Can Nuclear-Free Zones be Enforceable?

From END Info 25 | July/August 2021 | download pdf

The following text is taken from Think Globally, Act Locally: The United Nations and the Peace Movements (Spokesman, 1988).

The Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina alleged in July 1982 that the United Kingdom was in breach of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America. This Treaty had been agreed in 1967, at Tlatelolco in Mexico, and was the first Treaty to establish a nuclear-free zone in a widely populated area. Previously, areas which had been declared to be free of nuclear weapons had included the Antarctic, Outer Space, and the Seabed. But Latin America was the first populated continent to forbid nuclear weapons anywhere in its region. A recent report by the United Nations summarises the provisions of this agreement:

“The basic obligation of the parties to the Treaty, defined in article 1, is to use exclusively for peaceful purposes the nuclear material and facilities under their jurisdiction, and to prohibit and prevent in their respective territories the very presence of nuclear weapons for any purpose and under any circumstances.

Parties to the Treaty also undertake to refrain from engaging in, encouraging or authorising, directly or indirectly, or in any way participating in the testing, use, manufacture, production, possession or control of any nuclear weapon”.1

The Treaty of Tlatelolco has given rise to an Enforcement Committee, charged with the task of considering any violations or alleged violations.

“OPANAL was set up in June 1969. Its control system includes safeguards to be negotiated with IAEA with respect to all the nuclear activities of the parties”.2

When Argentina appeared before this Committee, it was seconded by Panama.

The status of Argentina in relation to the Treaty is itself a little ambiguous. The Argentines had signed the Treaty in 1967, but they had not actually ratified it subsequently, which would have been necessary if it were to be fully applied. However, the Treaty covers to whole area of Latin America, together with extensive areas in the surrounding oceans. Article 4 defines its scope:

“Article 4. Zone of application

1. The zone of application of this Treaty is the whole of the territories for which the Treaty is in force.

2. Upon fulfilment of the requirements of article 28, paragraph 1, the zone of application of this Treaty shall also be that which is situated in the western hemisphere within the following limits (except the continental part of the territory of the United States of America and its territorial waters): starting at a point located at 35° north latitude. 75° west longitude: from this point directly southward to a point at 30° north latitude. 75° west longitude: from there, directly eastward to a point at 30° north latitude. 50° west longitude: from there, along a loxodromic line to a point at 5° north latitude. 20° west longitude: from there, directly southward to a point at 60° south latitude. 20° west longitude: from there, directly westward to a point at 60° south latitude. 115° west longitude: from there, directly northward to a point at 0 latitude. 115° west longitude: from there, along a loxodromic line to a point at 35° north latitude. 150° west longitude: from there, directly eastward to a point at 35° north latitude. 75° west longitude”.3

Britain had long previously endorsed the Treaty, by signing, in December 1967, the two protocols which were open to nuclear powers outside the region. These were “deposited” with the Government of Mexico two years later, thus activating all the procedures of the Treaty. One of the protocols involved states holding colonial territories in the area, and the other, nuclear states. They were devised in order to permit both colonial and nuclear powers to underwrite the non-nuclear status of the whole continent. But the British Government filed declarations reserving its position on certain matters within the province of the Treaty, which placed limits on its compliance.

“When signing and ratifying Additional Protocol I and Additional Protocol II, the United Kingdom made the following declarations of understanding:

In connection with Article 3 of the Treaty, defining the term ‘territory’ as including the territorial sea, airspace and any other space over which the state exercises sovereignty in accordance with ‘its own legislation’, the UK does not regard its signing or ratification of the Additional Protocols as implying recognition of any legislation which does not, in its view, comply with the relevant rules of international law.

The Treaty does not permit the parties to carry out explosions of nuclear devices for peaceful purposes unless and until advances in technology have made possible the development of devices for such explosions which are not capable of being used for weapon purposes.

The signing and ratification by the UK could not be regarded as affecting in any way the legal status of any territory for the international relations of which the UK is responsible, lying within the limits of the geographical zone established by the Treaty.

Should a party to the Treaty carry out any act of aggression with the support of a nuclear weapon state, the UK would be free to reconsider the extent to which it could be regarded as committed by the provisions of Additional Protocol II.

