Dr. Hans Blix- It's a pleasure to be again in Vancouver and to be at Simon Fraser University . Universities I think have a special attraction because they are looking for truth and then someone said to me that he respected those who searched for truth and had little worry for those who have the truth. As a former inspector I like that. It's hard to get at the facts even though we have an enormous amount of information coming from many places and it's even harder to assess it accurately. Nevertheless, that is what we need to do even in the most--especially in the most--dangerous situations and developments that confront us in the world.

Today we are happy also to present to you the report of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission “Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons.” It may be a puzzle that we call it “Weapons of Terror.” Why not Weapons of Mass Destruction? Well, Weapons of Mass Destruction is a sort of omnibus expression and the weapons we talked about--nuclear, biological, and chemical--are very very different in their construction and in their uses, but one thing they have in common--the nuclear, biological, and chemical--is that they all create terror, they all create panic, so that also says something about their character.

We are happy to be here at the Global Action to Prevent War. You have a broader agenda then we do: to eliminate war is a much broader task than to try to eliminate some specific weapons, but of course there are links and causalities between the two. This Report will offer you an overview of the problems of the existence of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and also space weapons, and it also has a chapter about the UN, and what uses can and should be used for the UN.

We were fourteen experts in this Commission and they were not politicians, they were people who really are very experienced in their field. General Pan [Zhenqiang] from China is with us today. We also have the former Secretary of Defense of the United States , William Perry. We have the former Foreign Minister of Australia, Gareth Evans, who is now heading the International Crisis Group, and we have three very strong women in the group: the head of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, Alyson Bailes; we have Patricia Lewis, head of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva; and the State Secretary Dewi Fortuna Anwar from Indonesia. So, it was a very strong group of people who knew much, which didn't necessarily make it easier to come to joint conclusions but there was also a will to accommodate and to meet each other and hence the Report is a unanimous one with no reservations attached to it. It offers 60 recommendations, about half, 30, dealing with nuclear and the other on the other three types of weapons. I think that such a report is now badly needed because as the chairman Professor Warwick stated a moment ago after the end of the Cold War, at the beginning of the ‘90s, there was a feeling of sort of relief that we no longer risked the sort of MAD Mutually Assured Destruction of the U.S. and Russia in which the rest of us might be wiped off as collateral damage. That concern, that anguish, was over and we all expected a sort of harvest for disarmament. Well there was some harvest. There was the Chemical Weapons Convention, which had been negotiated for decades. There was also the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which had also been negotiated and in fact ever since the ‘60s when I was a young man it began with Myrdal in Geneva to discuss how to get a comprehensive test ban instead of a partial test ban. And that was a great blessing in preventing our earth from getting too much fallout. So, in the ‘90s we got the CWC, the Chemical Weapon Convention, and the Comprehensive Test Ban signed and adopted.

We also got something that was very important during the ‘90s and that was the decision of the Security Council under the inspiration and proposal from the President of the United States , from Bush Senior, to intervene in Iraq to stop the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait and the Security Council was standing wholeheartedly behind it. And it was stated that for the first time the UN security system really functioned. And President Bush talked about the new international order and they were all very hopeful.

Regrettably, it didn't last very long and in the ‘90s we began to see a stagnation also with disarmament and arms control and since then we have seen much worse. We have seen arms races appearing and we have seen also the stagnation in the organs established for arms control. The CD, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva , has not been able to agree on a work program for eight years. We saw last year how the General Assembly [World Summit] adopted a Resolution which didn't even contain two lines about arms control and disarmament. We saw last year in the spring how the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference ended in acrimony and no agreed statement at all. So, these are symptoms that things are standing largely still.

In order to be accurate and precise I would say, yes, there are also minor things happening on the other side that are positive. There was Resolution 1540 adopted by the Security Council which makes it criminal, or orders states to criminalize actions by private individuals to construct or to acquire or to make any weapons of mass destruction. That's a new, very interesting development from all those who want to watch the evolution of the Security Council. We also have the PSI, the Proliferation Security Initiative, which is initiated by the United States , and which a number of States--quite a number, 67 States--are asserting their rights to intervene and intercept ships on the high seas on the suspicion that they might contain weapons of mass destruction or equipment for that purpose. It has several positive aspects but also some question marks attached to it.

So, by and large, the picture is one of stagnation and of driving into the wall the organs which are created for arms control and some minor initiatives of the other side. And there is the concern that focus upon terrorism and focus upon the risk of proliferation after Iraq , North Korea , Iran , and Libya , and there is the fear that there might be more states out there. I don't think we should exaggerate. Some say the NPT is falling apart and that there may be cascades of States proliferating. There are risks but at the same time this treaty has also brought us a great deal of strength. It brought the Ukraine , Russia , Kazakhstan joined, Algeria joined, Argentina and Brazil joined, Vietnam has joined, etc. So, we must have the full complete picture and not simply look at the poor side of it.

However, what dominates now and what worries me very much--I came from Moscow the other day and I spoke with persons in government and outside government--is that while we have had a stagnation, it seems very clear that there is now, both in Russia and in China very much a concern of the U.S. being sort of dominant and building up mini-nukes, which will lower the threshold, or the bunker-busters that they talked about in the U.S. Congress I think has been somewhat persistent against this development, but it passed. This buster shield, of which we are very much aware of in Canada and which is explained by the United States as only geared to protect against rogue states and terrorists. It is not so perceived in Moscow and Beijing . It's perceived as something that is to be developed into a way of protecting the United States against any missile attack from abroad while allowing the United States to attack anyone in the world. And this is not something that they will look past with equanimity, neither in Moscow nor in Beijing .

