Archive for August, 2009

Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone

Posted on: August 31st, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

The entry into force on July 15 of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Pelindaba, was largely ignored by the world’s mainstream news media.[i]That’s too bad. It is a significant development and a further nudge toward a world without nuclear weapons.

It was South Africa’s historic decision to destroy its nuclear arsenal of up to six warheads and to accede, in 1990, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state that made possible the realization of the decades-old African objective of formalizing its status as a zone free of nuclear weapons. Already in 1964 the heads of State of the OAU had issued a “Declaration on the Denuclearization of Africa,” affirming their “readiness to undertake in an International Treaty to be concluded under the auspices of the United Nations not to manufacture or acquire control of nuclear weapons.”[ii]

The Treaty was agreed to in 1995,[iii] and since then all 53 African states have signed on and it entered into force when Burundi became the 28th nation to ratify it.

The Pelindaba Treaty, named after South Africa’s central nuclear research complex, confirms key provisions of the NPT, including the pledge of all signatories not to develop, produce, or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, as well as the commitment to enter into comprehensive safeguard agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency as ongoing verification of each state’s non-nuclear-weapon status (21 states have yet to conclude such agreements). But the Treaty also creates legally-binding obligations that go further. It prohibits testing of any nuclear explosive device and in effect fulfills the basic conditions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on the African continent. The Treaty also prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons on the territory of any state party to the treaty – the kind of key provision which, if it were in place in central Europe, would require the removal of all US nuclear warheads from the territories of non-nuclear-weapon states in Europe. In Africa it raises serious questions about Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is the largest Island in the Chapos Archipelago, which is considered by its parties to be bound by the provisions of the Pelindaba Treaty as a part of the territory of Mauritius. Its sovereignty is in dispute in that the UK regards Diego Garcia as part of its British Indian Ocean Territory and has of course given the US leave to build a major US military base there. The Americans in turn use it as, among many other things, a staging base for strategic bombers. These are nuclear-capable bombers with the US neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons. That puts Mauritius in violation of its Treaty obligations.[iv] The Treaty establishes the African Commission on Nuclear Energy to manage the Treaty and see to its full implementation – meaning that we will be hearing more about Diego Garica now that the Treaty has entered into force.

The Treaty also prohibits the dumping of radioactive waste in Africa and requires African states to apply the “highest standards of security and effective physical protection of nuclear material, facilities and equipment to prevent theft or unauthorized use and handling” of such materials and facilities. It prohibits any armed attack on nuclear installations within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone.

Africa’s nuclear-weapon-free status is given added importance by virtue of it being one of the world’s prominent uranium producing regions.[v] Africa currently holds something like 20 percent of exploitable uranium reserves, concentrated in Niger, Namibia, and South Africa,[vi] but deposits are also found in[vii]Algeria, Botswana, Central African Republic, DRC, Gabon, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The Pelindaba Treaty’s entry-into-force is also especially noteworthy in that it means to all sovereign territories in the southern Hemisphere, plus Antarctica, are now within legally-binding nuclear-weapon-free zones – South America through the Tlatelolco Treaty, the South Pacific through the Rarotonga Treaty, Southeast Asia through the Bangkok Treaty, and Antarctica through the 1961 Antarctic Treaty. In the northern Hemisphere the  Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone came into force in 2008 and covers Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

The Treaty of Pelindaba was a long time in the making, a process that was kept alive at least in part by persistent civil society attention – the South African Institute for Security Studies and the Monterey Center for Nonproliferation Studies maintained a continuing watch on and encouraged the Treaty’s slow progress. A visit to Burundi and Namibia earlier this year by a delegation of the World Council of Churches and the Africa Peace Forum, specifically to encourage ratification of the Treaty, helped to spur the Burundi action, and there are indications that Namibian ratification is close at hand.

