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Nuclear Proliferation

rose to ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to counter the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am grateful to the Government Whips for having found time for this debate on such an important matter, and to colleagues in all parts of the House who have decided to stay on to take part in this discussion. When I first tabled this Question several months ago, Iran was still a distant thundercloud on the horizon, and the recommendations of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Hans Blix, were, at most, a gleam in his eye. We now face the fact that much of the structure of law and treaty, which to some extent restricted and confined the development of nuclear weapons, is in a state of advanced erosion. We have to look at a structure in which, for example, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty is close to breaking down, with a number of countries refusing to sign it and others refusing to obey it. We also have to recognise that the United States and many other major powers have failed to ratify the famous test ban treaty, even though, up to now, it has been obeyed in practice although it has no legal standing. Since the Cold War ended, far from there being a new era of disarmament and a new willingness in the world to begin to create and structure a new system of law, we have seen governments become increasingly sluggish, with lagging interest in disarmament and less enthusiasm about trying to deal with some of the new challenges that confront us. What we need now is a new structure and the reinforcement of some of the best parts of the old structure. That will require a great deal of careful thinking by governments. Most of the law regarding nuclear weapons has been based for the past 40 years on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is amazing that it has survived so long and has been largely obeyed until recently. Much of its structure has suffered because of the extent to which the major powers have been seen by the rest of the world as failing to keep their side of the bargain. The major nuclear powers at the time of the passage of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty confidently insisted that they would accept a major degree of disarmament of the nuclear arsenals that they held. In the SALT agreements and in the major efforts made by President Bush the First—if I may call him that—there was a real attempt to try to reduce nuclear arsenals throughout the world. Some years ago, that effort seemed to run into the sand. Even today, with the Cold War long ended and with no obvious enemy for the West, some 12,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert are deployed throughout the world. Of them, 90 per cent are controlled by the United States or Russia. Another 13,000 nuclear weapons are not so deployed, and they are held by a great many countries but, again, the great majority of them are held by the United States and Russia. I have to underline the phrase ““hair-trigger alert””. Nuclear weapons can move from deployment to being used in a matter of seconds, and that is the tiny thread on which the safety of the world hangs. What is so extraordinary is that every one of those 12,000 nuclear weapons represents a major loss of resources that could have been used to deal with starvation, hunger and disease in the world. What makes it even more extraordinary is that nowadays nobody has any idea who the enemy is meant to be, except terrorism, and everybody agrees that the enemies who cannot be met by nuclear weapons are individual terrorists. So the situation is not only tragic; it is also, to a great extent, absurd. The fact that the major nuclear powers failed to keep their side of the bargain has been a substantial factor in influencing the attitude of non-nuclear countries. A few months ago, I was in India. I went to the major nuclear research centre and found a group of high quality, high level nuclear scientists who argued passionately that India had no obligation to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or not to go ahead with the development of nuclear weapons since the western world, in the shape of the major nuclear powers, had not taken its part of the treaty seriously and therefore there was no moral obligation on other countries to take it seriously either. In his introduction to the report of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which I strongly recommend to the House, Hans Blix says that,"““the nuclear-weapon states no longer seem to take their commitment to nuclear disarmament seriously””." Global efforts are also needed to secure and clean up fissile materials that are scattered around the world, many of them in perilous and dangerous places. In his important recent speech on foreign policy at Georgetown University, the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, said, when referring to world globalisation:"““What this means is that we have to act, not react; we have to do so on the basis of prediction, not certainty””." Almost every major expert in the world on terrorism predicts that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists or other organised criminals at some time in the next 10 years unless far more radical steps are taken than have been taken so far to control the fissile materials lying around the world. Let me refer briefly to some of the current crises. One of them, which is rather overlooked in this country, is the Indian-American special agreement. Under it, the United States agreed to provide nuclear materials to India for her civil power needs, but did not look carefully at the shortage of uranium in India. That meant that the more the United States was willing to provide civilian uranium, the easier it was for India to divert her own materials to weapons development. In the United States, a lobby is now suggesting that Congress should, at the very least, insist that associated with the Indo-US agreement—which in many ways is a very troubling extension of the areas in which the NNPT operates—there should be a commitment by India to a fissile material cut-off, which means that any fissile material that she does not use will not be exported or used for other purposes. India has said that, in principle, she is willing do so. Pakistan has said the same. The second current crisis that I want to refer to briefly is North Korea. The agreement reached in 1994 on the exchange of civil nuclear materials for a decision by North Korea not to continue with nuclear weapons production was breached when the Bush Administration decided not to continue to supply light water for North Korean reactors. The latest information we have on North Korea is that an agreement was reached last September, but it depended upon implementation by both sides. Each side has said that the other side must implement before it will, and so far, there has been no agreement on concurrent implementation, which might break the logjam. Can the Minister update us on that? On Iran, one has to say, ““Thank God for Condoleezza Rice”” and possibly, ““Thank God for Jack Straw”” because at least America is now willing to talk directly to Iran. Without that, it is quite clear that negotiations would have gone no further. Having said that, Iran is currently deeply concerned about security guarantees and feels itself to be surrounded by potential enemies. Unless we can broaden the basis on which Iran is brought back within the international community and within the IAEA, there is little hope that the problem will be resolved any time soon. In that context, the United Kingdom and its allies should look very closely at some of the rather ambitious proposals put forward by the Blix commission, which were echoed by Prince Hassan of Jordan, for a much wider security guarantee in the Middle East that would attempt to establish a non-nuclear region. Such a guarantee would embrace Israel as well as Iran and the Arab world and would also embrace a commitment by the West and other counties, such as, for example, the Arab sheikhdoms, to provide development aid and, particularly, to try to draw up treaties involving water and energy. Finally, there is the issue of loose fissile materials all round the world. Most people are unaware that the total budget spent by the IAEA on securing nuclear materials, as distinct from inspecting them, is $15 million. Except for $1.3 million, all the money comes from voluntary contributions. The statutory contribution required by the treaty is only $1.3 million, which finances precisely four full-time experts. The rest are all on short-term contracts. It is crackers, to put it no stronger, that so little is being spent by all of us on securing nuclear materials in countries such as Iran, North Korea, Israel and elsewhere. Therefore, in conclusion, I ask the Minister whether Her Majesty’s Government—the Prime Minister has recently shown a lot of interest in such matters as fuel banks—should not take to the European Union’s General Affairs Council the issue of whether the EU could not contribute to the IAEA the very small sums of money required to establish a proper nuclear security system under the IAEA’s ambit so that we can make sure that the loose fissile materials around the world are controlled and are under serious international inspection. I am grateful to everybody who has attended this debate, I am sorry that we have only an hour to discuss such a hugely complex topic.