1.  Abolition 2000 UK is an affiliate of a Global network (Abolition 2000) dedicated to the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. We try to act as a coordinating body to which more local organizations who are concerned with this issue can make reports and exchange information. Abolition 2000 was founded in 1995 and its statement of purpose was reaffirmed and supplemented in 1997 at Moorea (the Moorea declaration).

  2.  Our founding principles include the following items relevant to the committee's terms of reference. These are in principle directed to the governments of all nations but in the case of Abolition 2000 UK are specifically directed to the government of the United Kingdom:

(a)  To initiate immediately and to conclude by the year 2000 negotiations on a nuclear weapons abolition convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement;

(b)  To make immediately an unconditional pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons;

(c)  To complete rapidly a truly Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) with a zero threshold and with the stated purpose of precluding nuclear weapons development by all states;

(d)  To cease production and deployment of new and additional nuclear weapons systems, and to commence the withdrawal and disabling of deployed nuclear weapons systems;

(e)  To prohibit the military and commercial production and reprocessing of all weapons-usable radioactive materials;

(f)  To subject all weapons-usable radioactive materials and nuclear facilities in all states to international accounting, monitoring, and safeguards, and establish a public international registry of all weapons-usable radioactive materials;

(g)  To prohibit nuclear weapons research, design, development, and testing through laboratory experiments, including, but not limited to, non-nuclear hydrodynamic explosions and computer simulations, to subject all nuclear weapons laboratories to international monitoring, and to close all nuclear test sites;

(h)  To create additional nuclear weapons free zones such as those established by the treaties of Tlatelolco and Rarotonga;

(i)  To recognize and declare the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons, publicly and before the World Court;

(j)  To establish an international energy agency to promote and support the development of sustainable and environmentally safe energy sources;

(k)  To create mechanisms to ensure the participation of citizens and NGOs in planning and monitoring the process of nuclear weapons abolition.

  3.  Our concerns are thus primarily with the nuclear threat but we are also troubled by the threats represented by all weapons of mass destruction and we recognise the possible legal and political links between controls of biological and chemical weapons and actions with respect to nuclear weapons (linkages between your term of reference 3 and your terms of reference 1 and 2).

  4.  We believe that progress with the NPT and with the CTBT is probably linked to countervailing actions by the nuclear weapons states including the UK. We believe that the UK must review its present position on the New Agenda Coalition initiative within the UN, and to take a serious look into the development of a Nuclear Weapons Convention analogous to those conventions covering chemical and biological weapons.

  5.  We are thus concerned that the UK government has taken no substantial internal steps to reduce our own nuclear strike capabilities. We express our regret at the commissioning of the fourth Trident submarine which we believe sent a negative message to nuclear threshold nations. We also regret the failure to rely less upon the apparent independent UK nuclear threat by (i) officially reducing the Trident patrol times to less than 100 per cent and (ii) dealerting the weapons involved more completely, for example by separating the warheads from the delivery systems. An interim step might be at the very least formally to abandon the independent UK strategic role of Trident. In any case all UK nuclear weapons should be placed on any international table at any discussion concerning the global reduction of nuclear weapons. We should remember that most of our NATO partners do not possess or threaten the use of nuclear weapons and that some have maintained a policy of prohibiting nuclear weapons being stationed on their territories.

  6.  We should engage in bilateral and multilateral talks with those of our NATO allies who have recently registered abstentions on the UN resolutions concerned with the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons Convention. These resolutions have of course also been passed with large favourable majorities of those voting. In particular the one other Commonwealth state that is also a NATO member, Canada, has registered an abstention on this question, and strong support existed both within Canada and even within the Canadian Government for a "yes" vote. A final decision to cast the Canadian abstention was in part due to a desire to retain some degree of solidarity among other NATO nations. The latters' decision not to vote "no" despite the current NATO nuclear weapons policies and the UK and the US positions on the question left the NATO nuclear weapons' states, including the UK, isolated in taking a negative voting stance.

  7.  We are concerned at recent developments, apparently in association with the US Defence department, to increase and/or to modify the surveillance capabilities at the Menwith Hill site. These changes have been linked to the proposed development of certain anti-ballistic missile capabilities by the US and perhaps by NATO. We believe that any apparent breach of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, at whatever threat or supposed threat it may be directed, will jeopardise the possibility of ensuring non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and will certainly severely weaken the possibility of securing a Nuclear Weapons Convention of any kind.

  8.  We believe that security export control regimes must include all weapons, weapon parts, and supporting technology with the potential of involvement in the manufacture, deployment, or use of any weapon of mass destruction. That is, there are substantial links between the narrower control regimes and the broader questions of arms exports which need examination, particularly in view of the apparent increases in the UK share of global arms exports over the past five years and the recent decisions to approve arms exports to regimes whose records can reasonably be regarded as doubtful.

  9.  We believe that the most immediate action that can be taken by the UK Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee is to initiate a discussion within Parliament as to the possibility of the UK helping to formulate and eventually to sign a Nuclear Weapons Convention banning the possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons of any kind. A draft Model Convention has been developed in some detail. It has already been distributed to some ministers, members of parliament and other governmental officials. We should be happy to make copies of the relevant document* available to all members of the Foreign Affairs committee who have not yet been recipients.

  10.  In addition to this written submission, Abolition 2000 UK are prepared to make an appropriate oral submission elaborating upon and adding to these points at any convenient time at the request of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

  *Security and Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (1999). Including the Model Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Testing, Production, Stockpiling, Transfer, Use and Threat of Use of Nuclear Weapons and on Their Elimination. With Commentary and Responses.

  Principal authors: Merav Datan & Alyn Ware.

  Published by IALANA, INESAP, and IPPNW.