Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 14 December 2005
44 Mr. McCormack asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of states that have withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39246/05]
View answer73 Mr. Connaughton asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the position with regard to reform of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39248/05]
View answer124 Ms O. Mitchell asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the states that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39247/05]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 44, 73 and 124 together.
Ireland has a particularly close association with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, which came into existence following an initiative taken by a distinguished predecessor in this office, the late Frank Aiken. His pioneering efforts were duly recognised when Ireland was invited in 1968 to be the first country to sign the treaty after it had been negotiated. Since then, support for the treaty has been our highest priority in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation.
The NPT is the most universal of all the multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation treaties. Of the 191 members of the United Nations, only three countries, India, Israel and Pakistan, have failed to sign the treaty. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK, is the only country ever to announce its withdrawal from the treaty. It did so in January 2003, one month after expelling inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency from its territory. Since announcing its withdrawal from the NPT, the DPRK has claimed, in February of this year, that it possesses nuclear weapons.
The best hope for a peaceful solution to this problem lies in the six party talks process involving the DPRK, South Korea, Japan, China, the Russian Federation and the United States. China has played the lead role in these talks, having initiated the process and chaired all sessions of the talks to date. On 19 September 2005 the six countries concerned issued a joint statement which contained a commitment by the DPRK to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing weapons programmes and return to the NPT and to the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. I look forward to the early implementation of these commitments and the establishment of verification arrangements in which the International Atomic Energy Agency could play a useful role.
As regards the three countries that have yet to sign up to the NPT, I have made clear my view that they should accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states parties. I reiterated this call last May at the NPT review conference in New York. I described their decision to remain outside the NPT regime to be of serious concern and urged all three countries to accede to the treaty unconditionally at an early date. Such a call has also been made in recent statements of the European Union. All EU member states are legally obliged to pursue this objective in line with an EU common position, agreed in November 2003, promoting the universalisation of key multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation instruments, including the NPT.
We will continue to press for the universalisation of the treaty. Ireland most recently joined with our partners in the new agenda coalition, NAC, to submit a resolution on the NPT to the first committee of the United Nation General Assembly in October. In addition to reaffirming the outcome of the 2000 NPT review conference as the framework for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament, the resolution also called for the universalisation of the NPT and urged Israel, India and Pakistan to accede to it as non-nuclear weapons states promptly and without conditions. A separate vote was called on this latter aspect and some 148 countries voted in favour. The resolution came before the plenary of the General Assembly last Thursday and drew even greater support, with 158 countries endorsing the language on universalisation.
There is no reform process, as such, under way in respect of the NPT. Review conferences take place every five years, however, and afford an opportunity to review the implementation of the treaty and all its provisions. The next scheduled NPT review conference will take place in 2010 and will be preceded by a series of preparatory meetings beginning in 2007. Regrettably, the last review conference, in May of this year, ended without agreement on substantive conclusions and recommendations on how to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.
I have made clear the Government's deep disappointment at this outcome. This was a missed opportunity for the international community to tackle some key threats to global peace and security and to agree an effective collective response. We continue to believe that global challenges are best tackled together, through such a response. Action to strengthen the treaty and ensure full respect for all its provisions remains essential and we will spare no effort in pursuit of this objective.