So, we are, as Kofi Annan said a few days ago in Tokyo at a lecture, that the world seems to be “sleep-walking” into a new armament era and that we ought to wake up to that. And this report is meant to be such a wake up call. SIPRI in Stockholm claimed the other day that the world was spending 1 trillion dollars last year on armaments. One trillion dollars, 48% spent by the United States . That's a lot of money and it's increasing and with more oil money coming in from Saudi Arabia , Russia , etc. These figures may increase if the current muscular, more belligerent attitudes will prevail.

What do we do then in this report? I'm an arms theorist telling you the major recommendations we make, but you're quite right in saying that yes, we do urge that nuclear weapons should be outlawed in the same manner as biological weapons are outlawed for production, for stocking, and for use, and chemical in the same way. We propose this for nuclear weapons, as well. But of course we have also to be realistic about it and take a step by step approach. This is the goal and we should never lose the sense of where the compass points, but we must also know something about the terrain before going there--the map--and to avoid falling into precipices and finding things that are doable.

And so, we propose a number of steps and it's really in line with what the world needed in tasks. The first steps against nuclear weapons were an Antarctic treaty. The East and West agreed there would be no nuclear weapons in the Antarctic. Next up was another area that they cut off and that was the sea bed, also shielded off from nuclear weapons. And, similarly, outer space. The outer space treaty prohibits any placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space.

Then you had the regional approaches. The Tlatelolco Treaty in Latin America came before the NPT. All of Latin America signed onto a treaty which excluded nuclear weapons from Latin American soil. It took many years before it came into force, but it is now in force. Then came other regional treaties for Africa, Southeast Asia , and so today the whole Southern Hemisphere, the landmasses, are free of nuclear weapons. But the sea is not because we have nuclear submarines that move around with these weapons.

The NPT, of course, was the biggest achievement in this in which the Nuclear Weapon States promised they would seek nuclear disarmament and the Non-Nuclear Weapon States promised they would remain free from them and refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons. It has been taken that the P5, Nuclear Weapons States as it were, were anointed as Nuclear Weapon States. My successor, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post the other day said: No, the NPT did not legitimize nuclear weapons in the hands of the Nuclear Weapon States. He said that rather its a transitional state; its an acknowledgement of the fact that that they have them, and it starts out from that premise, but is seen as a what he termed a ‘transitional stage' in as much as they've promised themselves to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament, and he views India, Pakistan, and Israel in the same way. It does not legitimize--they have them, it's not legitimized. It's simply acknowledged that they exist.

By the way, how do they realize this commitment to negotiate toward disarmament, which the International Court of Justice has said is not just a commitment to negotiate but a commitment to achieve something through these negotiations? I think today there's a debate in the U.K. I saw the other day that [Gordon] Brown had stated that he threw his weight behind the U.K. renewing the Trident program that will expire around 2020 and he wanted them to continue. We say in the Report that every country that has nuclear weapons has a duty to see how they can exit the nuclear weapon era. If they do not exit--if they cannot come to that conclusion--the least that the world can ask is that they do not extend and expound the missions and the functions of the weapons that they have. But you will see that they do. Certainly the discussions in the U.S. about bunker-busters and so forth includes new function.

The U.K. specifically raises the question: what for? Once they acquired them, shortly after the Second World War--at a time when nuclear weapons were seen as conventional weapons. In my own country, Sweden , we had the discussion about whether we should have nuclear weapons--there are many that said that for tactical military reasons one should have them, and the U.K. got their weapons at that time. But it was also against an enemy that no longer exists: the Soviet Union . What would they use them for today? Enemies like terrorists? Can we use nuclear weapons against terrorists? It would be like shooting mosquitoes with cannons.

The question will be asked by many in the U.K. : will this enormous expense be worth it or would they be better off having other means of conventional defenses? Conventional defenses are nowadays considerable and we say in the Report that nuclear weapon states must consider how can they satisfy their own defense needs without having nuclear weapons, after all that's what most countries in the world have to do--they have to figure out their defense without nuclear weapons. I'm sure that if the U.K. came to the conclusion that they will not prolong their program on nuclear weapons that would make a much bigger splash in history than if they simply go on. People will just say well it just goes on.

There should be a step by step approach; a reduction in our nuclear weapons. Russia and the United States in particular should continue the SORT deal and come down easily to half of the number they said for 2012. We ask that they should exclude and eliminate all tactical nuclear weapons, which President Bush and Gorbachev began once although there was no indication and it was not informed in the bilateral binding treaty. And we urge that in Europe, which used to be the danger zone, that they should withdraw all nuclear weapons, which means that all the NATO weapons should be withdrawn to the U.S. territory and that the Russians' should withdraw the nuclear weapons they have and send them to storage and further back rather than being deployed, which is a more risky thing.

We also discuss in the Report what to do with terrorism, and that's less controversial. What one can do of course apart from the steps to try not to stimulate terrorism by social pressures or by ethnic cleansing or other things that are the social reasons behind it. We must make it more difficult for terrorists to get hold of material or of equipment to make any kind of nuclear weapon. And in this we talked about “cleanout” which means that all countries that have cesium or cobalt should have good accountancy of it. They should have control of it both national and international. And we should reconvert research reactors from using highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium, which cannot be used for bombs.

