A Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
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UNIDIR/96/24 UNIDIR United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research Geneva A Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East Jan Prawitz and James F. Leonard UNITED NATIONS New York and Geneva, 1996 NOTE The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. * * * The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Secretariat. UNIDIR/96/24 UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATION Sales No. GV.E.96.0.19 ISBN 92-9045-114-9 UNIDIR United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research UNIDIR is an autonomous institution within the framework of the United Nations. It was established in 1980 by the General Assembly for the purpose of undertaking independent research on disarmament and related problems, particularly international security issues. The work of the Institute aims at: 1. Providing the international community with more diversified and complete data on problems relating to international security, the armaments race, and disarmament in all fields, particularly in the nuclear field, so as to facilitate progress, through negotiations, towards greater security for all States and towards the economic and social development of all peoples; 2. Promoting informed participation by all States in disarmament efforts; 3. Assisting ongoing negotiations on disarmament and continuing efforts to ensure greater international security at a progressively lower level of armaments, particularly nuclear armaments, by means of objective and factual studies and analyses; 4. Carrying out more in-depth, forward-looking, and long-term research on disarmament, so as to provide a general insight into the problems involved, and stimulating new initiatives for new negotiations. The contents of UNIDIR publications are the responsibility of the authors and not of UNIDIR. Although UNIDIR takes no position on the views and conclusions expressed by the authors of its research reports, it does assume the responsibility for determining whether or not they merit publication. UNIDIR Palais des Nations CH-1211 Geneva 10 Tel. (41.22) 917.42.93/917.42.56 Fax (41.22) 917.01.23 iii Table of Contents Page Preface ............................................ ........ vii Chapter 1 Introduction ................................. 1 History of the Zone Concept ........................ 1 Chapter 2 Background ................................. 7 The Global Treaties ................................ 7 The 1925 Geneva Protocol ........................... 8 The 1963 Partial Test Ban .......................... 9 The 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty . ..... 10 The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention . .... 18 The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention . ... 19 Existing Zones ..................................... ..... 20 Antarctica ......................................... 21 Latin America ...................................... 22 The South Pacific .................................. ... 23 The Korean Peninsula ............................... ... 25 Africa ............................................. 27 ASEAN ............................................. 28 Trends ............................................. 30 The Proposed Zone in the Nordic Area . ..... 31 Chapter 3 The Theory of NWFZs and WMDFZs .... 35 Objectives and Principles .......................... ........ 35 Definitions ........................................ 36 Important Objectives............................... .... 40 Geographical Considerations ........................ .... 41 Territorial Disputes ............................... ..... 44 v vi Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East Basic Measures and Obligations ..................... ....... 45 Special Provisions for Sea Areas . ...... 49 Complaints and Control Procedures . ........ 52 The Meaning of Zero ................................ 55 Comment on the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy . ......... 56 Chapter 4 The Middle East as a NWFZ or WMDFZ . 59 The United Nations' Expert Study . ........ 60 Catalogue of Preliminary Steps ..................... ..... 60 Shared Views ....................................... 61 The Geographical Middle East Concept . ........ 63 Objectives and Measures ............................ ...... 66 Current Nuclear Programs ........................... ...... 70 Chapter 5 Staging and Sequencing .................... 75 The Pre-Negotiation Phase .......................... ....... 76 The Negotiation Phase .............................. ...... 79 The Entry-Into-Force Phase ......................... ....... 81 The Institution-Building Phase ..................... ......... 84 The Implementation Phase ........................... ...... 85 Mature Operation of the Treaty ..................... ........ 89 Annex: EURATOM & ABACC: Safeguard Models for the Middle East? Mustafa Kibaroglu .................................. ..... 93 UNIDIR Publications ................................ ........ 124 Preface This study is part of the UNIDIR project on "Confidence- Building and Arms Control in the Middle East". Early considerations within the project led to the conclusion that analyses of confidence-building, non-offensive defence and cooperative security, primarily defined in conventional force terms, would be difficult to undertake without also addressing the problems associated with weapons of mass destruction. It was understood that as long as one nuclear weapon was assumed to exist somewhere in the region, much attention would tend to be focused on that one weapon. A natural point of departure was then to undertake a separate study of the concept of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East, long since unanimously supported by the UN General Assembly. In 1990, it was accepted that the scope of the concept should be widened to include all weapons of mass destruction. The study begins by an examination of relevant parts of global arms control regimes, the most important one being the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Today, several such regimes are well enough established to constitute pillars for the drafting of regional treaties. Regional arrangements may, in turn, become important complements to the global regimes. An account is made of the experiences of zonal arrangements accumulated so far, i.e. in Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa and South East Asia. Two United Nations studies summarized those experiences in 1975 and 1985. In 1990, a third UN study concentrated on the Middle East. This study accounts for the lessons learnt in the form of a brief "zone theory" and applies the emerging concepts to the Middle East. The "theory" suggests a multifaceted regime composed of many "building blocs" relevant to the region. Main regime measures would be the non-possession by zonal states of prohibited weapons, the non-deployment of such weapons within the zone by any state, and the non-use or non-threat-of-use of prohibited weapons against targets in the zone. The study could be considered a follow-on to the 1990 UN study. That far, the study is theoretical and static - in a sense, a handbook of experiences and lessons from zonal arrangements to date. The next part deals with the dynamic issue of going from here to there, analyzing sequences of steps and building processes within the ongoing general peace process that vii viii Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East would eventually lead to the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. In an Annex, the delicate problem of how to encourage the peaceful atom and at the same time ban the military one is discussed in greater detail. It examines two successful models, i.e. the regional organization of EURATOM operating in Western Europe and the bilateral ABACC operating in Argentina and Brazil, and selects those elements that could be relevant to the Middle East. The Report was written by Jan Prawitz (Sweden) and James Leonard (USA), UNIDIR's main consultants on the Middle East project. The Annex was prepared by Mustafa Kibaroglu (Turkey), while he was a research fellow at UNIDIR. I am indebted to all of them: it is a privilege having such collaborators. Geneva, 6 May 1996 Sverre Lodgaard Director, UNIDIR Chapter 1 Introduction History of the Zone Concept The concept of the nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ), as it has evolved in political discourse since the mid-1950s, now covers a spectrum of arrangements. Geographically, it ranges from whole continents like Latin America to a corridor in Central Europe, and functionally, it serves the purpose of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, as well as that of avoiding nuclear war. The expansion of the NWFZ concept to include all weapons of mass destruction has been proposed. The zone issues should, therefore, be studied both in historical and conceptual terms. 1 The first proposal on regional limitation of nuclear weapons, introduced by the Soviet Union in the United Nations, was tabled in 1956 2. It referred to Central Europe and was proposed by one superpower and directed at the other. One year later Poland proposed the so called Rapacki-plan on the permanent absence of nuclear weapons from the entire territory of several states in Central Europe 3. The latter proposal was thus made by one of the states within the prospective zone region. 1 Texts of treaties