Good morning, and thank you for the chance to speak about how we in the United
States Government see the current Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review
cycle and its role in strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
I. Strengthening the Nonproliferation Regime
I had a chance to address some related issues at the end of last year at the
Wilton Park conference. There, I made the point that the nuclear nonproliferation
regime, as a whole, is greater than the sum of its treaty parts - and that governments
can and should engage in a range of individual, joint, and multilateral national
efforts to fight nuclear proliferation and complement and reinforce the NPT
regime. I outlined how the U.S. Government, working with other concerned states,
has built a "layered" approach to nonproliferation, supporting and
strengthening the NPT regime itself, developing new formal and informal multilateral
efforts such as U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 and the Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI), and employing national authorities with regard to
export controls and sanctions against proliferator entities. I also discussed
the relationship between nonproliferation and the international peaceful nuclear
cooperation that the United States seeks to enrich and deepen. I stressed that
no one has more to lose than the countries of the developing world, should the
international community fail to prevent the emergence of nuclear weapons capabilities
in additional countries.
II. The NPT Review Process and Nuclear Nonproliferation
But what I did not address at Wilton Park was how the NPT review process itself
can and should be used to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Since
we are now beginning a new review cycle that will culminate in the 2010 NPT
Review Conference (RevCon), I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words
on the subject today.
A. The Role of the NPT Review Process
So what does, or can, the review cycle actually do? The Treaty itself set up
the review process in the third paragraph of its Article VIII, providing that
at intervals of five years a majority of States Party may choose to convene
review conferences "in order to review the operation of this Treaty with
a view to assuring that the purposes of the Preamble and the provisions of the
Treaty are being realized." This cyclical process was not established for
the purpose of amending the NPT, for that is covered elsewhere. Instead, it
is something different: a provision for States Party periodically to come together
to talk about the operation of the Treaty, about the challenges it faces, and
about how to keep it relevant in a changing world.
The negotiating history of the NPT shows that it was the United States that
suggested inclusion of provisions for reviewing the operation of the Treaty
after a certain period of time. U.S. representatives noted that this would give
states the chance to air any concerns they might have about how well Parties
were living up to the Treaty's provisions and the principles expressed in its
Preamble. From the inception, therefore, the NPT review process has been about
discussion, about debate, about reinforcing the norms and principles expressed
in the Treaty itself, and about developing common ground in meeting challenges
that face the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
B. "Success" and "Failure"
One commonly hears talk about how frustrating it was that the 2005 Review Conference
missed the opportunity to issue Main Committee reports and agree upon a Final
Document because of one country's disagreement on one issue out of so many.
However, the United States believes that much progress was made at the
RevCon in discussing some key issues, among them the importance of:
* deterring and responding to Treaty withdrawal by states in
violation of the NPT's core of nonproliferation obligations;
* achieving universal adherence to the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol giving international inspectors more
of the authority they need to detect undeclared nuclear activity and making
the Protocol part of the safeguards standard;
* ensuring compliance with the nonproliferation obligations
that form the core of the Treaty, and preventing the emergence of further states
armed with nuclear weapons;
* recognizing the need for all states to live up to the strictest
standards of safety and security in their peaceful nuclear activities; and
* supporting the fullest possible cooperation in the peaceful
uses of nuclear energy consistent with nonproliferation norms.
It was indeed unfortunate that disagreement on a single precluded arriving at
statements of agreement on so many other key points.
But let us not overlook the forest for the trees. If the procedural collapse
of the 2005 RevCon was frustrating precisely because "we were so close"
to agreement on so many matters, we should take heart from that. After all,
progress made among so many sovereign governments on many issues is no less
significant merely because we do not today have a piece of paper on "Review
Conference" letterhead that expresses this understanding in five official
languages.
We should remember that the NPT review process, with its periodic Preparatory
Committee (PrepCom) and Review Conference meetings, is neither an executive
nor a legislative institution. To be sure, the Review Conferences can and do
sometimes - although only less than half of the time (at only three out of seven
RevCons), to judge from the historical record - reach consensus in Final Documents.