We say that the measure which would be the most significant to lead us back to the path of disarmament is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I mention it, it was adopted, it was signed by President Clinton and then rejected by the United States Senate, and it is not on the agenda of the present U.S. Administration to go for a new ratification. However, we know there is a moratorium. No country has tested a nuclear weapon since India and Pakistan did. But a moratorium is one thing. It is not a legally binding obligation and the world would stand much better if we had enacted the treaty into force. If the United States were to review its position and reverse it and if they ratify we can be pretty sure that China will follow. If China follows then India will follow. If India follows then Pakistan will. There will be a benign domino effect of such a step and it's high time that the world can feel reasonably secure that there will not be further nuclear weapons testing. It does impede the development of nuclear weapons but it does not totally exclude it from those who have very powerful computers. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction and it would be tremendous for the world that yes, we are now after all putting this chapter behind us, something we have been fighting for since the beginning of the ‘60s. I remember when I first came to Geneva I cut out a cartoon of one boy saying to the other: “ If I grow up, I would like to be a disarmament negotiator.” Well, it's still a good profession, I'm afraid. I wish we could all go out of work.

Now, the other main point, which I mention before I give the floor to the others to talk, is the FMCT--the Fissile Material Cut-off--that has also been on the table for quite some time; the idea is that there should be a commitment by those that can produce fissile material that they will not produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium for weapons purposes. And, in fact, as far as we know neither the United States , France , the U.K. , nor Russia are producing any such material for weapons purposes. Maybe China is also, but General Pan can tell us. But in any case there is so much of this material around that they don't really need it anymore. And we ought to have an agreement that closes the tap for the production of more material that can go into bombs, combined with a reduction and dismantling of existing weapons. You can then achieve a gradual reduction. You do have the question of how much stocks of the enriched uranium you have, and that is a problem that we will have to tackle, but in any case the stopping of this production would be a very positive step.

And in fact only a few weeks ago the United States tabled a draft in Geneva for such a treaty but it does not contain anything about verification, which is very puzzling. They have stated that they think such a treaty is unverifiable and the Commission discusses this explicitly in the Report and says ‘we do not agree.' We think there should be negotiations straightaway regardless of what you think of verification but the Commission is of the view that certainly this can be verified. And in fact we have international verification of enrichment in Brazil , even more in Japan --a huge plant. We had Euratom verification on the production in the U.K. , and in France , and we had IAEA verification of a bid enrichment plant in China that the Russians sold to China on the condition that they be subject to verification. So, there is a lot of experience in verifying that enrichment plants and reprocessing plants are not misused for the purpose of producing bomb materials.

It would also be a great help if the agreement between the United States and India on nuclear cooperation, weren't to come into force, because one of the fears for that agreement would be that India would be able to import more uranium and would be able to free up some of its own uranium for enrichment for weapons purposes. I'm not saying that they will, but they would be able to do so. And if that were to take place, in turn then Pakistan and China would also be concerned that India might increase its arsenal, and then you might have a race in that particular area.

Verification is the area in which I have the most expertise, working for the IAEA and the safeguard system and from the UN. It started in the 1970s and it was something new and we in the IAEA did not discover what was going on in Iraq in the 1980s when they were in clandestine development of a nuclear program because the rights of inspectors were so limited. We all needed to go to declared installations, not anything else, whereas the Iraqis were in fact developing a program mainly outside the declared installations. I think therefore the world has to get more used to verification; to having international inspectors.

And when we came closer to the truth than anyone else in the case of Iraq in 2003, it was because we were professional and we had power to go anywhere we wanted and to check and to intervene and to interview anybody. We had access to documentation. I wouldn't say the Iraqis were 100% cooperative, but we had power to get closer to the truth. People asked me a lot in 2002 what are my gut feelings about Iraq . I said I don't have gut feelings--I'm here to inspect, not to tell you my gut feelings. And as we went along even we carried out about 700 inspections in 500 different sites. And in about 3 dozen cases we had the sites given to us by intelligence of different countries--places where they suspected something was there. And as we went to these places and found nothing, then of course we became more and more skeptical about the contentions and we told the intelligence: look, here there was nothing. We found some conventional weapons and that sort. They ought to have become suspicious about their own sources, which in most case were defectors. They should have become suspicious. If they did, well, it certainly didn't trickle upward.

Well, I'm telling this story not to boast about what we achieved but rather to show that impartial international civil servants with a mandate of the Security Council to search for the truth or to have the truth or to search for the truth is more effective and more reliable. I'm not against national intelligence. It's needed in times of terrorism. But the governments sit there, they get the information from their national intelligence, they get information from international inspectors, so they have a corroboration; they can check. If they square, if they are going the same way, well then the conclusions are stronger. If the international intelligence and the national intelligence are very different--well then they must say there is something wrong here, and then they can double check. So, international verification is nothing like a humiliation of countries to have international inspectors milling around. These are instruments set up jointly by us in the international community to be used for our own indemnity. And I think to me that's one lesson of the Iraq affair.

