Nuclear Summit Glosses Over Divisive Issues

Amid growing concerns of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh joined leaders of 46 other countries in Washington on April 12 to discuss ways to strengthen the global initiatives to prevent such a scenario. The two-day Nuclear Security Summit, an initiative of US President Barack Obama, focused on dangers posed by clandestine proliferation and illicit trafficking of nuclear material and the possibility of terrorists acquiring atomic material.

At the Summit, Singh amplified India's apprehensions about terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The threat is greater in Pakistan, where nuclear material is believed to be not too safe.

India is party to key instruments of global architecture of nuclear security such as the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and its 2005 amendment. India also has been participating in the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism of 2006.

President Barack Obama's nuclear security summit took a step toward lowering the risk of a terrorist group getting an atomic weapon but real progress depends on countries keeping the promises they made.

At the two-day Washington summit the United States and 46 other countries agreed on a voluntary “action plan” to secure all vulnerable nuclear material over the next four years.

But the final communique glossed over disagreements on divisive issues like whether to continue making weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and came up with no binding commitments.

Obama called it “a testament of what is possible when nations come together in a spirit of partnership to embrace our shared responsibility and confront a shared challenge.”

Analysts said it was significant that the world's oldest nuclear powers the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China sat at a table with India and Pakistan, both nuclear- armed nations and Israel, which is presumed to have nuclear weapons but neither confirms nor denies it.

The three are outside the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty aimed at stopping the spread of atomic weapons.

Kenneth Luongo, head of U.S.-based Partnership for Global Security said it was important that developed and developing powers had come together and agreed “there's a problem with nuclear security and are prepared to deal with it.”

He said the communique and action plan were vague and weakened by qualifying phrases and noted its implementation was voluntary.

“But the fact that this discussion is happening at the highest levels for the first time is very significant and should not be discounted,” Luongo said.

Now the real work on improving nuclear security could begin. “Once the lights go down tonight, leaders need to hit the ground running on implementation,” Luongo said.

U.S. officials say there are about 2,000 tons of weaponsgrade uranium and plutonium worldwide but nuclear non-proliferation experts say that there is almost certainly more that has never been declared.

Analysts say that terrorists could theoretically build a crude but deadly nuclear device — or possibly something more sophisticated — if they have the money, technical personnel and required amount of fissile material. They say groups like Al Qaeda have been trying to get atom bomb ingredients.

Obtaining arms-grade material is the biggest challenge, which is why keeping it secure is so important.

An improvement in nuclear security also has implications for the civilian nuclear power industry, which has seen a rebirth in recent years partly because it produces few greenhouse gas emissions harmful to the climate.

David Albright, a former U.N. arms inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank, noted disagreements over civilian use of plutonium.

“Obama's willing to set aside his objections (regarding plutonium use) to keep France involved,” he said. France is one of the world's top producers of MOX nuclear fuel, which is made from recycled plutonium.

Environmental activists and other critics of MOX say the transport of nuclear waste and reprocessed plutonium leaves the materials vulnerable to accidents or theft.

Albright said that France — which gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, the highest in the world — had been concerned Obama might use the summit to highlight the dangers of nuclear energy and play down its positive side.

But Obama did not do that and France realized that the summit could prove helpful to the nuclear industry, he said.

Ultimately, Albright said, the success or failure of the summit will depend on whether individual countries live up to the commitments they made.

Success will also depend on continued U.S. leadership.

Securing nuclear material would be a good
start but not sufficient, analysts say. U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon urged the world to ban the production of atom bomb material.

The 65-nation U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva has long been considering such a ban. But Pakistan has blocked the start of negotiations, arguing that it would put it at a permanent disadvantage to India, with which it has fought three wars since independence in 1947. Limiting, reducing and eliminating the arsenals of nuclear weapon states is what the game of arms control and disarmament is all about, which is why, perhaps, there has been so little progress. Even U.S. President Barack Obama, who spoke of a nuclear weapons-free world in his Prague speech last April, added the caveat that this was unlikely to happen in his lifetime.

The Obama administration hopes to use the recent arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and Russia to make another push at the NPT review conference this summer. As non-members of the NPT, India, Pakistan and Israel used to be treated as undifferentiated members of this tier. The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal saw India being cut a lot more slack but it still finds itself on non-proliferation target lists of one kind or another. A recent example was the 2009 G-8 ban on enrichment and reprocessing technology sales to India and other non-NPT states.

The 1979 International Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (ICPPNM) was the first instrument to deal with physical protection of uranium and plutonium but only when they were in transit. In 2005, the Convention was amended to include the protection of physical facilities where such material is kept. But with only 32 countries, including India, having acceded, the Amendment has yet to enter into force. Pakistan has not acceded, nor has the U.S.

Finally, UN Security Council Resolution 1540 of 2004 obliges countries, inter alia, to develop and maintain physical protection measures for WMD items, refrain from helping non-state actors acquire or develop WMDs and to pass laws prohibiting nonstate actors from doing so. The Russiansponsored International Convention on the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism of 2005 has entered into force, but key states like the U.S. and Pakistan have not yet ratified it. This convention obliges state parties to make the unlawful possession of radioactive material with intent to kill, cause injury or damage a criminal offence. States are obliged to prosecute or extradite suspects and the convention rules out the “political offences exception” as a ground for refusing extradition.

