Director’s Message for 2008
Takaya Suto
Director of the Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (CPDNP), Japan Institute of International Affairs
(delivered at the beginning of 2008)Director’s Message for the year 2008
-Never Miss “the opportunity for Disarmament”-The year 2007 witnessed international efforts to recover from the damage which had hindered the attainment of disarmament and non-proliferation in previous years. Following such events as the failure of the 2005 NPT Review Conference, North Korea’s nuclear test in 2006, and Iran’s suspected nuclear development, the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 NPT Review Conference was held on 30th April 2007 under the leadership of Chairperson Yukiya Amano, Ambassador to the Permanent Mission of Japan to the International Organizations in Vienna. The session ended with meaningful achievement, including the conclusion of the Chairman’s working paper and the unanimous adoption of the draft agenda despite serious challenges and difficulties that concerned the whole international community. It was certainly a positive step for the progress of the non-proliferation regime through the NPT. Moreover, there was a certain degree of progress in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. As the first step towards the abandonment of nuclear weapons by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), the participating states have agreed on the shutting down, sealing, monitoring, and disabling of DPRK’s nuclear facilities. Furthermore, they have agreed that the DPRK should give notification of all of its nuclear activities. . Importantly, some of the above-mentioned agreements have already been implemented. It is important for the whole international community to keep a watchful eye on this course of events which is leading towards the realization of the complete abandonment of nuclear weapons and the present nuclear programs in the DPRK.
It has been ten years since the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) came into effect and it has now as many as 182 signatory states. The OPCW Director General Pfirter, during his visit to Japan last autumn, stressed the significance of the Convention, but despite that it has been struggling to solve such issues as the disposal of the large amount of chemical weapons which are in possession of the United States and Russia. He further emphasized that the signatory states should encourage the rest of the world including the DPRK to sign the Convention and to continuously make efforts towards the elimination of chemical weapons.
The Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines (Ottawa Treaty) is also celebrating its 10th anniversary. The present situation among the international community where we tend to dismiss the seriousness of antipersonnel mines because of other threats to international security, the signatory states have reconfirmed that the mines issue remains a “current threat” and that the international community should make further efforts aimed at solving this problem.
It goes without saying that there still remains a variety of problems in attempting to achieve disarmament and non-proliferation. The Iranian nuclear issue has reached a deadlock. Iran has continued to resist the UN Security Council ban on uranium enrichment. Moreover, we have not yet found any schemes that would effectively enforce Iran to implement the SC resolution. Since a U.S.-India agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy was reached last July, the international community has been haunted by the fear that India might be acknowledged as a de facto “nuclear weapons state” outside the framework of the NPT. This situation might consequently lead the NPT regime into a crisis.
International efforts towards nuclear disarmament have also faced difficulties as well. Little headway has been made in the US-Russia negotiations for nuclear disarmament after the expiration of START I in 2009. Furthermore, the issue of Fissile Material Cut-off Duty (FMCT) was again not placed on the agenda of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), as was the case with last year’s CD meeting.. Finally, we have little prospect of the immediate effectuation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).At the beginning of last year, four distinguished former American foreign policy makers, namely George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, published an article in the The Wall Street Journal titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” (January 4, 2007). The article attracted attention all over the world, as it proposed several concrete measures to realize a nuclear free world, including the US’s initiative in ratifying the CTBT.
The fifth meeting of the Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was held in Vienna in September last year. At that meeting, the participating states reconfirmed the significance of the CTBT and its early entry into force and further discussed actively how the international community would be able to develop a more effective verification system. At the Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, we have been making our own efforts to promote the CTBT ratification process from a technical and intellectual point of view. For instance, we provided clear explanations about the CTBT national operation system of Japan to delegates from Colombia and Indonesia during their visit to Japan last year, in order to accelerate their early ratification. Following North Korea’s announcement in 2006 that it had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test, the international community has reconfirmed the importance of monitoring noble gases for radioactivity. Consequently the Japan Atomic Energy Agency has set up noble-gas monitoring equipment in its Takasaki Quantum Beam Science Directorate, and the equipment has started its shakedown. In addition, all the auxiliary seismic monitoring stations in Japan are expected to be certified by the Provisional Technical Secretariat of the CTBTO within this year. Furthermore, we co-hosted an international workshop on infrasound with the Japan Weather Association. The workshop was highly appreciated in that it provided a forum for both practitioners on nuclear detection sites and scholarly researchers to discuss together the issue of infrasound, which is one of the most important techniques for the detection and identification of possible nuclear explosions. We are also actively taking part in the planning of the large-scale CTBT on-site inspection which is scheduled to take place this year.
This year the G8 Summit will be held in the Toyako-cho Hokkaido, Japan. I hope that the dialogues at the Summit will lead to strengthening of the international regime for disarmament and non-proliferation. Furthermore, we should make further use of the trend towards disarmament and non-proliferation that emerged last year through greater international efforts. On the other hand, presidential elections are to be held both in the United States and Russia, and the results of these could have a great impact on this trend. We should keep our eyes on the policies of their new administrations. Another important issue is the regulation of cluster ammunition. We are about to face a fundamental question in our efforts towards disarmament and non-proliferation: namely, how to keep a balance between humanitarian values and national security.
As has been observed, the international community has taken a small but positive step in the year 2007. We should continue making such steady progress in order to achieve further disarmament and non-proliferation. Japan has always valued disarmament and non-proliferation in its foreign policy and tried to take initiatives in that field in the international community. At the Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, we are prepared to do as much as we possible can in order to contribute towards Japan’s efforts in that area.
We appreciate your continued guidance and encouragement in helping our activities at the CPDNP towards a successful conclusion in the coming year.