But I shall end here. We do talk a lot about the UN and about the need to strengthen the UN. The UN is sometimes said, that is I think Mr. Bolton has said that if the UN is not a good problem-fixer, well then we will go somewhere else for a problem-fixer. Well, thank you very much, where exactly are you going to go for that purpose? In my view, the Oil for Food program has been smeared by the outside world. When you have 191 bureaucracies that must merge in one yes, you can expect a little mismanagement and a bureaucracy that is not always wonderful. However, in my experience, and that is of over 20 years, the UN is not a corrupt organization. It was not corrupt in the case of Oil for Food. There was some, little, minor, but not any major. What you saw was the case of the Oil for Food being defrauded by Saddam and his people on the one hand and by private businesses either buying oil or selling food. You read about the Australian Wheat Council had paid about 200 million Australian dollars for getting a contract worth perhaps a couple of billion dollars. That's a huge scale. The former head of the Oil for Food program was accused of having skimmed off $190,000. If that is true then it would be unforgivable if it is proven. But the dimensions are that it was the UN that was defrauded but not the UN skimming off. And the program performed as it was intended, namely to prevent Iraq from importing weapons during the ‘90s and it also helped to mitigate somewhat the miseries and the suffering the Iraqi people were subjected to due to the sanctions.

So, the UN should not be smeared but, especially not in this country, Canada , or any other who has always been a constructive force for the UN. I am glad to say this is an important conclusion that we must have. We must build up the international institutions and together, hopefully with the United States as again being the lead wolf rather than the lone wolf, coming to improve the situation and working towards disarmament.

Dr. John Burroughs- Good morning. The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) and its international body, the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, are members of Global Action to Prevent War. In addition, LCNP hosts the coordinator for Global Action to Prevent War, Waverly de Bruijn, and Professor Saul Mendlovitz, a Global Action founder, is LCNP vice-president. Personally I have worked closely with Global Action. My remarks here, however, reflect in particular LCNP's perspectives on issues relating to nuclear weapons.

The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy together with the Western States Legal Foundation and Reaching Critical Will, in partnership with the Arms Control Association, has a program of assessment and outreach regarding the Blix report. We're planning to do an in-depth analysis, probably available by the fall, but you can see our preliminary responses at www.wmdreport.org.

One of the things we like about the Blix report is that it reflects, to some degree, what civil society groups like ours have been saying and doing for the past decade or 15 years. On page 109 there is a reference to a nuclear disarmament treaty. In the mid-1990s, my organization and others drafted a model nuclear weapons convention to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, just as the Chemical Weapons Convention does for chemical weapons. Also on page 109 there is a reference to the unanimous holding of the International Court of Justice in its 1996 advisory opinion that there is an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. There was a major civil society campaign, in which the Lawyers' Committee was deeply involved, in the early 1990s to support the General Assembly's request for that opinion. It was one of the best things that occurred in the 1990s; among other things, it highlighted the goal of achieving a nuclear-weapon-free world.

Indeed, one of the greatest strengths of the Blix report is its emphasis on the importance of international law. It explains very clearly how nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons can be and are being controlled through treaty regimes. It explains that treaty regimes bring stability. It explains that they involve implementing agencies and review processes. It explains that states around the world buy into these regimes and buy into the rules on non-use, non-possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons. This may all seem rather basic, but it needs to be understood. It needs to be understood, that there are functioning, effective treaty regimes, and that there is a system of international law which applies to NBC weapons.

The report also very effectively gets across that regimes work when there is reciprocity and cooperation. Certainly what I've learned at the UN and the NPT is that for states to accept the Additional Protocol as the standard for compliance with their obligations regarding civilian nuclear power under the NPT and the safeguards agreements, they need to see some action on the disarmament side of the regime. That's an example of how reciprocity and cooperation works.

The report is refreshingly frank about the lack of reciprocity. On page 94, it says quite clearly, "It's easy to see that the nuclear-weapon states-parties to the NPT have largely failed to implement” their NPT nuclear disarmament obligation.

The principles of verification and irreversibility affirmed by the 2000 NPT review conference were not applied in the Moscow Treaty of 2002.

There has not been a diminishing role of nuclear weapons in security policies-another of the commitments made in 2000. President Chirac of France earlier this year signaled that nuclear weapons could be used in response to a terrorist attack on France . This month the U.S. Department of Energy was planning on blowing up 700 tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil at the Nevada test site in order to model the effects of a low-yield nuclear attack on underground structures. Fortunately, local opposition from Western Shoshones and anti-nuclear activists and down-winders has led to the indefinite delay of that test, but it's certainly illustrative of the dynamic of U.S. policy.

The report also touches on the need to comply with UN Charter requirements on resort to war and effectively rejects the Bush doctrine of preventive war as a means of counterproliferation.

In its emphasis on the importance of international law and treaty regimes, the Blix report parallels the Global Action to Prevent War program statement. The statement says that Global Action goals of demilitarization and conflict prevention, of the abolition of war, are ambitious, but “they have a basis in the existing treaty obligations of most countries,” in the NPT, the UN Charter, and other instruments.

Let me now compare some of the specifics of the Blix report and the Global Action program regarding nuclear abolition. The Blix report focuses mostly on near-term measures, like bringing the CTBT into force, negotiating a treaty banning production of fissile materials for weapons, implementing verified deep reductions of U.S. and Russian arsenals, standing down or “dealerting” nuclear forces now poised for immediate launch (just as during the Cold War), and bringing all nuclear weapon possessing countries into the disarmament process. But it also states clearly the imperative of “planning for security without nuclear weapons,” and as I mentioned earlier, says that a “nuclear disarmament treaty is achievable and can be reached through careful, sensible, and practical measures. Benchmarks should be set; definitions agreed; timetables drawn up and agreed upon; and transparency requirements agreed.”

