UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION
(Edinburgh Branch)
Lord Mark Malloch Brown, Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN
8th February, 2008 Playfair Library
“ Mutlateralism and Humanitarianism”
The Playfair Library was full. Some 150 had gathered to hear Mark Malloch Brown, describe our changing world. It was a rare opportunity to engage with a Cabinet Minister and several of the Branch committee were able to have a chat in which they described our work with Darfur and with Iran. Lord Brown had spoken quite recently with the President of the Sudan about Darfur and the Sudanese suspicion of western intentions. Malloch Brown surprised us with his knowledge of water problems in Darfur and of the potential for the use of solar energy in the region. He asked us to forward a copy of the full report of the visit of UNA-Iran.
In the past, Mark Malloch Brown reminded us, successive governments could order their foreign policy in terms of the balance of power and of imperialism. Even at the conclusion of the Second World War and the formation of the United Nations it might have been thought that the permanent members of the Security Council could jointly impose their own concepts of security. It didn’t work out like that. Now, in our present, more complicated, multilateral world we are unable to manage the core responsibilities of the nation state within our own borders. Global infectious diseases, immigration, terrorism, climate change, let alone trade, development and security, all embrace global interactions requiring multilateral institutions and multilateral ‘networking’ for their solution. Intervention, when necessary, should be military only in the last resort. In future all intervention should be multilateral, preferably ‘soft’ and under the mandate of the UN. (Hereabouts one notes that an eloquent question from a student implied that the UK had been quite old fashioned in its behaviour towards Iraq – to put it euphemistically)
The world is changing rapidly. The internet, Mark Malloch Brown said, is changing the world as profoundly as did the creation of the printing press. Economic growth can be dramatic. In consequence not only the Security Council but the UN Agencies and all the ‘world institutions’ have to accommodate the new China, the new India and Brazil and South Afirca and….. And there is a sense in which these countries have to accommodate themselves. Their rates of economic growth may outstrip human capacity to adapt to the tensions that growth may cause.
In this world, the UK, with a perhaps unique set of diplomatic partnerships, has to redefine its identity and. we have to redefine our lives.
How good It was that a Cabinet Minister formally recognised that our Government had to contribute to the complexity of the modern global world in new and less histrionic ways. One should, of course, have expected a former Deputy Secretary General of the UN to have realised this. In today’s world we have to work together for our mutual benefit – and in accordance with international law - and alas, there are members of the Government to whom Lord brown may have some difficulty in teaching this. The letters from the Rt Hon. Bob Ainsworth, suggest he has yet to realise that Russia also thinks it is working to achieve a peaceful world. He has “no intention” of enabling Russia to check that our Trident missiles do not threaten anyone; it appears not to have occurred to him to ask Russia simply whether or not the bombers that transgress our airspace are armed.
In today’s world, concluded Mark Malloch Brown, government action will be less heroic but the opportunities for the young are more exciting. Thinking in this way, one sees that the rapidity of global interactions and of global communication between people means that the whole of global civil society becomes professionally engaged. NGOs work alongside governments. Both our DfID and the European Commission’s Water Facility, for example, accept – indeed expect – that NGOs build development and overcome poverty in places that governments cannot reach.
Joint Meetings of United Nations Associations of Edinburgh and Iran held in Edinburgh, January 23-26 2008
1 Participants:
UNA Iran: Mr Yadollah Mohammadi (President, UNA-Iran), with Mr Hossein Ahmadyadib, Mr Mahmood Tavana. They teach International Law but also work p/t for UNA Iran.
UNA Edinburgh: 11 members of UNA Edinburgh
Chaired by: Dr Gari Donn JP, Convenor UNA-Edinburgh
A significant number of Members of Parliament and MSPs had been notified of this visit; noted by PM and Foreign Secretary; Message of Greeting received from First Minister, Alex Salmond.
The Iranian delegation also met with Mark Lazarovitz MP, with Robin Harper MSP, with representatives of civil society at the Peace and Justice Centre, and with the Convenor of the Church of Scotland’s Church and Nation Committee.
