PRIME MINISTER

SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP  THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNITED NATIONS  AUSTRALIA AND A WORLD WITHOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS  PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, 24 OCTOBER 1995

Thank you for coming today to this commemoration of the 50th anniversary of  the signing of the Charter of the United Nations.

I want to give particular thanks to the members of Australia's National  Committee for the 50th Anniversary and to its co-chairs, Gareth Evans and  Roger Shipton.

The Committee encouraged debate about how the United Nations should  respond to the challenges of the next century. It has played a great role as a  catalyst, encouraging a very wide range of organisations to create their own  anniversary activities. And in a particularly appropriate focus, it has  encouraged the involvement of youth in these discussions. We have a vivid  illustration of that in the postcards from primary schools all over the country  which are displayed around the room.

As we have seen again over the past few days, this 50th anniversary has  already generated another round of critical debate about the role and  functions of the United Nations. Practically everyone, it seems, has a view of  how the UN could operate more effectively, or cost less, or do more, or do

less.

This is no bad thing when an organisation matters as much as the United  Nations does. I've done it myself. And no doubt I will do it again. But not  today. Or not much, anyway.

Because on its 50th birthday the UN is entitled to a bit of a celebration, a  reminder to us all of what it has done in that half century to build a more  humane, enlightened, tolerant and secure world.

And Australians, especially, should join in the celebrations. Because through  all the ups and downs of those fifty years, the UN has had few better friends  than this country.

When the Secretary General, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, visited Australia in  April to take part in our conference on global cultural diversity he said to me

that he Judged countries not so much by their size and GDP as by their ideas  and commitment.

In financial terms, Australia is the thirteenth largest contributor to the United  Nations. We pay our dues on time and in full. But I think that by the  Secretary General's measure we have been even more important to the  organisation.

We were there at the beginning of course.

Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, was instrumental in drawing up the Charter. He  battled long and hard to ensure that the voice of the smaller nations would be  heard in its deliberations.

And the great feminist pioneer Jessie Street, the only woman in the  Australian delegation to the 1945 San Francisco Conference, helped to  secure in the preamble to the Charter a reference to equality between men  and women - the only human right explicitly so mentioned.

Fifty years on, most of you in this room are here because in one way or  another you have been carrying on the work of those Australian pioneers.

And many other Australians have been there before you.

Australians were the first peacekeepers to serve under United Nations  auspices when we sent military observers to Indonesia in 1947 during the  independence struggle. Since then, Australian military and police personnel  have served with great courage and distinction in Europe, Asia, Africa, the  Middle East and the Caribbean.

Australians have a distinguished record as aid workers, as diplomats working  on disarmament, as health experts dealing with smallpox or AIDS.

The Australian government and ordinary Australians have been able to  contribute, including through one of the world's largest humanitarian  resettlement

programs, to the wonderful work of the United Nations High Commissioner for  Refugees, in providing help and sanctuary to the millions of people who have  been forced from their homes by conflict and disaster over the past fifty  years.

Australians have played a prominent role in the system of human rights  protection created under the UN's auspices. Eminent Australians, including  people such as Phillip Alston and Elizabeth Evatt, have served in their  personal capacity on the expert committees which monitor implementation of  the core human rights treaties.

Part of the reason for holding this reception today is publicly to thank all of  you and your predecessors for your service to the interests of this country  and the international community through the United Nations.

But another reason for this gathering today is to thank the United Nations for  what it has done for Australia.

Because the United Nations has given us a forum where nations can resolve  differences in an environment bounded by agreed rules and norms. It has  provided a space in which the challenges facing humanity can be discussed  and our experiences shared.

For all its faults and imperfections, it is impossible to imagine a world without  it - without international forums for the discussion of human rights, setting  universal standards, and developing measures to prevent human rights  abuse. A world without bodies to address issues like the status of women  and racial discrimination or to give voice to the aspirations of indigenous  peoples.

A world without the capacity to negotiate the pressing trans-national  challenges of the environment or to tackle the most difficult problems of  economic development.