In addition, the UK declared that its undertaking under Article 3 of Additional Protocol II not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the parties to the Treaty extends also to territories in respect of which the undertaking under Article 1 of Additional Protocol I becomes effective”.4

The Argentine complaint of 1982 concerned the despatch of nuclear-powered submarines to the Falkland waters. It was, of course, a nuclear-powered submarine, the Conqueror, which sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano, an event which marked off the irreversible deterioration of this conflict into all-out war. It is a nice question whether the arrival of nuclear submarines in South American waters was in fact a breach of the Treaty. As we have seen, Article One insists that nuclear material and installations in the region are solely employed for peaceful purposes. It is arguable that a nuclear submarine engaged · in·- military action is not employing nuclear energy peacefully, even if it is not actually carrying nuclear explosives. Nonetheless, a “nuclear-weapon” in the meaning of the Treaty, is a device which can release nuclear energy “in an uncontrolled manner”. Article Five lays down this criterion. It explicitly exempts propulsion mechanisms from the definition of “weaponry”. No doubt because the Treaty is so specific, the Enforcement organisation did not feel able to take effective action on the original complaint. However, the Committee might have felt differently, had it been able to verify a report which appeared in the New Statesman two years later. This claimed to have hard evidence that a Polaris submarine had been sent to the South Atlantic.

“One well-placed political source has already revealed to Tam Dalyell that a Polaris submarine was sent to the South Atlantic. Dalyell was informed that the submarine went as far south as Ascension; the likely target for a threatened or demonstration nuclear attack was said to be Cordoba, northern Argentina. The nuclear threat might have been used if any of the task force’s capital ships - one of the carriers, or the troop ship Canberra - had been destroyed in a missile attack. The Polaris deployment was said to have been ordered in the wake of the sinking of HMS Sheffield, after ministers had to confront the possibility that Argentine air superiority and Exocet missiles could mean the military defeat of the British task force, and the rapid political extinction of the Thatcher government.

The New Statesman has been able to confirm that a Polaris submarine was indeed deployed to this position. Details of the deployment are given in a series of highly classified telegrams sent to the British Embassy in Washington”.5

Polaris, of course, is armed with what are undeniably nuclear weapons. If the New Statesman were able to authenticate their claim, then their evidence should certainly have been of interest to OPANAL, because, however distant Polaris remained from the Falkland zone, once it was redeployed in connection with the British task force, its weapons must have been trained against targets in the Treaty area.

Such claims may be difficult to substantiate. But they are not the only issues which should be considered by Tlatelolco’s enforcement committee. Other ships than submarines steamed South during the Falklands/Malvinas war. It remains a crucial question to determine how many of these were nuclear armed. One important witness was Lieut. David Tinker, who died during the conflict. His moving letters to his family were published in 1982, and this is what they said:

“One of our jobs out here is to transfer stores around between ships and yesterday I walked into the hangar and found a nuclear bomb there. I suppose if the USA and USSR have got 7,000 each, the chance of walking into one must be increased, but nevertheless I was rather surprised, and wondered if it was worth sheltering in the hangar any more. Of course, it turned out to be a drill round, full of concrete, that Fort Austin, now eventually going home, was taking back to England. I don’t really know why we brought any down here. Loosing one off really would evaporate support for us by the EEC and Third World. Anyway, at least this lump of concrete is going back.” 6

Tinker is not at all alone in offering this testimony. It is apparently standard practice to issue such drill rounds to ships which may be called upon to deploy real ones. But how widely distributed were real sea-born nuclear armaments, particularly depth charges, and were any of them sent southwards? There were various press reports that British ships routinely deploy nuclear depth charges while they are on patrol. The Times, on 3rd November 1982, made a categorical statement that some of these were taken South.

“Frigates had nuclear weapons

Some British ships in the South Atlantic during the Falklands campaign were carrying nuclear anti-submarine weapons (our

Defence Correspondent writes):

Whitehall sources said that some of the frigates which went to the Falklands had been involved in exercises in the Mediterranean, and would have been routinely carrying anti-submarine nuclear bombs. Because they were diverted directly to the South Atlantic there would have been no opportunity to offload the weapons.

There would certainly have been no intention to use them in the South Atlantic, and ships which sailed from Britain would not have taken any nuclear weapons with them.

These bombs or depth charges are designed to be dropped from helicopters against deep lying submarines, and they explode beneath the sea’s surface.

