Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence



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.


 
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Prepared 10 July 2000