The Global Action program is not inconsistent with the approach of the Blix report, but seeks to delineate more precisely the path to abolition over several decades. In the first phase, U.S. and Russian arsenals would be reduced to no more than 1000 total warheads each, and the arsenals of other states would be capped. In the second phase, arsenals in each country would be reduced to no more than 100 warheads. In the third phase, remaining stocks would be immobilized in internationally monitored storage. Also, there would be a global treaty for control of missiles, aircraft, and other means of delivering WMD. In the fourth phase, elimination of nuclear weapons would be completed through destruction of remaining warheads and delivery systems and the infrastructure to produce them, and a treaty to ban their possession or use would be brought into force.

One clear difference between the two documents is that the Global Action statement is absolutely clear on the requirement of control of missiles and other long-range delivery systems. In contrast, the Blix report describes the problems posed by ballistic and cruise missiles and notes that there have been discussions on missile control, but makes no clear recommendations for missile disarmament. It does say that states should not deploy missile defenses without first attempting to negotiate the removal of missile threats.

The WMDC was too cautious on this matter. Historically U.S./Soviet arms control was accomplished through limitation and reduction of bombers and missiles. It is true that verified warhead dismantlement now needs to be undertaken, as was contemplated in the START process rejected by the Bush administration. But it is also true that the delivery systems must be controlled, not only as between the United States and Russia , as in the past, but globally. This is well illustrated by the current crisis over North Korea 's development of long-range missiles. The focus on Iran is also driven in part by its development of intermediate-range missiles.

In the vocabulary of specialists, missiles, like NBC warheads, are “strategic” weapons that must be controlled. When sufficient sophistication is achieved, they can be used for delivery of non-nuclear warheads, whether conventional, biological, or chemical. This was dramatically illustrated by recent reports of the Pentagon's interest in the destabilizing substitution of conventionally-armed ballistic missiles for nuclear-armed ones on four Trident submarines. The U.S. is also investigating other delivery systems that could be used for all kinds of warheads. As Western States Legal Foundation has reported, the U.S. is researching new kinds of weapons with global reach, including gliding, maneuvering reentry vehicles that could carry a variety of weapons and that could be delivered by re-useable launch vehicles, somewhat like smaller, cheaper unmanned versions of the space shuttle.

Missiles and other delivery systems will almost certainly have to be controlled to get to low levels of nuclear weapons and their elimination. It is unlikely that states will want to give up their nuclear weapons if they are subject to being struck by long-range delivery systems that could carry conventional warheads or, if verification of nuclear warhead dismantlement has not been successful, nuclear warheads that another state was not supposed to have.

The same considerations apply to space-based systems, especially those capable of striking targets on the ground. However, with the possible exception of anti-satellite systems, it is not clear that such space-based systems are likely to be deployed due to their great cost and problems of technical feasibility. In contrast, improvements in missiles and other non-space based delivery systems are definitely feasible and are vigorously being pursued and implemented.

A strength, then, of the Global Action program statement is that it clearly recognizes the need to control on a global basis long-range delivery systems that can have nuclear, biological, chemical or conventional payloads. A more detailed study on this topic in recent years is Beyond Missile Defense, by researchers from the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation and Western States Legal Foundation.

The Global Action statement goes beyond the point about delivery systems, which is rooted in the U.S./Soviet experience of arms control, to say that “neither nuclear disarmament nor far-reaching conventional disarmament can be fully implemented without the active contribution of the other.” By far-reaching conventional disarmament, Global Action means phased, treaty-based reductions of tanks, aircraft, artillery – all the means of fighting major conventional war. It is certainly true that demilitarization and institutionalization of conflict prevention would, as Global Action says, “create an environment more conducive to the enduring elimination of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.” The Blix report gestures in the direction of the Global Action analysis in its final section, saying that “the perspective of a world free of WMD must be supplemented by the perspective of a world in which the arsenals of conventional weapons have been reduced drastically.”

However, we must be wary of positing achievements in these areas as preconditions for nuclear reduction and elimination. Based on observing their performance at the NPT, I can assure you that that position would be seized upon by states determined to maintain their nuclear arsenals. The Blix report rightly does not imply any such preconditions. It is also the case that, consistent with the Global Action statement, as reduction and elimination of nuclear arsenals proceed, states will be forced to adjust their security relationships in other respects, for the better.

In closing, let me say that the timing of the Blix report is superb. It comes at a time when the urgent need to revitalize the disarmament process is widely appreciated. Together with the Global Action statement and the model nuclear weapons convention, it can make a great contribution to our understanding of how to achieve a nuclear weapon free world.

Ambassador Jonathan Dean- This morning, I would like to comment on the relationship between the WMD Commission Report, especially its treatment of nuclear disarmament, and the program of Global Action to Prevent War. The cardinal feature of the Global Action approach is that it is comprehensive. It seeks to integrate and combine major programs along the entire spectrum of efforts to control and reduce armed conflict, including both nuclear and conventional disarmament.

Nuclear disarmament – both the need to act, and the steps that could be taken – is dealt with so competently and so clearly in the Report of the WMD Commission that the Report has created a new possibility of a real political breakthrough on this issue.

How to ensure this breakthrough must be the subject of a separate discussion. But how will these Commission proposals interact with other steps to control armed conflict now under way all over the world, steps ranging from conflict prevention, peacekeeping in all its forms, conflict avoidance, including confidence-building measures, and post conflict reconstruction?