See full report on "Iranian Exchange Page"
Parliament Meeting with Minister for External Affairs
On Tuesday 17 December, Committee members of UNA Edinburgh met with the Minister for External Affairs, Mrs Linda Fabiani. The discussion was wide-ranging and provided an opportunity for the Committee to speak about the five Working Groups - Darfur (Ray Newton), Middle East (Liz Sim), Nuclear Non Proliferation (Alec Gaines), MUNGAs (Gari Donn) and Website/Membership (Robert Williamson). In response, the Minister noted her support for the work of the UNA in Edinburgh and suggested further collaboration especially on Women's Training in Darfur, consolidation of approaches to Nuclear Non Proliferation and support for positive developments in the Middle East.
Saturday 24th November 2007
The Edinburgh Branch of the UNA could participate in a charity fund raising event which was held at the Walpole Hall of St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh.The stand was well attended and over £30 raised through the sale of Christmas Cards,marquetry and confectionary.Applications forms for membership were also given out and there was a lot of interest in the posters on display and literature.The stand was staffed by Alec Gaines and Robert Williamson and it is hoped that this will become an annual event at the grass roots level.
Thursday, 1 February 2007
EDINBURGH UNA WORKSHOP ON TRIDENT AND THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY
On 29 January the Edinburgh branch of UNA-UK hosted a one-day workshop at the Scottish Parliament to debate the proposed renewal of ‘Trident’, the UK’s nuclear-weapon system.
The event featured keynote presentations from a range of experts, including Lord Hannay of Chiswick, UNA-UK Chair and former UK Ambassador to the UN. UNA-UK Executive Director Sam Daws was in the chair.
Read BBC News report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6311125.stm
Scotland 'only home' for Trident
The UK Government wants to update Trident
Britain would be left with nowhere to store its nuclear weapons if it could not store them in Scotland, it has been claimed.
The comments came from advocate John Mayer, who drafted an SNP bill which would criminalise Scottish ministers who order the use of nuclear weapons.
He was speaking at a Scottish Parliament debate on the future of Trident and its possible replacement.
The event was organised by the United Nations Association of Edinburgh.
It was attended by politicians, academics and diplomats and hosted by Green MSP Chris Ballance.
Physically and geologically there is nowhere else in Britain capable of accommodating the Trident fleet
John Mayer
Advocate
If it became law, the SNP bill would see senior civil servants, military leaders, cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister face criminal charges for firing or ordering the firing of nuclear weapons.
Any senior figure even supporting the threat of the UK's nuclear deterrent - based in Scotland at Faslane on the Clyde - would also be in line to face charges.
Mr Mayer said it would lead to the the UK having nowhere to house its nuclear arsenal.
Scottish voice
"You might think of it as tugging the rug from underneath the commanders by taking away the right to command, the right to programme, those things that directly lead to a threat or use, then the whole purpose of the Faslane infrastructure becomes impossible," he added.
"We know physically that a Trident-free Scotland is a Trident free UK because physically and geologically there is nowhere else in Britain capable of accommodating the Trident fleet."
Prime Minister Tony Blair last year announced plans to upgrade Trident at a cost of up to £20bn.
Other speakers at the conference included the former UK permanent ambassador to the UN, Lord Hannay of Chiswick.
It was also attended by the consul generals of Germany, Japan and the US as well as trade union officials and church leaders from the Church of Scotland, the Catholic Church, the Society of Friends and the Scottish Episcopalian Church.
Speaking before the event, Mr Ballance said: "It is vital that Scotland has a voice in this decision, and that our voices are heard loud and clear."
