Non-Aligned Object to Nuclear Sharing Arrangements

By Gustavo Capdevilla

GENEVA, April 28 (IPS) – The Movement of Non-Aligned Countries (NOAL) called for the elimination of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) nuclear sharing arrangements, at an international conference on disarmament Tuesday.

The NOAL member states which are parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) stated their position in a document submitted to the preparatory committee of the NPT review conference for the year 2000.

The NOAL declaration was backed by the anti-war non-governmental organisations attending the preparatory committee’s sessions in Geneva, which will run through May 8.

Daniel Plesch, with the Project on European Nuclear Non-Proliferation, said NATO is the only alliance which operates nuclear sharing arrangements.

Under these arrangements, he pointed out, 150 to 200 U.S. nuclear weapons are deployed in six European states: Germany, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey.

The NOAL statement proposed that "the Nuclear-weapon States parties to the NPT reaffirm the commitment . . . to refrain from – among themselves, with non-nuclear weapons states, and with States non party to the Treaty – nuclear sharing arrangements for military purposes under any kind of security arrangements."

Plesch said that arrangements like NATO’s allow non-nuclear weapon states to be involved in nuclear training and consultations in peace time and to use nuclear weapons in wartime.

He added that as the representative to Turkey said, "Turkey . . . apart from the nuclear umbrella of the NATO alliance does not possess nuclear weapons."

Plesch, also a member of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), said NATO members argue that the alliance’s nuclear sharing arrangements are in line with the NPT, and that nuclear weapons are not shared unless war is declared.

Oliver Meier, with the Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS), said the other members of NATO – Denmark, Spain, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway and Portugal – supported the nuclear policies of the alliance’s three nuclear powers – the United States, France and Britain.

The three candidates to NATO – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – share that same policy, he added.

Tuesday’s preparatory committee was dedicated to listening to speeches by the representatives of anti-war NGOs.

Felicity Hill, with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, said "chemical weapons, biological weapons and anti-personnel landmines have now been banned. We must do no less with nuclear weapons. The work must begin anew this year.

"While the nuclear weapons convention is clearly on our horizon, taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert is an important early step toward that goal.

"As many of you know, in January 1995 a rocket was launched off the coasts of Norway on an exploratory mission to study the Aurora Borealis. This launch caused the Russian president to open, for the first time, the dreaded nuclear suitcase, and brought the world very close to a nuclear exchange, closer than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"Lengthening the time between threat and use to allow for diplomacy and rational decision making as well as verification will truly make this a post-Cold War era."

(END/IPS/TRANSO/SW/98)