Model Nuclear Weapons Convention

A model convention for the elimination of nuclear weapons was released at a meeting at the U.N. on 7 April, the first day of the NPT preparatory committee.

The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention was drafted by a group of some 15 legal, scientific and disarmament experts over the past year under the leadership of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy.

The preamble recalls the demands for nuclear disarmament from the first resolution of the U.N. General Assembly in 1946 to the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion on nuclear weapons in 1996. The model's preamble would have states parties declare their belief "that the threat and use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with civilized norms, standards of morality and humanitarian law which prohibit the use of inhumane weapons and those with indiscriminate effects." The text calls on all states to "destroy all nuclear weapons it owns or possesses," to "destroy all nuclear weapons testing and production facilities" and proposes that states undertake "never under any circumstances to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons... to engage in any military or other preparations to use nuclear weapons."

The model convention envisions a five-phase implementation schedule:

• Phase One calls for many of the actions disarmament advocates are calling for as steps the nuclear weapons states could enact immediately: taking weapons off alert, removing warheads from their delivery vehicles, removing targeting mechanisms from the vehicles, and closing all nuclear testing facilities.
• Phase Two calls for separated warheads to be placed under international supervision or dismantled and for all nuclear weapons research and testing facilities to be converted or dismantled.
• Phase Three would set limits on the weapons Russia and the United States could retain and brings the other three nuclear weapon states into the process by setting limits on their stockpiles as well. Phase Three would also see the dismantlement or conversion of all remaining nuclear weapons production and research facilities.
• Phase Four would further reduce the stockpiles of the five and close or convert all reactors using highly-enriched uranium.
• Under Phase Five "all nuclear weapons shall be destroyed." The time line in the model is left open but with the suggestion that the entire process could be completed in 15 years.

In releasing the text, two of the experts who worked on the draft, Merav Datan of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and Jurgen Scheffran of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP) addressed the meeting. Scheffran said the text attempts to resolve the dilemma between the arguments that a comprehensive approach is too complex and a step- by-step approach can not guarantee the final result will be elimination with "an incremental, comprehensive approach" of elements such as START and nuclear-weapon-free zones "all building toward a Nuclear Weapons Convention." In answer to the question "Why put energies into a draft that no government has promised to adopt?", Datan said the drafters believe that the drive will draw on the energies of civil society thus "once the process begins it will develop a life of its own." (Datan and Peter Weiss of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms also introduced the model convention during the informal NGO presentations to the NPT delegates on 16 April.)

Jonathan Schell, the author of The Fate of the Earth, said, "During the Cold War, the 'secret' of the bomb was held by a few governments, the nuclear club was exclusive. Now just about anyone can join. The danger is obvious: a world of 20, 30 nuclear powers. If America, Russia, and the other nuclear powers deem that their national security requires nuclear weapons, why shouldn't India, Pakistan, Israel and, for that matter, Iraq and Libya, decide the same... In suggesting that for the first time, we are setting a standard for the world as a whole, not just for two powers."

Ambassador Dato Abdullah Ahmad of Malaysia told the meeting his government "believes that negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention can proceed alongside negotiations on steps towards nuclear disarmament such as a fissile material cut-off, further reductions in stockpiles, a no-first-use agreement, and a convention prohibiting threat or use of nuclear weapons. Progress on such steps will be slow or non-existent unless there is also a concurrent commitment by the nuclear weapon nations to negotiate a program for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons."

Other provisions in the model text say:

• the convention would be of unlimited duration and not subject to reservations;
• withdrawal would not be permitted reflecting, according to the commentary accompanying the text, "that the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and the obligation to eliminate them, have entered the realm of customary international law from which there should be no exception;"
• not only states, but individuals, would be held responsible for violating the convention;
• public verification of the convention would be permitted and such "citizen reporting" would be protected; and
• an Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons "to achieve the object and purpose of this Convention," to ensure compliance and verification, and "to provide a forum for consultation and cooperation among States Parties" would be established with an Executive Council and Technical Secretariat modeled on the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Copies of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention and accompanying documents may be obtained from the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, 666 Broadway, Room 625, New York, NY 10012; phone: (212) 674-7790; fax (212) 674-6199; E-mail: lcnp@aol.com