But such documents are statements of political consensus at a particular point
in time upon certain policy positions. They do not themselves have any legal
import, and so of course they would not constitute a "subsequent agreement
between the parties regarding the interpretation of the treaty or the application
of its provisions" within the meaning of Article 31(3) of the Vienna Convention
on the Law of Treaties.
Indeed, the nature of the review process itself makes clear that Parties' expressions
of policy agreement at meetings are by their nature neither intended nor expected
necessarily to stand for all time. After all, were it possible for a group of
nations to articulate views that would forever thereafter perfectly fit the
challenges that would face the NPT in our complex world, there would have been
no need for a review process in the first place. Rather, it is precisely because
the world does change over time that it is important for all of us to come together
periodically and discuss NPT issues - and for us to decide, each time, what
we now think is most important to do.
Many issues will remain of enduring importance, and should continue to be a
focus of our attentions. Other issues may be overtaken by events in our changing
world and become less relevant. Still other, new issues will certainly arise.
It is our collective responsibility to discern and address the matters most
important to the successful operation of the Treaty.
C. Reinforcing Norms and Facilitating Collective Action
All of which brings me back to my point about the real value of the NPT review
cycle. As I noted, it does not "legislate," and it does not itself
implement.
Some might even disparage it by saying that what it does best is just provide
an opportunity for endless talk. But such criticism would be unfair, and would
miss the point.
The review cycle is supposed to provide a forum for talk; that is its primary
purpose. It provides a unique opportunity for countries to exchange views about
how the Treaty is living up to its intentions and expectations, and to develop
common ground on how we can help it do better. The cynic might argue that the
NPT review cycle does not "do" anything at all, but we must not lose
sight of how it can nonetheless catalyze and facilitate a great deal.
And that is why, while we are disappointed like many of you that more progress
was not made on Main Committee reports and a Final Document at the 2005 RevCon,
we in the United States do not regard 2005 as a failure. As we see it, the standard
for whether a review cycle should be regarded as a "success" or
"failure" is not whether it produces a particular document at its
conclusion - though we would agree that having a good consensus text on issues
of substance is certainly preferable to having none. Instead, we view "success"
as being determined by whether or not States Party are, at the conclusion of
a cycle, closer to or farther from the shared understandings needed to address
the challenges that face the nuclear nonproliferation regime. By that standard,
I would judge the previous cycle as having had mixed results.
(1) Article VI
Clearly, on some issues, differences remain. International debates about disarmament
and Article VI matters, for instance, have unfortunately not yet moved enough
out of the Cold War context. They remain too much fixated upon a superpower
arms race that has ended - just as Article VI of the NPT urges - and upon warhead
numbers and force postures which already reflect a very different 21st Century
world and still continue to move toward fulfillment of the Treaty's broader
disarmament objectives. It apparently remains insufficiently clear to many that
the gravest obstacles to making progress on the overall goals of Article VI
do not lie with countries such as the United States, the arsenal which has long
been making extraordinary progress in the right direction and whose commitment
to the disarmament goals expressed in the NPT's Preamble and Article VI remains
unwavering. Instead, the most acute Article VI problems today lie with the threat
of emerging nuclear arsenals in some present or former NPT non-nuclear weapons
states - arsenals which are moving quite in the wrong direction - and with the
regional nuclear arms races that might be engendered if States Party fail to
act to enforce nonproliferation norms.
If we all truly intend, as the NPT's Preamble exhorts us, to ease international
tension and strengthen trust between States in order to facilitate nuclear disarmament
pursuant to a Treaty on general and complete disarmament, it is imperative that
we act quickly against the emerging regional nuclear arms race dynamics that
fly so ominously in the face of the disarmament aims of the Treaty. (There is,
therefore, a critical nonproliferation element in Article VI!) Our hope in the
United States is that this review cycle will see other States Party come to
recognize all that we have done, and all that we are continuing to do today,
to achieve the disarmament goals expressed in the Treaty. And our hope is that
States Party will be able to join us in working to create a global environment
in which it will become both possible and realistic, rather than simply a Utopian
dream, to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons.
