Pakistan has urged “some major powers” to commence negotiations on the larger issue of nuclear disarmament instead of pushing for a treaty to ban production of fissile material used as fuel for atomic weapons, saying the treaty was a limited non-proliferation goal.

Speaking in the General Assembly’s main committee, Raza Bashir Tarar, the deputy permanent representative of Pakistan, said besides nuclear disarmament, his country was ready to start talks on two other outstanding agenda items negative security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon-states and preventing an arms race in outer space in the Conference on Disarmament, the Geneva-based UN negotiating body.

“After all, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) is not there to only negotiate an FMCT (Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty),” he said in the course of a thematic debate on nuclear weapons.

Over the past couple of years, Pakistan has been blocking the launching of negotiations on the proposed treaty at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on the ground that it is prejudicial to its national security interests.
Experts point out India has a larger stock of fissile material than Pakistan does, and a greater capacity to build warheads.

Since the Conference on Disarmament was unable to commence negotiations on any of those three agenda items, the Pakistani delegate said it was clear that there were States that were opposed to those issues.

If the States had legitimate security concerns, he said they should openly state their reasons for opposing commencement of negotiations on the other three equal, if not more important, agenda items.
“The fact that they have chosen not to do so raises serious questions regarding their motives and commitment to nuclear disarmament and, indeed, to the work of the Conference itself,” Tarar added.
Multilateralism, the Pakistani delegate said, was the only way to  craft international instruments in the field of security and disarmament that enjoyed legitimacy and respect.

Such negotiations should pursue real disarmament and not just a fade, he said. The United Nations Charter obliged nations not to  use or threaten to use force, Tarar said. Denying negative security assurances could only mean that the nuclear-weapon States wanted to  preserve their option to use nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear-weapon States.
In such a scenario, how could the global environment be  conducive to disarmament efforts when the nuclear-weapon States not only intended to preserve their nuclear arsenals, but also the option to use them. Some major States had resorted to shifting the international community’s focus towards a much more limited goal of nuclear non-proliferation, albeit, with a selective and discriminatory approach,the Pakistani delegate said.
That was, perhaps, the reason for their focus on a treaty banning only the production of fissile materials and not the elimination of their fissile material stockpiles. A fissile material cut-off treaty that only sought to ban future production of such materials was not even a non-proliferation measure, let alone a step towards nuclear disarmament, the Pakistani delegate said.
The retention of huge stockpiles of fissile material would allow major nuclear Powers to continue producing nuclear weapons even if such a treaty was to be negotiated successfully, Tarar said.
“If we are desirous of a treaty on fissile materials that has genuine non-proliferation and disarmament objectives, it must include reduction in the high stocks of existing fissile materials, a belief shared by many countries in addition to Pakistan,” he said.
This approach is essential to ensure equal security of States, which is a cardinal principle in disarmament negotiations. There was a need to redress the existing asymmetry in fissile material stockpiles in his region, he added. The pursuit of discriminatory policies by some major States regarding nuclear cooperation had fundamentally and qualitatively altered Pakistan’s security environment, the Pakistani delegate said.
“We can not remain oblivious to these dangerous developments,” he said. A [Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty] that only envisages a ban on the future production of fissile material would accentuate this precarious situation. Pakistan is, therefore, obliged to oppose negotiations on a [Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty] due to its legitimate security concerns.