over a footnote, having failed to agree on any concrete new steps to deal with growing nuclear fears in the world.

The quibble had symbolic meaning: whether a conference report should point to past disarmament commitments many say the United States is shirking.

But in their closing sessions Friday, after a month's work, the delegations of more than 180 nations will have no final document to approve, of consensus recommendations for action. At best, they may adopt a brief statement endorsing nonproliferation principles.

It will be a feeble climax to weeks of divisive debate over issues ranging from Iran's uranium centrifuges, to Israel's nuclear capabilities, to U.S. weapons plans.

"It's a tremendous lost opportunity to strengthen the effort to stop proliferation," said Daryl Kimball, of the private, Washington-based Arms Control Association.

The members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty convene only once every five years to identify weaknesses in implementing the 1970 treaty, and to forge political agreement on steps to remedy them. Though not legally binding, like the treaty itself, these consensus positions give a boost to nonproliferation initiatives.

Under the 1970 nuclear pact, states without atomic arms pledged not to develop them, and five with the weapons _ the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China _ undertook to eventually eliminate their arsenals. The nonweapons states, meanwhile, were guaranteed access to peaceful nuclear technology.

That guarantee underlies the long-running dispute over Iran's uranium-enrichment program, whose gas centrifuges can produce both fuel for nuclear power plants and material for bombs. Washington contends Tehran plans to build weapons, but the Iranians say they're interested only in peaceful energy.

Delegations here had promoted ideas, for example, for limiting access to such dual-use technology with bombmaking potential, along with proposals to strengthen inspection of nuclear facilities, pressure nuclear-weapons states to reduce arsenals more quickly, and take other steps to rein in the ultimate weapons.

Some also supported plans to make withdrawing from the treaty more difficult and penalty-laden. That was a response to North Korea's announced withdrawal from the treaty in 2003 and its declaration that it has built nuclear bombs _ all done without consequence under the nonproliferation pact.

But the three conference committees were caught in a crossfire of interests, including U.S.-Iranian antagonisms, and all failed to reach consensus on action programs to send to the full conference.

Iran objected to proposed language singling it out as a proliferation concern. Egypt blocked action on toughening treaty withdrawal, wanting the option to pull out as long as ex-enemy Israel, not a treaty member, has a nuclear arsenal. The United States, for its part, objected to any reference in a final document to disarmament commitments it and other weapons states made at the 1995 and 2000 conferences.

Those commitments included, for example, activation of the nuclear test-ban treaty and negotiation of a verifiable treaty banning production of bomb material _ both steps now opposed by the Bush administration.

The conference's last-minute squabble focused on whether to include in its technical report _ as a kind of footnote _ a May 12 statement of the Non-Aligned Movement here that had indicated the conference should assess how well the 1995 and 2000 commitments have been met.

Critics here accused Washington of reneging on those commitments, thereby undermining the balance of nonproliferation and disarmament obligations in the treaty.

"I wish the United States had been more flexible here, and not tried to question or downgrade the validity with respect to the 1995 and 2000 commitments," said Thomas Graham, a former lead U.S. arms negotiator.

A U.S. delegation spokesman indicated it balked on the disarmament side because it felt the conference was paying too little attention to Iran and Washington's other proliferation concerns.

"We're happy to talk about their issues," said Richard Grenell, "but there needs to be a recognition we have to talk about our issues and their issues _ not exclusively their issues."

27 May 2005
America's broken nuclear promises endanger us all
Bush has done his utmost to frustrate talks on the non-proliferation treaty
Robin Cook
The Guardian
 
Not a day goes by without a member of team Bush lecturing us on the threat from weapons of mass destruction and assuring us of the absolute primacy they give to halting proliferation. How odd then that the review conference on the non-proliferation treaty will break up this evening, barring an 11th-hour miracle, with no agreed conclusions. And how strange that no delegation should have worked harder to frustrate agreement on what needs to be done than the representatives of George Bush.

The tragedy is that, for all its faults, the non-proliferation treaty has hitherto been the best barrier put up by the international community against the spread of nuclear weapons. With the support of all but a handful of nations, the treaty provided a robust declaration that the development of nuclear weapons is taboo. That peer-group pressure has since resulted in more countries abandoning nuclear weapons than acquiring them.

South Africa disowned and dismantled its nuclear weapons after the collapse of the apartheid regime. New states to emerge from the Soviet Union, such as Ukraine, renounced the nuclear systems they inherited on their territory. Argentina and Brazil dropped the nuclear capability they were developing after negotiating a non-nuclear pact between themselves. Even Iraq turned out to have abandoned its nuclear weapons programme, although in that particular case the success of the non-proliferation regime was more of an embarrassment to George Bush.

