Central Asian Countries Declare Nuclear-Free Zone

With a political sky darkened by the nuclear weapon test of North Korea and the growing tensions over the nuclear program of Iran, a ray of sunlight comes from Central Asia. On September 8, 2006, the five states of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, signed a treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon free zone in the region.

The treaty aims at reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation and nuclear-armed terrorism. The treaty bans the production, acquisition, or deployment of nuclear weapons and their components as well as nuclear explosives. Importantly, the treaty also bans the hosting or transport of nuclear weapons, as both Russia and the US have established military airbases in Central Asia.

The treaty was signed at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, which was the main testing site for Soviet-era nuclear tests. Between 1949 and 1989, some 500 nuclear tests took place at Semipalatinsk, leaving a heritage of radioactivity and health problems. A non-governmental organization, Nevada-Semipalatinsk, was formed in the 1980s by persons in the US and the USSR who had lived in the nuclear-weapon test areas. The organization advocates both the abolition of nuclear weapons and that governments take responsibility for the medical consequences of their tests. Rusten Tursunbaev, the Vice President of Nevada-Semipalatinsk, remarked, "The signing of the agreement on a nuclear-weapon free zone in Central Asia is a remarkable, unbelievable moment and event, not just for Central Asia, but for the whole world."

The Kazakh President, Nursultan Nazarbaev, and the Uzbek President, Islan Karimov, the two Central Asian states to have non-military nuclear-power programs, have been advocating for such a nuclear-weapon free zone for a number of years.

However, Turkmenistan, with a largely isolationist foreign policy, needed to be brought into the nuclear weapons treaty for the treaty to be meaningful. The representatives of the Mongolian government have welcomed the nuclear-weapon free zone as an important confidence-building measure and may join the zone at a later date.

The concept of nuclear-free zones has been an important concept in disarmament and regional conflict reduction efforts. A nuclear-weapon free zone was first suggested by the Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki at the United Nations General Assembly in October 1957. The crushing of the Hungarian revolt by Soviet troops in 1956 showed that the East-West equilibrium in Central Europe was unstable.

The Rapacki Plan, as it became known, called for the de-nuclearization of East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The Rapacki Plan was opposed by the NATO powers, in part because it recognized the legitimacy of the East German state. It was not until 1970 and the start of what became the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that serious negotiations on troop levels and weapons in Europe began. While the Rapacki Plan never led to negotiations on nuclear-weapon policies in Europe, it had the merit of re-starting East-West discussions, which were then at a low point.

The first nuclear-weapon free zone to be negotiated -- the Treaty of Tlatelolco -- was a direct aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. It is hard to know how close the US and the USSR came to a nuclear exchange at that time. It was close enough that Latin American leaders were moved to action. While Latin America was not an area in which US-Soviet military confrontation was as stark as in Europe, the Cuban missile crisis was a warning that you did not need to have standing armies facing each other for there to be a danger of nuclear war.

Mexico, under the leadership of Ambassador Alfonso Garcia-Robles at the UN, began immediately to call for a de-nuclearization of Latin America. There were a series of conferences held, and in February 1967, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America was signed at Tlatelolco, Mexico. For a major arms control treaty, the Tlateloco was negotiated in a short time, due to the persistence of Garcia-Robles and the expert advice of William Epstein, the UN's Director of Disarmament Affairs. The Treaty established a permanent and effective system of control.

It is an unfortunate aspect of world politics that constructive, institution-building action is usually undertaken only because of a crisis. Although a Central Asian nuclear-weapon free zone was discussed at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the agreement of Kazakhstan to yield the 1,400 nuclear warheads that had been stationed on its territory by the Soviet military, it is only as the North Korean nuclear-weapon program became a serious factor of Asian politics that the Central Asian nuclear- free zone was finalized.

Since the North Korean nuclear test has become a concern of the whole world community, we must look to Central Asian leadership to show the way in developing structures for a nuclear-weapon free Korean Peninsula.

While the nuclear weapons free zone is a definitive step forward, the calamitous human rights record of these countries can not be ignored. Both Human Rights Watch and Forum 18 (POB 6603-Rodelokka, N-0502 Oslo, Norway, www.forum18.org), which focuses on religious liberty, document widespread abuses of human rights and religious liberty in Central Asia.

Letters protesting human rights abuses, while encouraging these states to propose this treaty as a possible model for Korea, can be sent to: The Permanent Representative, Mission of Kazakhstan to the United Nations, 866 UN Plaza, Suite 586, NY, NY 10017; Kyrgyzstan, 866 UN Plaza, Suite 477; Turkmenistan, 866 UN Plaza, Suite 424; Uzbekistan, 866 UN Plaza, Suite 326; Tajikistan, 136 67th Street, NY, 10021

To urge Mongolia to join the treaty: contact the Mongolian Mission to the UN, 6 East 77th Street, NY, NY, 10021, mongolia@un.int, 212/861 9460.