Читать книгу Disarmament and Decommissioning in the Nuclear Domain - Jean-Claude Amiard - Страница 23

The treaty banning the production of fissile material or other nuclear explosive devices (FMCT or “ Cut-off ”) is an old draft of the UN General Assembly. It was on December 16, 1993 that this Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/48/75L) that called for the opening of negotiations to elaborate such a treaty. The reasoning was simple: stopping the production of fissile materials (military plutonium or ²³⁹Pu and highly enriched uranium) constitutes one of the essential locks of nuclear proliferation.

For more than 20 years, the Disarmament Conference (DC) has been working on the text of this treaty. Several drafts have been submitted by France and Canada. However, the impasse in which the DC still finds itself today is due to the abuse of the consensus rule, which allows any state to block the progress of work for any reason whatsoever.

The main causes of divergence on this treaty concern the delimitation of the scope for negotiating this prohibition. Egypt and Pakistan want the stockpiles of nuclear-weapon states (NWS) to be taken into account, which the five strongly reject. China wants to increase its stockpile in the face of India’s expanding stockpile. The same is true for Pakistan with regard to India. France has always been favorable and actively supports the process of creating this treaty, but its stockpile (30.6 tons of highly enriched uranium and 6 tons of plutonium 239) would allow it to produce several thousand nuclear weapons [COL 15]. For nearly 15 years, France has been strongly committed to the negotiation of a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, known as the Cut-Off Treaty. This is one of the French proposals for disarmament, announced by the President of France in his speech in Istres on February 19, 2015 [FRA 15, FRA 19a].

In spite of this lack of progress, there is hope, however, with the shifting of discussions to the level of the General Assembly. In October 2012, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a Canadian-sponsored resolution that established a Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on TIPMF. In 2016, the UN General Assembly adopted another resolution introduced by Canada, and co-sponsored by Germany and the Netherlands, establishing a 25-member High-Level Preparatory Group of Experts (Preparatory Group) to build on the work of the GGE and make recommendations on the substantive elements of a treaty being prepared for negotiation [UN 17a, UN 17b].

At its last meeting in June 2018, the Preparatory Group successfully negotiated a consensus report recommending the elements of a future treaty. The UN Secretary General transmitted this report to the DC in the hope that they will begin formal negotiations on a treaty that will help end the global nuclear arms race [GOU 18].