Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT)

Such a treaty, if effectively verified, would put a ceiling on the total amount of fissile material available for weapons and thereby deliver a number of important benefits:

• turn existing moratoria on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices announced by the US, Russia, UK and France into legally binding commitments;
• place such a commitment on states that have not announced such a moratorium (China, India, Israel and Pakistan);
• ensure verification arrangements were applied, probably in the form of IAEA safeguards, to all enrichment and reprocessing facilities in these states and on any fissile material they produced for peaceful purposes;
• and in the process put in place an essential building block towards an eventual global ban on nuclear weapons.

Alongside FMCT negotiations, the Conference will hold substantive discussions on three other key issues - nuclear disarmament, negative security assurances and the prevention of an arms race in outer space.  

Nuclear Disarmament

In February 2009, the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband launched a paper “Lifting the Nuclear Shadow”which sets out the UK’s strategy for creating the conditions for abolishing nuclear weapons.   The paper identifies the conditions and concrete steps that we believe need to be taken by the international community to bring about nuclear disarmament.

The UK has a strong record of fulfilling its own disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Since the end of the cold war, we have reduced the explosive power of our arsenal by 75%; we have reduced our number of operationally available nuclear warheads to fewer then 160; we have reduced the number of nuclear weapons systems to just one.  The alert status of our weapons is held on several days notice to fire and they are not targeted at any country.  We keep the size of our arsenal under constant review, and when it will be useful to do so, Britain will be ready to include our small arsenal in any future multilateral disarmament negotiations.  

Negative Security Assurances (NSAs)

Negative security assurances are commitments by Nuclear Weapons States that they will not use nuclear weapons against Non-Nuclear Weapon States Parties to the NPT.   The UK gave ‘negative security assurances’ in a formal letter to the Secretary-General of the UN in 1995 (noted in UN Security Council Resolution 984) stating that the UK will not use nuclear weapons against Non-Nuclear Weapon States Parties to the NPT except in the case of attack on the UK, or its allies, carried out by such a state in alliance with a Nuclear Weapon State.  

The United Kingdom suports the creatiion of Nuclear Weapon Free Zones (NWFZs).  It has signed and ratified the protocols in respect of Latin America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco),  South Pacific (Treaty of Rarotonga) and Africa (Treaty of Pelindaba), giving treaty-based negative security assurances to almost one hundred countries.  The UK supports the establishment of NWFZs in Central and Southeast Asia and seeks ways to overcome difficulties that pertain to the Treaties of Semipalatinsk and Bangkok so that it can ratify similar protocols to those Treaties. 

Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS)

At the Conference on Disarmament in 2008, Russia and China jointly proposed a treaty to prevent the placement of weapons in space.  There is currently no international consensus on the need for this, given that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty already imposes constraints on the military uses of space.  As another way forward in the medium term, the EU has proposed a draft International Code of Conduct on Outer Space Activities aimed at enhancing transparency and confidence-building measures.

Recent history of the CD

For a number of years, the CD was unable to agree on a programme of work.   While a mandate existed for work to begin on FMCT, other members of the CD linked the start of negotiations to progress on their own priorities. Russia and China have proposed work on "Preventing an Arms Race in Outer Space" (PAROS). Other governments have proposed work on nuclear disarmament and on security assurances by nuclear weapon states.  Various proposals were put forward for combining the different priorities in a comprehensive work programme, notably the Amorim Proposal, named after a former Brazilian Permanent Representative, and The Five Ambassadors Proposal put forward by five former conference chairmen, but none gained consensus.

In 2006 the six incoming CD Presidents, led by Poland, decided to work together i.e. from a joint platform (P6) to advance the CD to agree a Programme of Work.  Their confidence building efforts were taken further in 2007 when the P6 tabled a draft informal decision (L1) which captured the results of 18 months of painstaking consultations.  It gained the support of the majority of members but was unable to gain consensus.  

On 13 March 2008, P6 members (including the United Kingdom) formally tabled a refined draft proposal, CD/1840, which better met the CD membership concerns.  The P6 sought political buy-in and gained many high level political statements of support in the CD, as well as international media coverage.  But despite concerted efforts from the P6 (and others), this proposal was not able to gain agreement from all CD members.  

The breakthrough finally came in 2009 under the stewardship of the new P6.  Following intensive consultations with member states, the Algerian CD President tabled draft decision CD/1863.  This built on previous proposals but provided a balance between issues which was acceptable to all member states.  This Programme of Work was adopted on 29 May 2009.