Ted Re....What's your agenda? You go after the Germans but you ignore the failings of your own gov't:
How so. I fully agreed that the Reagan and Bush administrations did some business with Saddam. In fact the US was using Saddam to counter the Ayatollah and his fanatics in Iran. Germany and France however, had no such grand designs, they were just after the buck; as they both had an antiwar stance, even then. Germany also was under an export restriction, at that time, from WWII days. However, that stopped neither Germany or France, from becoming the largest exporters of WMD equipment to Iraq. While France didn't export the quantities Germany did, France, under D Estang and Chirac, was far more brazen about it. Germany at least pretended to crack down on exports one in awhile, France ignored the National proliferation treaty, and its safeguards, something the US and Germany didn't do.
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fas.org
What has happened over those 12 or 15 years? We have found also that, gradually, the technology spread goes on. Gradually this method, this idea, or this concept of how you go about making a nuclear weapon has spread, enough so that if the people have the equipment and a little more technology, we are going to have a breakout of many nations around the world, perhaps, with a nuclear weapons capability.
It is rather ironic that this threat comes at the particular time when we just about have some agreements with the Soviet
Union, finally, to scale down some of the nuclear dangers of the world. That is one reason why I see this as being so important.
The roots of this policy go all the way back to the Acheson/Lilienthal and Baruch plans shortly after World War II, when it was already acknowledged that some form of international controls would be needed over many potentially sensitive steps of the nuclear fuel cycle. For what we viewed as security reasons then, those proposals by Acheson, Lilienthal, and Baruch were not placed into effect.
Over the years, other nations have come to see the wisdom of requiring their nuclear customers to have full-scope safeguards. Japan, for instance, now requires this condition, as do Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Even West Germany--a nation that has suffered repeated nuclear export scandals in recent years, including this year--has shown some preliminary signs that it, too, may finally be willing to require its foreign nuclear customers to adopt such controls.
France's action, however, along with the deals announced by the Soviets and the Chinese, jeopardize not just a nuclear embargo to Pakistan--these sales together represent a direct assault on an important long-term goal of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, an assault that may have produced some new business, but absolutely nothing by way of additional nuclear restraint.
There is little doubt that the international nuclear regime is now facing a crisis that no nation can afford to ignore. Under existing standards, all non-nuclear-weapon-states that are party to the NPT must have safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] over all of their nuclear facilities. These controls reassure both the nuclear nations and their buyers' neighbors that nuclear technology will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. When nuclear cooperation takes place under these controls, all members of international society--not just those involved in specific deals--stand to benefit from the increased security produced by those controls.
Under current French policy, however, nuclear business can evidently continue as usual even if its partner is a nonsignatory of the NPT, even if the partner is operating an unsafeguarded uranium enrichment plant, even if it is building an unsafeguarded nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, even if it is secretly buying up parts for an unsafeguarded plutonium production reactor, even if it is conducting explosive tests of various components of nuclear devices, even if it cannot keep its most solemn nuclear assurances, and even if it is continuing to violate national and international nuclear export controls.
The same policy evidently now applies with respect to the nuclear cooperation standards of the Soviet Union and, of course, China. All three nations have simply brushed aside international criticism of such nuclear supply practices. Purely a domestic affair,' we are told. `Cooperation will only produce further restraint,' they add.
Yet if France is so convinced that Pakistan is committed to its peaceful international nuclear commitments, why then does France not go all the way and sell Pakistan its long-sought nuclear fuel reprocessing plant as well? This is the process of making the fissile material that goes into nuclear weapons. France's evident decision not to supply such a plant raises several interesting questions: Does France not have full confidence in the ability of the IAEA to safeguard a commercial sized nuclear reprocessing plant and the plutonium it produces? Or, does France still harbor some doubts about Pakistan's ability or willingness to live up to its peaceful nuclear commitments? If the later is true, then France's case for selling a reactor is only further eroded.
As France continues to pursue such a policy, pressures will grow among other nuclear supplier nations to follow suit. Since there are many export-hungry nuclear firms in other nations, France's deal could well lead to a global free-for-all in nuclear technology and a further threat to world peace. Is this what we can now expect from the new Europe? Will Pakistan, India, and other nations interested in acquiring nuclear explosives now provide the markets needed to rescue Europe's nuclear industry from the doldrums it is now facing?
History will be the ultimate judge of France's current and past nuclear policies, just as history will judge our own policies. History will judge whether the following activities have truly served the cause of global peace:
Did the French sale of a reactor and highly enriched uranium to Iraq, a nation committed to the total destruction of its neighbor, Israel, and continued talks with the Iraqi Government on supplying a new reactor to replace the Osirak reactor that Israel bombed in 1981, serve the cause of global peace?
Did it serve the cause of global peace for France to transfer technical data for a large nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Pakistan, a deal that was ultimately terminated in 1977, as a direct result of strong United States opposition?
Or to assist India in building an unsafeguarded breeder reactor to produce large quantities of nuclear materials that could be used in nuclear weapons?
Or to supply to Israel with an unsafeguarded reactor for plutonium production and an unsafeguarded reprocessing plant at the Dimona site for plutonium separation?
Or to supply two large power reactors to South Africa and nuclear fuel services to keep them running?
Or to supply ballistic missile technology to India, Pakistan, and Israel?
Your condemnation of just US exports, while ignoring the far more extensive exports of both France and Germany are hypocritical. Yes, the US did export some WMD items to Saddam. Both France and Germany did so on a larger scale yet you condemn only the Us. |
