The Nordic Countries and the European Security and Defence Policy

262 THE BROADER DIMENSIONS OF SECURITYport. 30 Sweden is the only Nordic country contributing to bio-safety and biosecurityprojects within the Global Partnership framework.As noted above, Sweden has sometimes taken national initiatives (or joinedin multilateral ones) that go beyond the limits of EU common policies for thereduction of WMD threats. Its membership of the New Agenda Coalition since1998 can be seen in this light: Sweden joined with progressive states from otherregions to push demands for disarmament (and other matters) which at that timewere not even the subject of explicit EU policies. As a recent example ofSweden’s action in this area independent of the EU, at the 2005 NPT ReviewConference it used its membership of the New Agenda Coalition to insist thatthe Nuclear Weapon States make concrete progress towards fulfil their legallybinding commitment in the NPT to work towards complete nuclear disarmament.Later in 2005, at the High Level Plenary Meeting of the UN GeneralAssembly, Göran Persson, Swedish prime minister, complained about the lackof recent progress in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation. 31In the EU context, in early 2003 at a time of general European concern aboutthe destabilizing effects of proliferation, Sweden pushed for the Union todevelop its own, first-ever strategy on WMD. The initiative quickly led toguidelines and an Action Plan on the subject (adopted in June 2003) and, inDecember 2003, to a WMD strategy formally adopted by the European Council.32 These documents were, however, still of a moderate and pragmatic nature,skirting around the sensitive issues of disarmament. This may explain whySweden reverted in December 2003 to a unilateral initiative to establish theWMD Commission, which has nuclear disarmament as well as nonproliferationon its agenda. 33Norway generally shared the views of the Swedish Government concerningthe success of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. However, the NorwegianGovernment added an emphasis on the environment to the agenda of the conferencewhen Thorbjørn Jagland, Norwegian minister of foreign affairs, spokeabout Russia’s need for international assistance to secure radioactive waste andspent nuclear fuel, in particular that stored on the Kola Peninsula and in theArkhangelsk district. 34 Norway had already in 2000 taken steps towards negoti-30 Green Cross International was founded in 1992, at the suggestion of Mikhail Gorbachev, as a ‘RedCross of the environment’. It helps to deal with damage caused by industrial and military disasters andwith cleaning up contaminated sites from the cold war period.31 Swedish Government, ‘Statement by prime minister Göran Persson at the High Level Plenary Meetingof the UNGA’, 15 Sep. 2005, URL .32 See Council of the European Union, EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of MassDestruction, Brussels, 12–13 Dec. 2003, URL . The Action Planfor the Implementation of the Basic Principles for an EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons ofMass Destruction is included in the Basic Principles for an EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weaponsof Mass Destruction, agreed on 10 June 2003 by the Political and Security Committee of the EU, availableon the SIPRI website at URL .33 See note 13.34 Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Statement by Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, Minister of ForeignAffairs, NPT-Review Conference in New York’, 26 Apr. 2000, URL .