Panel discussion October 26, 1995 at the United Nations sponsored by the UN Centre for Disarmament Affairs, the UN Department of Public Information and the NGO Committee on Disarmament. Panelists:
AMBASSADOR SIROUS NASSERI of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Conference on Disarmament was to have initiated the discussion. He was not able to make it to New York in time. We have appended his written contribution at the end.
ANN HALLAN LAKHDHIR, Vice President for Program of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Moderator: Our first panelist this morning is Ambassador Mark Moher of Canada, who is Canada's representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He has been in the Canadian foreign service since 1973. Prior to his present position he was Director General of the Policy Planning Bureau and Director General of the International Security, Non Proliferation, Arms Control and Disarmament Bureau. Ambassador Moher.
AMBASSADOR MARK MOHER: Thank you very much. What I propose to do is speak very briefly to outline the background of the cut-off idea and then to spend more time on where we are currently in Geneva and to indicate briefly what the problems are in front of us.
What is the focus of the proposed cut-off convention? I think most of you know the answer to that. It is to prohibit the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive purposes. Quoting from a Canadian/Australian document of the Conference on Disarmament, CD/90 of the 17th of April, 1980: "Taken together, with other arms limitation measures, a cut-off convention would be an important step towards halting and reversing the nuclear arms race and towards further inhibiting the spread of nuclear weapons." The important thing to remember is that cut-off has always at least conceptually been seen as an instrument to deal with both vertical and horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Now I think it should be clear, looking back over the history of this idea - which goes back a long time - that, despite the quotation that I just read, the cut-off idea, for most of its history, has essentially been seen as a disarmament initiative, i.e., part of a process to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapon states. Its roots go all the way back to President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace in 1953 but the idea over the years had a mixed history in which it was frequently caught up in the rather sterile Cold War debate, with the result that very little if any progress was made in developing the concept or in engaging in really substantial exchanges of views.
In 1978 at UNSSOD I then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau spoke of a strategy of suffocation, focused on the nuclear weapon states, and put the idea of a cut-off convention in that context. In September of 1990 President Clinton of the United States addressed this issue, and again focused it as it always had been, on the two objectives of vertical and horizontal non proliferation. The key thing to remember, and why I keep coming back to this point, is that when you try to deal with it as a nuclear disarmament issue, it throws up one set of challenges. When you try to deal with it as a horizontal non proliferation instrument, a different set of challenges come up. When you try to deal with them both at the same time, it becomes rather complex.
The United Nations General Assembly, in 1993 unanimously passed Resolution 48/75 which "recommends the negotiation of a non discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." In late 1993 we were therefore given a good shot in the arm with regard to this concept and were finally pushed in the direction of actually negotiating the implementation of this concept.
Subsequently Canada, in the person of my predecessor in Geneva, Gerry Shannon, was requested within the Conference on Disarmament to develop, on the basis of the resolution, an agreed mandate for an ad hoc committee to initiate and pursue the negotiations. Now it took Gerry Shannon 14 months of constant, arduous effort to achieve a document which captured the mandate on the basis of which the CD might begin to work. That mandate, and I want to take just a minute and read it to you, really comes in two pieces. The first is the more formal part:
"Para. 1. The Conference on Disarmament decides to establish an ad hoc committee on a ban on the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
Para. 2. The Conference directs the ad hoc committee to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or for other nuclear explosive purposes.
Para. 3. The ad hoc committee will report to the Conference on Disarmament on the progress of its work before the conclusion of the 1995 session."
That was the formal mandate, and as you can see, it essentially follows the wording of the earlier resolution. But to have that captured in the CD Gerry Shannon was compelled to include the following paragraph:
"During the course of my consultations many delegations expressed concern about a variety of issues relating to fissile material, including the appropriate scope of the convention. Some delegations expressed the view that the mandate would permit consideration in the Committee only of the future production of fissile material. Other delegations were of the view that a mandate would permit consideration not only of future but also of past production. Still others were of the view that consideration should not only relate to production of fissile material, past or future, but also to other issues, such as the management of such material."
Now the purpose of reading that to you is to indicate the complexity that I flagged earlier, now was beginning to raise its head in March of 1995 in a very real tangible way. The end result is that for two reasons the Ad Hoc Committee, which the CD did agree to establish, has not been able to meet.
Those two reasons are: 1) the growing recognition of the difficulties that I have just outlined; and, 2) the context in which the CD would be negotiating such a convention. As regards the later, there is the nuclear testing issue, of trying to negotiate quite quickly a CTBT which we hope to have concluded by the end of June of 1996. There is also frustration by some countries as a result of the NPT Renewal and Extension conference from April of this year. A whole complex of issues have thus aggravated the environment in which we are pursuing this.
The challenge that we now face in the CD can be summarized fairly quickly. We are, I think, at a rather unique time when we should be able to make progress on this idea. Certainly Canada, for which I can speak, wishes to do so. We think an effective cut-off convention would be a highly valuable addition to our current efforts to deal with the nuclear weapons issue. These include everything from START I, START II, and hopefully beyond that, the indefinitely extended NPT and associated process, a CTBT and then national, bilateral and multilateral efforts to deal with other related nuclear questions, nuclear weapon free zones, a whole list.
But to do so two challenges have to be met. The first challenge is, how can we pursue cut-off as part of a broader positive and pragmatic nuclear disarmament agenda? The second challenge is, how can we proceed to address the many substantive issues which will have to be addressed if any cut-off convention is to be effective?
As regards the former challenge, the CD has to find a way to pursue, in a productive manner, not by a sterile setting of impossible objectives or a refusal to even consider the issue, but in a productive manner, its 1996 and beyond agenda. In this global context we have to address nuclear disarmament in a realistic and responsible manner. As regards the latter challenge, it is no secret that many countries are increasingly concerned and preoccupied by the major problems which lie ahead in the negotiation of an effective cut-off convention.
These latter are in fact referred to in the Shannon statement that I referred to: What is the appropriate scope of the convention? How does it deal with the issue of past and future production? How does it deal with production vs. stocks vs. management?
Verification will be a vital element of any such convention. The questions here are also complex and difficult. How do you verify and what do you verify in a nuclear weapons state? What do you verify and how do you verify it in a non-nuclear-weapon state, non NPT party? How do you verify a cut-off convention in a non-nuclear-weapon state NPT party? Each one of those categories raises different questions.
The bottom line is that we, Canada, believe that these issues will not resolve themselves nor will they disappear. Therefore we believe very strongly that in 1996 the ad hoc committee at least has to begin its work. It must meet, it must establish its working structure, and, at the minimum, an expert group should be under way to begin to explore some of the issues that I have identified here today.
What we are trying to do at this session of the General Assembly, in the First Committee, is to move forward with a very short procedural resolution which we hope can be passed by consensus and which will give the CD a little additional momentum in terms of getting on with carrying out what I have indicated. Thank you very much.
ANN HALLAN LAKHDHIR: Our next speaker will be Daniel Poneman, who has been Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for Non Proliferation and Export Controls. He has been in the White House since 1990. Prior to that he spent four years in the private practice of law and is the author of two books. One is entitled Argentina, Democracy on Trial. The other is Nuclear Power in the Developing World. Daniel.
DANIEL PONEMAN: Thank you very much. I am delighted to be here and to discuss an issue that is of the utmost importance to the future of our nonproliferation agenda. This is an issue which, as Ambassador Moher has just stated, has a long and distinguished history. I know that Premier Trudeau had advanced it. I understand that Mr. Pearson had as well. We also know that Mr. Nehru was an early proponent of a fissile materials cut-off. Therefore I think we come together at a moment of hope to see if we can enlist some of the prodigious energies of the NGO community in what we believe is a vitally important and useful cause.
I will also seek to be brief, perhaps to reflect what I see as the fundamental simplicity of the issue and to reflect our desire for a short and simple fissile material cut-off convention.
What I thought might be useful in looking at the tremendous expertise on the panel and in the audience, what I thought I might bring to the discussion from a US perspective, would be to describe how we see the fissile materials cut-off convention fitting into our overall non- proliferation policy.
In the broadest sense, and this is in some sense an oversimplification, we have always pursued our non-proliferation agenda through two kinds of mechanisms. One, for want of a better term, we can call demand side norms, and the other one we can call supply side arrangements. In the former category in the nuclear sphere we rely very heavily on the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. And that is why we felt, and the President felt, that it was an absolutely critical priority for us to achieve the indefinite extension of the treaty this year. We believe that is an accomplishment which we can all, as citizens of the world, take pride in and take comfort in, in knowing that not only we, but our children, and their children, and their children, can always count on that overarching framework of a normative system that says that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is something that must not occur.
We are also fortunate to have in force a Biological Weapons Convention. We hope to have in force before long a Chemical Weapons Convention and we are working very hard, with all concerned, including our own Congress, to bring that ratification about. In the CD, as Ambassador Moher has noted, we are working very hard on achieving next year a Comprehensive Test Ban. I had a chance to chat with Ambassador Ledogar before coming over here. I understand you had a useful discussion of that subject earlier today.