The nuclear-weapon-free zone question is not as directly linked to the security and stability of the Africa continent as it is to the Middle East, but Sola Ogunbanwo, a Nigerian non-proliferation expert, makes compelling points that the Treaty’s entry into force will yield significant security benefits by reducing proliferation risks and improving verification measures.[viii] Most notably, Protocol I of the Treaty provides for assurances from states with nuclear weapons that they will “not…use or threaten to use a nuclear explosive device against…any Party to the Treaty,” and Protocol II provides for assurances that they will “not…test or assist or encourage the testing of any nuclear explosive device anywhere within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone.” China, France and the United Kingdom have ratified both protocols. The US has signed, but along with Russia, has not ratified.[ix]

The Blix Commission on weapons of mass destruction called the concept of nuclear-weapon-free zones “a success story.” They “complement and reinforce” the non-proliferation commitments made through the NPT, and they fill in “gaps” left by the NPT.[x] In other words, the entry-into-force of the Pelindaba Treaty should be registered as a significant advance in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament efforts.

Notes


[i] IAEA, “Africa Renounces Nukes: Treaty’s Entry Into Force Makes Entire Southern  Hemisphere Free of Nuclear Weapons,” International Atomic Energy Agency News Center, 14 August 2009.http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2009/africarenounces.html.

[ii] OAU declaration July 17-21, 1964, Cairo. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/Documents/Decisions/hog/bHoGAssembly1964.pdf

[iii] Noel Stott, Amelia du Rand, and Jean du Preez, A Brief Guide to the Pelindaba Treaty: Towards Entry-into-Force of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, Institute for Security Studies, South Africa, 2008, 36 pp.http://www.iss.co.za/dynamic/administration/file_manager/file_links/RATPAKPELINDABATREATYOCT08.PDF?link_id=3&slink_id=6957&link_type=12&slink_type=13&tmpl_id=3.

[iv] Peter H. Sand,  “African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Force: What Next for Diego Garcia?,” ASIL Insight, 28 August 2009. The American Society of International Law. http://www.asil.org/files/insight090827pdf.pdf.

[v] Fareed Mahdy, “Africa Becomes World’s Nuclear Free Continent,” IDN – In Depth News,http://www.egyptiangreens.com/docs/general/index.php?eh=newhit&subjectid=18130&subcategoryid=268&categoryid=37.

[vi] “Uranium in Africa,” World Nuclear Assoaciation, August 2009. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf112.html.

[vii] “Uranium Science,” Cameco. http://www.cameco.com/uranium_101/uranium_science/uranium/#two.

[viii] Sola Ogunbanwo, “Accelerate the Ratification of the Pelindaba Treaty,” The Nonproliferation Review, Spring 2003, p. 132.

[ix] Liviu Horovitz, “African nuclear-weapon-free zone Enters into Force,” 12 August 2009, Center for Non-Proliferation Studies. http://cns.miis.edu/stories/090812_africa_nwfz.htm.

[x] Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission Report, p. 79. The full text is available athttp://www.wmdcommission.org/.

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The Canada-India nuclear deal and proliferation concerns

Posted on: August 16th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

An American energy industry journalist anticipates a Canada-India nuclear cooperation deal — an umbrella agreement to govern a variety of trade, research, and development arrangements — will be signed in time for the 2010 G8 meeting in Canada. It is a deal, says the report, which is unlikely to address the kinds of nonproliferation concerns put forward by DisarmingConflict and other nonproliferation experts..

Randy Woods, Senior Editor of the Nuclear Group of Platts, a McGraw Hill company that publishes energy sector news and analysis, writes that[i] “Canada and India could finalize a nuclear energy cooperation agreement within a year despite some concerns in Canada over proliferation risks, according to an industry source.” He reports that non-proliferation officials at DFAIT have managed to slow the advance of the deal in an effort to press nonproliferation issues, but that the Trade side of the department wants the deal, “as do the ministers.” While announcements this fall will likely be restricted to claims of progress, the deal is expected to be completed by June 2010 at the latest, in time for the G8 meeting in Canada.

The following excerpt addresses proliferation concerns:

“Ernie Regehr, policy adviser at the Canadian arms control group Project Ploughshares, said July 21 the deal’s potential to increase uranium supplies from Canada to India has caused concern among nonproliferation advocates. Some are worried that imports of Canadian uranium would allow India to set aside its own uranium production for military purposes. He said India may rush to produce weapons-grade uranium before signing on to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

“As a result, Regehr’s organization has asked the Canadian government to include language in the deal that would create explicit nonproliferation conditions. ‘The simple and obvious proposal’ is to include language threatening to kill the deal in the event India performs another nuclear weapons test, Regehr said. Canada also should seek a commitment from India to join a moratorium on production of fissile material or ‘at least’ get a commitment not to increase production, he said.