(2) Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation
Some differences also remain over certain aspects of how best to spread the
benefits that nuclear technology can bring to mankind. Iran has, for instance,
has tried to hijack legitimate discussions of the NPT's Article IV and twist
them into a politicized form designed to give cover to Tehran's nuclear weapons
ambitions. This works against the interests of the developing world by imperiling
the foundation of nonproliferation compliance upon which all nuclear cooperative
relationships must be built. And Iran's efforts in this regard imperil the security
of all nations by undercutting the NPT's ability to check the spread of what
the IAEA Director General has called "latent" nuclear weapons capabilities.
(3) Strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime
But while these differences are not trivial, the last review cycle nonetheless
saw very important developments affecting how well the nuclear nonproliferation
regime can address the challenges it faces. There is today, for instance, a
much clearer appreciation of the crisis of nonproliferation compliance facing
the regime. There is also a growing understanding of the ways in which innovative
approaches to peaceful uses, such as the United States' Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership (GNEP), can strengthen nonproliferation norms by providing incentives
for countries to forswear proliferation-risky technologies even as they participate
more and more in rewarding international nuclear cooperation programs. And there
has been a growing understanding by national governments of the roles they can
play, in a variety of respects, in reinforcing nuclear nonproliferation norms
and taking concrete steps to support the goals of the NPT.
Steps taken to promote nuclear nonproliferation outside the formal mechanisms
of the Treaty - I should reemphasize - complement and reinforce the NPT rather
than supplant or replace it. Today's nuclear proliferation challenges are less
severe, and the Treaty stronger, than would otherwise have been the case, as
a result of steps taken by states cooperating informally, acting individually,
and acting through other bodies such as the Security Council and the IAEA Board
of Governors. PSI mechanisms, for instance, help interdict WMD-related shipments.
Governments' efforts to improve export controls and nuclear materials security
are making it harder for fissile material or weapons-related technologies to
be transferred to aspiring weapons states, or stolen by criminals or terrorists.
And multilateral and national efforts to promote adherence to the Additional
Protocol are helping IAEA inspectors get more of the tools they need to verify
safeguards compliance in the countries that have adhered.
At the same time, the U.N. Security Council, with Resolution 1540, has set in
place important requirements to improve, where necessary, national legislation
and regulations, and their enforcement, in order to help keep WMD-related technologies
out of the hands of proliferators and terrorists. Meanwhile, the IAEA Board
has lived up to the requirements of the Agency's Statute by referring Iranian
safeguards noncompliance to the Security Council. And steps have been and continue
to be taken by the Council itself to address the threats presented to international
peace and security by the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs.
We should remember, therefore, that progress has been made in fulfilling the
purposes of the Treaty during and since the last review cycle. And we should
remember that while many of these developments occurred in ways formally separate
from the NPT review process, it is the review cycle that has provided vital
opportunities for the international community to come together regularly to
discuss and build support for much-needed common approaches to such matters.
III. The 2007-2010 Review Cycle
This is why we approach the current review cycle with cautious optimism.
A. Substance
As I noted, despite the lack of an actual piece of paper achieved by consensus,
the 2005 Review Conference saw extensive and sometimes very productive discussions
on important issues. This should give us a foundation upon which to build during
the current cycle. Let me point out some key steps we will need to take together.
(1) Compliance
During this new cycle, we will all need to speak emphatically about the importance
of rigorous compliance with the nonproliferation obligations of the Treaty.
These words of ours must reflect our resolve, and be reflected in our actions.
Without steadfast efforts to return violators to compliance and deter those
who in the future would otherwise seek to follow such paths, neither the Treaty
itself nor the system of peaceful nuclear cooperation that has grown up under
its umbrella can survive. Without such compliance, the national security of
all States Party will in fact be gravely endangered - both directly by the proliferators
themselves, and by the spiraling regional nuclear arms competitions their behavior
will produce.
