Counter-Proliferation and Counter-Terrorism: Two Major Challenges for the G-8

By Victor Comras

This year�s G-8 summit, which began this evening at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland, certainly has a full agenda of major international issues. They will discuss global warming, debt relief and aid for Africa, and a plethora of international trade and economic issues. Also on their agenda is �counter-proliferation.� That�s a new term for the G-8 which had previously always been careful to use �non proliferation� as its term of art. Sir Michael Jay�s introduced the new terminology in his July 4th Summit pre-brief. At the time it didn�t seem to raise any eyebrows. But, maybe it should. For �counter-proliferation� certainly connotes a more aggressive tone than the earlier G-8 references to �non-proliferation or �rolling back proliferation.� And Sir Michael Jay intimated that �counter-proliferation� would likely take up a good part of the G-8�s Thursday afternoon security and foreign policy discussions. A draft statement on �counter-proliferation� is apparently already being circulated. Counter-terrorism will also be discussed on Thursday. But no one really expects any new counter-terrorism initiatives will emerge from this summit. Better that they reflect on how to enhance progress re their previous initiatives. (see my April 20 Blog G-7 and Terrorism Financing: Looking Toward Gleneagles )

The election of a hardliner in Iran, the stalemated six party talks with North Korea, and the failure of the NPT Review Conference in New York provide a challenging predicate for the �counter-proliferation� discussions. President Bush has already called on his colleagues to follow his lead (June 29th Executive Order) and join in imposing trade and financial sanctions against companies and countries which supply and support Nuclear Weapons proliferation. The G-8 is also likely to express support for strengthening national and multilateral export controls on sensitive goods, technology and expertise; adoption of more intrusive IAEA nuclear facility inspection programs; increased cooperation on threat reduction through controlled WMD disposal; and a reinvigorated Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to help prevent trafficking in WMD and related technology.

When it comes to counter-terrorism, we should expect more of the same. The G-8 will likely tout the progress made in aggressively pursuing terrorists and curtailing terrorism financing. They will call for the adoption of a comprehensive convention on combating terrorism and for adoption of an internationally agreed definition of terrorism. But they must also be cognizant that this struggle against terrorism is far from over and far from being won. Much more needs to be done to garner international cooperation and to strengthen the imposition of internationally agreed measures against terrorists and their financiers. Let�s hope they have some real progress to report in implementing their previous initiatives such as SAFTI and CTAG.

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