Because of the undiscriminating lethality of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, common sense dictates that priority should be given the effort to control and eliminate these weapons. Once achieved, nuclear disarmament would bring enormous benefits for all living beings. And it also could be the locomotive of more general disarmament, drawing behind it conventional force reductions, verification, and confidence for other required actions. This means giving maximum publicity to the WMD Commission Report, seeking to generate pressure on world governments, especially the governments of countries with nuclear weapons, to take decisive action along the lines the Report proposes.

We do not know when important opportunities for action on nuclear weapons will arise, so the pressure for action must be continuous and we must be prepared with a coherent, well-argued plan when opportunity does come. That is why the WMD Commission Report is so valuable.

The position of the United States is a key factor in prospects for progress on nuclear disarmament. We know that in the United States there will be a change of administration, possibly also a change of governing party, in January 2009. Before that, this year's congressional elections could bring a change in the composition of the U.S. Congress. We must prepare for both developments, publicizing the analysis and the action proposals of the Commission Report.

But we should also continue to work hard in other areas of disarmament, especially on improving conflict prevention and conflict avoidance, peacekeeping, and, above all, the neglected field of conventional disarmament.

Our friend Sir Joseph Rotblat was a leading figure in the Pugwash movement and the only man to withdraw on grounds of principle from the Los Alamos team developing the first nuclear weapon after the defeat of Germany meant that there would be no Nazi atomic bomb. Toward the end of his long and active work on nuclear disarmament, Sir Joseph joined the International Steering Committee of Global Action to Prevent War. He told us he did so because he had concluded that the task of nuclear disarmament could not be definitively completed unless war and armed conflict could be abolished or at least brought under increasing control. Sir Joseph believed that knowledge of how nuclear weapons are constructed is widespread and cannot be eradicated, and that war, or the approach of war, would eventually trigger return to nuclear weapons even if all existing weapons had been eliminated.

We had thoughts like these very much in mind as we developed the Global Action program. I have mentioned the role of nuclear disarmament as a locomotive drawing behind it the heavy train of general disarmament. But it is also the case that progress in conventional disarmament and other areas of controlling armed violence is needed to smooth the way for nuclear disarmament.

It is this dynamic interaction between nuclear and conventional disarmament that we in Global Action seek. While giving moves toward nuclear disarmament necessary priority, we believe that nuclear disarmament can only get so far in the absence of serious progress in conventional disarmament and other forms of conflict control.

Conventional arms, after all, are the daily killers. States with nuclear weapons will not agree to practical plans for elimination of their nuclear arsenals if this elimination leaves other states still more powerful in conventional forces in relation to them. To be specific, it is the official position of Israel that it will not discuss nuclear issues and a possible Nuclear Free Zone in the Mideast until disarmament of numerically superior conventional Arab forces has taken place. Pakistan 's refusal of a no-first-use commitment is conditioned on India 's conventional superiority. For its part, China seems very unlikely to eliminate its nuclear weapons unless there has already been a far-reaching reduction of United States conventional forces. And weapon states in general are unlikely to agree to eliminate their nuclear weapons if there is still a high level of armed violence in the world.

It is not without reason that Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for both nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. But no serious effort has yet been made to tackle the problem of general disarmament in spite of the very large conventional forces and very large military budgets that dominate international politics and that are being used in ongoing conflicts. No other institutions, as Chapter 1 of the WMD Report suggests there may be, are now addressing this issue. Yet both tasks, nuclear and conventional disarmament, have to be effectively tackled, or neither can be fully solved.

Let me put it another way: Some degree of conventional disarmament is an indispensable condition for decisive nuclear disarmament, and vice versa. We need a plan for conventional disarmament as cogent as the WMD Commission Report for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The Global Action Program contains the rudiments of such a plan. It includes both proposals for reaching conventional disarmament and for a treaty commitment by UN member states not to use armed force except in self-defense or as decided by the Security Council, as suggested in the concluding paragraphs of the WMD Commission Report. It would be a positive move if the commission could review our plan and decide to promote it.

We in Global Action believe that a comprehensive approach is needed which integrates in a single mutually reinforcing package conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and conventional disarmament as well as nuclear disarmament. This package ranges from improved conflict warning, aggressive action to undermine terrorist ideology, and improved peacekeeping, including a United Nations Emergency Peace Service, to deep cuts in nuclear and conventional forces, arms production, and arms transfers. We are not thinking of lockstep between nuclear and conventional disarmament, but of parallel independent movement as the opportunity opens. We should act when and where we can in any area of disarmament.

It is not only a question of reducing conventional armed forces, but of reducing the level of armed conflict throughout the world. If armed conflict using conventional weapons can be brought under increasing control, the rationale and the motivation for nuclear weapons will be weakened and the trigger for possible use of these weapons placed on safety. If we can create a situation where there is a decreasing number of armed conflicts and increasingly long periods of peace between them, the grounds for retaining even a few nuclear weapons will become weaker and weaker. Conversely, if there is progress on cutting nuclear weapons, it will require and draw behind it action on conventional disarmament.

Any report as carefully formulated among sometimes divergent viewpoints as the WMD Commission Report is bound to contain some points where more detail would be welcome. The Report urges movement toward outlawing nuclear weapons. But it does not mention the model nuclear convention. It stresses the dangers of missiles, but proposes no restrictions on them. It does not urge continued efforts to reach agreement on a verification system for the Biological Weapons Convention. The Report does not take a position on the pending UK decision on a follow-on to the Trident missile, although it rightly warns against introduction of new weapon systems.

These aspects detract little from a Report whose combination of explanatory material and practical proposals make it the authoritative resource on WMD issues, and a rallying point for all governments and groups who want to see progress in this crucial field.

Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the U.S.-Soviet military rivalry, the UN and regional security organizations have come into their own, innovating a continual stream of new measures and functions when pressed to do so by civil society. The results have been impressive. The 2005 Human Security Report from the University of British Columbia indicates that, owing mainly to these measures and the interaction of civil societies and governments, the lethality and destructiveness of wars and the number of armed conflicts, including conflicts within states, have declined sharply since their peak in the late 1980s. This trend gives me confidence for the future of the WMD Report.

I believe our task is to create an environment in which both nuclear disarmament and this marked decrease in wars and armed conflicts of all kinds can continue in parallel with each other, moving toward a situation where both use of weapons of terror and organized armed conflict with conventional weapons are increasingly improbable.

I want to thank the WMD Commission and its backers for opening up this perspective much wider. We are grateful to them for this major achievement.

I totally agree with both the previous speakers. This is a really invaluable document, and I think if you read it you will see why were saying it. It does so much more than the kind of thin, brief article version of support for nuclear disarmament that we have had available up until now, covering not only chemical and biological weapons but covering all aspects of the danger posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. In fact, probably the first thing we should say when comparing or talking about the relationship between Global Action and the WMD Report is that, by comparison, Global Action gives the slimmest thumbnail sketch of what would be desirable in the area of nuclear disarmament, and the real meat of the measures that we need to pursue are offered in the WMD Report. I'm going to focus, however, on something that the report explicitly does not focus on and which has been mentioned by my two previous colleagues and that is the area of actually eliminating nuclear weapons. In this part of its coverage, the WMD Report is fairly succinct and brief and I want to just refer you, since everybody has a copy of the Report in front of them, to a couple of pages where it is discussed.

First of all, in the Ssynopsis on page 19 under the heading “Work towards outlawing all weapons of mass destruction once and for all,” the Commission says we should “accept the principle that nuclear weapons should be outlawed,” which of course has been emphasized by all the previous speakers. And toward that end, the recommendation that is made is we should “explore the political, legal, technical, and procedural options for achieving this within a reasonable [period of] time.” That's a recommendation, but the report doesn't actually tell us what that would mean--exploring the ramifications. Again, if we look at the Disarmament chapter, Chapter 1, it concludes on page 28 with the sentence: “The reduction and elimination of WMD must be pursued through measures at all stages of the lifecycle… [And] there must be no compromise on the goal of outlawing nuclear weapons.” So these are very forceful statements, but very brief.

When it comes to the chapter on nuclear weapons, if you look on page 93, all of the proposals starting with Number 18 relate to moving toward the goal of nuclear disarmament. The first one is in some ways the most specific. It says the United States and Russia should aim to reduce their active arsenals by about half, compared with the SORT Treaty limits, which are a range of 1,700 to 2,200. If you cut those two figures in half, you come up with a goal of 850 to 1,100 nuclear weapons on each side. But there are no further specific recommendations in the report for going beyond that number, which by the way is very close to the number on the Global Action plan for our first phase of nuclear disarmament; of cutting back the two sides to 1,000 deployed weapons, which is simply a round number that is a good deal lower than what they have today and kind of a stepping stone. And, as Jonathan Burroughs mentioned earlier, our next stepping stone is a good deal less than that: 100 nuclear weapons. And as you all know 100 nuclear weapons are enough to destroy 100 cities, and from that point of view it's enough to destroy modern culture in some ways. So that's still a very large number, but our proposal does go that further step.

I want to just mention briefly the other measures relating to the elimination of nuclear weapons that are brought forward in the Report. Number 19 on page 94 is a transparency measure. It's time that we had a public accounting of the existing stocks of nuclear arsenals on the part of the countries that hold them: the U.S.A. and Russia, followed by other states possessing these weapons, that is Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel, possibly North Korea.

There is another recommendation that I think is very useful, and that is the idea that Nuclear Weapon States need to develop a plan for the elimination of nuclear weapons. This is a proposal which has growing support at the grassroots level in the United States ; where there is actually a campaign to try to move toward Congressional legislation to require the administration to develop a plan for complete nuclear disarmament. When I talked with the people who are supporting this campaign about how members of Congress would be likely to come back and say ‘but there are too many obstacles to complete nuclear disarmament,' along the lines of what Jonathan Dean just said. We've got all this armed conflict going on, we've got these huge stocks of conventional armed forces, nuclear weapons that are being relied on to deter nuclear war between China and the United States, and China and Russia and so on. And how they responded I thought was really quite remarkable, and that is: ‘Ok, if these are obstacles, then the plan has to take these obstacles into account.' It's not: ‘You don't develop a plan because you see many obstacles.' But, on the contrary, you develop a plan in which you mention the obstacles and you discuss how they could be overcome.

This is in fact what Global Action to Prevent War has done, so I'm a very strong supporter of the idea of not developing a kind of utopian, simplistic, mechanistic ‘Well we go from 100,000 to 10 and then we get rid of them.' That doesn't really serve any useful political, educational, or intellectual purpose to say that ‘you get rid of them by getting rid of them.' The point is really when you think about exploring the mechanisms and conditions that need to be met for eliminating nuclear weapons, that you include and address the things that you think are not nuclear but are standing in the way of nuclear disarmament.

