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By rejecting or ignoring a broad range of international treaties, the United States jeopardises efforts by other nations to create a strong international rule of law, says a report released Thursday by disarmament and human rights activists.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Washington has moved away from backing world-wide agreements and instead shifted toward greater reliance on military force, says the report, 'The Rule of Power or the Rule of Law? An Assessment of US Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties'.

"The United States is setting itself above the rules and rejecting the notion that treaties are instruments among equals, in which all parties give up something and get something," said Nicole Deller, an attorney and editor of the report. The document was prepared by two advocacy groups: the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP).

The report details evidence that it says shows US policy is drifting away from regarding treaties as an essential element in global security to a more opportunistic stand of abiding by treaties only when convenient. This strategy, it says, could backfire on the United States and further weaken the Bush administration's coalition in its so-called "war against terrorism".

"If the United States sets itself above the law, and bases itself on the rule of power instead, what's to stop other countries from doing the same?" said Deller.

The report says the Pentagon's new Nuclear Posture Review violates the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which bars almost all states in the world from acquiring nuclear weapons, and commits parties that possess the weapons to negotiate their elimination.

Nuclear targets

The nuclear review, leaked to the media in March, revealed Washington's contingency plan for using nuclear weapons against a range of countries, including some that do not have them. The plan suggested that nuclear weapons could be used under a variety of circumstances and it cited seven nations — China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and Syria — as possible targets.

The "variety of options for use of nuclear weapons, including by pre-emptive attack against non-nuclear weapon states, are contrary to a commitment to a 'diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policy' made less than two years ago," said John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based LCNP.

The Sept 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, he said, underscore the urgent need to marginalise nuclear weapons and intensify global cooperation on disarmament.

"Instead, the United States has adopted an irrational policy of elevating the role of nuclear weapons in its overall military strategy," said Burroughs.

The United States also appears to be flouting the CTBT, which bars all nuclear testing and explosions. The treaty was signed by former president Bill Clinton, but the Senate has vowed not to ratify the accord.

New laser devices

The report says the United States and France are each planning laboratory thermonuclear explosions in huge new laser devices. The devices would be used for experiments aimed at producing explosions of magnitudes greater than four pounds of TNT equivalent, a widely accepted limit of testing under the treaty, it says.

President George W Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in December, says the report, further created a dangerous slide away from the international rule of law. The action was the first formal unilateral withdrawal of a major power from a nuclear arms control treaty after it had been put into effect.

Bush has long argued the ABM treaty was a cold war relic that stood in the way of a needed national missile defence system. The administration's expensive plan for missile defence, estimated to cost about US$200 billion, includes air, sea, land, and space-based systems and the construction of a ground installation in Alaska — all of which violate provisions of the ABM treaty.

New arms race

China and Russia have argued that Bush's rejection of the treaty will spark a new arms race. The US intelligence community and congressional opponents to missile defence, including Carl Levin, chair of the Senate armed services committee, said the development and deployment of a national missile defence system would push China to rapidly expand its force of about two dozen inter-continental ballistic missiles into a massive arsenal. Critics worry that any move by Beijing to increase its strategic forces could spark an arms race in South and East Asia.

The report also chastises the United States for refusing to support the Mine Ban Treaty, which bars all anti-personnel landmines without exceptions, entered into force in March 1999.

Although Clinton was the first world leader to call for the "eventual elimination" of landmines, during the negotiations of the treaty, the administration demanded that certain types of anti-personnel mines be permitted, that Korea be exempted from the ban, and that an optional nine-year deferral period for compliance be established. But the US demands were rejected, and Washington declined to sign the treaty.

The United States possesses the third largest stockpile of anti-personnel mines in the world — more than 11 million — and stockpiles at least 1.7 million other mines in 12 countries that are party to the treaty, says the report.

It also warns that the United States is violating its commitments under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Washington ratified the agreement, which entered into force in 1994. President Bush, however, has rejected the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which was designed to be the first step toward specific binding limits and timetables for heat-trapping emissions.

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