These measures, however, are not entirely self-enforcing. They are not entirely self- executing, and therefore need to be supplemented by a variety of other arrangements that seek to place under the authority and with the support of these demand side norms some very specific concrete procedures on how various export authorities can deal with one another so that we can assure our own governments and then one another that trafficking in illicit material of whatever variety is fought at every corner.
In this context we see a fissile material cut-off convention could, as Ambassador Moher was saying, be looked at as either arms control or non proliferation. I confess with each passing year I find myself harder pressed to distinguish between the two categories. The fissile cut-off does two things. It will create a norm that calls for the universal and non discriminatory capping of the production of all fissile materials for nuclear explosive purposes outside of IAEA safeguards.
Secondly, through the verification measures that hopefully could be done not by creation of a new bureaucracy but rather through the august and well-established pathways of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its safeguards regime, it will simply outlaw the production of these materials for any purpose. The third option would be banning these activities when they are conducted by private commercial entities or national governments, but leaving the door open for proposals for genuine international ownership and control of fuel cycle facilities at some point in the future should a real economic need arise.
The fissile cut-off would be in the context of a variety of other measures. As I was just hearing reiterated by Ambassador Moher, some of the discussion surrounding fissile cut-off debates has had a kitchen sink quality to it which suggests that we can't really do the fissile cut-off until we finish every other item on our agenda. I would suggest this is an unwise way to proceed unless you don't want to see a fissile cut-off convention come into force.
We are pursuing a number of steps in support of the overall fissile material policy that President Clinton advanced in the UNGA speech of September 1993. At that time he advanced a fissile material cut-off which sought to account for, control and cap fissile stocks worldwide and ultimately to seek their reduction. To just tick off a few items that show how we are now moving along a number of fronts to do that I would like to develop some of the steps we are taking unilaterally.
On March 1 President Clinton announced that the United States was withdrawing 200 metric tons of fissile materials from its own nuclear stockpiles, never again to be used for any military purposes. We are moving bilaterally on a very rich agenda, with Russia, to see that 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium are removed from warheads, blended down to commercial reactor fuel that could no longer be used for any explosive purposes.
We are also engaged in an ever-expanding agenda of productive efforts with Russia to ensure the security of fissile materials across Russia, something that the two Presidents, President Yeltsin and President Clinton discussed a few days ago at Hyde Park and released a joint statement. Indeed, we expect to be working ever more closely to advance some of those initiatives.
We are moving multilaterally as well. Here we move to where fissile cut-off fits in. It fits in very clearly with the broader agenda as advanced by President Clinton a few days ago here at the UN. There is serious concern I think all of us in this room and around the world have about the increasing linkages between organized crime, terrorism and traffic in illicit materials. This is something we all need to put our best efforts towards. A fissile material cut-off convention clearly fits into it and that is why President Clinton reiterated his support for a convention.
In terms of the convention itself, I don't think it would be productive to dwell on the specific details. I would merely say that it does strike us as an idea whose time has come. I would hope that we could avoid being dragged into sterile debates. It is something that has been a cause of concern to us, having pressed for NPT extension, having had the NPT Conference Principles and Objectives articulate fissile cut-off as an objective to pursue, having had the UN General Assembly resolution for it the year before, having had governments around the world in support of this fissile cut-off convention. When the conditions are ripe to pursue this with some vigor it is frustrating to discover parliamentary sorts of activities which seem designed to obstruct, delay and make it less, not more likely, that we will live to see the day when there will be a fissile material convention in force.
I know that there are difficult issues out there but I think it is unwise to let the best be the enemy of the good. If we decide to link this one very critical part of our overall nonproliferation agenda to every other item on the list of arms control desiderata, we will all be sitting here at the 100th anniversary of the UN General Assembly talking about what preconditions need to be set before we can really achieve the nirvana that we all seek. I would rather light one candle at a time. We have done it with the BWC, we are doing it with the CWC, we have done it with the NPT. I would submit that now it is time to move ahead very aggressively and to do it with the fissile cut-off. Thank you.
ANN HALLAN LAKHDHIR: Thank you. Our next speaker is Ambassador Jonathan Dean. Those of you who are members of the NGO Committee on Disarmament know him well because he is one of our Board members. He has had a long career in the US Foreign Service. He has been involved in Katanga, in Berlin, in Czechoslovakia. From 1973 until 1981 he was the US Deputy Representative and then the US Ambassador to the NATO/Warsaw Pact Force Reduction Negotiations in Vienna, the MBFR talks. After leaving the Foreign Service, he has been with the Union of Concerned Scientists as their Arms Control Adviser. He has written a number of books. The most recent one, published in 1994, entitled Ending Europe's Wars, is available from Twentieth Century Fund Press. Jonathan.
JONATHAN DEAN: Thank you, Moderator. Today we have already heard something of the difficulties of a fissile cut-off. I would like to explain why a verified international agreement to end the production of fissile material for weapons or outside of safeguards is so essential for nuclear disarmament.
It is evident that a fissile cut-off treaty is needed to end the possibility of increasing the stockpile of nuclear weapons materials of the declared nuclear weapon states and the three threshold states. In other words, a treaty is necessary if we want to put a worldwide cap on total nuclear arsenals, which cannot expand without more fissile material for warheads. By bringing non-NPT countries into the IAEA safeguards regime, a treaty would also have importance for non-proliferation. However, this statement refers again to the three threshold states and is really making the same point about putting a cap on their arsenals too. But a cut-off treaty would have even broader significance than limiting the maximum size of nuclear arsenals. A cut-off treaty is an essential requirement for the elimination of these arsenals.
Before going further, I would like to explore with you what nuclear disarmament is - and what it is not:
The INF Treaty calling for destruction of all intermediate-range ballistic missiles is not nuclear disarmament, because it specifically exempts the warheads of these missiles from destruction. The START treaties too are not disarmament. The treaties call for withdrawal of nuclear weapons from operational deployment and for destruction of many launchers. But these treaties are still arms control and not nuclear disarmament because they permit the Russian and US governments to retain and to store the warheads of withdrawn armaments and their fissile material, as well as thousands of reserve warheads and large stocks of unweaponized fissile material. These stored materials could be used at some point to rapidly expand deployed weapons.
The Treaty on Conventional Weapons in Europe, the CFE Treaty, does require that weapons excess to negotiated levels be destroyed - at considerable cost. But the CFE Treaty too is not a disarmament treaty in the fullest sense because it does not require ending the production of the reduced weapons. To the contrary, production for export and accumulation of these weapons at storage sites can and does continue - to our distress. In this context, I ask myself again and again, what has happened to the commitment of all 180 NPT states, renewed last May, to move to general and complete disarmament also in conventional arms?
The chemical weapons convention does require ending production and destroying stocks. When it enters into effect, it will be disarmament. In essence, disarmament requires verified termination of weapon production and destroying existing weapons.
As regards nuclear weapons, the United States and Russian governments have agreed on a large number of innovative agreements in this field which merit our respect and support. Dan Poneman has described some of them. Unilaterally, the two governments are each dismantling thousands of the warheads for tactical-range delivery systems whose withdrawal from operational deployment was informally agreed by President Bush and President Gorbachev. There is, however, no verification of this dismantling or what is done with the fissile material from the dismantled weapons. To comply with bilateral agreements with Ukraine and Kazakstan, Russia is dismantling strategic-range warheads withdrawn from those states. Again, the US does not know precisely how many are dismantled and what is done with the fissile material from them.
A very creative agreement has been concluded covering the sale by Russia to the United States of 500 tons of enriched uranium converted to reactor fuel by mixing with natural uranium. After difficulties with entrenched American interests, it is being implemented. The two governments are also moving slowly ahead to a precedent-setting exchange of information on their holdings of nuclear warheads and weapons-grade fissile material. The United States - Dan mentioned it - has agreed to place a certain portion of its excess fissile material in storage under IAEA safeguards. The United States and Russia also agreed last May to place fissile material excess to their national security needs under bilateral monitoring. In addition, they also appear to have agree bilaterally in May to end the production of fissile material for weapons, formalizing earlier unilateral decisions.
These are important steps in the right direction. But they are not yet irreversible nuclear disarmament. We do not know with certainty the size of the total Russian stock of highly enriched uranium from which the 500 tons are being withdrawn. Each country decides for itself what its national security needs for fissile material are and what amount of fissile material could be placed in monitored storage as excess to its national security needs. Moreover, there is no agreement to continue the process with agreed amounts on an agreed schedule. Both countries can and do store on their own territory thousands of warheads withdrawn from operational deployment to comply with the START I Treaty, plus large reserve stocks of completed warheads and fissile material.
For irreversible nuclear reductions - what the two Presidents have spoke of three times - for genuine nuclear disarmament - Russia and the US need to take three steps:
First, they must bilaterally agree to end the production of fissile material for weapons, as they appear to have done, although arrangements to verify this agreement have not yet been made.
Second, they should agree to dismantle all the warheads that are withdrawn from operational deployment to comply with the START treaties and subsequent agreements.