The fact that anti-submarine vessels carry nuclear depth charges has been an open secret for some time. It was being said yesterday that until the weapons were “armed” they were safe, and that the arming or fusing mechanisms were stored in separate parts of the ships from the bombs themselves.

It is likely that the Prime Minister will be closely questioned on this issue. Mrs Margaret Thatcher will also be questioned about the fact that the 16,000-ton supply ship, Fort Austin, was diverted to the South Atlantic, sailing from Gibraltar on March 29”.

Other sources have assumed that the redirection of British naval forces towards the South left them with no opportunity to divest themselves of nuclear depth charges before they went off to fight the Argentinians.

HMS Sheffield, which was sunk, took down, it was claimed, an entire cargo of such nuclear depth charges. A preliminary account of this appeared in the Latin America Weekly Report, on 12th November 1982:

“Another diplomatic storm is blowing up from the South Atlantic following claims that the British task force was carrying nuclear weapons during the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, in violation of the Tlatelolco treaty. The British government is refusing to respond to these accusations, claiming that any disclosures about its deployment of nuclear arms would run counter to national security interest.

According to defence experts in London, many of the British frigates and destroyers diverted to the area at the beginning of April would have been carrying tactical nuclear weapons designed for anti-submarine warfare. Nuclear depth charges are routinely carried by British warships on operations patrol in such areas as the North Atlantic, they say, and a large part of the fleet had no opportunity to offload any lethal weaponry before sailing for the South Atlantic.

A former naval secretary in the Thatcher government, Keith Speed, has cast doubt on the theory that the task force would have discharged its nuclear weapons at Ascension Island. Interviewed by BBC television this week, he said that he would have been surprised had the British force not carried nuclear arms to the Falklands.

Other defence sources say that the first effort was made to take the weapons out of the area after the sinking of the General Belgrano and the beginning of the ‘shooting war’. This task was undertaken by an auxiliary support vessel, the Fort Austin which was close to HMS Sheffield when the destroyer was crippled by an Exocet missile.

It has been claimed that the Sheffield still had nuclear depth charges on board when it was hit, and that the British force spent the next three days attempting to remove them. The ship went down with a number still on board. These had to be recovered by naval divers.

The Fort Austin, meanwhile, is at the centre of another mystery surrounding the conflict. It has been established that the supply vessel sailed for the South Atlantic on 28 March, several days before the British Prime Minister claims she had any knowledge of the impending Argentine invasion of the islands”.

Further allegations of the same kind have been made by Tam Dalyell:

“ ... on March 29, ships and RFA vessels on Exercise Springtrain were ordered south ... a number of those vessels carried nuclear weapons.

... some of the ships left Portsmouth in early April carrying nuclear weapons. ... there was a row of gargantuan proportions about this in parts of Whitehall, as a result of which some, though not all, of the nuclear weapons were offloaded from the ships when they were at sea, before they got to the western approaches ... the Stenor Inspector and the Stenor Seasearch have been trying to retrieve nuclear devices from the tombs of HMS Sheffield and HMS Coventry.

... there is also the problem of lost nuclear depth charges from two lost Sea King mark 4 and two lost Sea King mark 5 helicopters

... the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr Speed), the former Navy Minister, who lost his post, opined on News Night that he would be most surprised if the fleet were not carrying nuclear weapons”.7

This account was also supported by an extensive account in the New Statesman which said:

“The Navy has its own, relatively small stock of nuclear depth bombs. For some time after the Falklands War, they were not allowed to take them to sea. Ministers had belatedly discovered that the admirals had sent three quarters of the total British naval nuclear stockpile towards the South Atlantic battle zone.

In peacetime, nuclear depth bombs are only allowed on board attack carriers (like HMS Hennes and HMS Invincible) and certain anti-submarine frigates. As all of the available ships in these classes set off for the Falklands in 1982, the ‘War Cabinet’ - the Oversea and Defence committee (South Atlantic) - were warned that most of the Navy’s nuclear weapons would soon cross the equator”.8

This was not the only claim in the Statesman piece, to which we shall return shortly.

At this point in the argument, what can be said about the case of the Sheffield? The HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile on May 4th. “She caught fire, and the crew abandoned ship”, reported The Times next morning.

“A massive pall of smoke appeared on the horizon as Sea King helicopters ferried casualties back to the flagship carrier HMS Hennes. The Sheffield, about 15 miles away, was completely blotted out by the smoke which formed a solid column from the sea to the clouds.

