Stephen Harper will push the world Tuesday to expand a Canadian-led program aimed at securing Russia’s vulnerable nuclear sites to other weak spots around the globe in a bid to prevent potentially devastating bomb-making materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.
But even as the Prime Minister promotes what some describe as one of Canada’s greatest diplomatic successes, his critics argue another policy – a deal to supply India with uranium – is undermining international security by stirring the fears of nuclear-armed rival Pakistan.
In Washington today, Mr. Harper will urge world leaders to take the Global Partnership Program, created at the 2002 G8 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., to secure and lock up vulnerable nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union, and expand it to newer soft spots that could be targeted by terrorists, such as Africa and Pakistan, Canadian officials say.
The future of the Global Partnership Program, which is slated to end in 2012, will be decided when Mr. Harper hosts G8 leaders at a June summit in Muskoka. While Canada and the United States want to see the program extended, European nations in the G8 are not as keen to continue footing the bills.
Although it is a multilateral program, Canada considers the program its baby: it was created in Canada, and Ottawa committed $1-billion to it over 10 years.
As it now exists, the program provides funds to dismantle nuclear submarines and destroy or lock up nuclear materials in Russia and Ukraine.
Both Canada and the United States would like to see it extended to other countries – many of which don’t have nuclear weapons – to beef up border controls, establish regulations and convert civilian nuclear power plants to low-enriched uranium, which is more difficult to process into weapons-grade uranium than the highly enriched form many of them now use.
“Pakistan is being mentioned as one potential target of this program. There are a whole series of African countries which have very poor track records in terms of smuggling, some of which are actually thinking about civilian nuclear power plants,” said Carleton University arms control expert Trevor Findlay, director of the Canadian Centre for Treaty Compliance.
Citing the risk of theft, the Obama administration is spearheading a call for countries to stop fuelling power plants with uranium of a grade sufficient to be used in a weapon – particularly in countries where nuclear material is not regulated as closely as it ought to be.
Monday Mr. Harper took a symbolic step to back that effort when he announced that Canada will start returning to the United States weapons-grade uranium imported for use at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s research reactor in Chalk River, Ont. Canada, he added, will eventually stop using such fuel altogether.
The Chalk River reactor is scheduled to close in 2016 in any event, but Mr. Harper’s announcement lends credibility to Canada’s call for countries to submit to international oversight of their stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, and ultimately to phase out its use.
“We still use highly enriched uranium for some purposes, but obviously as we’re moving forward we’re trying to make sure that our future nuclear activities don’t involved highly enriched uranium,” Mr. Harper told reporters in Washington.
Critics have argued, however, that some of Mr. Harper’s policies could in fact loosen control over nuclear material, and promote proliferation. Plans to sell uranium to India could fuel an arms race with Pakistan, already a weak link in the world’s nuclear security regime, they say.
Following the lead of the United States, Canada changed its policy in 2008 to support India’s entry into the global trade in civilian nuclear materials, even though New Delhi had tested a nuclear weapon in 1974 and has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Canada is finalizing a deal that would allow the sale of nuclear materials like uranium to India – allowing it to devote its tiny supply of domestic uranium to weapons.
“If Canada sells uranium to India, then India uses more of its domestic uranium for its military program,” said Ernie Regehr, senior policy advisor for Waterloo, Ont.-based Project Ploughshares.
The network of Pakistani scientists headed by A.Q. Khan is known to have trafficked nuclear-weapons technology, and the Taliban insurgency has fuelled fears that Pakistan could be the place where terrorists acquire a nuclear weapon.
Pakistan has blocked efforts to open negotiations on a treaty that would ban the production of new weapons-grade uranium for warheads – citing India’s newfound access to imported nuclear materials, aided by Canada and the United States, as a reason.
