PRESS RELEASE

25 April 2000

Russian Nuclear Disarmament Policy Limited

Reliance on Thousands of Nuclear Weapons Overshadows Progress on CTBT and START II

WASHINGTON, DC – Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said at the United Nations today, “We are resolved to pursue a stage by stage and integral progress of all five Nuclear Powers towards nuclear disarmament without any artificial delays or undue hurry.” His speech rebutted many countries that said yesterday they want accelerated progress on disarmament and that the US and Russia are not committed to Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which calls for the elimination nuclear weapons.

 Like their counterparts in the Pentagon, Russian officials have provided a bottom-line number of nuclear warheads they feel will ensure national security.  Kremlin officials believe a minimum of 1500 warheads are needed; The Pentagon has stated that further nuclear warhead reductions should not go below 2500.  “The Russian and American view of nuclear disarmament is like looking into a one-way mirror. They look in the mirror and see themselves as the only countries with a legitimate need for nuclear weapons, but they don’t see 182 countries on the other side of the mirror who say, ‘We don’t need nuclear weapons and neither do you’,“ says Daniel Plesch, Director of the British American Security Information Council.

US officials have been on the defensive about progress on disarmament since the Russian Duma ratified START II and the CTBT last week. “It was a calculated decision by Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin to get ratification of START II and the CTBT before the NPT Review, but it seems the Russians will remain committed to some number of nuclear weapons and that fundamentally contradicts the stated aims of the NPT,” says Plesch. 

Yesterday, Ms. Rosario Green, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mexico, spoke on behalf of the seven countries known as the New Agenda Coalition (South Africa, Ireland, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, and New Zealand).  She summed up the lack of progress since the last NPT in 1995 when she said, “Besides the completion of the negotiation of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty nothing else has been achieved on the multilateral front. In short the response to the challenge of the persistence of nuclear weapons has been of complacency or indifference in some quarters.” 

Later, South African Deputy Director-General Multilateral Affairs, Abdul S. Minty blasted the nuclear powers for their reliance on nuclear weapons when he said, “Our experience clearly demonstrates that nuclear weapons are not the source of security that those who possess or aspire to possess them seem to believe they are. Nuclear weapons and the threat that they pose are in fact sources of greater insecurity. As long as these weapons exist in the arsenals of some, others will aspire to possess them. International relations and the history of States clearly indicate to us that the insecurity created by the possession of superior power by a few will be countered through the need -- real or perceived -- of others to establish a balance.... A commitment to nuclear arms reductions -- which has to do with a strategic balance of power and with the removal of the Cold War's excessive nuclear destruction capacity -- does not necessarily translate into a commitment to nuclear disarmament and to a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.” 

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