Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 49, August 2000

Editor's Introduction

A common feature of post-Cold War arms control has been the tension between traditional security practices and evolving disarmament obligations: a theme taken up by all the contributions to this issue. With regard to nuclear arms control, Ambassador Thomas Graham, President Clinton's former Special Representative for Arms Control, and Leonor Tomero, former Program Director of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS), argue that NATO needs to engage more seriously with the issue of negative security assurances (NSA); Karel Koster, a member of the Project on European Nuclear Non-Proliferation (PENN), explores the general disjunction between the Alliance's nuclear policy and the obligations of NATO states under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and Morten Bremer Maerli, Science Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), argues for an end to the secrecy still cloaking naval nuclear fuel cycles. Focussing on conventional arms control, Ambassador Mitsuro Donowaki of Japan, former Chair of the UN Panel and Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms, and Bennie Lombard, Counsellor at the South African Permanent Mission in Geneva, each assess recent international efforts to tackle the scourge of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons.

Documents and Sources features President Clinton's deferral of the decision to deploy a national missile defense (NMD) system to his successor, arms control statements and comment from the US Republican and Democratic Conventions, the latest US intelligence assessment of global proliferation trends, and fresh details of the US Energy Department's nuclear test simulation programme. News Review also highlights the NMD debate, as well as summarising coverage of the 55^th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan, an apparent offer by North Korea to end its ballistic missile development programme, the latest developments in the Russian Government's debate - considered by Dr. Nikolai Sokov in the last issue - over the direction of its nuclear policy, confusion over new nuclear export rules issued by Pakistan, the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, and dejection and tension in the Security Council over UN policy towards Iraq as the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait passes with sanctions still in place.

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