Signing Weapons Reduction Treaties, Talking About Non-Proliferation Not Enough

Media-Newswire.com
New York: Monday, 29 October 2007
UN

There was a need for “results-based management” of the international disarmament machinery and to ensure that disarmament bodies were “a means to an end, and not an end unto themselves”, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today as it continued its thematic debates. 

Suggesting that disarmament efforts could benefit from creative approaches, Canada’s representative pointed to the Ottawa Treaty ( Convention on Prohibitions of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction ) and the Oslo agreement on cluster munitions as examples of that type of initiative.  Those two agreements were evidence that if States were serious about accomplishing something, they would find the appropriate diplomatic vehicle for so doing, and that innovative, external processes most often brought States back to work within their treaty-based multilateral agreements and multilateral bodies, making them more relevant and robust.

Similarly, the United States representative said that signing weapons reduction treaties and making statements on non-proliferation were not enough.  To be effective, the disarmament machinery needed to be backed up by the political will not only to sign, but to implement substantive treaties.  Nations must have the political strength to comply with the treaties they signed.  The international community must insist on full compliance with international obligations.

He said that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was the most universal tool in the non-proliferation toolbox, but it confronted tremendous challenges, among them, a crisis of non-compliance.  Other problems included the public revelation of Iran’s two decade-long clandestine nuclear programme and its nuclear weapons ambition, which had become clear to the international community, Libya’s secret nuclear weapons programme, the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network, which supplied enrichment technology and nuclear weapons-related designs to Libya and Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s announced withdrawal from the Treaty and its subsequent nuclear detonation.

Also today, several delegates described the impact of conventional weapons on the lives of ordinary people in their countries.  The representative of Lesotho said he was “deeply concerned” by the widespread proliferation and indiscriminate use of small arms and light weapons.  In countries emerging from, or still engulfed in, internal conflict, such weapons were transferred to non-State actors and fuelled those conflicts, creating havoc and causing enormous humanitarian suffering.  Due to their easy availability, illicit small arms and light weapons from conflict-ridden countries often found their way into neighbouring countries, where they were used for criminal purposes.

When the Committee resumed its thematic debate on conventional weapons, Mozambique’s representative said that landmines still presented a serious challenge to the efforts undertaken by his Government towards combating absolute poverty and promoting social and economic development in rural areas.  For that reason, mine clearance activities constituted a fundamental pillar and cross- cutting issue in its five year national programme.  There had been some progress in mine clearance in recent years.  In 2006, for instance, 10 million square metres were cleared and approximately 5 million square metres surveyed, allowing for an additional 83 villages of approximately 335,000 people to be declared free of landmines.  However, 442 areas in 57 districts of the six central and southern provinces remained infected from those insidious devices, he said.