National Magazine
‘The Prospects for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime’
Keynote speech by Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Chair of the UN Association of the UK
[Speaking at the Scottish consultation on Trident and the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty: a one-day workshop organised by the Edinburgh branch of
UNA, and held at the Scottish Parliament on 29 January 2007]
We have heard today a wide range of views both about Britain’s own position
and responsibilities within the world nuclear non-proliferation regime and about
specific challenges to that regime, in most detail that from Iran. My task is to try
to set all that in a broader framework and to look at the prospects for a regime
which has now, for nearly 40 years, been a cornerstone of international law in this
field and of the defence of international peace and security from the threat of
nuclear proliferation. And we should be in no doubt about both these salient
points. In 1992 the first ever summit meeting of the UN Security Council stated
quite flatly and unanimously that nuclear proliferation was indeed a threat to
international peace and security; and in 1995 the totality of the signatories of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, very roughly all the then independent states in
the world, bar three, agreed, again by consensus, that the Treaty should no
longer need to be renewed every five years but should remain in force in
perpetuity. So however many siren voices - and some of them are clearly selfserving
- may be raised in criticism of the treaty and in asserting that it is out of
date or discriminatory or irretrievably broken, that is the position in international
law.
The second point I would like to make is that the Non-Proliferation Treaty has
been an astonishing, and perhaps rather unexpected, success. At the time it
was signed, back in the 1960s, it was confidently predicted that within 20 years
there could, and probably would, be upwards of 25 nuclear-weapon states.
And there is no doubt that scientifically and technologically that was perfectly
possible.
And yet now, nearly 40 years later, there are in fact either eight or nine,
depending on how you score North Korea, five who were already nuclearweapon
states at the time the treaty was signed and three others - India, Israel
and Pakistan - which never signed it and which have therefore never been
bound by its provisions. More impressively it has proved possible to roll back
potential break-outs from the regime. South Africa, following the collapse of
apartheid, renounced a programme which had almost certainly included a test
explosion; Iraq was deprived of its growing nuclear-weapon potential following
the 1991 Gulf War; Libya agreed to abandon its programme following the
discovery of a shipment of material from the network of the rogue Pakistani
scientist A.Q. Khan; Brazil and Argentina gave up research programmes with
potential military implications and several newly independent countries in the
former Soviet Union – Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan – gave up existing
stockpiles of weapons. Not only that, but a large number of countries have
been able to develop civil nuclear programmes for the generation of electricity
without being impeded in any way, indeed having often been helped with
technical and security advice by the International Atomic Energy Agency in
Vienna. I know that the development of civil nuclear power is a contentious
issue too, but the guarantee of the freedom for every state to make its own
choice in this matter was an essential component of the original Non-Proliferation
Treaty deal, and it has been respected.
Does that success mean that everything in the record is perfect? Far from it. For
one thing the basis of the treaty, the distinction between the nuclear-weapon
states, the five permanent members of the Security Council, and the nonnuclear-
weapon states, which all signatories accepted when they signed and
ratified the treaty, is inherently precarious and discriminatory. It has been made
more so by the pretty patchy record of the nuclear-weapon states in fulfilling
that side of the bargain, to move towards nuclear disarmament. For many years
during the Cold War they actually moved in the opposite direction. And, ever
since the end of the Cold War, when there has been a very welcome reduction
of missiles and warheads by all except China, the commitment has been
observed rather haphazardly. More recently the stalling of the arms control
process, the failure to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force and
talks in Washington of new forms of nuclear-weapons being developed has cast
a heavy and damaging shadow over the treaty. And then the nuclear
safeguards operated in civil nuclear installations by the International Atomic
Energy Agency proved all too easy for unscrupulous signatories of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty to elude. That was the case in Iraq, in North Korea, in
South Africa and in Libya. The first generation of safeguards agreements was
clearly inadequate. And thirdly the omission of three countries – India, Israel and
Pakistan – from the scope of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the
progress of all three towards the possession of nuclear-weapons and the means
of their delivery has set up strains, both regionally and more widely. One more
weakness needs to be mentioned. The treaty originally envisaged non-nuclearweapon
states being permitted to possess the whole civil nuclear fuel cycle,
which includes the capacity to enrich uranium and to reprocess spent fuel. But
both these two processes have turned out to be tempting short-cuts to acquiring
fissile material that could be used for weapons.
