#11
Ekspert
No. 22
June 10, 2002
NUCLEAR TEMPTATIONS
Non-proliferation of weapons is the top priority for today
Author: Iskander Khisaimov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

PREVENTING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR ARMS AND OTHER MASS DESTRUCTION WEAPONS IS BECOMING THE TOP PRIORITY FOR THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY. RUSSIA SHOULD USE ITS AUTHORITY TO PROMOTE PEACE. WITHOUT RUSSIA, THE WORLD CANNOT RESOLVE THIS PROBLEM.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan spent ten years to create an Asian analogue to the OSCE, while even the original was rapidly losing the ability to strengthen international security. Perhaps, at times he wished he had not that easily parted with the Soviet nuclear heritage, exchanging it for the unstable image of a Eurasian integrator and peacemaker. Meanwhile, the nearby neighbor, India and Pakistan, passionately rushed into acquiring nuclear weapons, and finally gained them.

The present Indian-Pakistani deadlock is justifiably compared with the Cuban missile crisis, when the two great powers - intoxicated with their own strength - were rapidly approaching the point of mutual annihilation and a global disaster. What happened in 1961 did not turn into a tragedy, but what is happening now is not a farce either.

Putin's talks with the Indian and Pakistani leaders in Almaty were generally described as a failure. So they were, if the very consent of these countries to Russia as the intermediary is not considered a success. However, even this fact does not convince everyone. Indeed, why all these Sharons, Arafats, Musharrafs, and Vajpayees always apply to Putin with the request to judge them and why America always readily giving him another chance to gain the laurels of a peacemaker? We have no money, our fleets are unable to leave harbors, and they do not need our soldiers. Here there's a common assumption: we are simply framed, aimed at certainly unachievable targets and then we are mocked.

All these talks are because of an understated national self- esteem. The aforementioned heads of suffering peoples cannot afford jokes or dirt-cheap intrigues. They apply to Russia not only habitually, not even because it is still one of the two actual powers in the world, one of the two founders of the nuclear club. They simply want to see it play this part. One sheriff is so far not enough for the planet, others have not grown up as yet, and collective sheriffs are inefficient. And Washington understood this.

The Indian-Pakistani strain which is quite possible to be ruled managed by the people responsible for the terrorist act of 11 September has shown that today's top priority task is to stop the proliferation of mass destruction arms. The world as usually found itself totally unprepared for challenges which had been thousands of times predicted - terrorism, extremism, and nuclear blackmail. The world had not been building organizations and configurations which are able to meet these challenges. The UN, NATO, and other OSCEs gaped and stared how for example India and Pakistan were getting armed with atomic bombs and actually did nothing to stop them.

Meanwhile, the process is under way. Today, 43 states have research reactors which use arms uranium as fuel; many of them are ready to make up an atomic bomb, someone is most likely to have got one, only secretly. And if something is not undertaken now, one of these 43 guns will start to shoot. The Nunn-Lugar draft "Global coalition against terrorism leading to disasters" says that global efforts leaders must reach an agreement concerning joint actions to ban non-purpose use of arms and materials through teams of response in emergencies. They must also agree to cooperate in the sphere of managing the consequences in case of radiological and nuclear incidents throughout the world.

We are actually invited to use force against organizations and countries that pose a threat to humanity. There is much that is unresolve between us and America, but this offer must not be turned down. Because they are not going to make it without us - and if they don't, everyone will be worse off. (Translated by P. Pikhnovsky)

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