But in addition to these large issues the United Nations also affects for the  better the lives of ordinary Australians through the web of international  agreements which have been negotiated under its auspices. These cover  issues as diverse as weather monitoring and prediction through the World  Meteorological Organisation; improved labour standards and protection of  workers' rights through the International Labor Organisation; safety standards  in civil aviation and maritime transport; the placement of satellites and even  the transfer of mail between countries.

But for all the good work which the UN does in such areas, its ultimate  success or failure will have to be judged by the impact it has on international  security.

Because above all else, the people who drafted the Charter 50 years ago,  who had just experienced a global conflict - the most destructive in all of  human history - were motivated by the desire to rid the world of the scourge  of war. But their hopes were almost immediately crushed with the coming of  the cold war. For the first time, the international community had to  contemplate the possibility that another world war would destroy our  civilisation.

The UN system has a great responsibility to help the world avoid such a  catastrophe. The disarmament goals of the international community are set  in resolutions adopted by the General Assembly.

The vital international treaties to turn these goals into reality are negotiated in  the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. And the ultimate recourse for  enforcing compliance with international disarmament obligations lies with the  UN Security Council, as we have seen in the Council's actions on Iraq and  North Korea.

This central role of the United Nations makes today's occasion an appropriate  one to make a major announcement about Australia's arms control and  disarmament policy.

In all the debate and anger over the past months about the French  Government's decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific, there is  one point which consistently recurs in our thinking about the issue.

I have made that point publicly. It is that, however strong our opposition to  them, those tests at Mururoa, and China's continued testing, are not  themselves the core of the problem. They are instead a symptom of the  problem - the deeper and more troubling problem of nuclear weapons in the  world.

The reason we have seen such a huge outpouring of public concern about  the French tests, not only in this region where they are being held, but also in  Europe and Japan and elsewhere, has been a feeling that we have been  cheated - robbed of the chance of a world free of nuclear weapons.

With the end of the cold war, we all breathed more easily. We allowed  ourselves to think that the nuclear threat, the nightmare of two generations,  had finally passed. The thought of nuclear weapons and nuclear war faded  from our minds.

But the reality has not faded. Fifty thousand nuclear war heads remain in the  arsenals of the five declared nuclear powers. And it is no less real and  frightening that others - not just the so-called threshold states of India,  Pakistan and Israel, but others like Iraq - wait and work to acquire nuclear  weapons.

The French decision to resume testing - announced within weeks of the  indefinite renewal of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - was an outrage  and a folly. It has produced an entirely understandable wave of anger around  the world. But we may yet be able to derive something positive from it  because it has jolted us back to the reality of nuclear weapons in the world.

I now feel a growing certainty that some great good might yet be got out of  the present bitterness if we make this the moment to take on the challenge of  nuclear weapons.

I believe we can turn the global outrage at French and Chinese testing into  something broader and more ambitious - I mean the creation of a world totally  free of nuclear weapons.

This has often been talked about in the past, of course. It is a goal which has  been forcefully articulated by Professor Joseph Rotblat, who won this year's  Nobel Peace Prize. It has long been an aim of Australian policy.

However, to most people, including me, it has always seemed an  unachievable ambition, at least in our own lifetimes.

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The strategic uncertainties and deep political suspicions of the cold war  would surely have made this goal impossible.

But that world has now changed.

We still have conflict, of course. We still have competing national interests.

But the strategic framework in which nations operate has changed profoundly  and I believe it is now possible to contemplate getting a concrete program to  achieve a nuclear weapons free world.

Because the truth is that the sort of world we now have, with nuclear powers  committed to reducing their arsenals and unlikely to use their weapons  offensively, will not continue forever. We can be certain of this.

Unless we take action now, the nuclear competition that characterised most  of the second half of this century will very likely return - and probably in a  much more unstable and multipolar form.

The world must extricate itself from the circular argument that we need  nuclear weapons because we have nuclear weapons.

