17 December 1999
(U.S. non-proliferation efforts are ongoing) (840) By Susan Ellis Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- to which the United States is one of 187 signatories -- drew inspiration from the 1968 Treaty of Tlatelolco, signed by Latin American and Caribbean countries in the Mexican city bearing that Aztec name more than 30 years ago, says President Clinton's special representative for nuclear non-proliferation. Ambassador Norman Wulf told Latin American correspondents at the Foreign Press Center December 16 that the "United States is a party to the NPT and a party to the protocols to the Treaty of Tlatelolco." In response to questions about Cuba's objections to becoming a "full party" to Tlatelolco, he said "we heard the same reasons from Cuba why it couldn't sign Tlatelolco as they are now using for why they cannot ratify Tlatelolco. And my message to Cuba (at a recent meeting in Lima, Peru) was to urge them to put this part of the U.S.-Cuban differences aside and to focus on the overall good, which is to make Latin America free of nuclear weapons in a legally binding manner." On regional security efforts, addressed by a conference and a seminar in Lima rededicating the regional United Nations Disarmament Center there, Wulf said, "Latin America is a very unique continent in many ways. The governments of Peru and Ecuador have recently reached an agreement settling a longstanding border dispute...with the assistance of guarantor states like Brazil. And the whole history of Latin America, by and large, has a lot of good examples that the rest of the world could well emulate." In this respect, he named Tlatelolco, saying it served as a pattern for later non-proliferation efforts. Asked whether recent Senate rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) came up during his recent trip to Lima earlier this month, Wulf said, "Absolutely. That was the one topic that was brought up most often." He stressed that while there were concerns that it signaled a "new way" in the direction of the United States toward disarming, "the United States has been pursuing the question of nuclear disarmament since 1946 when we put forward the Baruch Plan. I believe President Clinton and Secretary (of State Madeleine) Albright have made clear that the Senate vote is a detour, but not a fundamental change in direction." Rather, he added, "I think you're seeing an ill-advised decision and I would commend to you...Secretary Albright's speech that she gave in Chicago last month to the Council of Foreign Relations. "Importantly, the president has said that the United States will not resume nuclear testing. Even during the course of the debate in the Senate, none of the opponents of the treaty advocated the resumption of nuclear testing now," Wulf said. When asked about a new National Missile Defense (NMD) program, Wulf said it "would be adequate to deter (a) limited threat or what the president has referred to as 'rogue state threat.' It is not designed...(to) build an umbrella over the United States that would protect us against any and all threats." President Clinton will decide next summer whether to proceed with deployment. Wulf said the president's decision will be based on four factors: the existing threat; whether the system is capable of doing the job; cost; and the effect the NMD program will have on U.S. arms control negotiations. The assumption that nothing is happening because the START strategic arms reduction treaties have not been ratified is wrong, he said, pointing to the fact that "the number of nuclear weapons the United States possesses has been reduced by 60 percent in the last 11 years. The United States and Russia have an extensive series of agreements that are continuing to be negotiated and implemented dealing with trying to ensure, in the first instance, fissile material in Russia is kept under safe control, and to the maximum extent possible, that fissile material in the United States and Russia is altered so it can no longer be used for weapons purposes." Wulf offered an example of a purchase agreement "where the United States is purchasing 500 tons of highly enriched uranium that was useable for weapons purposes. That is being blended down into low enriched uranium, and will be used in civil power reactors. "It's only one example of a really extensive exchange of activities," he said. "The United States has spent, thus far, something in the area of $3 billion on these programs and the president has committed us to another $4.5 billion. So this is a very major extensive operation, and my message is that despite some of the doomsayers who look at the CTBT vote or the NMD, and say somehow that this means nuclear non-proliferation has come to a halt, my answer to that is, they could not be more wrong." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)