Because we believe there is such broad agreement on the principle that North
Korea needs to be denuclearized and return to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon
State Party, and that Iran's nuclear weapons effort must be demonstrably abandoned
in its entirety, we think that this current NPT review cycle can contribute
to the resolution of such problems by demonstrating the commitment of all Parties
to these ends.
(2) Deterring and Responding to Withdrawal by Violators
In light of Main Committee III's discussions during the 2005 RevCon, we believe
there is a great opportunity to build upon the common ground that exists on
the importance of deterring and responding to Treaty withdrawal by countries
that are in violation of their obligations. Our French and other European colleagues
did excellent work on this issue in the last cycle. We strongly support a renewal
of these efforts, and look forward to contributing to them during this review
cycle.
(3) Peaceful Uses
With regard to peaceful uses, while there are legitimate debates over how to
handle the proliferation potential of "latent" weapons capabilities,
we should not exaggerate them or assume that such differences are intractable.
First, to the extent that these peaceful use debates come up in the context
of the Iranian nuclear crisis, we all must resist Tehran's effort to wrap its
weapons program in the protective cloak of assertions about Article IV "rights."
There are some legitimate differences over peaceful use policy that we should
all be discussing, but these debates have nothing whatsoever to do with Iran.
Article IV is quite clear that, for NPT parties, the right to develop, produce,
and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is the right to do so "in
conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty." NPT parties do not have
a right to nuclear technology for purposes that violate these key provisions
of the Treaty.
Honorable people may disagree about what the correct answer is with respect
to stopping the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology elsewhere.
But no
responsible observer can defend the Iranian regime's contempt for its Treaty
obligations as some kind of perverse fidelity to Article IV. So whatever one
thinks of the broader Article IV debate, we should all insist that Iranian regime
abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and restore international confidence
in its peaceful intentions by ending the programs it began in secrecy two decades
ago, and which it continues behind a cloud of lies and deception to this day.
Let us, in other words, have our debates about how best to fulfill the Treaty's
principles with regard to peaceful uses. But let us also agree, and act upon,
the fact that the Iranian regime, which has no operational nuclear reactors
anyway, is not interested in enriching uranium for peaceful uses - and that
the Iranian issue is thus an entirely separate question.
Second, we should not too quickly assume that today's disagreements over how
to handle the increased availability of fuel-cycle technology necessarily reflect
an entirely unavoidable tension in the NPT regime. This is not, we should remember,
the first time the NPT has faced what may have seemed a "structural"
tension between peaceful use and nonproliferation principles.
Perhaps the first "inherent tension" between peaceful uses and nonproliferation
was perceived early in the NPT's history, in the fact that the most common research
reactor designs of the time ran on highly-enriched uranium (HEU) - fissile material
which might perhaps be easily diverted for direct use in a weapon. That is one
of the reasons it was necessary to create the IAEA, a decade before the NPT
was itself negotiated, and to build a safeguards system for monitoring and accountability
of nuclear material. But technology is enabling us to reduce those tensions
in the peaceful use system, for today an increasing proportion of research reactors
run on less weapons-usable low-enriched uranium (LEU). Moreover, we have been
working to convert older research reactors to LEU and to recover supplies of
HEU from far-flung locations where they might perhaps be vulnerable to terrorist
theft or proliferator access.
This example shows how it can be possible, over time and with innovative approaches,
to escape - or at least reduce - what might otherwise seem to be an inescapable
"structural" tension between peaceful uses and the Treaty's core nonproliferation
norms.
Some have argued that the NPT faces a structural tension today. On the one hand,
the world relies upon nuclear power for electricity generation - and, thanks
to growing energy needs and increased awareness of the problems associated with
fossil fuel consumption, it will likely rely more and more upon nuclear power
in the future. But since reactors today tend to run on at least LEU, most of
them still need uranium enriched to some extent.
