05 February 2009 : Times
By Bronwen Maddox
David Miliband called for a new debate on ridding the world of nuclear weapons yesterday, saying that 40 years after the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty now was the “time to show that we’re serious”.
The Foreign Secretary also told The Times that if Iran succeeded in building a nuclear weapon it would set off a Middle East arms race.
Earlier, when he released a report called Lifting the Nuclear Shadow, he said that the world faced the danger of a new race for the ultimate weapon on one side but on the other the slim chance that nuclear powers could agree to give up their arsenals. Mr Miliband said that critics were right to be sceptical about this goal, given the hurdles.
He made his call for serious dialogue at a moment when world leaders suddenly are paying much greater attention to this once-derided call.
It is likely to be a significant theme at the Munich Security Conference at the weekend. The Times reported yesterday that President Obama would push for a deal with Russia to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads by 80 per cent to 1,000 each.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said: “The only way to prevent atomic weapons from spreading further and ultimately being used, is by getting rid of them.”
Mr Miliband set out a six-point plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
The proposal calls for tight measures to halt the spread of atomic weapons, cuts in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals and the activation of a global test ban treaty.
It also urges help for countries seeking peaceful nuclear energy and new talks to ban fissile material.
Mr Miliband said that the growth of civil nuclear power was essential, partly to combat global warming. If that were to equip more countries with nuclear weapons however, then governments would have to repair the fraying web of arms control treaties.
The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had been a success, he argued, although a test case will be whether Iran defies it to make nuclear weapons.
Mr Miliband said that “there is no more evocative image for any of us than the mushroom cloud”. Although disarmament was a strong theme in the 1980s, when people of his age were growing up, it had faded away.
The report attracted a crowd wider than the normal hardcore fans of foreign affairs. Old Cold Warriors were there as well as anti-nuclear campaigners.
Lord Gilbert, a Defence Secretary in the Government of James Callaghan, said to loud laughter that he disagreed entirely with Mr Miliband and was delighted that nuclear weapons had been invented by the US.
Mr Miliband called for new effort on old stumbling blocks. Countries should put into effect the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and begin talks on a treaty to end production of fissile material for weapons, he said.
The CTBT, drawn up in 1996, which has been described as “the hardest fought-for arms control treaty in history”, planned to strengthen the NPT by banning the testing of weapons.
It needed to be ratified by all 44 countries which in that year possessed nuclear research or reactors to come into force. The US, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are, however, holding out.
“The fact that we’ve been stuck on it has sapped a lot of hope”, he said, adding that he welcomed the renewed interest from the United States in it.
Mr Miliband rejected calls that Britain should lead the way by scrapping Trident, its submarine-based nuclear deterrent which is due for renewal at a cost of £20 billion.
He wanted talks about multilateral disarmament, he said. “If we went down the unilateral road, would Iran say ‘We won’t have ours’? I don’t think the world works like that.”
He dismissed a call in The Times last month by three senior retired generals to scrap Trident and spend the money on the Army as “a different kind of argument”.
He said that Britain should not cling to the belief that it had a seat at the top table only because it has nuclear weapons, adding that “prestige goes to countries for many different reasons”.
Mr Miliband, who met Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and General James Jones, the National Security Adviser, in Washington on Tuesday, said that they were engaged in these issues generally.
He defended the nuclear co-operation pact between India and the US last year as good for counter-proliferation efforts because “it brought India into the NPT, sort of”.
Critics of the deal have charged that the US rewarded India for acquiring weapons while refusing to sign the treaty and demanded too little in return.
Asked whether he expected that there would be a nuclear-free world during his lifetime, he said: “I think of myself as having long enough to go that this is realistic”, but acknowledged that “this is very difficult”.
