Disarmament and International Security - World Model United Nations

Korean Peninsula was signed, in which North Korea and its
southern neighbor agreed not to develop nuclear weapons
and not to possess uranium enrichment facilities. 199 A few
years later, however, IAEA’s safeguard inspections revealed
that North Korea must have produced more plutonium than
it had declared, which prompted North Korea to announce
its intent to withdraw from the NPT. 200 In 1994, after USorganized
negotiations, North Korea signed an Agreed
Framework declaring a freeze to its nuclear program, an
acceptance of IAEA’s inspectors and rejoining the NPT.
By 2005, however, it became clear that North Korea had
been secretly developing its nuclear capabilities, which was
confirmed when the country’s government claimed being
in possession of nuclear weapons. 201 In 2009 North Korea
conducted another nuclear test and it became clear that
North Korea has become a ‘fully fledged nuclear power,’
according to several experts, including the IAEA’s director
Mohamed ElBaradei. 202 North Korea maintains that its
nuclear weapons program is being conducted as part of
the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent solely for
self-defense, and refuses to abandon its program or to allow
IAEA inspectors into its nuclear facilities.
Iran
Iran has a long-standing tradition of developing its nuclear
capability by enriching uranium without reporting this
activity to the IAEA. Iran’s government firmly asserts that its
efforts are intended only to give the country an indigenous
source of low-enriched uranium fuel for its planned nuclear
power plants, and rejects any accusations that Iran intends to
use these capabilities to produce highly-enriched uranium
to develop nuclear weapons. 203 The Iranian government
believes that concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation
are pretextual, and international calls for suspension of
enrichment are simply intended to ultimately deprive Iran
of the right to have an independent nuclear technology, and
thus maintains that its right to peaceful nuclear technology
is inalienable. Iran is likely to object to any attempts to
prevent it from possessing enrichment plants of its own,
stating that it cannot simply trust the United States or
Europe to provide Iran with nuclear energy fuel.
United States
The United States supports international cooperation
among sovereign states, manifested by parallel or joint
action towards common goals on a domestic or international
level, accompanied by corresponding developments in
treaty-based and UN-conceived international law. 204 The
United States government spearheaded the Global Initiative
to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and supported the adoption
of several UN resolutions addressing the issue, including
the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts
of Nuclear Terrorism. America’s extensive involvement in
addressing the issue of safeguarding of nuclear materials
is undeniable and is best displayed by its relentless efforts
in promoting international systems of prevention from
nuclear threats, such as the Proliferation Security Initiative.
However, the United States government is highly suspicious
of the role of international bureaucracies in achieving
objectives of global importance, which is one of the main
reasons it dislikes the International Criminal Court, and for
this reason it might be reluctant toward any solutions that
would emphasize the role of such instruments. 205 The United
States is also deeply involved in guaranteeing nuclear nonproliferation,
and is one of the strongest critics of the North
Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. At the same time, the
American government tends to refrain from taking a strong
diplomatic stance against some other countries involved in
nuclear proliferation – such as Pakistan – because of their
role in the war on terrorism.
Russia
Since its political transformations after the fall of the Soviet
Union, the Russian Federation has been extensively
involved in securing the former-Soviet nuclear arsenals and
material to prevent undesirable individuals from getting
access to them, for example through its active support of
the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program
from 1992. It was the government of president Yeltsin that
proposed a treaty to prevent rogue terrorists from getting
their hands on nuclear material from insecure facilities
spread across the former Soviet Union, which resulted in
the adoption of the Convention for the Suppression of Acts
of Nuclear Terrorism by the General Assembly seven years
later. The Russian Delegation to the United Nations was also
one of main authors of several international agreements on
preventing nuclear terrorism, such as the Global Initiative
to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. In regards to Iran’s nuclear
program, Russia has maintained that is no evidence that
Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, 206 and has been
reluctant to accept any drastic measures of response. Russia’s
attitude to the North Korean nuclear weapons program
is significantly different, and the Russian government has
taken a stance of strong condemnation of North Korea’s
nuclear tests. 207
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