Fissile-material treaty urged

Special correspondent John Zaracostas interviewed Patricia Lewis, director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, in Geneva on Friday about the prospects for breaking the near decade-long logjam in the Conference on Disarmament to open talks on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). The 66-nation conference is linked to and funded by the United Nations, and negotiates disarmament accords. Mrs. Lewis, a dual Irish-British national, has a doctorate in nuclear physics.

Question: Mrs. Lewis, how would you sum up the issues that have put the brakes on progress by the Conference on Disarmament in recent years?

Answer: In a nutshell … it’s competing priorities.

For some states, achieving a cutoff of fissile material production for nuclear weapons is the priority. For other states, the main issue is preventing an arms race in outer space, and for other states, it’s nuclear disarmament. … I think these are the three competing priorities … but some countries are linking their issues to other issues, and blocking progress on one issue unless they get what they want in their priority.

Q: Can you give an example?

A: For example, we did have agreement in 1998 to begin negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, and late in the year of the Conference on Disarmament, it was decided to hold it over to 1999. Then, unfortunately, in 1999, one country — mainly China — said they were not happy in terms of the relative status of preventing an arms race in outer space, and wanted that to have equal [priority] with FMCT. That has now changed. China no longer demands [equal priority], but other countries have pushed up their issues on the agenda.

Q: Is this the traditional nonaligned countries?

A: Not altogether. I wouldn’t say altogether they’re traditional nonaligned, but I’d say they’re countries that have traditionally put a great deal of effort in trying to promote nuclear disarmament.

I think what the problem now is, is the issue of verification of the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. I think we got a long way in solving this relative balance and relative priorities, and a proposal was put down for a work program. But then the United States announced that they were doing a review of the FMCT.

Last year, the U.S. announced it could accept a FMCT, but it didn’t believe that the verification of such a treaty could be feasible.

Q: A lot of countries are insisting that any verification of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty must not only be on future production, but also on stockpiles.

A: Yes, not only is that a very political issue … but it is also a very important technical issue for verification. If you want a treaty that has a high degree of certainty in its verification regime, the inclusion of previous production stockpiles is something that can increase the verification regime.

The U.S. is one of the countries that are on record as saying it doesn’t want past production and its stockpiles to be included in any treaty.

It would only want a cutoff of production, if you like, from Day Zero of the treaty on future production. It might be one of the technical reasons it feels that a verification regime would not be so feasible.

Q: Might that complicate things in terms of knowing who’s done what?

A: That’s right.

I think one of the things that you can increase confidence in such treaties is to know past production, how much is being produced, to know how much an enrichment facility can produce, how much a reprocessing facility can produce, and to know then, for the future, what it had stopped producing.

It’s not impossible to verify the treaty without stocks, but certainly it would increase the confidence of the verification regime if stocks were included.

But it’s always been known that, politically, the issue of stocks is very big because the issue of stocks gets into the whole issue of nuclear disarmament. And if stocks are included in the treaty, then the issue of what’s called “surplus stocks” — surplus to requirements — becomes a very big issue.

Some of the nuclear-weapons countries, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, have dealt to a large extent with “surplus stocks,” and they have been very transparent.

Q: They got rid of them?

A: They’ve been trying to get rid of them. It’s a very big job, but yes, they have done that. Other states have been much less transparent about that. Clearly this is a very political issue. It’s not only technical.

Q: What do the experts think? Can you verify a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty?

A: A lot of the technology already exists. And you have inspections. And fissile material has a very clear signal. It’s made only in certain places; it can be detected far more easily than chemical or biological weapons.

Tiny, tiny materials of nuclear weapons can be detected. That’s how the activities of Iran that had not been declared were picked up.

Q: Some experts say no one has a clue what the stocks of China are.

A: You’re right. Outside China it’s very hard to work out estimates. China itself has given some rough values in deployed fissile materials, but what it has in stock, I’m afraid, is very hard to know.

Q: If there was some breakthrough and the conference hammered out a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty agreement, that would mean countries like Iran and North Korea would also be obliged to go along, right?

A: Well, indeed, if you take the issue of Iran, which is somewhat different from the issue of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea], Iran is inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT already prohibits Iran from making fissile material for weapons purposes. Iran is covered legally by that treaty.

Now, in the case of the DPRK, that’s in a different stage of development of all of this, as it was announced [by Pyongyang last week that it has nuclear weapons].

The DPRK was in the NPT [but] announced its withdrawal. Other states party to the NPT do not accept that the DPRK has withdrawn. Legally speaking, parties to the NPT believe the DPRK is covered by the treaty as well, like Iran. However, the DPRK itself does not consider itself bound by the treaty because it has announced its withdrawal. …

Q: The Chinese and the Russians are still making a lot of noise about the equal importance of PAROS — the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. Are they backtracking in the Conference on Disarmament?

A: No, I don’t think so. Russia and China have for the last few years been developing a framework for PAROS. Certainly for China, it’s a major issue, and for Russia it’s also a very big issue. They link it to the missile-defense issue in terms of in the future placing weapons in space, and that’s one of their biggest fears.

Q: Why is it important to get a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty deal here?

A: Well, I think one of the reasons it’s important is, it is seen as an essential step on the route to nuclear disarmament. There’s debate about when, but obviously the earlier the better.

It’s the analogy of a bath overflowing: The first thing you’ve got to do is turn off the tap, and then you can worry about mopping up the water and pulling up the plug. So the FMCT is the equivalent of turning off the tap for fissile materials to make nuclear weapons. …

Now some countries, such as China, argue they are way behind the development of nuclear weapons — compared with the United States, for example — and need to catch up and, therefore, need to produce more fissile material. Whereas, the U.S. has such a surplus of fissile material that they don’t really need to produce any, and indeed have stopped production.

And, in fact, there is a statement from the United States, from the UK, Russia and France that they don’t need to produce any fissile material and have stopped production of fissile material for the production of nuclear weapons. So, four out of the five nuclear-weapons states have indeed stopped production.

Now, those outside the NPT are India, Pakistan and Israel [which has never admitted any production]. India and Pakistan have admitted that they have developed nuclear weapons — they have tested — and they are producing fissile material for weapons purposes. And they both argue that they need more time to build up their stocks.

This argument, of course, is not accepted by other states, because they don’t think [India and Pakistan] should have nuclear weapons at all.

North Korea has not talked about its production. It has only talked about what it possesses. The way in which North Korea has behaved over the NPT, one can imagine that they will say that they are not bound by the treaty.

So even if the political problems between the United States and its allies over verification get sorted out in the Conference on Disarmament, what would be the role of North Korea? … How will it go with India and Pakistan and Israel in the conference?

Q: What if nothing happens on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty? Is it time, as some have suggested, to look at other issues rather than waste another year?

A: There’s a strong argument that the Conference on Disarmament as a forum for negotiations needs to exist, and if it didn’t exist, you would have to find another forum — you would have to reinvent it. I think that is a strong argument.

There is also a strong argument that where a process is not working, you need to find another one. The problems that we have within the conference is that every decision has to be made by consensus. That’s fine when everyone is looking to find ways to agree, but when people are looking to find ways to block, it’s basically giving every state a veto — and that happened at the end of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations and ever since on the Conference on Disarmament.