By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : Addressing the threat of the A.Q. Khan network built by the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb and potentially similar networks more effectively has been listed as a key challenge to the non-proliferation regime by a US think tank.
“The international community lacks the appropriate measures to prevent and deter the procurement of illicit materials,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said Tuesday, announcing 10 key recommendations of an International Non-Proliferation Conference here in June.
The advertised renaissance of nuclear energy will be impeded by a shortage of skilled personnel and materials which could increase tensions between the haves and the have nots, it said, listing it as a second top challenge. The boom could also encourage new providers to join the market, who may not follow established safeguards.
Increasing demand for nuclear fuel can pose a grave proliferation threat and industry and government must shift gears to adopt arrangements to minimise these risks, said the report on the conference that was attended by 800 participants from 33 countries including India. This was listed as the third top challenge.
Those left behind may cite this as another example of the discriminatory nature of the non-proliferation regime and its failure to deliver on promises, it said. Alternatively, new technology providers could step into the supply market – for example, India or China among others.
The participants included US and foreign government officials, policy and technical experts, academics and journalists as well as representatives from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN and the European Union.
Besides, the three most critical challenges to the non-proliferation regime, the conference identified the three best new policy proposals, and the four most important policies to implement by 2010.
Top Three Best New Policy Proposals:
– The UN Security Council (UNSC) should make the consequences of non-compliance concrete and immediate by adopting a binding resolution requiring a standard set of actions when the IAEA reports a state’s non-compliance.
– To block escape routes for actors the US has sanctioned in dollar-based markets, the US, EU and Japan must coordinate more closely Euro and yen-related sanctions into a common framework.
– The business community should be mobilized to report suspicious procurement inquiries and tighten nuclear material security.
Top Four High Impact Ideas to Implement by 2010:
– The US should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. This would pressure other states that have not yet ratified to clarify their nuclear policies to the rest of the world including China, India, Egypt, Israel and Iran.
– The permanent members of the UNSC should remain united on Iran, even if maintaining unity requires a slower tightening of sanctions on Iran than some advocate.
– Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin should task the US Strategic Command and the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces commanders to produce – with a deadline – recommended measures to take all nuclear forces off hair-trigger alert.
– Leading states – with and without nuclear weapons – should begin to seriously debate nuclear disarmament.
Suggesting that proliferation networks continue after A.Q. Khan, the Carnegie report said while some officials claim that the infamous A.Q. Khan network had been shut down, there were more participants than have been identified.
Many are not in jail or even subject to prosecution. It is impossible to know whether blueprints for components or for a nuclear weapon have been distributed to actors that either were not in the original network or were undetected.
Moreover, Pakistan still relies on a procurement network to maintain and enhance its nuclear weapon arsenal. This is how the original A.Q. Khan network began; there are no guarantees that today’s importing network might not become tomorrow’s distributor to other buyers.
Among the indications that elements of the Khan or successor networks persist are the ongoing queries that trade brokers in Dubai and elsewhere make to European (and presumably other) suppliers of proliferation-sensitive materials and equipment.
“Who are the would-be buyers? How will governments, alone or, more ambitiously, through the UN Security Council (UNSC), prevent undeclared transactions and deter illicit procurement?” the Carnegie paper asked.