Third, they should agree to turn over all the fissile material from these dismantled warheads and, in the course of time, their stockpiles of unweaponized fissile material, to bilaterally or internationally monitored storage to provide assurance that this material will not be reused for weapons, and they should agree also not to manufacture additional warheads except for replacements. Highly enriched uranium can be downgraded to reactor fuel. However, monitored storage of plutonium components will be needed for a time, because there is no agreement on either the best way to deal with plutonium for the long tern or on whether these warhead components should or should not be used to produce energy.
Until all three of these steps are taken: cutting off fissile production, dismantling warheads, and neutralizing fissile material by placing it in monitored storage, there can be no genuine nuclear disarmament - meaning enduring and real drawdown of the stocks of nuclear weapons at the disposal of each state. These are the core actions of genuine nuclear disarmament. And no matter how we dispose of existing warheads and fissile materials, the whole operation makes no sense unless the production of more fissile materials is effectively prohibited. Otherwise, countries can simply produce more and more fissile material and there is no real disarmament.
This is not some technical fix, but a point so fundamental that it has often been overlooked. I repeat, there can be no disarmament without all three of these actions.
Now, I would like to show what an agreement to stop producing fissile material can lead to in terms of real disarmament: To honor their commitment taken at the NPT Renewal Conference to pursue systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, the US and Russia, using the procedures I have just described, should in time cut their deployed arsenals to 500 warheads each and then engage France, Britain and China in reduction negotiations, using the same rules of fissile cut off, obligatory warhead dismantling and monitored storage of fissile materials.
All five should cut to a residual force of 200 warheads each, to include no more than a handful of single-warhead missiles on submarines. They should separate the warheads from the delivery vehicles of all of their remaining land-based weapons, placing these warheads under international monitoring on the territory of the owner state, resulting in small immobilized nuclear forces.
A requirement for these important moves - and therefore a requirement for the ultimate complete elimination of nuclear weapons - is an effectively verified worldwide treaty ending production of fissile material for weapons, to which both the five weapon states and the three undeclared nuclear weapon states - Israel, India and Pakistan - would adhere, as well as a far stronger non-proliferation regime, one that gives the International Atomic Energy Agency expanded monitoring powers.
Finally, the five nuclear weapon states should require Israel, India and Pakistan to join this regime of neutralizing nuclear weapons through placing their own nuclear materials in monitored storage on the territory of the owner state, to be withdrawn only under conditions of national emergency. Unless Israel, India and Pakistan are constrained in their production of fissile material that can be used for weapons and unless they are prepared to take similar steps to immobilize their existing fissile materials as the declared nuclear weapon states, it will not be possible to persuade the other nuclear weapon states to reduce their arsenals to a low level and immobilize these arsenals. Many estimate the Israeli arsenal at over 200 warheads, the size of the UK force.
Once implemented, a regime of the kind I have been describing will end the possibility of large scale nuclear surprise attack, as well as threats to use nuclear weapons. And, if this regime works satisfactorily for some decades, and an effective global security system grows up to lower the level of armed conflict worldwide, then the case for eliminating nuclear weapons completely will become very strong.
This is how to get to zero. The key actions are further deep cuts by the nuclear weapon states based on a worldwide treaty to end production of fissile material, and an agreement to dismantle all withdrawn warheads, and to turn over their fissile material to monitored storage. I believe it is clear from these comments that ending production of fissile material on a worldwide basis is a central requirement for nuclear disarmament. Consequently, all those who wish genuine nuclear disarmament should give energetic support to an international treaty for a fissile cut- off.
One final comment: Many people want to use a fissile cut-off treaty not only to stop production but also to get some control over existing stockpiles of fissile materials. I believe that actions irreversibly drawing down the stockpiles of fissile material in the hands of all the weapon states will be more feasible in the context of a step-by-step disarmament plan that assures the security of the weapon states than in the context of a fissile cut-off treaty. Demands now to account for stocks and to transfer them to international monitoring as part of a cut-off treaty can only derail a cut-off treaty.
The central issue, of course, is obtaining the consent of the nuclear weapon
states to hand over their stocks to international monitoring. They have all
made clear that they are not ready to do this now as part of a cut-off agreement.
But if we tackle this issue step-by-step in the disarmament context, starting
with Russia and the US, which are already moving in this direction, we may get
there - and get there faster.
ANN HALLAN LAKHDHIR: Thank you very much, Jonathan. Our next speaker is Frank von Hippel, a physicist, and a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University. He also directs the Federation of American Scientists cooperative research project on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. During 1993 and 1994 he was Assistant Director for National Security in the White House office of science and technology. He has written a number of articles on the technical basis for a ban on the production of fissile material for weapons, and on a good many other topics as well.
FRANK VON HIPPEL: Thank you very much. I think Ambassador Dean has given us a rather sweeping and really quite attractive vision for a comprehensive approach to nuclear disarmament. I will narrow the discussion down again to the fissile cut-off.
First I will talk about the verification issues, since I am the technical person on the panel. In brief, the arrangements would be based on the approach that the IAEA uses to verify the commitment of non-weapons states not to divert safeguarded materials to weapons uses and not to produce fissile material except under safeguards. The problems of detecting any clandestine facilities would be the same as face the IAEA and the solutions would be the same as have been developed to help the IAEA since the discovery of Iraq's clandestine uranium enrichment program: environmental monitoring and intelligence information, including the results of surveillance from space. Environmental monitoring can detect even the tiny quantities of fission products or enriched uranium that would escape from clandestine plutonium production facilities or an enrichment plant.
Although there never can be guarantees for verification, these methods are strong enough in combination so that a violating country could not be confident of concealing its clandestine program for a period of a decade or so, required to bring it on line and then to produce a significant amount of weapons useable material.
Now how can we improve the environment for a successful fissile-cutoff negotiation at the Conference on Disarmament? These negotiations, I think we all realize, could easily take several years. The specific proposal I would like to discuss, is that we work in parallel to achieve a moratorium on the production of fissile materials for weapons, much as supporters of the Comprehensive Test Ban worked to achieve a testing moratorium to give momentum to the test ban negotiations.
Steven Fetter and I have written an article on this idea in the October 1995 issue of Arms Control Today. It is called "A Step-by-Step Approach to a Global Fissile Materials Cut- off." The target countries for a moratorium would be the five nuclear weapon states: the US, Russia, UK, France and China, and the three so-called threshold states: Israel, India and Pakistan.
The US, Russia and the UK have already announced that they have permanently ended the production of fissile material for weapons. Their declarations, therefore, provide a core on which we can build a moratorium which would include all eight countries. France has announced that she has ended the production of plutonium, but not necessarily highly enriched uranium (HEU). Chinese officials have been stating privately for some years now that China has not been producing fissile materials for weapons but the government of China is not yet willing to make a public formal statement that it has stopped permanently.
Pakistan has stated that it stopped producing highly enriched uranium (HEU) in 1991 but Pakistan's government is under domestic pressure to resume production in the absence of a matching Indian production moratorium on plutonium. Pakistan could quickly make up for the highly enriched uranium (HEU) that it did not produce in this period by fully enriching the partially enriched uranium that it produced instead.
We recommend that each of the five countries which have not yet made commitments to stop production be pressed to join in a moratorium. In the case of the testing moratorium, because of the excellent seismic stations that are distributed around the world, we know that a country has stopped, at least at yields above a few kilotons. Tests with yields of a few hundred tons can be detected at distances of thousands of kilometers, unless a country goes to extraordinary lengths to conceal them.
In the case of a fissile material production moratorium, however, things are not so obvious from a distance, especially if the production facilities continue to operate for other reasons, such as to produce low enriched uranium for nuclear power reactors. Therefore, we propose Confidence Building Measures to strengthen international confidence that countries are doing what they say they are doing, i.e., that they have stopped producing. These Confidence Building Measures that we discuss in our article would be far short of the type of verification measures that the world would require for a formal and permanent production ban, but they could give significant credibility to a production moratorium.
A Confidence building Measure that is available to any country that is concerned about protecting secret design information would be to simply shut the facility down. This is what we would expect Israel to do in the case of its Dimona reactor, shut it down, rather than continue to operate it under inspection. The shut down of the reactor could be verified even from space by the absence of its waste heat production.
Pakistan could similarly shut down its centrifuge facility, which has no civilian purpose. In this case, on site inspection around the perimeter of these facilities might be required to verify the shutdown because centrifuges consume a relatively small amount of energy.
In some cases, however, the production facilities have a dual purpose, and it would be impossible to shut them down. This is the situation, for example, with uranium enrichment facilities in countries that produce low enriched uranium for power reactors. In almost all uranium enrichment facilities, the facility would not be producing highly enriched uranium (HEU), suitable for making nuclear weapons. It would therefore only be necessary to build confidence that no highly enriched uranium (HEU) was being produced. This might require limited access to the interior of the facilities by an agreed foreign group. In the case of a formal ban, we would expect verification to be carried out by the IAEA. In the case of an interim moratorium alternatives might be considered if it made a cutoff easier to accomplish politically.
