Non proliferation regimes undertakings: Benefits and limits of synergies in verification technologies and procedures

Full text: Thirty years ago the NPT was entering into force. Therewith, when a State became party to the NPT, it had, in accordance with article III.1 of the Treaty, an undertaking to conclude a Comprehensive Safeguards agreement with the IAEA and accept safeguards verification on source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within its territories in order to verify that such material is not diverted. This multilateral instrument was the foundation stone of the non-proliferation regime and marked the actual birth of internationally accepted measures to verily compliance with politically stringent agreements. Since that time several important multilateral or bilateral instruments on non-proliferation and disarmament have been negotiated and adopted to curb the development and the acquisition of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) most of them since the middle of the eighties and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Amongst the multilateral instruments are the Convention on the Prohibition of Bacteriological Weapon and Toxin Weapons (1972), the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (1993), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (1996), the Strengthening of the IAEA Safeguards and the Additional Protocol (1997), with some still in negotiation like the Protocol of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons, and some on which negotiation is still a wish like the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. Bilateral disarmament agreements between the United States of America and the Russian Federation such as the INF Treaty, START I and II, the agreements on the elimination of excess defence nuclear material as well as the Trilateral Initiative with the IAEA pave the way to nuclear disarmament with the reduction of both the number of nuclear weapons arsenal and the fissile material inventories. The politically stringent undertakings of States that have become parties to those agreements would not be possible without the development and the implementation of adequate verification. During the last thirty years, multinational or mutual verification has become a fundamental element in building States' confidence in the agreements and amongst those States. It gives them the assurance that the agreements are efficient and that all other parties comply with their obligations. This trend has been confirmed with the discovery of the cheating of two NPT Parties in the beginning of the nineties. First, the clandestine programme of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq revealed after the Gulf war and, secondly, the inability of the IAEA to verify the initial declaration of the DPRK and the discovery of its attempt to build a clandestine nuclear programme along with a ballistic missile programme. These cheats have led to the strengthening of the IAEA safeguards, the reinforcement of export controls and new efforts to curb the proliferation of ballistic missiles. With the development of verification and monitoring regimes in scope, range and precision, the international interdependence has grown very rapidly. The verification protocols of these instruments share a lot of features: procedures, inspection techniques in the field and in the laboratory, information analyses, and so on. A wide range of techniques is employed which goes from the simple like exchange of information to more intrusive techniques like environmental sampling, permanent surveillance, on-site inspection, short notice access, etc... In the past ten years, the capabilities of verification techniques have been very much improved. For example, sampling and trace analysis allow to detect minute quantities of materials which could show evidence of proscribed activities, satellite imagery can allow to detect undeclared activities or undercover preparation But a one hundred percent assurance of compliance is more a political wish than a reality and is not needed for most of the agreements. Whatever the sophistication of techniques, a small possibility of non-compliance will always remain, but at a higher cost for the proliferator. Implementation of sophisticated verification techniques which improve the effectiveness of the monitoring will be limited by what the States consider to be an attempt to their sovereignty and by what they recognise as their national security interest. To improve the overall effectiveness in cost and in kind of monitoring regimes, benefits can be drawn from a careful examination of the common ground they share and how one regime may benefit from lessons drawn by the others, taking their scope into account. But, though synergies between verification regimes would be logical and productive like between the CWC and the IAEA safeguards or the future protocol of the Bio Convention or like between some aspects of the CTBT and the IAEA safeguards, it is not politically and technically desirable to go too far in the merging of verification regimes. Treaties and Agreements must keep their own specificity, and confidentiality of collected information should remain as a rule. The dream for a global and universal verification system to deal with. all the aspects of Weapons of Mass Destruction, a kind of 'big brother', is both unrealistic and dangerous States Parties have always the possibility to merge and cue information from various monitoring systems, from outside and from their national technical means to form their own judgement. Then, elements of this analysis can be forwarded to international organisation, in a manner consistent with agreed rules in order to help them to carry out their responsibilities. (author)