Previous review conferences, which come round every five years, have been used as an important opportunity to regenerate support for the treaty. Not this time. The full weight of Washington diplomacy was focused on preventing any reference in the agenda to the commitments the Clinton administration gave to the last review conference. As a result, the first two weeks of negotiation were taken up with arguing over the agenda, leaving barely one week for substantive talks. Robert McNamara, the former US defence secretary and no peacenik, has observed that if the people of the world knew "they would not tolerate what's going on in the NPT conference".

Observance of the non-proliferation treaty rested on a bargain between those states without nuclear weapons, who agreed to renounce any ambition to acquire them, and the nuclear-weapon powers, who undertook in return to proceed in good faith to disarmament. It suits the Bush administration now to present the purpose of the treaty as halting proliferation, but its original intention was the much broader ambition of a nuclear-weapon-free world. The acrimonious exchanges inside the present review conference reflect the frustration of the vast majority of states, who believe they have kept their side of the deal by not developing nuclear weapons but have seen no sign that the privileged elite with nuclear weapons have any intention of giving them up.

It was to bridge the growing gulf between the two sides that the British delegation, led by Peter Hain, at the last review conference in 2000 helped broker agreement to 13 specific steps that the nuclear-weapon powers could take towards disarming themselves. Labour scores reasonably well against those benchmarks. Britain has taken out of service all non-strategic nuclear weapons and as a result has disarmed 70% of its total nuclear explosive power. It has also halted production of weapons-grade material and placed all fissile material not actually in warheads under international safeguards. This positive progress will be comprehensively reversed if Tony Blair does proceed as threatened to authorise construction of a new weapons system to replace Trident, but until then Britain has a good story to tell.

Not that it gets heard in the negotiating chambers, where it is obscured by our close identification with the Bush administration and our willingness in the review conference to lobby for understanding of their position. Their position is simply stated: obligations under the non-proliferation treaty are mandatory on other nations and voluntary on the US. Even while the review conference was sitting, the White House asked Congress for funds to research a bunker-busting nuclear bomb, although to develop new nuclear weapons, especially ones designed not to deter but to wage war, is to travel in the opposite direction to the undertakings the US gave to the last review conference.

The rationale for the bunker-buster is revealing. Its objective is to penetrate and destroy deeply buried arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. Perversely, the current regime in Washington does not perceive its development of nuclear weapons as an obstacle to multilateral agreement on proliferation but as the unilateral means of stopping proliferation. Whatever may be said for this muscular approach to proliferation, there is for sure no prospect of negotiating an agreed text with the rest of the world legitimating it.

Any progress within the non-proliferation treaty is therefore likely to be on hold until George Bush is replaced by a president willing to return to multilateral diplomacy. This is worrying as there are other pressing problems that should not be left waiting.

One of the design flaws of the treaty dates from its negotiation in the pre-Chernobyl era of rosy optimism about nuclear energy. As a result it turned on a deal in which the nuclear powers undertook to transfer peaceful nuclear know-how in return for other nations forswearing the military applications of nuclear technology. At the time many of us warned that it was inconsistent to enshrine the spread of nuclear energy in a treaty trying to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.

It therefore is no surprise that we now have a crisis over the advanced nuclear ambitions of Iran. One of the weaknesses in the west's negotiating position is that there is nothing in the non-proliferation treaty to prohibit Iran from acquiring a declared nuclear energy programme, although it seems implausible that the country has any urgent need for one, as it practically floats on a lake of oil.

The desirable solution is for an addition to the treaty banning countries without nuclear weapons from developing a closed fuel cycle for nuclear energy, which would stop them acquiring the fissile material for bombs. But this would deepen the present asymmetry between the nuclear powers and everyone else, and is only going to be negotiable if there is some evidence that we are serious about disarmament.

If the review conference breaks up in failure to agree, I suspect there will be some in Washington celebrating tonight, perhaps not in anything as foreign as French champagne but in the Napa Valley imitation. Within their own narrow terms they will have succeeded. They will have stopped another multilateral agreement and will have escaped criticism for not fulfilling their commitments under the last one. But in the process they will have weakened the non-proliferation regime and made the world a more dangerous place. The next time they lecture us on their worries about weapons of mass destruction, they do not deserve to be taken seriously.

20 May 2005
Experts Call for Pragmatic Leadership and Positive Action to Strengthen Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty:
U.S. and Iranian Delegations Have Misused Procedure to Block Progress
Arms Control Association
 
Contacts: Daryl G. Kimball, (202) 277-3478;
Joseph Cirincione (202) 441-9825;
Rebecca Johnson (646) 675-1436

(Washington, D.C.): As a month-long international conference on curbing nuclear weapons dangers moves into its final week, behind-the-scenes maneuvers by a small minority of delegations, including the United States and Iran, have frustrated progress on strengthening the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Today, several leading nuclear and security experts called on member states to seize the chance to produce a strong action plan to update and strengthen the 35 year-old treaty.

"The NPT is not broken, but it must be strengthened if past successes are to be preserved and if today's and future proliferation threats are to be rolled back. The NPT's future success depends on universal compliance with tighter rules to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, more effective regional security strategies, and renewed progress toward fulfillment of the nuclear-weapon states' disarmament obligations," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association and co-chair of the Campaign to Strengthen the NPT.

