IN 1961 MINISTER for Foreign Affairs Frank Aiken successfully proposed the “Irish resolution” to the UN General Assembly. It called on countries to negotiate an agreement under which nuclear states would not export nuclear weapons or know-how, and non-nuclear states would promise not to manufacture or acquire them. In doing so he set in train a process that importantly reconvenes today in New York and in which Ireland will again be hoping to play a significant part.
The month-long meeting brings together 189 countries for the five-year review of implementation of the 40-year-old Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In 2005 procedural wrangling involving the US, Egypt and Iran led to failure, but diplomats hope this time they can breathe new life into a treaty which is worthwhile in itself but which has singularly failed to prevent North Korea from building a nuclear bomb or forced Iran to stop uranium enrichment. A Pakistani-led illicit nuclear supply network and slow progress on disarmament have also highlighted its weaknesses.
President Barack Obama’s commitment in Prague a year ago to a “world without nuclear weapons”, a major arms reduction treaty recently signed between Russia and the US, a summit on terrorism and nuclear weapons, and a significant US nuclear strategy review, have helped to create a fairer wind for the meeting. At the heart of the stalemate for years has been the reluctance of non-nuclear states to embrace more anti-proliferation measures and their desire to acquire nuclear energy technology, while nuclear powers make so little progress on their treaty obligation to disarm gradually.
It is a point to which Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likely to return when he addresses the conference today, attacking the likely prospect of reinforced Security Council sanctions against Iran while the world turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear bomb. Iran will oppose a final text which singles it out. And it is also linked to another thorny issue, the “additional protocol”, a strengthened transparency agreement that allows the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency more intrusive inspections. Some want this to become obligatory, others, to remain voluntary. Agreement is unlikely.
One sideshow to the conference will be work on the optimistic aspiration, pushed by Egypt and others, for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, difficult discussions which Ireland is likely to chair. As part of the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), which includes Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden, Ireland will also hope to see movement on the initiative agreed at the 2000 review conference known as the “13 Practical Steps” , a benchmarking tool to measure the glacial progress of disarmament.
As for Ireland's EU partners, their collective contribution would be more coherent and helpful to the review were France, with the world's third-largest nuclear armoury, to express a willingness to scale down its " force de frappe". However, Germany's recent indication that it would like to see the withdrawal of the US's 200 tactical nuclear weapons from Europe is welcome.