“No first use” removed from draft report at nuke disarmament confab

A call for states to adopt doctrines banning preemptive use of nuclear weapons has been removed from a draft report for an ongoing international disarmament conference, according to a version the chairman circulated Thursday.

The watered-down draft also took out a reference to “the Russian Federation” in its call for the restoration of local control over a conflict-prone nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, a day before the end of the nearly month-long review conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at U.N. headquarters.

Through further behind-the-scenes negotiations, delegates from the treaty’s member parties will hash out by Friday’s closing session the latest version proposed by Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the conference that began on Aug 1.

In the previous version shared Monday, the report said the nuclear-weapon states agree to take steps to diminish the role and significance of the weapons in all military and security concepts, doctrines and policies.

For nuclear-weapon states “this should include the adoption of no-first use doctrines,” it said. But the sentence has disappeared from the latest version.

The treaty which came into effect in 1970 authorizes only five countries to possess nuclear arsenals, namely Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Including a call in the treaty’s report for states to ban the first use of nuclear weapons has been a matter of some controversy. Although such policies aim to build mutual trust for the sake of disarmament efforts, they also raise concerns about the potential impact on nuclear deterrence.

On the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, an urgent international topic, the latest draft “stresses the paramount importance of ensuring control by Ukraine’s competent authorities of nuclear facilities.”

The previous version said the review conference “calls for the restoration of control by the Russian Federation to the competent Ukrainian authorities” of the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for ongoing conflicts on the premises of the largest nuclear power complex in Europe since Russia seized it in March.

Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed hope in an interview with the France 24 news outlet Thursday that the U.N. nuclear watchdog may be able to secure access for experts to inspect the plant within days.

The review conference convenes once every five years, in principle, to check the situation surrounding nuclear disarmament among other issues under the treaty, which now involves 191 members.

Member countries failed to agree on a final document in 2015, while the 2020 meeting was postponed until this year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES