Paris, 5 December 2000.- The WEU-ESDA Assembly Tuesday called for the Council of Ministers to step up efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. Voting on a report prepared for the defence committee by Dieter Schloten (Germany/SPD), the Assembly said ministers should urge their governments to reach a common European position on non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament and defend it in international negotiations.

Governments should ensure full implementation of international treaties, encourage the creation of new nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs), and strive to convince the United States and Russia of the need to retain the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and to agree to drop the idea of a National Missile Defence (NMD) system, said the report, which is entitled Nuclear Armaments Control-the Issues Involved and Prospects for the Common European Security and Defence Policy. The Assembly called for countries outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to sign up, for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to be ratified and implemented by all nuclear powers, and for the Geneva Disarmament Conference. It also called for a revival of negotiations on the Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty and for Washington and Moscow to speed up implementation of the START II Treaty and to start serious negotiations on START III.

Reduction of nuclear arms « made fair progress for a time, » commented Mr. Schloten. «But more recently international stability has taken a more worrying turn, » he said. The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, Iraq and North Korea’s ambitions, doubts over the ABM Treaty because of the U.S. NMD plans and the U.S. Senate’s recent refusal to ratify the CTBT « are some of the reasons why non-proliferation issues are again to the fore in European and Western strategic concerns. «

Apart from the occasional initiative, the European Union (EU) has achieved little in « developing legal or political instruments or discussion of possible politico-military responses, » Mr. Schloten added.