Bronwen Maddox
IT IS hard to find much room for disappointment about the attempt to fix the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at the New York meeting which ends on Friday. Expectations for the month-long gathering could not have been lower.
Well, expectations have been met. Nothing has been agreed, and with three days to go, it looks as if nothing will be. However, this is not the same thing as complete failure. At least three suggestions have been put forward which must be the shape of any future talks.
The NPT has been called the world’s most successful arms control treaty. Many also think it is damaged to the point where it has stopped working. Both these things are true.
It has worked in the sense that only nine countries have nuclear weapons: the US, Britain, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel (assumed) and North Korea (so it claims).
When the treaty came into effect in 1970, many predicted that there would be ten times as many nuclear powers by the start of the 21st century. That has not happened. The treaty, which now has 187 signatories, can take much of the credit.
But its grip is breaking down. North Korea has advertised one central weakness: a state can quit the treaty with only 90 days notice, giving others no time to respond. Six-nation talks about North Korea’s programme have made “almost no progress” since 2003, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank, said yesterday.
Iran has advertised the other weakness: a state can get to the brink of making weapons within the letter of the NPT.
Today in Geneva, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his French and German counterparts will try to persuade Iran to drop its most controversial work. Iran argues the research is legal under the NPT; the West argues that the 20-year covert programme suggests Iran plans to make weapons.
Yesterday Hossein Mousavian, one of Iran’s top nuclear negotiators, put the chances of success in the talks at “50-50”. He apparently meant this as a warning, although the dispute has been so bitter in the past month, that the odds he gives almost sound encouraging.
These two disputes have overshadowed the New York talks this month. The mood of pessimism is entirely understandable. But at least there are the three suggestions for the way forward:
Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, wants to see countries pool together their plants for uranium enrichment, the process which makes nuclear fuel, but can also make nuclear weapons.
This hasn’t got anywhere yet. Countries which have the technology don’t want to surrender it. But his idea, at first widely dismissed, has gained ground as a possible solution to the “Iranian problem”: how to prise countries off a technology which leaves them on the brink of having weapons.
He has also suggested a five-year freeze on all uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, existing weapons states included. But the US wants the freeze to apply only to those which so far lack weapons.
The European Union has suggested making countries which withdraw from the NPT liable for any infringement beforehand, to fix the “North Korean” loophole.
Each of these suggestions may offer some way forward, if not this month. The New York talks have stalled, above all, because of accusations that states with nuclear weapons have shown little commitment to the disarmament pledges which are also in the NPT. In particular, the Bush Administration has been criticised for refusing to sign up to the ban on testing weapons.
The rest of this week is unlikely to bring a breakthrough. But it will show whether there is any desire to move on the US side, and test the interest in compromise among the others.
