A. THE TREATIES AND CONVENTIONS
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
The UK continues to view the Treaty on Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons as the cornerstone of the non-proliferation
regime. As one of the five nuclear weapons states (NWS) recognised
by the NPT, the UK is committed to the Treaty's full implementation.
It attaches particular importance to the terms of Article VI under
which all parties commit themselves, inter alia, "to
pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating
to . . . nuclear disarmament".
At the 1995 Review and Extension Conference
the NPT Parties agreed to extend its duration indefinitely. To
achieve this they also agreed on a set of "Principles and
Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament",
a Strengthened Review Process for the Treaty, and a Resolution
on the Middle East.
CURRENT ISSUES
The Treaty now has 187 States Parties (including
all five NWS), over a quarter of which adhered in the 1990s. However,
there are three main current issues:
— non-parties: there remain
four States which have so far refused to adhere to the Treaty:
Cuba, who argues that the Treaty does not go far enough in pressing
for nuclear disarmament rather than because Cuba is unwilling
to renounce nuclear weapons ambitions of its own, plus India,
Israel, and Pakistan, because they have been unwilling to renounce
such ambitions. India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in May
1998;
— non-compliant parties: some
States which acceded as Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) have
nevertheless sought to acquire nuclear weapons (Iraq), are strongly
suspected of having sought to do so (North Korea), or are the
subject of concerns that they might seek to do so. These issues
are covered more fully in the Supplementary Memorandum in the
Report on UK Policy on Weapons Proliferation and Arms Control
in the Post-Cold War Era;
— good-faith parties: many
NNWS parties claim that the NWS Parties have not done enough to
make progress towards the goal of nuclear disarmament. This has
been the main bone of contention at the Conference of the Parties
which have reviewed the Treaty's operation at five yearly intervals
since its entry into force.
It remains a key UK objective to promote universality
of the NPT which we do in multilateral fora and in bilateral contacts
with India, Pakistan and Israel. We have also demonstrated our
commitment to reduce nuclear weapons. We have reduced our operationally
available warheads by 50 per cent since the end of the Cold War
and in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review we announced a reduction
of a third in the previously planned number of warheads. We also
announced that the one submarine on patrol will be at a reduced
state of alert. Our nuclear holdings are now considerably lower
than those of any other NWS and we are the first NWS to declare
the size of our defence fissile material stocks. Substantial quantities
of the UK's nuclear material have been brought into safeguards
as a result of the SDR of 1998.
The next Review Conference of the NPT will be
held in New York during April-May 2000. The UK will be working
hard to achieve an agreed outcome. We are active in discussions
with key partners and regularly meet representatives of NGOs interested
in promoting disarmament. An FCO Minister will attend the Review
Conference. The three meetings of the Preparatory Committee, held
in 1997, 1998 and 1999, have agreed on the procedural arrangements
for the Conference but failed to agree any substantive recommendations
to it. The US Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, the failure to start Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty negotiations,
US plans for a Natinoal Missile Defence System, and the poor state
of bilateral nuclear arms control efforts between the US and Russia
will inevitably make it a difficult Conference.
Implementation of the safeguards required by
the Treaty is undertaken by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(see below under verification).
Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)
Three major attempts have been made to negotiate
a CTBT. The first, from 1958 to 1962, ended in failure, but spawned
the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), which bans explosions
anywhere but underground. The second attempt, from 1977 to 1980,
also failed, but was preceded and followed in the mid-70s and
late-80s by bilateral US/Soviet treaties to limit the size of
underground explosions. The third attempt involved three years
of intense negotiation in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in
Geneva from 1994 to 1996. This led to the opening for signature
of a CTBT in September 1996.
During the negotiations several nuclear weapons
states, were unwilling to be constrained by the Treaty unless
all five nuclear-weapon States, together with India, Israel, and
Pakistan, were similarly constrained. The upshot was a provision
making the Treaty's entry into force dependent on its ratification
by 44 named states, including these eight states. As of January
2000, 26 of the 44 have both signed and ratified (including the
UK and France), another 15 have signed but not yet ratified (including
the US, Russia, China, and Israel), and a further three have not
yet signed (India, Pakistan and North Korea).
ENTRY INTO
FORCE
Prospects for the Treaty's entry into force
received a set-back with the US Senate's rejection of the Treaty
in October 1999, but President Clinton has made clear that the
US will not resume testing and that his Administration continues
to favour US ratification. The US is also contributing to funding
the development of the CTBT's interim monitoring arrangements.
Russia and China continue to say they will move towards ratification.
In the wake of their May 1998 tests, both India and Pakistan made
heavily qualified statements about signing the Treaty and each
announced its own moratorium on future tests. We are encouraging
both to sign the CTBT as a contribution to stability in the region.
Foreseeing that its entry into force might not
be straightforward, the negotiators of the Treaty provided in
its Article XIV that, if it had not entered into force within
three years of its opening for signature, a conference of ratifying
states would be held to "consider and decide by consensus
what measures consistent with international law may be undertaken
to accelerate the ratification process in order to facilitate
the early entry into force of this Treaty". This Article
XIV Conference was duly held in October 1999, in Vienna. Further
such Conferences will now be held periodically until such time
as the Treaty enters into force.
