STOCKHOLM — The financial crisis and global warming have had the world’s attention in recent years. Thanks to President Barack Obama’s initiative, perhaps the season for nuclear disarmament has finally arrived.
Wiew the conference on
webtv.camera.it/portal/portal/default/Conf.+Stampa.
On Thursday, President Obama will meet Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Prague to sign a nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia that will reduce their arsenals by 30 percent.
The new treaty will be received positively. There will be praise for the Obama administration’s attitude toward arms control and disarmament and for Russia’s readiness to join hands with the United States.
Though not achieving the drastic cuts in nuclear arsenals and delivery vehicles that the world is longing for, the U.S.-Russian treaty is important and encouraging. Coming after Bush administration policies that nearly sent the two states into a new Cold War, the new treaty constitutes the resetting of an important button. It preserves arrangements for confidence-building mutual inspections and sets the stage for negotiating more far-reaching cuts.
We should be aware, however, that a next step of deeper reductions will hardly be attainable unless there is agreement on extensive cooperation on missile defense. Russia is deeply suspicious that the missile shield could enable the United States to launch an attack on any target in Russia while itself remaining immune to any such attacks. Further bilateral disarmament will also be impeded if Russia feels that the NATO alliance seeks to encircle it by expanding its military cooperation through membership or otherwise with more states neighboring Russia.
The signing on Thursday will take place one year after President Obama’s presentation in Prague of a detailed program for the revival of global nuclear arms control and disarmament. Later this month he will be the host in Washington of a large summit meeting that will focus on nuclear security. In May, the operation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be the subject of review at a conference in New York in which nearly all governments in the world will take part. The review that took place in 2005 ended in acrimony and some predicted the end of the treaty.
Through adherence to the nonproliferation treaty that was concluded in 1970, states have committed themselves to stay away from nuclear weapons or to move away from these weapons. If all states had joined and fulfilled their commitments, the treaty would have led by now to a world free of nuclear weapons. This has not happened, of course. The number of nuclear weapons, which peaked at more than 50,000 during the Cold War, is still over 20,000 — most of them in the United States and Russia. The number of states with nuclear weapons has gone from five to nine since 1970.
There is also frustration at the lack of progress on many important items relevant to the treaty. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not entered into force because the United States, China and a number of other states have not ratified it. The negotiation of a convention prohibiting the production of enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons remains blocked at the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency for strengthened safeguards inspections remains unratified by a large number of states, including Iran.
Some items are bound to attract much attention at the nonproliferation treaty review conference in May. One is that 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the obligation of five nuclear-weapon states under the treaty to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament has not led us anywhere near zero. Another grievance — especially among Arab states — is that Israel has nuclear weapons and has refrained from adhering to the treaty. A third is that the treaty has been violated by several states. Although Iraq and Libya have been brought into compliance, North Korea has not and Iran and perhaps others might be aiming to ignore the treaty.
Related Documents:
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: HANS BLIX IN ROME NEXT THURSDAY
On the eve of the presentation of the Obama Plan for the reduction of nuclear weapons, the US-Russian summit and the international Conferences of Washington and New York, which in coming months will place the reduction of nuclear arsenals at the centre of international politics Hans Blix, former AIEA Director general and Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, will be in Rome on Thursday, 25 March.
Hans Blix will be attending the Conference: “DOES SECURITY REQUIRE NUCLEAR WEAPONS?”, which will be held in the lower house of Italy’s Parliament (Chamber of Deputies, sala del Mappamondo, 3 p.m.), promoted by the Permanent Secretariat of the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit, chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev and Walter Veltroni, and by Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.
Speakers at the Conference, chaired by the Hon. Federica Mogherini, of the Defence Commission of the Chamber of Deputies and member of the International Council of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and (PNND), will include the Hon. Giorgio La Malfa and the Hon. Arturo Parisi, signatories of the appeal for a world without nuclear weapons, Ambassador Carlo Trezza, Chairman of the UN Advisory Committee for Disarmament Affairs, Flavio Lotti, Coordinator of the “Tavola della pace”, Lisa Clark, Mayors for Peace, and Prof. Paolo Cotta Ramusino, Secretary General of Pugwash, Nobel Peace Prize Organisation.
Hans Blix, Swedish Foreign Secretary from 1978 to 1979 and former AIEA Director general, chaired the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) from January 2000 to June 2003, and on 27 November 2002 was named head of inspectors sent to Iraq as part of UN Resolution 1441 measures to search for weapons of mass destruction believed to be held by that country. He is currently one of the leading voices and advisors on the subject of nuclear weapon reduction policies and on the use of nuclear energy in Middle East countries.
Info: +393929717840, 0667605348.
For accreditation: mogherini_f@camera.it
Click here for more information
Share this