As fire raged in the Sheffield a call was put out for hoses and pumping equipment to be dropped by helicopter. A frigate went alongside to help tackle the fires but three hours later it was decided to give the order to abandon ship because of the danger of a possible explosion of the Sheffields own Sea Dart missiles ... The Sheffield was still drifting and on fire last night. She is thought to be the first British warship to be lost in battle since the Second World War (Henry Stanhope writes)”.

In fact, at the time Sheffield sank, she was not “drifting” but under tow, as Mr Frank Allaun elicited from Mr Blaker in a parliamentary question on 23rd July 1982:

“Mr Frank Allaun asked the Secretary of State for Defence how HMS Sheffield was sunk; and if he will make a statement.

Mr Blaker: HMS Sheffield sank under tow in heavy weather because sea water entered the hole in her side caused by the

Argentine missile which struck her. To clarify any possible misunderstanding, I can state that there has never been any incident involving a British nuclear weapon leading to its loss or to the dispersal of radioactive contamination”.

Was Mr Blaker admitting that the ship carried nuclear weapons which were not “lost” during the dying agony while the wreck was under tow? And why was the ship under tow after the order had been given to “abandon ship” for fear of exploding missiles? What, furthermore, of Mr Dalyell’s charge that some of the weapons which sank with their ship were nuclear ones, for which the Stenor ships were later chartered to fish? These were the subject of another parliamentary question from Mr Frank Allaun, on 18th October 1982.

“Mr Frank Allaun asked the Secretary of State for Defence why two oil-fired underwater recovery vessels have been chartered to deal with HMS Sheffield.

Mr Blaker: No underwater recovery vessels have been chartered to deal with HMS Sheffield.

Mr Frank Allaun asked the Secretary of State for Defence, further to his reply to the hon. Member for Salford, East on 23 July, Official Report, c.340, if HMS Sheffield carried nuclear weapons.

Mr Blaker: It would not be in the interests of national security to depart from the long-standing practice, observed by successive Governments, neither to confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons in particular locations at given times”.

Here we may see one of the great principles of Government equivocation at work: never lie if you can help it, but don’t hasten to tell the truth. The Stenor ships were not “underwater recovery vessels”, although at least one of them, the Seaspread, did carry a diving bell, as we were to learn on 1st September 1983 when Petty Officer Michael Harrison received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, as The Times told us, for “possibly the most dangerous task ever undertaken by a Royal Navy diving team”.

“The medal was won while divers were recovering classified documents and equipment from ships sunk during the Falklands campaign last year. The nature of the material recovered has not been specified but it is thought to have included top secret code books and cryptographic equipment.

The citation says that ‘though working in extremely unpleasant, hazardous and dark conditions, and despite becoming entangled on two separate occasions with hanging debris, Harrison persevered with the task, putting himself at grave personal risk’.

The action was in depths of more than 300 feet, and was carried out by a team of 27 naval divers.

The operation was conducted from a chartered vessel, the 7,000 ton Stena Seaspread. It involved using a diving bell to carry the divers down.

The divers left the diving bell but remained connected to it, while searching for the documents and equipment in the sunken ships.

It is believed that much of the activity centred on Coventry which sank north of the Falklands.

The recovery of the material has been regarded as a sensitive matter by the Royal Navy, not only because it was highly classified, but also because ships lost off the Falklands have been designated war graves”.

Subsequently some doubt has been expressed about the role of the Stenor ships. Basing himself, no doubt, on this report, Duncan Campbell claimed in the New Statesman report to which we have already referred that they were in fact sent to retrieve cryptographic equipment and code books, not nuclear weapons.

“There were thus no tactical nuclear weapons on board the surface ships sent south to the Falklands. The deep-diving vessel sent to recover ‘equipment’ from the sunken wreck of HMS Coventry -widely suspected at the time to have been an attempt to recover lost nuclear weapons - was in fact attempting to retrieve top secret cryptographic equipment and codebooks which the destroyer’s captain had not had time to destroy. Type 42 destroyers, like Coventry, do not carry nuclear weapons in peacetime”.9

Perhaps this may be true of the diving recovery work on the wreck of the Coventry: but are we expected to believe this of the Sheffield, which was under tow when it went down?

If they were not incinerated, why could the code books and machines not have been retrieved during these operations?