“But the industry source does not believe the final deal will include strong language on nonproliferation, as India’s government has ‘tough negotiators’ who are aware that Canada is eager to compete for India’s growing nuclear market. Regehr also said he would be ‘surprised’ if India signed on to an agreement that includes strong language on nonproliferation. Instead, there may be an unstated political threat to India, which could lose its right to trade nuclear technology with Canada if it tests another atomic weapon, Regehr said. ‘It would be a lot better,’ however, if such threats were written into the deal rather than implied, he said.”

Aside from uranium sales, the Platts article by Randy Woods notes that “Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, or AECL, could be an attractive partner for India if the South Asian country starts to export its nuclear technologies abroad….AECL announced in January this year that it had signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Indian engineering and construction company Larsen & Toubro, or L&T, to cooperate on the Advanced Candu ACR-1000 reactor. Under the agreement, the two companies could start talks to develop nuclear reactors in India under engineering, procurement and construction models.” But implementation of the AECL-L&T deal depends on the signing of the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Note

[i] Randy Woods, “Canada, India could finalize nuclear cooperation deal soon, Platts(http://www.platts.com/AboutPlattsHome.aspx), August 2009.

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Has the CD stalemate returned?

Posted on: August 13th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

For the first time in fully a dozen years, the UN’s disarmament forum agreed last May to a program of substantive work, but in early August it has run into another obstruction.

The 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) has become best known for being stalemated for more than a decade, unable to go beyond informal consultations because delegations could not reach consensus on what all would accept as a balanced program of work. Then, at the end of May, the Geneva-based negotiating forum finally agreed on a 7 point program that, among other topics, mandated the start of negotiations on a critically-important treaty to ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.[i] This did not mean there was consensus on the issues themselves, only that they would begin to formally address those issues.

Now the implementation schedule,[ii] the schedule for getting down to work on the issues that the May agreement included in the overall program of work, has run afoul of the Pakistani delegation – and because the CD works strictly according to consensus, which in that context has unfortunately come to mean that every member state has a veto, Pakistan’s dissent means everything is stalled once again.

So the stalemate continues.

While the point of Pakistan’s opposition is far from clear, it is not focused on the substance of the implementation plan. As reported by “Reaching Critical Will,”[iii] the current CD President, Australian Ambassador Caroline Miller, told delegates that Pakistan wanted changes, not specified by her, to the language of the chapeau or introductory paragraph to the document – a source of “puzzlement,” said Amb. Millar, since she had understood that all issues had been worked out and agreed to in the course of extensive advance consultations.

So that is where the matter stands, with delegates still hoping that this is a mere glitch and not the start of another prolonged period of inaction.

What’s at stake is not only the future of the CD, but also, not to be too dramatic about it, the future of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). If the time for the 2010 NPT Review Conference arrives without there having been any concrete progress in addressing key disarmament measures, the NPT will suffer a further and serious blow to its credibility as a nuclear disarmament instrument.

The CD’s agreed program of work now includes 7 elements:

  1. Negotiations on a fissile materials treaty;
  2. A working group for discussions on nuclear disarmament generally;
  3. A working group to discuss preventing an arms race in outer space;
  4. Another working group on negative security assurances (assurances against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon state parties to the NPT);
  5. The appointment of a coordinator to gather the views of states on new and emerging weapons;
  6. Another coordinator to seek views on “comprehensive” disarmament; and
  7. A coordinator to seek views on transparency.

Each of these issues is important, but work on fissile materials especially so. The need for immediate negotiations on a treaty on fissile materials was agreed to in 1995 (in fact, the centrality of controlling fissile materials, the core component of nuclear weapons, has been proposed and agreed to since the dawn of the nuclear age), and was in fact a key condition of converting the NPT into a permanent Treaty.

