Nuclear treaty stance

Nuclear treaty stance

Members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) remained divided on how to tackle the issue of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at the close of their three-day meeting in Bandung on Thursday.

Even so, NAM members who are signatories of the treaty, which is designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to nations that do not have them, agreed to compromise on the issue.

The treaty was adopted in 1970 by 169 states and comes up for renewal during the month-long disarmament conference currently being held at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Western powers, spearheaded by the United States, are trying to make the treaty a permanent one.

Indonesia was the first country to oppose the move, saying that an indefinite extension of the treaty would mean the permanent legitimization of nuclear weapons and allow the five acknowledged nuclear powers -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- to keep their nuclear arsenals, while others are barred from making and possessing nuclear weapons.

It is true that since the adoption of the treaty, the number of nuclear warheads worldwide, based on reports by the World Watch Institute, declined by almost six percent in 1993, from 52, 875 to 49,910. The number of explosions conducted annually has decreased from 47 tests in 1987 to only one in 1993.

Still, the Jakarta government considers the treaty as not having functioned as originally intended.

Indonesia's Director General for Political Affairs Izhar Ibrahim, who leads the Indonesian delegation to the UN conference, referred to "the failed promises of the NTP and the nuclear powers over the last 25 years". He also said that "the United States and Russia did not go far enough in their Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and to make good on their NPT commitments to move toward disarmament".

By opposing the indefinite extension of the treaty, Indonesia, the current chairman of NAM, wants to reaffirm its stance that nuclear weapons should not be monopolized by certain countries, and that it objects to the weak assurances from the nuclear powers that they will not use the deadly bombs against non- nuclear countries.

It is always possible that with more countries possessing nuclear weapons, a greater balance of power would be created to maintain world peace than if those deadly weapons are monopolized by only a few countries, leading to hegemony.

Aware of this, the NAM members, however divided they may be on the issue, came to a compromise and produced a seven-point document regarding the treaty, which includes calling for a comprehensive nuclear test ban, elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as the establishment of nuclear free zones.