There has not, hitherto, been any problem meeting reactor fuel needs through
the long-established producer states. Nevertheless, some additional countries
have, for various reasons, expressed an interest in acquiring fuel-cycle technology.
But the ubiquitous availability of uranium enrichment capability - or its analogue,
plutonium production and reprocessing - also necessarily entails a capability
to develop nuclear weapons. The basic physics and operating principles of nuclear
weapons have been known publicly for many years now, and it has long been understood
that the greatest technical barrier to massive and widespread proliferation
has been the difficulty of acquiring sufficient quantities of weapons-usable
fissile material. Anyone who can enrich (or reprocess) can overcome this hurdle
to weapons development - helping open the door to the incalculable dangers of
a proliferated world.
This was not so much of a problem in the past. Back at the time the NPT was
negotiated, enrichment technology was available to very few, not widely understood,
and commonly treated as tightly-controlled national security information because
of its utility in producing fissile material for weapons. Enrichment technology
was not expected to be widely available, so it was easy to promote "Atoms
for Peace" because peaceful nuclear cooperation was seen as largely building
power reactors to be run on fuel produced by the few states that already had
the technology. Today, however, thanks in part to indigenous development efforts
and in part to the activities of A.Q. Khan and his ilk, enrichment and reprocessing
technology is increasingly available. As a result, there seems to exist today
a conflict between the pursuit of peaceful fuel-cycle activity and nonproliferation
good sense - a tension that apparently resulted from early assumptions that
such technology would not be as ubiquitous as it threatens to become today.
President Bush has long made clear our belief that a key to controlling this
problem is to limit the further spread of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR)
technology. This remains our view. But we understand that this important step,
alone, might not be attractive to every non-ENR country that might be considering
getting into the fuel-cycle business in order to provide fuel for expanding
power-generation programs.
That is why we are also working hard with the producer states and the IAEA to
develop broad cooperative programs for fuel-supply assurances, as well as efforts
such as our own GNEP initiative. GNEP seeks to develop new reactor technologies
that are more proliferation-resistant than ever, as well as designs optimized
for the needs of developing countries. It also seeks to develop a reliable system
of fresh fuel supply and spent-fuel management services, to build upon and reinforce
the efforts currently underway here in Vienna to create a reliable fuel supply
system that might include an IAEA-overseen fuel bank as a supply of "last
resort." We also intend to create our own reserve of nuclear fuel to back
up these collaborative fuel-supply efforts. (For this purpose, we will be converting
into LEU more than 17 metric tons of surplus HEU from our own defense programs.)
Significantly, we believe that the perceived need for countries to consider
proliferation-risky fuel-cycle activity will decrease in proportion to the world's
success in setting up such a reliable, multi-producer, and internationally supported
system.
So before one assumes that the fuel-cycle problem embodies an intractable tension
between peaceful uses and the core nonproliferation principles of the Treaty,
remember these efforts. Thanks to such work, we hope the world will be able
to avoid confronting a zero-sum trade-off between nonproliferation and peaceful
use equities. We believe the world can, as the saying goes, have its cake and
eat it too. We can expand and deepen nuclear cooperation around the world, and
we can do so in proliferation-responsible ways through robust collaborative
international fuel-services mechanisms that will help take away perceived needs
for the further spread of proliferation-risky fuel-cycle technology.
This is why we are cautious optimists with regard to peaceful use issues in
this new NPT review cycle. We hope that it will be possible for States Party
to come to a better understanding of the ways in which such innovative approaches
can allow the world to enjoy increased benefits without increased risks.
(4) Safeguards, Safety, and Security
As everyone knows, the United States is a steadfast supporter of strengthening
the nuclear safeguards system, achieving universality for the Additional Protocol
as the new safeguards standard, improving nuclear-related export controls, and
augmenting nuclear safety and security efforts to prevent access to nuclear
materials and technology by terrorists. Because I think there is so much agreement
on these goals, I will say here only that they remain a high United States priority
- and that GNEP also aims to develop new and improved safeguards technologies.