Failure, once again, to deliver on a disarmament promise would have major repercussions – but here’s hoping it’s too soon to panic.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Discussed here on June 1: “Finally, the UN’s Geneva disarmament forum gets to work.” http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/6/finally-un%E2%80%99s-geneva-disarmament-forum-gets-work

[ii] CD/1870/Rev.1, 6 August 2009. “Draft decision on the implementation of CD/1864 (that being the program of work agreed to on 29 May 2009.

[iii] Regular reports on the CD are available on the website of Reaching Critical Will, the pre-eminent NGO monitor of UN-related nuclear disarmament diplomacy.  http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/speeches09/reports.html.

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Remember Hiroshima Nagasaki by rejecting nuclear ambivalence

Posted on: August 5th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

Canada had more than a front row seat at the dawn of the nuclear age. As part of the Manhattan Project this country was a player in the bombings that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago, providing both uranium and extensive scientific support for the first nuclear weapons.[i] Yet, right after World War II, Canada made a firm and lasting decision never to pursue the bomb for itself. And so began the nuclear ambivalence that still characterizes Canadian policy.

Canada’s nuclear abstinence was in no small measure born out of confidence in, or resignation to, the inescapable reality that Canada would be a permanent tenant in the widening geopolitical territory under the then emerging American nuclear umbrella. And from the start it was clear that space under that nuclear umbrella was never going to be rent free.

Early on, the US Strategic Air Command began using its base at Goose Bay, Labrador for elements of its strategic bomber fleet. The DEW line, the distant early warning line of radars, was soon installed across Canada’s north at the behest of the United States to join and then supersede the Mid-Canada and Pinetree Radar Lines to warn of any Russian bomber attack, and Canadian fighter/interceptor aircraft joined their American counterparts to stand ready to defend against any attack.

By dint of geography and an accommodating demeanor, Canada had become a strategic forefield in the MAD (mutually assured destruction) dynamics of the Cold War while, at the same time, earning a reputation as a stalwart nuclear disarmament advocate. It thus fell to successive governments in Ottawa to balance accommodation to America’s nuclear-centric security strategy with a commitment to the disarmament then being urged by the Canadian public and by a concerned international community.

The duality that Canada lived – that is, complicity in the nuclear weapons buildup joined with an active commitment to the elimination of the same weapons – was deeply imbedded within the United Nations itself. From the UN’s earliest days, the two leading permanent members of the Security Council were engaged in an intense nuclear weapons competition; at the same time, the first ever resolution in the UN General Assembly, with the support of the nuclear powers, established a “Commission to deal with the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy,” and directed it to “make specific proposals for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

This nuclear contradiction was of course keenly felt as an immediate political conundrum by Prime Ministers John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson in the early 1960s. Diefenbaker chose as his Foreign Minister an ardent disarmament advocate, Howard Green, at the very time he was inviting the United States to install Bomarc missiles in Canada – missiles with only one function, and that was to carry nuclear warheads into the paths of Soviet nuclear bombers transiting Canada en route to targets in the United States. He never did authorize installation of the warheads; that was left for the Nobel peace laureate Pearson who had earlier opposed the move.

And that is why some 250-450 nuclear weapons[ii] were deployed with Canadian forces in Canada and Europe when Canada joined the NPT in 1968 as a non-nuclear weapon state pledging never to acquire nuclear weapons. Canada’s arsenal was numerically larger than is China’s arsenal today, and larger than the combined arsenals of India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan, the only states not party to the NPT.

Pearson’s agreement to deploy US nuclear weapons with Canadian Forces earned him the rebuke of the one who succeeded him, Pierre Trudeau, but it was not long before Trudeau too would become possessed of the same nuclear ambivalence. He went to the UN General Assembly’s first special session on disarmament in 1978 to present his plan to suffocate the nuclear arms race, a key element of which was his proposed ban on the flight testing of new strategic delivery vehicles. Just five years later he agreed to the flight testing of the US air-launched strategic cruise missile in Canada – which he in turn followed up with a high profile peace initiative on the eve of this final retirement from politics.

