The head of the United Nations announced a five-part proposal Friday intended to one day create a world without nuclear weapons (see GSN, July 1).
(Oct. 27) -
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) speaks Friday during a WMD panel discussion. Joining him were Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak (center) and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Paulo Filgueiras/UN Photo).
The international community spends trillions of dollars on military and nuclear-weapon programs, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said during a speech at the organization’s headquarters in New York. There are now somewhere around 26,000 nuclear weapons spread around the world and concerns about the atomic efforts of Iran and North Korea, he said.
“Today, there is support throughout the world for the view that nuclear weapons should never again be used because of their indiscriminate effects, their impact on the environment and their profound implications for regional and global security. Some call this the nuclear ‘taboo,’” Ban said. “Yet nuclear disarmament has remained only an aspiration, rather than a reality. This forces us to ask whether a taboo merely on the use of such weapons is sufficient.”
The recognized nuclear powers under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty should begin meeting their obligation to undertake “good faith” talks on disarmament, Ban said.
“They could pursue this goal by agreement on a framework of separate, mutually reinforcing instruments. Or they could consider negotiating a nuclear-weapons convention, backed by a strong system of verification, as has long been proposed at the United Nations,” he said. Ban said that he had sent a draft version of a convention to all U.N. states.
Ban also called for the permanent members of the United Nations — which are also the recognized NPT nuclear powers — to begin security talks related to disarmament and to pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against nations without such capabilities. He urged nations that remain outside the treaty to halt any nuclear weapons activities and agree to disarmament.
Ban’s third recommendation addressed what he called the “rule of law.” It called for entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; enactment of a pact prohibiting production of fissile material for weapons purposes; adoption by all International Atomic Energy Agency member nations of the Additional Protocol, which allows for more intrusive inspections of nuclear sites; and other measures.
The nuclear powers should offer more transparency regarding their disarmament activities by providing written descriptions of their work to the U.N. Secretariat and allowing the material to be distributed elsewhere, Ban said.
“The nuclear powers could also expand the amount of information they publish about the size of their arsenals, stocks of fissile material and specific disarmament achievements,” he said. “The lack of an authoritative estimate of the total number of nuclear weapons testifies to the need for greater transparency.”
Finally, he called for “complementary measures” such as destruction of other forms of unconventional weaponry; additional initiatives to prevent acts of WMD terrorism; and prohibitions on space weaponry and other types of new armaments.
“Some doubt that the problem of WMD terrorism can ever be solved. But if there is real, verified progress in disarmament, the ability to eliminate this threat will grow exponentially,” Ban said. “It will be much easier to encourage governments to tighten relevant controls if a basic, global taboo exists on the very possession of certain types of weapons. As we progressively eliminate the world's deadliest weapons and their components, we will make it harder to execute WMD terrorist attacks” (Chris Schneidmiller, Global Security Newswire, Oct. 26).
There needs to be action rather than just talk on disarmament, according to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and others who attended the event organized by the EastWest Institute, the Associated Press reported.
“This is about action — about an action agenda, how we go from a lot of talking and passing resolutions to actually taking advantage of seizing the moment," said EastWest Institute founder and President John Mroz.
"The concept here is to launch a major effort to build a consensus between the West and the East on these critical issues of WMD and disarmament," he added (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 24).