"Tragically, practical proposals to strengthen compliance and implementation of the NPT across the board are being stymied because a small number of states have chosen to play procedural games and try to rewrite history, seriously delaying the adoption of the agenda and working groups," said Rebecca Johnson of the London-based Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, presently covering the NPT in New York.

"Now very little time is available to seek common agreement on important ideas contained in the substantive working papers that could help the international community strengthen the nuclear test ban, reduce nuclear dangers, and promote further action on nuclear disarmament," said Johnson.

During the first two weeks, the conference could not agree on an agenda because the United States sought to block discussion of nuclear disarmament-related commitments and decisions from the 2000 and 1995 NPT Review Conferences. At the same time, Iran has been trying to block discussion and criticism of its advanced uranium enrichment program, which could be used to produce nuclear bomb material. This week, agreement on the organization of working groups for key agenda topics was delayed, in part, by U.S. opposition to proposals from Iran and other non-nuclear-weapon states to discuss assurances against attack or threat of nuclear attack. The conference, which involves representatives from over 160 of the nearly 190 treaty parties, generally operates by consensus.

The NPT codifies one of the most important international security bargains of all time: states without nuclear weapons pledge not to acquire them, while nuclear-armed states commit to give them up and move toward disarmament. At the same time, the NPT allows for the peaceful use of nuclear technology under strict and verifiable control.

"The U.S. delegation argues that the United States commitment to fulfill its Article VI disarmament commitments is 'unassailable,' but a closer examination of the Bush administration's nuclear stockpile numbers and actions make it clear that it has failed to move beyond Cold War-era nuclear force structure and strategies," noted Kimball.

"The administration's selective presentation of its record at the NPT conference does not hide the fact that it has taken actions contrary to U.S. disarmament commitments and obligations established by the NPT and the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences, including its publicly stated opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiations on a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty, its pursuit of new nuclear weapons, and its failure to agree to deeper, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear weapons reductions," Kimball noted. (See http://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2005/...  for a detailed analysis.)

Some U.S. and French officials have even suggested that their 2000 NPT Review Conference commitments on specific disarmament measures are no longer relevant. Former U.S. disarmament Ambassador Robert Grey has called the current U.S. stance "a radical departure from past American practice" that is a dangerous invitation for other states to ignore commitments made at previous review conferences, not the least of which is the indefinite extension of the treaty in 1995.

"As a result, the majority of countries do not believe the United States and the other nuclear-weapon states intend to live up to their NPT-related nuclear disarmament commitments, which, in turn, erodes the willingness of other states to fulfill their own treaty obligations, much less take strong action to condemn the transgressions of North Korea and Iran," noted Joseph Cirincione, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-chair of the Campaign to Strengthen the NPT.

"Iran for its part, has mischaracterized concern about its advancing nuclear program as an assault on developing states' Article IV 'right' to peaceful nuclear energy production," noted Kimball. "In reality, the right of states to pursue peaceful nuclear technologies must be balanced against the treaty's core mission to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The Review Conference can and should reaffirm the right of all states to energy security, while at the same time agree to freeze construction of new plants capable of producing highly enriched uranium and plutonium, which are needed for weapons but are not necessary for nuclear energy production," Kimball argued.

"There is still an opportunity to reach agreement on a balanced and comprehensive plan to strengthen compliance and implementation with the NPT," said Cirincione. A review of the national statements from the first two weeks of the conference reveal that the vast majority support a range of concrete steps that would advance both nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. (See http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/statements.html for the statements.)

"The best chance for success would be for the United States and other states to embrace the common European Union (EU) position, which balances the views of the two European nuclear-weapon states, France and the United Kingdom, with the goals of the 23 EU non-nuclear-weapon states. The EU strategy action plan reaffirms the goal of nuclear disarmament, the need for new measures to control the spread of technologies that can be used to produce nuclear weapons material, while also endorsing tougher inspections and new mechanisms to deter and punish states that withdraw from the treaty to build nuclear bombs," Cirincione argued. (The EU strategy is available at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/RevCon05/.... )

"The 2005 NPT Review Conference is a vital opportunity for the United States and the international community to recommit to the treaty's goals and agree to a comprehensive program of action to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and reduce the nuclear danger. It is an opportunity that we cannot afford to squander," urged Kimball.

For more information and updates on the NPT and the Campaign to Strengthen the NPT, visit: http://www.npt2005.org . For further analysis of key issues, see: http://www.armscontrol.org/pdf/NPTRevConf2005... and for updates on the conference proceedings, see http://www.acronym.org.uk/npt/index.htm .

The Arms Control Association (ACA) is an independent, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. The Campaign to Strengthen the NPT is a joint project of ACA and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization.
If you find our resources useful, please consider joining or making a contribution.
Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor.

Global Network Yorkshire CND