Obama at the end of the Nuclear Summit to which he had invited 47 countries, leaving out countries like Iran, South Korea and Venezuela while Israel scaled down its representation, said that his country and the world was 'safer.' But many are wondering what precisely happened at the Washington jamboree that made him declare so authoritatively that the threat to world peace from weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of the terrorists had considerably reduced?

Is it because at the end of the summit, 47 nations said in a written statement that they would take all steps to secure their nuclear material from being stolen by the terroristswithin the next four years? Is that a good enough reason to instill a sense of security in the terror-ridden world?

The Washington summit almost coincided with the American and Russian decision to reduce the quantum of their plutonium reserves by 34 tonnes each. The two countries have also agreed to bring down the number of their nuclear arsenal to 1500 each. All this sounds impressive, but not reassuring. At the time the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was initiated these very two counties were expected to work towards a quick end to their entire nuclear arsenal. While the NPT signatories were forbidden from manufacturing or testing any nuclear weapon, an exception was made arbitrarily in the case of five members, including the US, Russia and China.

The world will feel really free of dangers from a nuclear attack, either by the armed forces of a country or terrorists, only when there are no nuclear weapons in the world. As long as the nuclear weapons exist, the danger would continue, no matter how many summits are held and pledges given to make the nukes safe and secure.

The Washington summit failed to pinpoint a very specific threat to global peace that comes from the covert collusion between certain states and their so-called 'non-state players'. This unholy alliance becomes scary when the state is nuclear armed and is known to talk and act irresponsibly.

These states have successfully outsourced their dirty work to 'non-state players' and also ensured them apparent immunity from any action. In India's neighborhood it is all too evident that any activity that invited world-wide opprobrium is always attributed to these 'non-state players' even when the latter openly flirt with the state authorities.

The fear of unexpected attack with nuclear material comes not just from the known terrorist groups. It also arises because there are states that have been lax about the infiltration of people-'scientists', if you willwith extremist views into their nuclear complexes. These people have free access to every nook and corner of a nuclear complex. They may not be able to smuggle any physical material but it will not be difficult for them to transfer other material, such as a drawings.

The only known nuclear 'Wal-Mart', owned by the Pakistani metallurgist A. Q. Khan, thrived with the transfer of not only physical material, right under the nose of the army that supposedly guarded the nuclear stations, but also drawings of procedures necessary for completing the nuclear cycle.

Interestingly, the Pakistani contribution at the Washington nuclear summit was the announcement that it was completely equipped to transfer knowledge about the entire process for making nuclear weapons. It offered to export officially its atomic fuel service to the world, something that A.Q. Khan had done successfully but clandestinely for years. Obama, no doubt, would term it as Pakistan's unique contribution to world peace.

For some years now every nation that has some nuclear program going, advanced or in nebulous stage, has been saying that it makes its nuclear materials secure and offers no chance for the terrorists to get hold of any material that can be used to fabricate a 'dirty' bomb. In any case it will be absurd to imagine that any country would admit of any lapse in securing their nuclear material.

Even a nation like Pakistan, with its proven proliferation and roguish activities, has been maintaining that there is no chance of any of the many terror groups in the country stealing material from its nuclear complexes located in the heartland of terror in the northern and western parts of the country. It is a country like Pakistan that causes worries all over the world because the widely held view is that its considerable nuclear arsenal, built to attack India, is open to access by the terrorists and extremists.

Pakistan's 'crown jewels', its nukes, are reportedly guarded by the army, which, in fact, has exclusive control over its use. In most countries it would be assumed that the military guards at the nuclear centres are trustworthy and the nuclear treasure is well secured.

But Pakistan is one country where, it is no secret, the army has been heavily 'Islamised' and its civil society is deeply influenced by extreme views. The overwhelming numbers of Pakistanis approve of jehad against India; the government does so tacitly. Two senior nuclear scientists of Pakistan were known to have been hobnobbing with Osama bin Laden, traveling to Afghanistan with full knowledge of the government and the army. They were allegedly removed from service. But can it be believed that the large nuclear establishment in Pakistan had only two Al Qaeda sympathisers?

One of the greatest harms that the Americans have done to world peace is to overlook many of the proliferation activities of Pakistan as well as that country's open nurturing of terrorist networks, especially those trained to hit India.

The Americans have found it convenient to buy the Pakistani canard that if there is any anti-India activity originating from its territories it is conducted by 'non-state' players over whom the state machinery has no control. This kind of malicious fiction leaves enough room for Pakistan to continue to disown all kinds of terrorist activities that its men direct at India.

And how can Pakistan, so furiously engaged in selectively fighting terrorists in a limited tribal area, be ever blamed for something that is carried out by 'non-state players', even if that includes stealing and fabricating a dirty bomb?

[ BY RITU PANDEY ]