In the case of Britain and France, for example, EURATOM could verify that enrichment of uranium for weapons, has halted. EURATOM already has the job in Europe to safeguard all civilian material. EURATOM could, for example, inspect the British uranium- enrichment facilities now that they no longer have a military purpose. And similarly, following France's announcement that it was not producing more plutonium for weapons, EURATOM could move into those facilities.
A precedent that we have in the case of the US and Russia is their bilateral agreement to monitor their moratoria on the production of weapons grade plutonium. The primary focus of this effort is the three out of Russia's original 13 plutonium production reactors that continue in operation to provide heat for local populations. In June 1994 Prime Minister Chernomydrin and Vice President Gore agreed that the plutonium produced by these reactors until their shut down will be placed under a joint monitoring arrangement. The agreement has not yet come into force, however, because the US also committed under that agreement to facilitate the Russians obtaining alternative energy sources of heat and electricity and the Russian government is not yet satisfied with our effort. But technical people worked out a relatively simple arrangement that would build confidence that in fact no plutonium is being produced for weapons at these reactors.
This arrangement would not be up to the IAEA standards which try to achieve a 99% level of accounting, but it would be probably better than 90%, which would be a reasonable target for confidence building in a moratorium. It is not clear that in every situation there would be a politically easy choice of partners. And it would probably not be possible at the moratorium stage to have a system of challenge inspections to deal with concerns about possible clandestine enrichment facilities. But it is clear that there are considerable opportunities for building confidence in moratorium declarations, with measures that would be relatively unintrusive and with annual costs of the range of a few millions of dollars rather than in the hundred million dollar range which is usually estimated for IAEA safeguards to be instituted in the weapons and threshold states.
I would also like to offer a comment on the connections between the fissile cut-off and proposed reductions in existing stockpiles. I agree with the previous speakers that it is possible to be too extreme on either side of this issue.
On the one hand, if one insists on a very tight connection with reduction negotiations, it seems to me that this would put too small a weight on the value of a fissile cut-off in its own right. One should not delay a fissile cut-off by tying it too tightly to reductions. It has a tremendous value in that it would put a ceiling on existing stockpiles and it would be an essential element in any system to reduce these stockpiles by transferring the materials out of the stockpiles and placing them under international safeguards. The fissile cut-off would prevent this transferred material being replaced by newly produced material. It is therefore an essential building block for disarmament.
On the other side, if one insists that there is no connection between the fissile cut-off and reduction negotiations, one ignores the fact that a large part of the rationale for fissile cut-off is to provide a verifiable basis for nuclear reductions. If there are no parallel moves towards the elimination of existing stockpiles, then a fissile cut-off is indeed undermined. I therefore urge my own country and Russia to get on with negotiating reductions, from thousands of warheads to hundreds of warheads, as Ambassador Dean has urged.
It is also important to maintain the agreements that create the possibilities for the environment in which such reductions can be possible. I an thinking particularly these days about the importance of preserving the US-Russian treaty limiting Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems, which is under some threat.
Finally, I think that it is appropriate to say at an NGO meeting, that, unless the non- nuclear weapon states press the nuclear weapon states and the threshold states to move forward on a fissile cut-off and on nuclear disarmament I fear that neither will happen. It is not just the business of the nuclear weapon states. This is the business of us all. Thank you very much.
ANN HALLAN LAKHDHIR: Thank you very much, Frank. Our next speaker is Christopher Paine, who is Senior Research Associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He has been there since 1991. Prior to that he was legislative assistant for arms control to Senator Edward Kennedy, from 1987 to 1991. He was the staff consultant for non-proliferation with the energy and power subcommittee of the House of Representatives from 1985 to 1987. He is one of the architects of the Nuclear Weapon Freeze and the MX Missile campaigns of the early 1980s and on CTB since the 1980s. He is the author of numerous articles and reports on arms control topics. Chris.
CHRISTOPHER PAINE: Thank you very much, Ann. I would like to take a slightly different cut at this issue, and talk in somewhat longer-range terms about the proliferation and denuclearization problems and what measures are going to be required. And in that context see how the cut-off fits in. I personally have been a long-time supporter of a cut-off, but unlike some of the other members of the panel, I am increasingly receptive to some of the arguments I hear from other states regarding the weaknesses of the proposal, and therefore I am perhaps more sympathetic for the need for collateral measures that will come along at the same pace as the cut- off.
If we look at the long-term problem of proliferation of fissile materials, there are certain fundamental risks that won't go away even if we have a cut-off, and I would like to enumerate those risks. Small quantities of plutonium and slightly larger quantities of highly enriched uranium (HEU) can be used to make efficient powerful nuclear bombs as well as inefficient crude bombs and terrorist devices. This material will continue to exist, potentially available for weapons use, even under a cut-off, and that in the view of many analysts is its principal and abiding efficiency. That doesn't mean that we should not pursue a cut-off. We just have to realize that it doesn't directly address the central proliferation problem over the long term, which is the continued existence, and even the continued production of materials that can be used in weapons.
We are likely to see, even under a cut-off, a further diffusion of nuclear explosive material production capabilities. National separation and breeding of plutonium, which is permitted under the NPT and would be permitted under a cut-off when pursued on a commercial scale, places an insupportable burden on the current and prospective capabilities of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its safeguards system. It simply will not be able to promptly detect thefts or diversions of bomb-grade quantities of plutonium, for example, from peaceful use.
There is an inherent military potential to so-called peaceful nuclear programs that are permitted all parties under the NPT. I worry about the long-term political effect of a cut-off possibly legitimizing the civilian use of weapons-useable materials - plutonium and HEU. The cut- off could provide a legitimate civilian cover for any country to acquire and stockpile nuclear explosive materials under safeguards.
And we have to face the fact that a civilian nuclear fuel cycle that uses these materials will continue to sustain a technology base world-wide in things such as chemical separation, plutonium processing, and plutonium metallurgy. This technology base has been and will continue to be applied to clandestine programs, with or without a cut-off. We have to look at the increasing potential for future weaponization. We need to address the broader fissile material problem, the increasing potential, world-wide, for so-called breakout of the NPT.
I am not talking a year or five years from now. I am talking twenty or thirty years from now, the kind of time horizon that institutions like the United Nations should have in thinking about what really is needed. Nations that have legally acquired a stockpile of separated plutonium might change their objectives, they might become embroiled in a regional conflict, undergo a political upheaval, change a national strategy, and suddenly emerge as nations capable of building nuclear arsenals because they have legally acquired the capability to do so, even with the cut-off for weapons purposes.
We also have to think about the long-term impact of legitimizing fissile material use when we think about the prospect of societal breakdown in the future. We really have not thought very much about that until the developments in Russia of a few years ago. It has come home to us what the impact of just the existence of the stockpiles is, whether they are military or civilian. It doesn't make much difference when you are talking about the prospect of societal breakdown. The material could be seized by contending political forces, sold to organized crime elements, governments, or sub-national groups.
Finally, we have to think about the existence of these stockpiles, per se, whether they are under safeguards, or not under safeguards. We have to think about the existence of stockpiles as a long term obstacle to deep nuclear arms reduction and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. I believe that these so-called legitimate civil stocks will act as a barrier to deep reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Indeed, I have been involved in many conversations with government officials in the United States and in other countries where this issue comes up and the conclusion inevitably in these discussions is that a country would not abandon its nuclear arsenal until it was sure that a given opponent or adversary state had no fissile materials at all, that their stocks had likewise been eliminated. In other words, military establishments around the world don't place a great deal of stock in the integrity of the safeguards system.
Those are the long-term risks. The question we have to face is, on balance, is the cut-off proposal leading us in the direction that will reduce those risks, is it neutral with respect to those risks, could it actually make matters worse. I pose the question. I am not going to answer it. I do want to suggest that simply the longevity of the proposal on the international agenda does not necessarily equate to its meaningfulness.
It is also possible that major international agreements and steps that we have taken in the past were mistakes. I certainly think that most analysts in retrospect think that Atoms for Peace was a terrible mistake and that we shot ourselves in the foot, even to the extent of providing our then adversary Russia with the chemical separation technology to improve their own nuclear arsenal dramatically. They apparently learned about the Purex process at the 1955 Geneva Conference on peaceful uses. So I think simply because something has been on the agenda does not relieve us from the burden of analysis on whether it is the right way to go or not.
As currently envisaged, it is said that a global cut-off convention would cap the quantity of unsafeguarded fissile material "available for weapons use" in both declared and undeclared nuclear weapons states. I think as a technical matter, this newly produced material would remain available for weapons, in the sense that it could be used in weapon at some future date, technically. Politically it has been removed from the sphere of weapons use. But it could go into weapons at some future date. Of course, the right to do that is enshrined in the NPT. Countries have the right of withdrawal, based on their supreme national interest. I assume the cut- off convention would have a similar mechanism. So we shouldn't fool ourselves that because the material has been placed under safeguards that it is forever removed from the domain of weapons use. It is not. It is there.
As presently envisaged, unsafeguarded inventories of weapons-useable materials produced prior to entry into force of the convention would not be covered by the requirement that production be placed under international safeguards. That has been one of the most frequently voiced objections to it. It is a legitimate objection, it needs to be taken seriously. Some kind of collateral measures, if we proceed with the cut-off, are going to have to be developed to address this question. I firmly believe that. Otherwise I believe there will not be a cut-off.