As Mr Dalyell asked at the time, it would be interesting to establish

“whether our security services let our American allies know in advance that we British were taking nuclear weapons into their hemisphere against protocol 1 of the Treaty of Tlatelolco of which ~both Britain and the Americans are signatories. The related question is, what do we now say as British people to the non-aligned nations which, meeting in Delhi, asked us to remove nuclear weapons from land and sea areas around the Falklands? It is all very well to say that we would never have used nuclear weapons. That seems to be the received wisdom. However, can we be quite sure? Let us suppose, heaven help us, that Invincible, Hennes or Canberra, hit by a torpedo which actually exploded, had gone down with a loss of life comparable to the sinking of the Belgrano. There might have been an irresistable demand, in a losing situation, to go ahead - as was, indeed, discussed in certain quarters - to bomb granaries and airports in Argentina. Those who have nuclear weapons in desperate situations may be tempted not to be too choosy about how they use them. The whole operation was a hideous gamble, with no long-term prize for this country”.10

On June 3rd 1983, I wrote to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on some of these questions:11

Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary-General, United Nations New York, USA

Dear Secretary General,

For some time now British public opinion has been disturbed by questions about the conduct of the Falklands War, and in particular by a serious controversy about the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser Belgrano.

The charges against Mrs Thatcher have been tersely summarised in an ‘information sheet’ (number 11) published by Ecoropa under the title Falklands War: The Disturbing Truth. There are two main counts in this indictment:

1. The cruiser Belgrano was sunk ‘so as to make peace impossible’ even while an agreement for Argentine withdrawal from the islands was reaching its final stages.

2. That nuclear weapons were taken to the South Atlantic.

These matters are very grave and they surely merit a special enquiry in Britain. I shall certainly give all support to the demand for this enquiry if I am elected to the House of Commons on June 9th.

But these matters do not only affect the people of the United Kingdom. Both raise profound international questions.

The first charge, of sabotaging peace talks by sinking the Belgrano, amounts to an accusation that Mrs Thatcher or her agents breached the Nuremburg Principles of 1946, which provide the most authoritative summary of the decisions of the post-war War Crimes Tribunal. This Tribunal received unanimous endorsement for its findings at the General Assembly of the United Nations (see Resolution 95-i). The precise infraction alleged against Mrs Thatcher or her agents is covered in Principle VI as a ‘crime against peace’, qualified in Article a(i) as ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war ... in violation of international ... agreements or assurances’. It will be remembered that UN Resolution 502 demanded ‘immediate cessation of hostilities’ and withdrawal of Argentine forces, and called for a ‘diplomatic solution’ respecting the UN Charter.

The second charge of sending nuclear weapons into the war zone, alleges a direct breach of the terms of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, under which Britain recognises the status of Latin America as a nuclear-free zone.

Can you advise us about how these issues could be properly investigated? We are particularly concerned about the enforcement of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, since we have been active in encouraging the proposal to create a nuclear-free zone in Europe. Clearly, the possible breach of the Latin American nuclear-free zone raises major questions. Disregard of nuclear-free zone arrangements would, if it were to go unopposed, totally negate the intentions of the UN Special Session on Disarmament, which commended such zones as an important confidence building measure.

At the same time, the legal implications of the sinking of the Belgrano are also deeply serious. There would be no ‘crime against peace’ if there had been no UN Resolution 502, and if diplomatic approaches had been spurned on all or either sides. The armed forces on both sides were in no position to know about the extent of diplomatic progress. It is unlikely that the diplomats could expect to have detailed knowledge about military dispositions. Only at the point where decisions could be taken, weighing together both diplomatic and military issues, is there any possibility of a ‘crime against peace’. For this reason, it seems to me that the United Nations is the only relevant body to investigate this issue.

With great respect,

Yours sincerely,

Ken Coates

On 26th August 1983, I received a reply from Mr Richard Wathen:

Dear Mr Coates,

I should like to refer to your letter of 3 June 1983, addressed to the Secretary General concerning matters pertaining to the conduct of the Falklands War.

We have carefully analysed the two issues you have raised in your letter which are of undoubted importance. The alleged introduction of nuclear weapons into the South Atlantic Zone has been the object of a resolution by the General Conference of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America (we are attaching a copy in Spanish, the only language available at this time). This Organisation might in fact be competent also to initiate an investigation on this matter.