The nuclear powers cannot be excluded from this: they must understand that  the most likely threats to their security lie in the proliferation of nuclear  weapons.

This is a point we have made often about the French tests and the way they  cut across the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the most important arms  control treaty ever negotiated within the UN system.

I notice that former French President Giscard D'Estaing made a similar point  in an article in the French press on 12 October. He said that "the increase in  the number of states, be they big or small, who manage to develop nuclear  weapons, now constitutes for France a threat just as serious, if not more  serious, than that of a strategic strike decided by one of the rare countries  with nuclear weaponry."

I believe that a world free of nuclear weapons is now attainable. It can be  done and it will be in the best security interests of Australia and our allies and  friends if we do it.

As we saw in the Gulf War, new technology has given weaponry an accuracy  that substitutes precision for brute explosive force, and with far less risk to  civilians than those from nuclear weapons.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have also seen how real is the  potential for catastrophic nuclear accidents.

The Government believes the time has come for more determined movement  towards the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

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There is no magic wand we can wave to make this happen. As with the long  negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament to get rid of chemical  weapons, ultimate success may be decades away. And getting there  involves security issues of the greatest complexity and profundity. We do not  minimise the difficulties or the dangers.

Success depends ultimately on having the will as well as the ambition. The  Chemical Weapons Convention. endorsed by the UN General Assembly in  1992, has shown that where there is a will there is a way to put the genie  back in the bottle. We proved it was possible to rid the world of a whole class  of weapons of mass destruction. And the verification problems for a total ban  on nuclear weapons should be easier to solve than those for a ban on  chemical weapons.

A key building block for a nuclear weapons-free world is already in place with  the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, article VI of which commits the nuclear  weapon states to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures  relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear  disarmament".

But this generalised statement of principle is not nearly enough.

What we need now is action to achieve the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

These are the next steps the Government has in mind.

In our own region we want an end to nuclear testing by France and the  closure of the Mururoa test site.

For nearly 50 years - since the beginning of the nuclear weapons era - the  Pacific has been used as a testing ground. The Americans began testing in  the Pacific in 1946 and continued until 1962; the British tested in Australia  from 1952 until 1963; and the French are still testing in French Polynesia.

In 1983 the Australian Government set the objective of ridding the region of  testing and began its campaign to declare a South Pacific Nuclear Free  Zone. With the announcement on 20 October by France, the United  Kingdom and the United States that they would sign the protocols of the  South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty in the first half of 1996, we can say  that we are on the point of achieving our objective and ending a dark period  of the region's history.

The Government's deep regret, of course, is that France is not drawing the  logical conclusion from its intention to sign the SPNFZ protocols and ending  its tests now - as we urge it to do.

We also want the nuclear weapons states to support the African Nuclear  Weapon Free Zone Treaty, which is being presented to the current session of  the General Assembly, as well as the South East Asian Nuclear Weapon  Free Zone which is nearing completion.

We believe that progress towards a nuclear weapons free world would be  given a major boost through the creation of linkages between existing or  potential nuclear weapons free zones 1n the South Pacific. Latin American.  Africa and the Indian Ocean which already cover most of the southern

hemisphere.

Globally. the most immediate priority has to be the conclusion of a genuinely  comprehensive test ban treaty by mid-1996, followed by its early entry into  force. Australia, together with Mexico and New Zealand. is presenting a  resolution to the current session of the General Assembly to entrench this  deadline.

In Geneva, Australia has been consulting closely with key countries on ways  to expedite the CTBT negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament to take  advantage of this opportunity. Over the next few months the Government will  be devoting substantial resources - as we did for the Chemical Weapons  Convention - to doing what we can to help bring this about.

Next. we want to see the immediate start and early conclusion of negotiations  on a convention to ban the production of fissile material for weapons  purposes - the so-called "cut-off' convention. And we want to see the  development of a regime requiring all states to declare and account for their  present stocks of fissile material, as another necessary prelude to the  elimination of nuclear weapons.

