(See News Release 3, dated 5 January 2000, inviting those interested to submit memoranda to the Committee by 10 February 2000)

  Pax Christi (UK) asks the Select Committee, in its deliberations on the progress of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to press HMG on its unfortunate negative vote against UNGA 54 Resolution A/C.1/54/L/18: "Towards a nuclear-weapon free world".

  We recognise the difficulty of maintaining Britain's submarine-based nuclear deterrent (Trident) in a state of readiness for use if nuclear warheads are de-mated from launch vehicles. Such separation cannot be effectively attained within the confines of a vessel at sea. Nevertheless, the Resolution is correct in stating that proceeding to the "removal of nuclear warheads from delivery vehicles" is one of a number of necessary steps on the way towards eventual elimination, which after all is HMG's stated objective. The vast majority of objective and independent expert opinion accepts that such a step is necessary. Among those bodies endorsing it is the Holy See, whose spokesman at the United Nations has insisted every year since 1993, and as recently as 14 October 1999, that this step "should be an immediate objective of the international community". (Statement by H E Arch, Renato Martino, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to UN First Committee). Pax Christi fully agrees with this wholly independent assessment from a manifestly sincere and expert quarter.

  We recognise that taking this necessary step would affect the practicality of maintaining Britain's Trident deterrent. But this is precisely the point. For together with many other bodies expressing the views of concerned Christians, including the Holy See, Pax Christi finds the present position of HMG to be unacceptable because it is so radically ambivalent on the central nuclear disarmament issue. We find it quite unconvincing for HMG simultaneously to claim both that the UK is serious about eliminating nuclear weapons and that it intends to keep its nuclear weapons for the next 30 years or more. Furthermore, it gives quite the wrong message to those states which might be considering plans for acquiring nuclear weapons, or whom we all hope will desist from pursuing further a policy of proliferation (eg India and Pakistan). Given the logical instability of HMG's ambivalent posture on this matter, one or other side of the dilemma has in effect to give way. As things stand at present, it appears to many outsider observers, including Pax Christi (not to mention the Holy See), that despite HMG's protestations to the contrary, the objective of eventual elimination has been effectively sidelined. We do not think that this is a satisfactory response to the promises Britain made when ratifying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. These promises, implicit in Article 6 of the treaty, have not yet been fulfilled, as resolution A/C.1/54/L.18 indicates.

  Thus we do not find convincing HMG's explanation of its negative vote on Resolution A/C.1/54/L.18 and ask the Committee to press ministers to go further in the direction indicated by the Resolution.

Brian Wicker

(for Pax Christi UK)