I won't go through all of them but I just want to underscore my support for the complete elimination of so-called ‘tactical nuclear weapons,' that is weapons whose range is too short to go between the United States and Russia, so, from their point of view, these are weapons that could win a battle but not a war or could not eliminate their societies. From the point of view of the countries where those weapons are stationed, these weapons are not tactical. These are not about a battle. These are just as strategic, just as destructive, just as awful as the things that we, the former soviet superpower, Russia , and the U.S. consider strategic because they can hit us while tactical weapons hit other people. So this is really a silly distinction and those weapons should be eliminated. And, in addition, the NPT provision that States should not station nuclear weapons in the territory of countries that are not nuclear weapon States should be observed and complied with by removing U.S. nuclear weapons from a bunch of NATO countries that are not nuclear weapon States, one of the most blatant violations.

Now I'd like to talk just a little bit more about what Global Action does to flesh out that process to go from 1000 to 0, although John Burroughs mentioned the steps briefly. Global Action to Prevent War is two different things. One of them is a program, a kind of a political platform. It answers the question: “If nations did everything they could do to prevent and end war, what would that be?” You'll find the answer, I think, in this document [the Global Action Program Statement]. Secondly, it is an international campaign supported by people in many different countries and worked on in components and also in its overall vision by those people, quite a few of whom are represented here in the seats with the nametags on them. We have people at an international meeting of the Global Action campaign--a three-day meeting we've just concluded. At that meeting, we have had participants from Mexico , Brazil , South Africa , Germany , Sweden , Australia , and Japan , which is probably not a comprehensive list but will give you an idea of the scope of the participation.

The program itself is written up in a small booklet called ‘Global Action to Prevent War.' This booklet was written up in 2003 and was intended to have a four-year duration and there are a couple of things in it that are now outdated. We at this meeting have just completed an overview of all the revisions we think are needed to make it up-to-date and applicable to today's world and this fall we'll be issuing a new four-year overview. We also have available here brochures that describe the Global Action briefly and then I arranged to give out this morning this four-page summary of the Global Action proposal, which I'm going to speak to right now. Again, I apologize there are a couple of areas in which it is a bit out of date, but the main outlines are still quite relevant and I want to talk about those outlines and then come back to the question of how that pertains to the potential abolition of nuclear weapons.

The Global Action program has been elaborated through an interactive international process which is ongoing and since the program statement is continuously being revised and updated there are always opportunities for more and new input from people who haven't been previously involved if there are people who have good ideas about aspects of war prevention that we've overlooked or not gotten quite right. The way the program is organized is in three components, but one of them has two subparts, so I'm going to call it four components. The first, which is shown in your summary under Roman numeral I with four subheadings, includes measures to prevent armed conflict and measures to promote nonviolent conflict resolution through improvements in institutional operations under the UN system/framework, the creation of regional security organizations, and the strengthening and enforcement of human rights. The second part of the program is the phased program of nuclear and conventional disarmament, which has five phases. At the conclusion of these five phases, in the best of all possible worlds, we would have a world in which all states would have only bordered defenses and police forces. The only capacity for major international military intervention would be in the hands of the UN and regional security organizations and we would expect that capacity to be used only for humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide as a last resort after nonmilitary means have failed, to counter global criminal syndicates who might be armed, and to ensure ongoing compliance with the treaty commitments of the Global Action program. The other major aspect of Roman Numeral II is, as you can see if you look under each phase of the program, there are three subheadings: A, B, and C. A is conventional disarmament, B is nuclear disarmament and C is this other component I want to talk about briefly--increased reliance on UN and regional security organizations, peacekeeping, and enforcement capabilities. So the other key aspect besides the process of nuclear and conventional disarmament is incorporating into that process a gradual transfer following an important confidence-building and capacity-building measure for policing in the international community and protecting people in the international community from individual Nation-States, notably the United States , from the international community.

We consider this an important achievement--not to have a proposal which is mechanistic but to really face the fact that the central obstacle to nuclear and conventional disarmament, both, is the fact that nations are unwilling to relinquish military might as a tool of power. We have tried to address what would have to happen to make that transfer from individual Nation-States to the international community. One of the things we've done is to have a whole series of confidence-building and capacity-building measures first. The other is to leave nations with completely effective means of self defense. So, we're not turning over to the international community genuinely defensive national homeland defense forces but only the capacity to conduct war far away from your own country.

Finally, as you will see on the back page, there is a Roman Numeral III, where we support efforts for peace education and the development of a commitment to nonviolent behavior among all individuals in all nations. So, there is this three-fold program. We believe that in the framework of that program, building up confidence in international institutions in Roman numeral I, conducting gradual, verified, reciprocal, and reversible steps toward conventional disarmament and nuclear arms reduction in Roman Number II. And then, after the groundwork is laid, coming to grips with this key feature of transferring finally the capacity for long-range intervention entirely from individual nations to the UN and then ultimately reducing the remaining forces that have no role in international politics. We believe that this series of interactive steps would create an environment in which nuclear weapons could be eliminated.

It is possible that nuclear weapons could be eliminated without this large program of eliminating war, for the prevention of war, if enough people came to feel that nuclear weapons, like chemical and biological weapons, are not weapons--these are not things that should be used in war, then in theory nuclear weapons might be eliminated without this program. We're not putting our bets there. Many people who have wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons have, and so there are two kinds of efforts for nuclear disarmament: the ones that only look at the nuclear part of the problem, and ours and others that look more broadly at the reduction of war and how to promote an even more rapid and solidified progress that is already going on in the international system. We feel that it would be great if nuclear weapons could be eliminated before and without the achievements of all these other measures, but in the meantime, it might be important to work on them as our insurance policy. Thank you.