By the early 1980s Canada had divested itself of all nuclear weapons,[iii] but Canada’s direct participation in nuclear deterrence and planning operations continued and remains through its membership in NATO and NORAD.[iv]

Most Canadian Governments and officials have not regarded life under the American nuclear umbrella as contradictory to disarmament advocacy, though the specifics of the two roles have most certainly been in tension. Canada saw, and still sees, itself as contributing to nuclear deterrence while it is needed, and at the same time supporting disarmament toward the day when it will no longer be needed.

But 1945 and 1968 have become 2009, and today nuclear deterrence does not so much await disarmament as it actively prevents it. The most compelling nuclear certainty now is that the continued reliance by some on nuclear weapons increases the danger of their spread and ultimate use by either a state or a non-state group. This danger is now acknowledged by one-time Cold Warriors like Henry Kissinger and Richard Burt, by current political leaders like Gordon Brown and especially Barak Obama, and by figures of extraordinary international stature like Mikhail Gorbachev and current and former UN Secretaries-General Ban Ki-Moon and Kofi Anan. In other words, nuclear ambivalence now presages nuclear disaster.

So, given Canada’s ongoing entanglement in nuclear strategies through NATO and NORAD, what would an end to Canadian nuclear ambivalence look like? Withdrawal is not really an option – geography won’t allow us to escape the US nuclear umbrella, and when it comes to the Americans, neither will our accommodating demeanor. Besides, the objective is not just to somehow sever Canada’s links to nuclear weapons; it is to dismantle the umbrella itself, en route to a world without nuclear weapons.

Ending nuclear ambivalence fundamentally means rejecting the double standard that nuclear weapons are OK for some, but not for others – NATO being a case in point. The alliance is now reviewing its security framework which currently insists that nuclear weapons are “essential” for the security of NATO states (para 46).[v] It is a claim that is obviously incompatible with contemporary disarmament imperatives that demand non-discrimination – and since NATO makes its decisions by consensus, Canada is in a position to prevent that doctrine from surviving in a new NATO strategic concept. Obviously no NATO member can singlehandedly force a new approach, but Canada can certainly work with other like-minded states to urge the alliance to finally and formally acknowledge that nuclear weapons threaten our security, rather than preserve it, and that it is disarmament that is “essential” to peace and security.

Similarly, another decisive rejection of nuclear ambivalence is available to Canada in its dealings with India. As a condition of selling uranium to India to fuel its non-military nuclear power plants, Canada should insist not only that India ratify the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but also that India offer verifiable assurance that it has joined the five officially recognized nuclear weapon states in halting all production of fissile material for weapons purposes.

Sixty-four years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an extraordinary array of former and current world leaders has finally joined a concerned civil society and an attentive arms control community to insist that in order to prevent the further spread and use of nuclear weapons they must be banned for all. Hiroshima and Nagasaki confirm it – the age of nuclear ambivalence must finally end.

eregehr@ploughhares.ca

Notes


[i] The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (http://www.ccnr.org/#topics) provides an overview of Canadian involvement.

[ii] John Clearwater is the leading documenter of nuclear weapons in Canada. In his 1998 book, Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal (Dundurn Press) he concludes that “at the height of the Canadian nuclear deployments, the greatest number of weapons which could have been available to Canada would have been between 250 (low estimate) and 450 (high estimate),” p. 23. The November/December 1999 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported (by Rpbert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr, pp. 26-35) on a Pentagon document received through the Freedom of Information Act entitled: History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons:  July 1945 through September 1977. One graph shows a peak of just over 300 nuclear weapons in Canada in the late 1960s. The Clearwater upper end estimate is higher because his totals include the weapons with Canadian forces in Europe, while the Pentagon report would show those as being in Germany.

[iii] It was also under Trudeau’s watch that all the nuclear weapons within Canadian territory and deployed with Canadian forces in Europe were withdrawn – a development that was primarily a function of technological advances in fighter-interceptor aircraft and conventional air-to-air missiles.

[iv] The North American Aerospace Defence Agreement — While the NORAD air defence role declined significantly when the main Soviet threat switched to intercontinental ballistic missiles from bombers, NORAD was and is also the primary ballistic missile early warning agency.

[v] NATO. 1999. The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, 24 April. Approved by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm.

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