There are calls by over one hundred countries for new UN talks about global nuclear disarmament. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) announced that these countries support L41, a draft UN resolution which seeks a total global ban on nuclear weapons. L41 calls for two conferences, one next March and the second next June at UN headquarters in New York involving all member nations. L41 is a proposal from a UN forum that was created in 2012.
There are currently about sixteen thousand nuclear warheads in the world. The U.S. and Russia both have about seven thousand each with the rest possessed by the U.K., France, Israel, Pakistan, India, China and North Korea.
The proposal in L41 is called the "Nuclear Weapons Convention". It calls for nations with nuclear warheads to eliminate those weapons in five phases. Phase One would be for nations to take their weapons off "alert" or ready to launch status. The Second Phase would consist of removing weapons from deployment. The Third Phase would have the warheads removed from delivery vehicles including ICMBs, cruise missiles and bombs. The Fourth Phase would require dismantling the warheads themselves. The Fifth Phase would have the fissile "pits" from the warheads disfigured so that they could never be used again. The fissile material from the warheads would be placed under international control. In additions to the five phases, the delivery vehicles would have to either be destroyed or adapted to non-nuclear use. The Convention also prohibits development of, stockpiling of or even threatening to use nuclear weapons. In addition, the production of weapons grade fissile materials would be prohibited.
The UN would create a new agency to administer the Convention. This agency would include a Conference of State Parties, a Technical Secretariat and an Executive Council. All signatories would have to submit a list of all nuclear weapons, weapons grade nuclear materials and delivery vehicles including their locations. The State Parties would also need to create an Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This agency would be in charge of verification, ensuring compliance, decision-making and it would provide a forum for consultation and cooperation between all signatories.
Germany has publicly come out against the new proposal. A spokesperson from the German foreign ministry expressed the fear that the new Convention would be "impractical" because it would "devalue" the existing Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT is the main treaty between the U.S. and Russia that deals with nuclear weapons. Between them, they have over ninety percent of the world's nuclear weapons. On the other hand, both Russia and the U.S. have recently accused the other of violating the terms of the NPT so perhaps it is time to develop a new international treaty for nuclear disarmament. Germany did vote for the UN forum to be established in 2012. However, Germany did vote against the Convention draft document. France, Russia, the U.S. and eighteen other nations also voted against L41. Australia opposes L41 and agrees with Germany that it would be ineffective and would undermine the current NPT. With Russian and U.S. rejection of the proposal, L41 would seem to be an exercise in futility.
