Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments
Bureau of Verification and Compliance
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC
August 30, 2005
III. OVERVIEW
The United States has long recognized the importance of reaching the most rigorous judgments possible as to whether parties to arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements or commitments are complying with the obligations or commitments they have made. This Report represents the most recent in a series of Noncompliance Reports issued to alert policymakers, Congress, and - with the unclassified version of the Noncompliance Report - the public, to questions of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament noncompliance. All governments that give their word in this vital area should be held to it, and the United States is committed not only to holding others to a high standard of compliance but also to adhering to such a high standard itself.
The Report, in turn, addresses U.S. compliance, compliance by Russia and other successor states of the Soviet Union with treaties and agreements concluded bilaterally with the Soviet Union, compliance by other countries that are parties to multilateral agreements with the United States, and compliance with commitments made less formally but that bear directly upon arms control, nonproliferation, and/or disarmament issues.
Several items of particular importance that have arisen since the last edition of the Report merit mention.
Libyan Renunciation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Perhaps the most significant event since the submission of the last Noncompliance Report in June 2003 is Libya's historic undertaking, on December 19, 2003, to renounce its pursuit of WMD and long-range missiles and to come back into compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, as well as to join and comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention and begin to eliminate its long-range missiles. In the next Report, the United States will publish a detailed analysis regarding our efforts to assist in Libya fulfill its commitments, with specific emphasis upon our degree of confidence that such WMD programs no longer remain in Libya and that its Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)-class ballistic missiles have been, or will be, eliminated.
This Report addresses Libya's previous noncompliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements - e.g., with Articles II and III of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - before Libya renounced its WMD and MTCR-class missile programs and provides updates on the unprecedented cooperative WMD elimination and verification effort undertaken by Libya in 2004. Libya's return to compliance will be discussed in more detail in the next edition of the Noncompliance Report.
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
Another important development - albeit a less salutary one - during the period since the submission of the last Noncompliance Report has been North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT and the large volume of new information available about the challenge to the NPT regime presented by Iran's long history of clandestine nuclear activity.
The United States has warned publicly for more than ten years that Iran was engaged in a covert effort to develop nuclear weapons, but it was only in 2002 that much information began to appear in public about the Iranian nuclear program. Since that time, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has extensively documented much of the Iranian program, making detailed information available about Iran's long history of undeclared activity and lies to the IAEA and the rest of the international community.
This Report marks the first time that U.S. noncompliance findings have specified violations of the NPT on an article-by-article basis. Such distinctions are particularly important in cases such as Iran's, because of the potentially quite different implications of Article II and Article III noncompliance. A violation of Article III - e.g., a country's noncompliance with its IAEA Safeguards Agreement - might occur for a variety of reasons, not all of which are sinister (e.g., simple error). An Article II violation, however - that is, an effort to manufacture or otherwise acquire a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device, or seeking or receiving any assistance in such manufacture - necessarily represents a willful subversion of the NPT's core nonproliferation principles. For this reason, and in keeping with the United States' emphatic commitment to rigor and clarity in all compliance assessments, this Report sets forth NPT noncompliance findings with greater specificity than in previous reports.
This Report also contains much new information on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and its longstanding violation of the NPT prior to its withdrawal from that Treaty becoming effective in 2003. Recent developments in North Korea have been particularly significant because of Pyongyang's admission to a U.S. delegation in October 2002 that it had been pursuing a clandestine uranium enrichment program, its resumption of activities at the Yongbyon facility, its announcement of the resumption of plutonium reprocessing, and its shifting admissions and denials with respect to the plutonium weapons it has already produced. This Report details North Korea's violations - through the pursuit of both uranium- and additional plutonium-based nuclear weapons - of its IAEA Safeguards Agreements, Articles II and III of the NPT, the 1994 Agreed Framework, and the Joint North-South Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Expansion of START Compliance Section
Section 403 of the Arms Control and Disarmament Act - the legislative basis for the submission to Congress of this series of Noncompliance Reports - requires that the Report provide greater specificity about compliance concerns. To wit, the law requires the Report to include "a specific identification, to the maximum extent practicable in an unclassified form, of each and every question that exists with respect to compliance by other countries with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements with the United States." To comply with this requirement, this edition of the Report has included more information than ever before on, among other things, Russia's implementation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
To facilitate this effort, in 2003 the United States conducted consultations with the Russian Government regarding a number of longstanding, unresolved U.S. concerns about Russian compliance with the START Treaty - some of which actually date back to the first year of START implementation. These included Russia preventing U.S. inspectors from measuring the launch canisters of certain Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) or verifying that certain ICBMs do not contain more warheads than attributed under the Treaty. The U.S. concerns also included Russia failing to provide all required telemetry materials for some START-accountable flight tests, failing properly to declare certain ICBM road-mobile launchers accountable under the Treaty, and locating some deployed SS-25 ICBM launchers outside their declared restricted areas. With respect to this last issue, however, it should be noted that Russia has taken steps that have resolved U.S. compliance concerns.
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)
During this reporting period, the United States increased its efforts to engage in compliance-related dialogue with States Parties with which we continue to have concerns. The bilateral discussions underpin the United States' effort to pursue strict compliance with the CWC and resolve questions regarding a State Party's compliance. These actions have been taken under the Article IX provisions of the CWC for Consultations, Cooperation, and Fact-Finding. Article IX provides a role for every State Party to participate actively in resolving questions of concern which may cause doubt about compliance with the Convention. For its part, the United States has successfully used bilateral consultations under Article IX to resolve numerous compliance concerns.
The CWC section of this Report addresses our concerns with China, Iran, Russia and Sudan, as well as the results of our interactions with Libya to assist it with declaring and eliminating its chemical weapons (CW) program. However, the United States also has conducted bilateral discussions with other States Parties during this reporting period. These bilateral efforts have been well received and useful in laying the groundwork for judging compliance; as a result, the United States has resolved a number of its CWC compliance concerns. In this regard, the United States welcomes the actions undertaken by Albania to declare newly discovered chemical weapons, obtain an extension to its CW destruction deadlines, and work transparently and cooperatively to ensure the security and elimination of these chemical weapons stocks. Such actions set a positive precedent for CWC compliance and deserve to be commended.
Open Skies Treaty
Finally, it is worth noting that the Open Skies Treaty came into force in January 2002, making this Report the first to discuss compliance with that Treaty.
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