Given the convention's limited scope, as it has been proposed, but perhaps the scope will be broadened, it will be a sensitive and difficult task politically to avoid legitimizing the existing High Enriched Uranium and plutonium stockpiles in the undeclared and threshold states. I am not saying that that is an insuperable problem. I just think it exists, and we have to face it squarely. There are certainly countries that are going to take advantage of the legitimacy that a cut-off offers to seek additional technology that is sensitive with respect to weapons.
I mentioned the problem of long-term breakout. There is also another problem, which we need to look at. In areas such as the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia the relatively permissive standard of the cut-off could undermine - I am not saying it would, I am not saying there is not a way that these objectives can be harmonized - but certainly they could undermine the establishment of more restrictive regional arrangements simply by its precedential value. I am not saying it would and I am not saying that there is no way these objectives can be harmonized.
What kind of more restrictive arrangements? Those that seek to establish a higher level of security by barring national possession, even under safeguards, of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment capabilities. An example, in the Middle East: I do not see Israel taking much comfort from the operation of an uranium centrifuge enrichment plant in Iran, even though it is under safeguards. I don't see China agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons or even significantly reducing its nuclear weapons while Japan continues to accumulate large stocks of separated plutonium under safeguards.
We have to take a frank look at the overall proliferation picture and then decide how much diplomatic effort should be devoted to the cut-off, that is, the multilateral global cut-off, if in fact there is substantial diplomatic opposition to it. How many resources, how much time should be devoted to this or perhaps, if it can't be achieved quickly and simply, as Dan Poneman suggested, we might have to move on to other measures that will have to be more effective.
Assuming, despite the flaws that I have identified, the cut-off proposal moves forward, what could be done to mitigate its weaknesses? The first step might be a contemporaneous protocol along the lines of Article VI of the NPT, committing the parties to bring all their stocks of fissile material under international safeguards, or some other form of regional multi-national accounting in conformity with some international timetable.
A second protocol might be able to establish certain agreed criteria, and an international mechanism under the convention, to regulate any national production of weapons useable fissile materials for civil purposes, at least until more durable arrangements are found. This could require that further production of plutonium, or highly enriched uranium (HEU) for any purpose, by any party to the treaty, should be deferred unless three fundamental criteria are met, and I suggest the following as these criteria:
I happen to believe that these three criteria are essential. Most people, most analysts, would accept them. Even those who support plutonium use acknowledge the validity of each of these three criteria, when considered in isolation as analytical precepts.
Over the longer term, a more durable arrangement for reducing the risks of fissile material to the international community might be found along one of the following patheays:
ALICE SLATER, Economists Allied for Arms Reductions (ECAAR): I would like to thank Chris Paine for giving us a way out. I want to restate it from a housewife's point of view. I think that going for a ban on weapons fissile materials is like walking out of the house with an umbrella that has holes in it. It is too much of a leaky sieve. We see it in Iran, in North Korea, that nuclear civilian material can be converted to weapons material. Unless we are going to take a complete global inventory of every kind of fissile material and know where it is and monitor it, what are we cutting off? When Clinton said he will remove 200 metric tons, it was 200 from what to where? What was given there?
CHRIS PAINE: At the Natural Resources Defense Council we try to keep as close track as we can of fissile material worldwide, but particularly the US fissile material. I think we have even been in the position of being able to correct some of the government figures that were initially issued. By out calculation only 30% of the weapons-grade plutonium that is currently in weapons or in plutonium pits has been declared excess to US military needs and only about 17% of the highly enriched uranium (HEU) stocks. That is 30% of the plutonium, 17% of the HEU. So that 200 tons includes what we call a lot of junk. There are 19 tons of plutonium scrap in there that is really not from weapons but was involved in the weapons production process. And very little of it is under safeguards and there is no particular program to place the bulk of it under safeguards. There is a declared intention to do so but no schedule, budget or program for actually doing it.
So I think the world is right to be skeptical of where this is heading. What do they see in the cut-off, other than a convenient means of monitoring the existing the future production of India, Israel and Pakistan? It really doesn't bite on the nuclear weapons states, and I think the rest of the world knows that. I think that is the fundamental problem we are having with getting more acceptance of this as a negotiating objective.
DANIEL PONEMAN: As someone who often leaves the house with an imperfect umbrella, I can relate to your comment. I cannot avoid astonishment at the arguments we continue to hear. If I have to choose between walking out of my house with an umbrella with five holes, or just throwing away the umbrella and walking out an getting drenched, I will start with an umbrella with five holes.
After 50 years of building stockpiles, for the first time we declare a substantial part of the US stockpile excess. It is just never enough for some people. If we try to get everything perfectly accounted for we will never make any progress because the sad fact is that there are a lot of places where the accounting for years was imperfect. I frankly see a lot of the focus on achieving perfection as a possibly fatal obstacle to genuine progress. If there is a concern that we will exhaust ourselves negotiating a fissile cut-off convention, why don't we do it in about two weeks, because I think we could? Instead we take fifteen months to figure out a negotiating mandate.
I think we have to go back to some first principles. What are we trying to do, and how do we get there? I would submit to you that the history of diplomacy never suggests you try to get everything at the first step of the game as the way to get to the end of the game.
ALICE SLATER: Isn't it the truth that the US won't permit an inventory of its own fissile material?
DANIEL PONEMAN: In my introduction it was noted that I have been with the US National Security Council for five years. It fell on my shoulders in earlier settings to answer questions from Chris Paine about US willingness to share information about US stockpiles, which I dutifully did. I am happy to report I no longer need to use those talking points because in fact our government is working very hard to seek maximum transparency as was reported by Jonathan Dean. The impediment I think you will not find is the US government. I am not saying that anybody can walk into any facility, but we are trying very hard to enhance the transparency, and accounting for warheads and to seek their irreversibility by accounting and submitting them to international inspection. So the premise of your question is not correct.
JONATHAN DEAN: I want to comment on Chris's presentation, and also your remarks, Alice. I accept the desirability of these individual measures to tighten the control on existing stocks of fissile materials for weapons and also on civilian production. For example, I believe quite strongly that when you get to the point of seriously considering elimination of residual stocks of nuclear weapons, the existence or non-existence of a plutonium energy system and economy is going to be a serious obstacle. It will have to be stopped if elimination is to take place.
On the other hand, in his talk Chris rather blandly reassembled the package of total coverage of this issue which many in the Conference on Disarmament are asking for from the outset. In other words, control over the existing stockpiles, control over this and that, and I really do believe in my own experience, instead of the step-by-step approach, which has in fact worked for many decades. The associated measures that Chris has suggested really re-add all of the requirements for a comprehensive coverage. I am reminded here of Aesop's fable which I recall to you all of the monkey who put his hand in the gourd. He grabbed too much, and he wanted it all so much he could never pull his hand out and never got any.
We have to keep in mind who you are dealing with here. You are dealing with five, in this case, eight, very tough governments who have identified the possession of nuclear weapons with their national security and who cannot be intimidated or harangued into taking these steps. If we are ready to conclude a CTBT, on the one hand, if they are ready to formalize stopping the production of fissile material, then I think it is somewhat foolhardy to ask for more in the situation when we know that they will not give it.
CHRISTOPHER PAINE: I wasn't asking for more. I was just suggesting that if these are the measures that it takes in order to get international consensus on a cut-off then we had better be prepared to make them.
My view is that the flaw, if there is one in the short term, is perhaps the attempt to multilaterize this, to create a global convention, when in fact the proposal was designed to stop the production of the nuclear weapons powers and they could go ahead and do it. My view is, since they are not producing, with small exceptions, this whole issue of the cut-off could be resolved in a context of negotiating a five power regime for verifying the elimination of existing stocks. It would simply be subsumed into the broader effort of establishing a regime for elimination.
I think it is the call of virtually every country in the world at this point, coming out of the NPT conference, for a more systematic and universal process of eliminating nuclear weapons. So I don't see the problem that the five nuclear powers, or at least the two, Russia and the United States, proceeding immediately to negotiate the verification provisions, as you urge, Jonathan Dean, and then UK and France and China can join.
The issue, then becomes, how long are you going to tie up the international agenda, how much browbeating are you going to do, in order to get countries like India and Pakistan, which have fundamental objections to the political and military equities of this proposal, to join the convention. And are you going to allow that failure to achieve progress on the multilateral level to stall what could be a relatively quick and easy agreement among the five.
DANIEL PONEMAN: I agree with one thing Chris just said, which is, we ought not to allow the sloth and impediment of multilateral negotiations to stop us from more rapid progress bilaterally, and we haven't. We are moving bilaterally, with Russia, as fast as we can. The one statement we got out of the Hyde Park meeting had to do with the efforts we are making in this area, the joint statement on security on nuclear materials. We would like to move even faster. I cannot help but note, in terms of the concern about browbeating, India and Pakistan I believe were both cosponsors of the 1993 UNGA resolution on this. This falls somewhere near the can you take yes for an answer category. I think, going back to our earlier colloquy, this doesn't have to be something that is browbeaten into them. We are talking about a short document which I think ought to be concluded rapidly.
JACK PHELAN, Union of Concerned Scientists: In the context of Chris's notion of possible societal breakdown, with a broader 30-50 year perspective, it seems to me there is a background question that looms very large over the debate going on in the panel and elsewhere of different methods reaching a nuclear-free world. There are problems with every approach. What is behind it is the lack of a trustworthy, effective and long-lasting monitoring system that is really foolproof and safe.
In my own field, which is communications, there has been a move away from politics, political controls, toward business controls and financial controls. One of the prime examples of this is in computer inscription. Suggestions have been made that rather than governments being the administrators of this very important and dangerous inscription methods in communications, that banks or financial institutions be placed in charge of monitoring.
One of the things that has to go forward, along with the practical discussion of different individual regimes of control, is a forward motion towards an ever greater de-politicizing of the monitoring functions on the international scene. It looks to me that even without our planning it there is a movement in other areas away from these political regimes, more towards financial and business regimes, which may be for good and for ill. It seems to offer more hope for a less contentious and suspicious international environment.
DOUG ANDERSON: I am from the Hodei Shoshoni, Six Nations of Iroquois of North America. We are located in the lower basin region of the Great Lakes. I can't speak on Chernobyl or Hiroshima but I can speak on the industrial nations of North America. The stockpiles that are located next to the Hodei Shoshoni country have a half lifetime of four and a half million years. Radioactive contamination is contaminating the whole area. Of the 18 burial sites that are located in the industrial nations of North America, 15 of them are on indigenous lands. The three that aren't are located in such a geographical area that when they have a spill, it immediately hits the indigenous people. My question is, if you have K-65, plutonium 238 and 240 and you have stockpiles, where are you going to stockpile so it doesn't hurt the people or the environment?
FRANK VON HIPPEL: You are talking, I think, about residues from mining of uranium. That uranium originally was in the environment in deposits. It may have been made more mobile, but it was there, so I think it can be immobilized again and become again like the uranium in deposits that is abundant all over the world. We could do the same thing with the highly enriched uranium (HEU), we could de-rich it, and, for example, put it in the ocean. There are billions of tons of uranium already in the ocean. In fact, because it has economic value we will use it as fuel for nuclear reactors, and then the problem will be what to do with the radioactive waste, the spent fuel from the reactors, which has been a problem which has been at an impasse all over the world, and also with the plutonium that comes out of weapons, which may or may not go through a reactor. In either case, the plutonium is going to have to be immobilized and placed deep underground.
In the case of uranium residues, the residues from the uranium mining, the volume is so great it won't be possible to put it as deeply underground as one could put plutonium. Since it is the residues of natural rock which happened to be uranium rich, it is not necessary to put it so deeply, but it is necessary to cover it up deeply enough so that the radon, which comes as a result of the decay of uranium, and has a four day half life, will decay before it gets to the surface.
JAPANESE PARTICIPANT: If there are many defects in this treaty, it is better to make further efforts for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. I want to hear the opinion of the panelists about this.
JONATHAN DEAN: We are trying to move a very unwieldy machinery of war which has been established over 50 years towards its dissolution. I did try to set forth how it was essential to reduce the weapons of the weapons states down to a small residual level, and then immobilize them along with the weapons of India, Pakistan and Israel...It is essential that all of the known nuclear weapon states stop the production of this material in order that there be a real serious reduction and a general nuclear disarmament.
STEPHANIE FRASER, nuclear activist from Nevada: I listen, and I try to have an open mind. Mr. von Hippel, don't ever say to a Native American that uranium came out of the land, it can go back. The Shoshoni people have been decimated. They have been decimated, bribed, to take yours and my waste. I found that comment insensitive...that is land, not some obscure desert.
I firmly believe there is an inextricable link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. I am listening to you talk about fissile material cut-offs as if plutonium for weapons and plutonium for a power plant were inherently different things. The risks are the same. Now whether I could make and design - I am not a physicist, but I did start out studying physics - I don't know if I could make a nuclear bomb, but if I had some plutonium, whether it came from a reactor, or anywhere, I could stick it next to a bomb, and it would be a bad idea...I posit that they are the same.
There are 880 pounds of plutonium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories now. In 1943-4 when they made the first bit of plutonium they had to measure it with a pin, and they could only tell that they had any because the weight of the pin changed. Now how did we go from that to 880 pounds at one facility along in 50 years. I think it is a little bit behind the curve to talk about fissile material cut-off. I really do, not that I am saying don't do it, but it is not going to solve the problem. Don't stop negotiating, just don't make it more complicated than it has to be.
I believe that the United States has made nuclear addicts out of the rest of the world...You are building a plutonium reprocessing plant. This is going to further the same problem. It is going to further the risks. At some point we as a species are going to have to conclude that we cannot afford nuclear power. Maybe later, but not today. The next thing is to Ambassador Dean. Did I hear you say we negotiate this fissile material cut-off and then there is a period of time when we will see if it works. That is if Iran and Iraq and Pakistan and Israel and everyone else goes along with it, though we really won't be able to tell because we are giving them all nuclear power plants. After this period of time, then there would be a justification for nuclear disarmament? We had 25 years of an agreement. And the US twisted arms to get this indefinite - undetermined, not forever - extension. Do you really think there will be 30 years before there will be a justification for nuclear disarmament? I find that really scary. I want it to happen sooner.
FRANK VON HIPPEL: I won't respond to all those points. With regard to the uranium question, I am not sure where else to put it, except in the land. The way in which the Atomic Energy Commission mined uranium and the cavalier way in which it dealt with the safety and the environment issues caused a great deal of damage. It was irresponsible and the cleanup has to be dealt with responsibly.
With regard to plutonium, I think you are right. I don't think anyone meant to imply that plutonium from reactors is different than plutonium from weapons, in that both are weapons useable. I have made great efforts myself into making clear that civilian plutonium is not innocent. It can be used to make nuclear weapons. I am glad you brought that point up. I certainly agree with you that we are behind the curve on fissile cut-off. We have to do it some time, but it doesn't mean that it should prevent other things going on in parallel.
JONATHAN DEAN: Stephanie I don't think you were paying close attention to what I was saying. I said that we should be trying now rapidly to move to real disarmament by ending the production of fissile materials, dismantling weapons, turning over the fissile material to monitored storage. I urged that the two governments should start it tomorrow. I said that after we get down to a small residual arsenal and the nuclear weapons states, the ones we have to convince to take these actions, can convince themselves that the system works over a considerable period, then we will be in a position where there will be irreversible pressure for elimination. That is my understanding of how the process could actually work.
On your other point, which I think is a serious problem, that is limiting this possible treaty to the military use of plutonium. The problem as I see it is that the following countries insist on the civilian use of plutonium: Russia, India, China, Japan - well over half of humanity. At a certain point - and this came out in what Chris said - we will have to, if we really want to eliminate nuclear weapons, persuade these countries from following the plutonium fuel cycle.
The question is, whether you want to try add your requirement to those that Chris Paine wants to load on the back of a fissile cut-off, including the stockpiles, and you want to add this question of taking care of civil production and plutonium, which he also mentioned. I don't believe you can do it all this at the same time. But I do believe that if you successfully start on a process of real disarmament, and people can see this, then it will be in the interest of the United States and Russia to urge and bring China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, Japan, into this system. When you get down to a very low level then everybody in the world, not only us, is going to be able to see that the one thing that is blocking the movement to complete elimination of these weapons is the plutonium economy. Then you have them in your sights. But if you ask now for eliminating the use of plutonium for energy, you just get a rude rejection, and accomplish nothing.
QUESTION, from a member of Gensuikyo: ...I put the question to Mr. Poneman. After the Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, I think now there is the biggest chance to abolish nuclear weapons. I think the United States of American must be the leader in abolishing nuclear weapons. I think the United States of America has to present a new complete umbrella.
DANIEL PONEMAN: Thank you for your comments. The United States, I am sure you know, believes deeply in the principles of arms control and non-proliferation. We have witnessed dramatic changes that would have been unforeseeable even a few years ago, as you alluded to when you talked about the end of the Cold War. We do not consider that they are bounded by traditional multilateral forums of arms control in every respect, but as I said earlier, we do things unilaterally, bilaterally, multilaterally. September 27, 1991, President Bush announced the drastic unilateral reduction of US nuclear arsenals. START I, START II, slashed our nuclear weapons by two-thirds. The slope of the curve has been a dramatic decline over recent years.
We have not rested there. We struggled hard - and I do take exception - we did not twist arms at the NPT Conference. We believe that we worked collectively with a number of countries to secure the indefinite extension of the NPT.
We have led efforts for a comprehensive, global test ban on nuclear testing. We are proposing, in addition, this admittedly modest and not fully positive but yet useful measure to cap fissile stocks. We are trying to blend down highly enriched uranium where we find it. We are trying to work, and Dr. Van Hippel worked hard while in government, on the problem of what to do with all of this plutonium, which, I agree, is way too much. I would like very much to see it reduced, and indeed it is our policy to reduce it.