As far as the United Nations is concerned, any investigation would have to follow the adoption of a resolution by one of the two political organs of the Organisation already seized of the question of the Falklands (Malvinas), namely the General Assembly or the Security Council. Such resolution would have to be sponsored by one or more member states.

Yours sincerely,

Richard W. Wathen, Principal Officer,

Department of Political Affairs,

Trusteeship and Decolonisation.

ORGANISATION FOR THE PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR ARMS IN LATIN AMERICA

GENERAL CONFERENCE

Eighth (Ordinary) Period of Sessions

Item 18 on the Agenda

KINGSTON, JAMAICA: 16-19 May 1983

CG/RES.170 (VIII) 18 May 1983

Resolution l 70(VIII) - Reports of the introduction of nuclear arms by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the zone and areas of the Islas Malvinas, Georgias Del Sur and Sandwich Del Sur.

The General Conference,

Considering that the governments signatory to the Treaty of Tlatelolco have categorically expressed their determination that

nuclear energy be used in Latin America exclusively for peaceful purposes and, to this end, reaffirmed their sovereign decision to establish a military de-nuclearised zone in order to keep their territories free, forever, of nuclear armaments:

Considering that the Argentinian Republic has denounced at various international gatherings the presence of nuclear weaponry aboard vessels of the British naval forces which operated in areas within the geographical zone designated by Paragraph 2 of Article 4 of the Treaty in connection with the conflict in the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and the South Georgias and South Sandwich Islands, pointing out in the light of this event the significance of countries in possession of nuclear weapons engaging in operations in which nuclear energy is put to non-peaceful uses:

Considering that spokesmen for the government of the United Kingdom have on several occasions declared that it would be inconvenient, for reasons of national security, to abandon the established practice, observed by successive governments, of neither confirming nor denying the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at a specific place and a given time;

Considering that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has made the declaration which appears in the document S/Inf. 261 of 11 May 1983;

Having regard to the fact that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Nuclear Arms in Latin America (OPANAL) has a duty to supervise compliance with the obligations laid down by the Treaty of Tlatelolco;

Reaffaming the need for a balance of responsibilities and obligations affecting states which possess nuclear arms and those which do not possess them;

Resolves:

1. To note with concern the complaint formulated by the Argentinian Republic concerning the introduction of nuclear arms, by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, into areas included in the geographical zone designated in Paragraph 2 of Article 4 of the Treaty of Tlatelolco.

2 To take note of the declaration by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to which the fourth Considering paragraph of this Resolution refers, and which states in its leading paragraphs: “The Government of the United Kingdom has scrupulously complied with its obligations under Additional Protocol I to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Arms in Latin America and has not deployed nuclear weapons in areas for which, de jure or de facto, it is internationally responsible and which are located within the limits of the geographical zone established in the said Treaty. Moreover, the Government has scrupulously complied with its obligations under Additional Protocol II to the Treaty and has not deployed nuclear weapons in areas where the Treaty is in force”.

3. To take note of the important presentations and declarations formulated by the Delegations of Argentina and the United Kingdom at this General Conference.

4. To express its concern at the fact that in areas within the geographical zone designated by Paragraph 2 of Article 4 of the Treaty, submarines powered by nuclear energy should have been employed in warlike actions.

5. To exhort all States in respect of which the Treaty and its Additional Protocols are not in force, to take the necessary steps in accordance with Article 28 to complete the process of military de-nuclearisation in the relevant zone defined by Paragraph 2 of Article 4 of the Treaty itself.

6. To reaffirm the commitment of all States linked by the Treaty of Tlatelolco and its Additional Protocols, to refrain from carrying out all actions which might endanger the status of military denuclearisation of Latin America and to recommend that the Council of the Organisation closely supervise its strict enforcement.

7. To communicate to the General Assembly of the United Nations in its 38th Period of Sessions, and to the Disarmament Committee, the text of the present Resolution, together with the declarations made on the subject in the course of this Conference.

(Approved in the Forty-ninth Session, held on 19 May 1983).

Translated from the Spanish by Mike Mullan.

In order to understand the significance of the British Government’s statement summarised in the second point of this Resolution, we need to remind ourselves of the two distinct commitments which arise, not only under Protocol I, to which Tam Dalyell referred in his complaint, but also under Protocol II of the Treaty. Protocol I implies the exclusi