Although the Treaty has yet to enter into force,
the only nuclear explosions conducted since it was opened for
signature have been those of India and Pakistan in May 1998. China
and France both tested during the negotiations, but the US, Russia,
and the UK have not tested since before they began. Having ratified
itself, the UK strongly urged a positive vote in the US Senate
on US ratification and has encouraged non-signatories (particularly
India and Pakistan) to sign. The UK acted as facilitator for the
October 1999 Article XIV Conference. It also strongly supports
the work of the CTBT Prepcom to establish the International Monitoring
System (IMS) (see Section D below). The Treaty provides for the
establishment of a Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban
Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) to oversee the IMS. A Preparatory
Commission for the CTBTO is making efforts to ensure both can
be up and running when the Treaty enters into force.
The CTBT will make a substantial contribution
to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. It will represent
a significant constraint (political for non-parties) on the development
and qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons. Those countries
which have signed can be expected to comply with its provisions.
None has suggested it would do otherwise.
Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT)
A Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty has been seen
for many years as the next logical and practical step inefforts
to prvent nuclear proliferation and prmote nuclear disarmament.
The essential prupose of an FMCT would be to end the production
of those materials without which no nuclear weapon or other explosive
device can be made to explode, essentially plutonium (Pu) and
high enriched uranium (HEU).
The only states which are still legally free
to produce these materials for nuclear weapons are the five NWS
(the US, Russia, the UK, France and China) and the four non-parties
to the NPT (Cuba, India, Israel and Pakistan). The main benefits
of an FMCT to the UK would be:
— to prvent any further pdouction of
fissile material for nuclear weapons by the US, Russia, France
and China and the first three, like the UK, have publicly stated
that they have already ceased such production;
— to prevent any increase in the size
of existing stocks of fissile material available for nuclear weapons,
and thus to establish a baseline from which efforts can be made
gradually to control and/or to reduce those stocks.
— to prevent the continuin production
of fissile material for nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan
and possibly Israel.
The UK has long supported the achievement of
an FMCT as the next incremental step to achieving nuclear disarmament.
We regularly advocate an FMCT in bilateral contacts with, inter
alia, India, Pakistan and China.
Although the idea of a cut-off has been around
for decades, President Clinton gave the idea new momentum by advocating
it in his address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)
in September 1993. Later that year the UNGA adopted by consensus
a resolution calling for negotiations. Since then efforts have
focussed on trying to get negotiations started in the Conference
on Disarmament (CD) at Geneva. This has so far proved impossible.
While there is wide agreement on the mandate for an Ad Hoc
Committee to negotiate such a Treaty (the so-called "Shannon
Mandate"), the NAM and China are linking the actual establishment
of such a Committee to agreement on how to address other issues
(Nuclear Disarmament in the case of the NAM and the Prevention
of an Arms Race in Outer Space in the case of China). The UK position
is that, as agreed by the 1995 NPT Review) and Extension Conference,
an FMCT is the next multilateral step in the process of nuclear
disarmament. Negotiations on the basis of the Shannon Mandate
should not be held up by linkage to these other issues.
MAIN ISSUES
When negotiations on an FMCT do begin, the two
main issues will be: whether the Treaty should deal with existing
stocks of fissile material as well as with ending future production;
and what the arrangements for verifying such a treaty should be.
On stocks, the UK agrees that these will need to be addressed
as progress is made towards nuclear disarmament. However, we believe
that trying to deal with them in FMCT negotiations would prevent
the early achievement of a straightforward ban on future production,
and that in the meantime stocks can be addressed more successfully
in other ways. The UK favours focussing verification measures
on those facilities that can produce fissile material (reprocessing
and enrichment plants) and on any fissile material they produce
after the cut-off date.
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABMT)
The ABMT is a bilateral treaty that was signed
in 1972 between the US and the Soviet Union. It restricted each
party to only two ABM deployment areas (and in 1974 a Protocol
restricted each side to only one such area). Its underlying purpose
was to ensure the mutual vulnerability of each side to the other's
strategic nuclear missiles, and thus to make it easier for agreements
limiting such nuclear missiles to be reached. The first such agreement
was also signed in 1972 and the ABMT has continued to underpin
subsequent US/Soviet and US/Russian agreements to limit, and to
reduce, their strategic nuclear forces.
In September 1997, the US, Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and Belarus signed a Memorandum of Understanding which,
once it enters into force, will make all five states parties to
the ABMT (Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus each inherited Soviet
ABM facilities on their territory). These five states also concluded
two Agreed Statements to clarify the demarcation between systems
to counter strategic ballistic missiles (covered by the ABMT)
and systems to counter theatre ballistic missiles (not covered
by the ABMT). They also concluded a related Confidence Building
Measures Agreement.
The United States is now seeking to engage Russia
in discussion of a possible protocol to the treaty to permit the
deployment of a "National Missile Defence" system, designed
to defend US territory against limited ballistic missile attacks
from "rogue" states. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin
agreed in Cologne in June 1999 that US/Russian discussions on
the ABMT and on a possible START III treaty should be set in train.
These discussions are now in progress. We strongly hope that they
can be brought to a successful conclusion. Although not ourselves
a party to the Treaty, we have made clear many times the importance
we continue to attach to it.
| 