That having been said, it remains an extremely dangerous world. There remain adversaries and we remain allies with countries who face dangerous adversaries, so I do not wish to mislead you and say that I think that with a wave of the wand we can achieve the absolute abolition of nuclear weapons. We do retain security commitments, we do face threats. But our objective, as codified in the NPT Article 6, which we adhere to, as reiterated by Vice President Al Gore, just a few yards from here on April 19, when he spoke at the NPT Conference, our objective is the same as the objective you have articulated. We are trying to pursue that objective as rapidly as we can, consistent with the national interest, and we will continue to work. I very much appreciate your comment.
YURIKA AYUKAWA, Harvard University graduate student: I have worked for an NGO on plutonium issues in Tokyo. I would like to comment that it may be necessary to take these steps for fissile cut-off treaty just for weapons use. But for a non nuclear weapons state like Japan while you are negotiating to have this treaty concluded, Japan is going to accumulate tons and tons of plutonium and then after if you have come to an agreement then, that will be a new threat and a problem that will have to be solved. So I think including the civil use of plutonium in this fissile cut-off agreement is essential, and I am glad that Chris has pointed this out. I would like to ask Chris another point. Banning these activities by governments and industry, but opening the door for international control. Would you elaborate on that?
CHRISTOPHER PAINE: I said there were three options, and the third option was a combination of the first two. The first option was the one that was envisaged by Acheson and Lilienthal nearly 50 years ago. That is, if one is to use weapons-useable fissile materials in the fuel cycle, one would need a much stronger control regime than simply what they called a "police-type" operation, that is, safeguards and inspections. One would need genuine international ownership and control to reduce the risk to the international community. We moved away from that concept after Eisenhower decided he needed a positive spin on the arms race, which was essentially the origin of the Atoms for Peace proposal.
The second idea would be just to bite the bullet now and realize that we don't want a future where there are many states that have the closed nuclear fuel cycle and are separating and using plutonium or have enrichment plants with a capability of producing highly enriched uranium. We don't want that future. We do not want to go there, so what are the steps we need to take now, not to go there. There is a question whether the cut-off will lead us in the direction that I suggest, towards eliminating the civil use of these materials, or whether the cut-off will legitimize it. I don't know the answer. I think that is an open question. But I think the wisdom of pursuing this and beating this horse in the international arena depends very much on how we resolve that longer term question.
The third option is to combine the two, in essence to accomodate states like Japan who insist that plutonium is a requirement for the long term energy supply. Well, concede that point, but say it certainly isn't your requirement for your short term energy supply. Short term means, by our calculation (for economic utilization of plutonium) at least fifty years. So one could defer further separation and use of plutonium in the nuclear fuel cycle until such time as there were genuine international arrangements. One would have in effect a convention that defers the national separation and national use of plutonium and highly enriched uranium and specifies certain international institutional arrangements that must be met before there could be any use of these materials in the fuel cycle.
I would say that there is really in the offing a grand bargain that could dramatically accelerate this piece by piece process that the nuclear weapon states seem bent on pursuing. And that is, in return for in the near term constructing a comprehensive safeguards regime that includes a cut-off and comprehensive coverage of their existing stocks, in return for the weapons states doing that, the non-weapons states could agree to reinterpret Article IV of the Non Proliferation Treaty, the article that "entitles" them to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle.
In my view that is a mis-reading of the article. That is a political reading of the article. It comes out of the history of the treaty. The treaty itself says that Article IV must be interpreted in conformity with Articles I and II, which prohibit the nuclear weapon states from providing, and the non-nuclear weapons states from receiving, any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear devices. Well, it is quite clear that providing a country with a breeder reactor or a reprocessing plant or an enrichment plant is "assistance" in creating a capability to produce nuclear devices.
And so I am suggesting as a part of a grand bargain, that the weapons states would agree to bring all their stocks, military and civil, under some form of multilateral or international monitoring, we are committed to reducing these stocks in so far as practical, towards zero. In return for doing that you, the non-weapon states would eliminate - not just moderate, modify, control or safeguard -the risk of further proliferation by agreeing not to acquire these technologies. I think that is the safest course for the future.
FRANK VON HIPPEL: I wanted to raise a related point. Chris and I have both been working in opposition to reprocessing for twenty years. One problem that has become clearer and clearer is that environmental groups are inadvertently sustaining reprocessing. And this is a problem that the NGO community has to discuss internally - the people who are concerned about proliferation and the people who are concerned about opposing nuclear power.
Let me give a specific example: In Germany the law has been changed to allow the nuclear reactor operators to store spent fuel on an interim basis, to dispose of it directly without reprocessing. An interim spent fuel storage facility has been set up. Transporting the first cask of spent fuel there required the assistance of 5000 policemen because of opposition by the German Greens. Shipment of spent fuel to Cogema, from France, to be reprocessed, encounters no opposition. The result has been that the pressure on the German nuclear power plant operators to continue to reprocess continues.
This is a 20-year long story. Twenty years ago, in Germany and Japan in particular, the environmentalists opposed to nuclear power said to the operators, "You should not operate those plants unless you know what you are going to do with the spent fuel." The answer from the operators was "We know what to do with the spent fuel. We will send it to Britain and to France to be reprocessed!" And that worked. It was not a good answer, but it worked politically.
Today, when one talks to the Japanese nuclear power operators and says "You are wasting a lot of money, you are creating a lot of danger by reprocessing and by building a reprocessing plant in Japan," their answer is "There is no place that the environmental movement in Japan will let us store spent fuel. We don't want to do it but we have no alternative."
I think the case against reprocessing is stronger than it has ever been. The economics have gotten worse, the openness to alternatives on the part of the nuclear power plant operators is greater than it has ever been. We have this key problem, however, of not having an agreement on being able to store spent fuel on an interim basis until we can agree what to do with it in the long term.
YASUSHIGE HIROTA, a public worker in Japan: This cut-off treaty has many defects. We need a treaty that guarantees the abolition of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were created by human beings so humans can destroy nuclear weapons. We hope we will make further efforts to achieve our goal, the elimination of nuclear weapons.
KAZUE TAKAHASHI, Secretary of the New Japan Association, Tokyo: We were talking about the effectiveness of this treaty. After the NPT was extended indefinitely nuclear tests have been conducted. Even if the CTBT is concluded, nuclear weapon states can continue nuclear weapons development through simulation tests. I want to stress that the abolition of nuclear weapons must come first. I want to recall the history of the development of nuclear power. Nuclear power has been developed with the aim of using it for military purposes. In our history, the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened. We have to direct our efforts to the conclusion of a more effective treaty for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We have a responsibility to pass on this world to future generations, so we have to create a nuclear weapon free world...I am grateful that you have worked hard for promoting the process of eliminating nuclear weapons but we need to pay attention to the urgency of creating a nuclear free world.
CHAI KALVEKAR, United Nations Association, Toronto, Canada: ...Chris Paine did raise some interesting points...when is the United States going to pay its assessment?
NANCY COLTON, International Association for Volunteer Effort: What does genuine international control mean? How can we achieve enough transparency with Iran, North Korea and China? What is included in international control, Chris Paine?
JACKIE CABASSO, Western States Legal Foundation: A short comment. I have a solution to the problem that Frank von Hippel posed. I think environmental groups will be much more likely to accept interim storage because interim storage is the only kind there is, if a promise is made that there will be no more spent fuel produced. It is quite simple.
CORBIN HARNEY, Nevada: You are talking about putting the nuclear rods in the ocean. I think that is not a good idea, to kill everything in the ocean. That way we won't have any water. We won't have anything. A lot of waste is not the way. Let us stop this thing. Let us do it now, not thirty years from now...the native people have been used for nuclear dumps, nuclear waste...our land is sacred to us...I hope you people can really unite, instead of just talking about it.
FRANK VON HIPPEL: I would like to make a comment about the enormous amount of work which is represented by the 51 million signatures and how important this type of effort is in putting pressure on the system to achieve abolition. I think it is important also to stay engaged and maintain that pressure and maintain pressure to make step by step progress towards abolition. Without your efforts and your continuing to remain engaged with this problem, I don't think we will succeed.
We have seen how much of a difference the worldwide protest against France's tests made to the Comprehensive Test Ban negotiation, this worldwide protest against France's tests. We saw that an acceleration resulted in those negotiations. We need that kind of pressure if we are going to go down the road to nuclear disarmament.
Jackie Cabasso commented: "If you want a solution to the spent fuel problem, stop reactors." I wish I could. We have to have some kind of strategy. In the meantime we need to have something besides the conflicting pressures from the two sides which results in continued reprocessing. I would like to get together with you to talk about what kind of strategy we should have.
DANIEL PONEMAN: On the point about pursuing a treaty with many defects: For the record, I never said the treaty had many defects. I said that I didn't think it solved every problem that we have. I think it is a good treaty and I think it should be pursued in its own right and on its own merits.
In fact if you take the example that you raised about the CTBT, I know that I am glad that we have not had atmospheric testing or more strontium 90 in our children's mild for the last 30 years. We would have had much more if we had not had a PTBT. 1963: at that time the CTBT was an objective. If we had held the PTBT objective hostage to a CTBT we would have had even more atmospheric testing.