So we have a regime which has been a remarkable success but which contains
notable weaknesses. And we have a regime which is now under serious and
growing stress. One country – North Korea – has broken out of the regime and
defied the international community; another, Iran, is strongly suspected to have
the intention of doing so, and is refusing to take the step – suspending its
enrichment programme – needed to convince the international community that
it is not. And these are not just any old countries. They are countries whose
successful possession of a nuclear-weapon capability is only too likely to lead to
their neighbours following suit. In the case of North Korea that could involve
Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan. In the case of Iran it could involve Saudi
Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. And these are also countries in highly unstable regions,
where unresolved disputes are numerous. The assumption that a range of
nuclear-armed states in these regions could achieve the relative stability which
the US and the Soviet Union eventually achieved or that India and Pakistan may
conceivably be on the way to achieving, would seem to be extremely risky and
dubious. And then there is now the threat that non-state actors, terrorists most
alarmingly, might come by nuclear-weapons or at least nuclear material which
could produce massive contamination.
Faced with all these risks and so much fragility one might have hoped that the
international community would have pulled together and strengthened its
defences against nuclear proliferation. On the contrary: in 2005 two major
opportunities to do just that were comprehensively squandered. At the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May of that year and at the UN
Reform Summit in September, not one single new measure against nuclear
proliferation could be agreed; and that was not for any lack of proposals for
strengthening the regime – the UN Secretary-General, endorsing the series of
proposals put forward by the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and
Change, on which I had the honour to serve, provided plenty of raw material.
Since then the Security Council has been struggling with the cases of North
Korea and Iran without giving the impression that they are making much
progress.
So what is to be done if the dire consequences of a collapse of the nuclear nonproliferation
regime are to be avoided? Well, first, there is no way of ducking the
challenges posed by North Korea and Iran. There is no easy exit or soft landing
which involves accepting either country’s possession of nuclear-weapons. But
nor are economic sanctions, let alone the use of military force, in themselves an
answer. In the case of sanctions they are, in my view, fully justified, but they are
not on their own going to achieve the suspension or roll-back which we are
seeking. To do that requires active, persistent and imaginative diplomacy of
which there has been all too little so far. In each case the format for dialogue
exists – in the case of North Korea the six-nation group, in the case of Iran the EU-
3 offer backed by the US, Russia and China, which Iran has so far rejected. This
diplomacy will have to address the security concerns of the two countries in
question and will require in one form or another, the direct involvement of the
United States. And it will have to involve bringing both countries into a
framework for regional security – in North-East Asia and in the Gulf. It will have to
ensure full access to civil nuclear power. A tall order, perhaps. But to assume
now that it is unachievable would be a counsel of despair.
But we also need to be clear that no number of bilateral fixes will on their own be
sufficient. To rely just on bilateral fixes is to emulate the little Dutch boy plugging
leaks in the dyke. We do need a stronger dyke. In the next decades in all
probability there are going to be a lot more civil nuclear power stations
constructed all round the world. You may think that a good or a bad thing; but
with the oil price where it is, and is prospectively likely to be, and with the
pressure to meet the challenge of climate change, I doubt if that prediction will
prove wrong. If that spread of civil nuclear power is not to bring with it
unacceptable proliferation risks from a spread of uranium enrichment and
reprocessing capacity, there is an urgent need for a system of internationally
guaranteed supplies of these services – not guarantees in the hands of one or
more nuclear powers but of the International Atomic Energy Agency in whose
impartiality all can have confidence. Discussion is under way now at the
International Atomic Energy Agency on several ideas for such a system – the
British government has contributed a proposal for what is called a uranium
enrichment bank with drawing rights for those whose safeguards are in good
standing. What is needed now is for rapid progress at the negotiating table and
early decisions to set up such a scheme and thus to lift the pressure for individual
countries to develop their own enrichment and reprocessing plants.
More than that needs to be done to strengthen the multilateral dyke. The new
International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards system, known as the Additional
Protocol, needs to become the gold standard for safeguards, replacing the
earlier, flawed system. The Additional Protocol provides more intrusive
inspections procedures with less scope for a country to dissemble or conceal
forbidden activities. So far not much more than a one third of the countries
which have safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy
Agency have accepted and ratified the Additional Protocol. All signatories of
the Non-Proliferation Treaty need to do so. And this may at some stage require
the Security Council to make acceptance of the Additional Protocol mandatory.