We want to encourage the further strengthening of international safeguards,  in particular by building up the International Atomic Energy Agency's ability to  detect illegal undeclared nuclear facilities.

We want universal membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,  particularly by the nuclear threshold states of India, Israel and Pakistan.

But as I said earlier, Australia is determined to pursue the complete  elimination of nuclear weapons.

We want the nuclear weapons states to carry out their commitment to the  elimination of their nuclear stockpiles by adopting a systematic process to  achieve that result.

The next steps towards this are the adherence by the United States and  Russia to the destruction timetable under START, and further nuclear  reduction agreements between the United States and Russia, with the  earliest possible involvement of the United Kingdom, France and China.

We acknowledge the need , as we always have, for a system of stable  deterrence to be maintained while the reduction and eventual elimination of  nuclear weapons is being achieved.

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All these elements constitute a program which will set norms for international  behaviour, establish new international legal obligations and further develop  international control mechanisms which will serve as an essential framework  for the safe and secure elimination of nuclear weapons.

I am writing to other heads of government who share Australia's concerns,  suggesting that we look at the means by which we can advance the cause of  a nuclear-weapons free world. I hope a new coalition of international  interests will emerge from these consultations.

As its contribution to this, the Government will establish a group of  knowledgeable and imaginative individuals from around the world. In a major  series of meetings in Australia, this group will be tasked to produce a report  to be submitted to the next United Nations General Assembly and to the

Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

The group will examine the problems of security in a nuclear weapons-free  world and suggest practical steps towards the goal, including the ways of  dealing with stability and security in the transitional period.

Next week, the International Court of Justice will be hearing a case referred  to it by the UN General Assembly, asking it to give an advisory judgement on  the legality of the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. We believe, and  will argue before the Court, that it would be best for the Court not to make a  judgement - the legality of nuclear weapons is a different matter, of course,  from their utility or strategic value or even their morality.

A judgement by the Court that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is  legal, even if only in some limited circumstances, runs the profound risk of  achieving precisely the opposite of what those seeking the Court's opinions  want - namely the encouragement of others who want to join the nuclear club.

Even a judgment that nuclear weapons use or threat is illegal - unless very  carefully framed to deal with how that conclusion might be put into practical  effect - would likely be ignored by the nuclear powers and, as a result, serve  no purpose other than to weaken the standing of the Court itself.

The Government has now decided, however, that Australia will also argue to  the court that if, despite the good reasons for not making a decision, the court  is minded to make a decision in the case, it should decide in favour of the  illegality of those weapons. The Foreign Minister, Senator Evans, will travel  to The Hague to present this case on the Government's behalf on 30  October.

We are not naive about our role in this enterprise to make the world free of  nuclear weapons. We are a nation of only medium size and weight in the  world, and we are not a nuclear power.

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On the other hand, we are skilled at multilateral diplomacy and have  demonstrated on issues like the peace process in Cambodia and APEC and  the Chemical Weapons Convention and the protection of Antarctica as a  wilderness reserve and the campaign against apartheid, that we have the

energy and ideas and the capacity to create coalitions with others, to make a  real difference in the world.

With the same energy we gave to those projects we will now commit  ourselves to the goal of a nuclear free world.

Reflecting on the history of nuclear strategy, the American writer Fred Kaplan  says that nuclear strategies were contrived to disguise the real nature of the  nuclear bomb. It is in fact, he writes, "a device of sheer mayhem, a weapon  whose cataclysmic powers no-one really had the faintest idea of how to  control. The nuclear strategists had come to impose order - but in the end

chaos still prevailed."

The world has a chance just now to find a way out of the chaos. The chance  will not last long. We can help the world to grasp it, even show the way.

At the beginning of the United Nations' second fifty years, there could be no  better way for us to show our commitment to the ideals which motivated the  men and women who drew up the Charter than by working, like them, to turn  a coalition of noble ideas into a concrete and enduring reality.