I do not know this problem can be solved faster by solving more of it in a single step. We would not have had START II or START I because we are not abolishing nuclear weapons with those treaties. I too join my colleagues in commanding everyone to be active and pursue these goals. I think we are proceeding in a manner that is most likely to achieve those goals.
The US does pay phenomenal sums to this Organization. We are working on our arrearages. We are working on Congress but we also believe that there is need to address the question of internal reform here too. So we will continue to work on that, we will continue to make the large contribution that we do make...
On transparency: I think the best system we have for doing that is the IAEA. Whether we are talking about Iran or North Korea I think that is the institution that has been instructed by the International community and we should continue to work through it. I think the Iraq experience was a very useful one for the agency and the new reformed and improved system of safeguards, the 93 plus 2 reforms, continue to improve it and we can continue to do more.
JONATHAN DEAN: I would like to comment on our proceedings here today in general along the lines of what Frank von Hippel has said. I think he is right. Not surprisingly for most of us, two schools of thought have emerged here, as they usually do on most disarmament subjects. That is, total action now, and step by step.
These two approaches really cannot be reconciled, but both are necessary. On the one hand, we have to convince governments that they have to act. Even though rejected, demands for comprehensive action now can help soften resistance to taking any action. We also, because little steps for little feet are necessary for governments too, need to urge governments to takr specific actions. So both these functions of exhorting and advising are necessary. I was interested to see it repeated here in a classic way. I think the overall results are rather good. Thank you.
AMBASSADOR MARK MOHER: Though being perceived as the "sloth-like representative of multilateral diplomacy," the source of all the problems that we have been addressing here, I wish to emphasize that diplomacy, multilateral diplomacy, in a kind of busted paraphrase, is the art of the possible, guided by principle. Whether one likes it or not, that is the game that one ends up playing. You have to move the 38 governments in the CD in the same direction at the same time, all governments with their own package of problems. And then you have to take it to a broader community where you have 180 countries.
So when I say it is the art of the possible guided by principle, both of those elements have to be addressed. The principle that we have been talking about today is, in a sense, how do you get to the elimination of nuclear weapons. To get there you have to pursue a comprehensive program and deal with the possible when you can deal with the possible. The question of cut-off, the banning of fissile materials for weapons production, is something that we can deal with now. CTBT is something we can deal with now.
The question I would turn back to many of those people in the audience who have addressed this question, is exactly the point that has been made by several earlier speakers. We think, speaking for Canada, that it is better to go for what you can get now, to deal with the very real problems that are going to have to be addressed, getting there, evaluating as you are going along, and then ensuring that what you have done is a positive contribution towards solving the larger problem.
I spent probably half of the last 20 years dealing with nuclear energy in one way or another. All of these debates I have heard before: international control, plutonium storage, the Carter initiative, the international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation. All of these issues have been tackled and addressed over and over again. The minute you say we must solve all of these problems now, you block progress on everything. I come back to one key part: multilateral diplomacy is the art of the possible. Thank you.
CHRISTOPHER PAINE: It is my personal view that the risks of the nuclear fuel cycle, at least the closed nuclear fuel cycle, are only manageable in the long term if one has genuine international control as it was originally conceived. Failing those kinds of arrangements we shouldn't embark on closed fuel cycles as national governments. That would need, under the Security Council or some specially designated body representating the Security Council, an international institution that owned, operated and secured the fuel cycle facilities. They would obviously located on the territory of somebody, but they would be, in effect, managed and staffed and secured by employees of the international community. That was the original vision.
We are a long way from that now. That is why I think the more plausible alternative is not to proceed down that path, because I don't believe that the international institutions are sufficiently developed. And there is no immediate economic or even short term economic need to recycle these materials. Can't one hold out the prospect of ultimate use should it be required, under these kinds of enlarged international arrangements, while in the near and medium term, essentially giving up the option and giving non-proliferation a big boost?
It seems to me my position has been characterized as doing everything at once, and that is not my position at all. I think the question of what you do, and when you do it, is important. Thinking long term about the implications of the steps that you are taking now, and how they will affect the long-range possibilities for nuclear weapons elimination, is important. It is not important if you don't care about the goal.
We stumbled very badly when as a public relations gesture in the mid-1950s we essentially declassified the fuel cycle, and pretended that simply by slapping safeguards on these things we could make it safe for humanity. We stumbled very badly. I don't want to stumble again. In my lifetime I want to get to a situation where I can say I worked as hard as possible and made these decisions that led in the direction of reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons, insofar as practical.
I agree that there are technical and political barriers to the elimination of nuclear weapons but we should not be constrained by the agenda as it has been classically defined over the last 40 years. Sometimes you can get over problems by resolving them at a higher order of generality, rather than reducing everything to the least common denominator.
I cite as an example the test ban. A few months ago not only Russia, but the UK, the United States and France were all seeking to continue testing at various levels but there seemed to be no prospect for resolving that issue at zero. In other words, everyone wanted to seek a least common denominator solution. What is the level of testing that everyone will accept? Well, in the end, it turned out to be zero. And the people in this room had a lot to do with that. So I am suggesting that maybe there are difficulties that are being raised by countries with respect to existing stocks, with respect to the continuing discrimination and imbalance in the world, that need to be addressed, and may have to be addressed in the context of this negotiation. I do not oppose a fissile material cut-off. I simply want people to realize that collateral concerns are important, they should be addressed. I think that the nuclear weapon states should pay a price for this agreement. I don't think it should be a freebie.
ANN HALLAN LAKHDHIR: I would like to thank all our panelists and our audience and our interpreters who have been working hard to interpret all of this...
(Ambassador Nasseri was to have been the first panelist in the discussion. He was unable to make it to New York in time. We requested him to give us in writing what he would have said if he had been at the meeting. If the Conference on Disarmament Ad Hoc Committee on a cut-off of fissile materials for weapons purposes had met in 1995, Ambassador Nasseri was likely to have been the Chairman of the Committee.)
The commencement of the discussion on a cut-off convention dates back to the early negotiations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in its broad sense of vertical and horizontal aspects. The non-nuclear weapon states, and particularly the developing countries during the NPT negotiations, insisted that the prohibition of fissile materials should be included among the basic obligations. This was not accepted at that time and, accordingly, was not reflected in the Non Proliferation Treaty.
NNWS were discouraged by this set back but resolved, nonetheless, to pursue their demand for enacting a legally-binding instrument for prohibiting the fissile materials. The latter's position even became stronger due to the slow pace of NWS' negotiations for deep reductions in nuclear weapons and massive production of hundreds of metric tons of fissile materials for weapon purposes during the Cold War era. The 1993 UNGA consensus resolution, through unprecedented, is but an indication of enthusiasm of the international community to prohibit the fissile materials for weapon purposes.
Following the adoption of the resolution, the Conference on Disarmament engaged in intense discussions to agree on an arrangement which could facilitate early commencement of negotiations on the cut-off treaty. The progress has, to some extent, been promising, taking into account the sensitivity of the issue and the differing views that continue to prevail in this regard even today.
The members of the Conference have now agreed that the CD is an appropriate forum for negotiation of the Convention. The CD has also made serious attempts to agree on a mandate for the cut-off Ad Hoc Committee. It was during discussions on this matter that substantive questions about the definition of the scope and the principle objective of the Convention were seriously raised. In this regard, two different schools of thought existed. While some members of the Conference were supportive of a narrow definition, some others were in favor of a broader definition in order to cover the question of the existing stocks of weapons-grade fissile materials.
An agreement was eventually reached on a specific mandate which kept open the possibility of discussions on the scope of the Convention. We are indebted to Ambassador Shannon of Canada for his persuasive efforts to bridge the gap between various positions on this important issue.
As to the substance of the Convention, a number of issues merit in depth examination and consideration. Most important among them is the verification aspects of the Convention which tends to be rather complex. The importance and complexity of verification lie largely in the necessity of non-discriminatory application of the provisions of the Convention, as has been underlined by the General Assembly. Provision of a technical definition for fissile material should, in this light, be included among the priority issues. Facilities which should also be subject to declarations and possible on-site inspections need to be determined within the context of our objective to find a cost-effective verification system. The Chemical Weapons Convention does provide, in certain areas, a useful framework for negotiations.
We should also deal with the legal and organizational aspects of the Convention. The question of the organizational relationship of the Convention with the IAEA could have a determining impact on the implementation of the Convention. There are of course a variety of other issues which require detailed negotiations.
What is important, in any case, is that the members of the Conference have succeeded to agree on the basic arrangements for the negotiations, and are involved in consultation to finalize the agenda and organization of the work of the 1996 session of the Conference on Disarmament. We hope that these consultations will result in early commencement of negotiations, as only then may we be enabled to have a realistic appraisal for the prospects of the cut-off treaty.
In conclusion, I would like to assure you that despite the fact that negotiations on a CTBT would, most likely, require substantive time and work from on the part of members of the CD, they are, I believe, all committed to start negotiations on cut-off early in 1996.