We hope that during this NPT review cycle States Party will reaffirm these principles
and voice support for these efforts, adding their moral and political weight
in support of ongoing projects toward these ends.
B. Procedure
Before I conclude, let me say a few words about issues of NPT review cycle procedure,
to explain the philosophical underpinnings of our approach to such matters as
the Preparatory Committee agenda, the allocation of special time, and defining
the jurisdiction of committees and subsidiary bodies.
As you'll recall, I said a moment ago that the importance of the NPT review
process lies in the opportunities it allows us to seek the best answers to the
many challenges facing the nuclear nonproliferation regime today. The United
States believes it is imperative that we use the NPT review process to the fullest,
by engaging in frank and wide-ranging discussions to this end. This means getting
through - and beyond - the traditional squabbling over "procedural"
matters that has in the past made it so hard to have the kind of straightforward
debate we need.
As we all know, when asked to do things such as define a meeting agenda, it
is all too easy for countries to formulate clever turns of phrase that imply
criticism of other governments' positions, or that seek to preempt anticipated
rhetorical attacks. Anyone can play at this game, and all too often, many do.
The problem, of course, is that when governments insist upon politicizing such
matters, we all lose - because it becomes impossible to resolve these allegedly"procedural"
matters and engage in real debate about substantive issues.
From the perspective of the broader purposes of the NPT review process, getting
bogged down in political contestation over such turns of phrase represents the
worst possible outcome. Ostensibly "procedural" discussions can become
so polluted by substantive disagreements that it is impossible to resolve them.
At the same time, we lose the chance to engage in open and honest debate about
the issues when policy disagreements are camouflaged in fights over procedure.
What we need, therefore, is a chance to get beyond the politicization of "procedure"
and focus as quickly as possible upon the real debates.
So we seek a fresh approach to these matters. First, wherever possible, we should
simply avoid having to fight over turns of phrase. Nothing, for example, requires
us to have special time or subsidiary bodies. And because we do not absolutely
need them, we should avoid such things. No lack of a jurisdictional headline
will prevent governments from airing their concerns and discussing their ideas,
but insisting upon such headlines can sidetrack meetings into dead-end blind
alleys and prevent much valuable debate on these same concerns and views. Accordingly,
we believe States Party should adopt a minimalist approach to such matters.
Second, where actual statements of purpose and jurisdiction are unavoidable,
States Party should agree upon phrasing as broad, as unspecific, and as inclusive
as possible - language that includes nothing that could irritate or inflame
the political sensitivities of others, and which allows maximum freedom to debate
substantive issues because it precludes nothing. Many governments will, for
example, surely wish to discuss the nuclear situation in the Middle East, the
crisis of nonproliferation noncompliance facing the regime, or what practical
steps are needed to make progress toward the disarmament goals of Article VI
and the Treaty's Preamble. Phrasings should be chosen that allow every issue
to find a home in our work program, but that do this without creating political
difficulties that could trigger a cascade of "procedural" difficulties.
This is the secret to success, and to avoiding yet another paralyzing procedural
war that disguises matters of substance but that would keep us from honestly
addressing the issues. We earnestly hope that people of goodwill and generous
spirit will see the merit of this approach. It represents the best chance quickly
to put procedural matters behind us and to engage in the candid and legitimate
substantive debates that will be needed if the NPT is to survive the challenges
it faces.
IV. Conclusion
Too often, one hears it said that the NPT is on the verge of collapse - or even
that it is doomed. We in the United States do not believe that needs to be the
case, however, and we hope that this review cycle can succeed in its intended
purpose of helping ensure that the NPT plays as important a role in protecting
and promoting our common interests in this new century as it did in the last.
Thank you.
Released on February 6, 2007
************************************************************
See http://www.state.gov for Senior State Department Official's statements and
testimonies
********************************************************************************
To change your subscription, go to http://www.state.gov/misc/echannels/66822.htm
Return to Iranian Nuclear Crisis Page