World Bulletin
 | | President Obama, speaking at the General Assembly today, will become the first US president to chair a meeting of the Security Council tomorrow. UN Photo/Mark Garten. |
Obama, Speaking at the Security Council, to Take on Nuclear Issues
By Christopher J. Tangney
Sept. 23 -- President Barack Obama will convene a head-of-state-level meeting of the United Nations Security Council tomorrow, Sept. 24, to address nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament -- the first time a US president has chaired a Security Council session.
Obama pledged during his presidential campaign to put nuclear nonproliferation at the top of his priority list, and tomorrow’s council meeting marks another step in the administration’s ambitious agenda to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
“On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being stupendously important, the Security Council session is a 7 or an 8,” Charles D. Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview with UNA-USA. “It is significant, not earth changing; but it lays the groundwork for events in the next 10 months.”
Ferguson, who directed a Council on Foreign Relations task force on US nuclear weapons policy earlier this year, noted that in addition to attending the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, review conference in May 2010, the administration has scheduled a first-ever nuclear security conference in Washington, DC, in March 2010.
The specific dates and participants for the March 2010 security conference have not been finalized, but the White House announced on July 8, 2009, that the meeting “would develop steps that can be taken together to secure vulnerable materials, combat nuclear smuggling and deter, detect and disrupt attempts at nuclear terrorism.”
Obama signed an agreement with Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev on July 6, 2009, that would reduce American and Russian nuclear arsenals by 25 percent over the next seven years. The treaty is expected to be completed by the end of this year and would require Senate ratification.
Last week, the president announced that the US will discontinue plans to install missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, opting instead to pursue a strategy of arming ships and submarines with weapons that the administration says are better suited to countering the threat of shorter-range missiles, particularly from Iran.
“All of this comes in the context of getting to zero nuclear weapons,” said Thomas Pickering, a former US ambassador to the UN and UNA-USA co-chair. “I think the president is taking each piece in the proper order, and Russia is a key part of the equation.”
Pickering, who said the shift in the US’s missile defense policy was well received in Moscow, emphasized that nonproliferation is of joint interest to Russia and that the Obama administration is effectively targeting areas where the US and Russia share common goals to advance disarmament objectives and address the potential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
“This is a marked change from the last eight years,” Pickering said in an interview with UNA-USA. “And the Security Council session will once again give the Iranians notice of the world’s commitment to nonproliferation.”
Kennette Benedict, executive director of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, agreed that while a Security Council resolution is unlikely to stop the Iranians from enriching uranium it will increase pressure on the regime to comply with International Atomic Energy Agency regulations.
“They don’t want to be isolated,” she said of Iranians in an interview with UNA-USA.
Benedict reiterated the importance of relations with Russia, who along with the US posses 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons and is essential to nonproliferation efforts.
“Common security has not often been a phrase uttered from a US president’s lips,” Benedict said. “The future of dealing with the nuclear threat is through international bodies, so President Obama’s commitment to the UN and to multilateralism is extremely important and unprecedented.”
Thursday’s Security Council meeting is expected to result in a resolution that establishes widespread commitment to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament and reaffirms the five permanent members of the Security Council’s allegiance to the terms of the NPT and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans the testing of nuclear weapons.
While it is unclear whether Obama will tackle the thorny issue of India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons without committing to the NPT, Ferguson of the Council on Foreign Relations said the administration would likely be forced to address the subject at the March 2010 nuclear security conference in Washington.
And at a UN preparatory conference earlier this year to plan for the May 2010 review of the NPT, Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation, said, “Universal adherence to the NPT itself – including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – also remains a fundamental objective of the United States.”
A draft of the Security Council resolution, which was circulated last week, also includes language that would make a nation’s pursuit of nuclear technology for energy purposes contingent upon its compliance with the terms of the NPT, which came into force in 1970.
“The message that Obama and his team need to convey to non-nuclear states is that ‘with rights come responsibilities’,” Ferguson said.
Christopher J. Tangney is the communications assistant at UNA-USA.
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