Then there is a need to strengthen the links and cooperation between the
International Atomic Energy Agency and the Security Council, so that the
Council can bring its influence to bear at an earlier stage of any doubtful case.
If the Council were to invite the Director General of the International Atomic
Energy Agency to submit to it periodic reports on the state of the world-wide
safeguards regime, that should make it easier to prevent any departures from a
country’s commitment to stick to civil programmes rather than, as now, only
bringing cases to the Security Council when the horse has bolted or is in the
process of bolting. And it is high time that negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-
Off Treaty, on which all countries, including the nuclear-weapon states, are in
principle agreed as to the need, are brought to a conclusion, thus capping the
production of weapons grade material, whether it is for civil use - for example in
research reactors - or not.
That then leaves the hard cases, the officially accepted nuclear-weapon states
and the three countries outside the system. But those two groups cannot simply
be left out of any equation, without seriously weakening the overall regime. The
nuclear-weapon states need to make much more decisive progress than they
have done hitherto to move down the road to nuclear disarmament. In the
case of Russia and the US at least, they still retain excessive numbers of warheads
and launchers to deal with any conceivable threat and the level of alert is still
too high. The process of negotiated reduction in those arsenals needs to be
resumed; and US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty remains a
high priority. This category is of course where Britain comes in, as the one of the
five nuclear-weapon states with the smallest armoury; and it is against the
yardstick of the commitment to move towards nuclear disarmament that we
need, if we are looking at the matter within the framework of the Nuclear NonProliferation
Treaty, to measure the government’s proposals for Trident. The
government has offered one step, the reduction in warheads from a ceiling of
200 to one of 160, and one possible step to be decided later, the reduction in
the fleet from four to three submarines. The first certainly is one step in the right
direction, the second less surely so. Some would argue that this is not enough;
others believe the decision is being taken prematurely; and others that we
should not replace Trident at all. That is the debate we are now having, at the
end of which Parliament will take a decision.
Possibly the hardest cases of all, and the ones on which one has to take a long
view if one is to avoid a total lack of realism, are those of the three nonsignatories
of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In both instances – India/Pakistan and
Israel – it is hard to see nuclear weapons being abandoned or even reduced
without agreement having been reached on comprehensive settlements to the
two disputes – over Kashmir and over Palestine – which were the main drivers of
the acquisition of nuclear-weapons by these countries in the first place (I say the
main drivers because one must not forget the Chinese dimension in the case of
India). So attempts to negotiate nuclear-weapons free zones in South Asia or in
the Middle East are likely to get nowhere so long as these disputes remain as
open sores on the world’s body politic. But that is no reason to abandon the
objective of negotiating such zones in the longer term. Indeed abandoning
such an objective would be far worse than simply failing, or taking a long time, to
achieve it. Abandoning the objective would be an open invitation to further
proliferation in those regions. That is one of the arguments against the recent
US/India agreement in civil nuclear cooperation. So it is important that the
ultimate achievement of nuclear-weapon-free zones is built into any peace
settlements in South Asia and the Middle East.
There is much more that could be said about this complex and crucial subject of
nuclear non-proliferation. But time does not permit that. I hope I have said
enough to persuade listeners that this technically demanding subject, festooned
with acronyms and scientific jargon, is in fact at the heart of much of the
international diplomacy which will determine whether, in the years ahead, we
live in a more or a less secure world, whether we move towards a more ordered
or a more disordered world. The challenge we face is to integrate nonproliferation
policy into our overall diplomacy, not to regard it as a kind of
optional extra or bolt-on addition, best left to experts and technicians. I do not
myself believe that any country in the world, nor any international organisation,
has yet responded as effectively as it needs to do to that challenge. Let us do
what we can to ensure they do so in the years ahead.
Edinburgh Branch