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Ottawa -- Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy travelled to the United States yesterday to attack U.S. nuclear policy, saying the world's only superpower has a moral responsibility to lead the fight for disarmament.
Instead, he told a Boston audience, the United States is moving backward on a series of nuclear issues.
U.S. efforts to build a national missile defence system, Mr. Axworthy said, could threaten the international nuclear arms-control regime. Mr. Axworthy also chastised the U.S. Senate for its recent vote to shelve a nuclear test-ban treaty, and urged the Clinton administration to reverse course and support Canada's call for a review of NATO's nuclear war-fighting doctrine.
Canadians are greatly concerned that the United States is retreating from its traditional leadership role in the field of nuclear disarmament and arms control, he said in a speech to the United Nations Association of Boston.
"By far the greatest threat to our children -- indeed to all humanity -- remains the spectre of nuclear annihilation and the hazards posed by other weapons of mass destruction."
The speech is one of the Canadian government's most detailed policy statements on the threat of nuclear weapons since the Liberals were elected in 1993. Mr. Axworthy chose to give it to the American audience in Boston, and in condensed form later in the day in a lecture to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in nearby Medford, Mass.
Mr. Axworthy, who received an award from the UN Association for spearheading a global ban on land mines, said in an interview he thinks President Bill Clinton can still lead the international effort to reduce nuclear weapons despite the setback of the Senate vote.
"What we are saying is you're the leader of this thing. You are front and centre. Let's not let this thing drop off and go on to something else. Let's take the Senate vote as wakeup call, and let's really get back in gear."
For more than a year, Mr. Axworthy and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer have been trying to nudge the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization away from a reliance on nuclear weapons in alliance defence strategies.
Ottawa sources say the Senate vote last week to postpone ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has added urgency to Mr. Axworthy's efforts to not just advance the ball within NATO circles, but to try to shore up the endangered international nuclear arms control regime.
Ottawa is also watching with increased concern the diplomatic battle between Washington and Moscow about proposed U.S. revisions to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The ABM treaty has been "the cornerstone of strategic stability" and must be respected, Mr. Axworthy told the Boston audience.
He added that great care is needed to make sure U.S. deployment of a national missile defence system does not damage the web of arms-control agreements that has "underpinned nuclear restraint and allowed for nuclear reductions."
Both Russia and China have warned that U.S. deployment of such a system could set off a new nuclear arms race.
Two days of U.S.-Russian arms-reduction talks broke down in Moscow yesterday because of continued deadlock on the ABM treaty issue.
Washington appears to be stepping up efforts to amend the ABM treaty following the successful test firing of an interceptor missile over the Pacific three weeks ago. The interceptor tracked and shot down a high-altitude ballistic warhead, a technical feat that some defence analysts have described as hitting a bullet with a bullet.
The U.S. government has allocated billions of dollars for further research and development and may decide as early as next year that it has perfected a system that is ready to be deployed.
Mr. Axworthy has said in the past that deployment could have implications for Canada because the Pentagon wants to use NORAD -- the Canada-U.S. North American Aerospace Defence Command -- to control the missile defence system.
He said yesterday it is too early to say what Canada would do if the United States ever tried to deploy a national missile defence system over Russian objections.
Liberal policy has been ambivalent on nuclear weapons since the last U.S. warheads were removed from Canada during Pierre Trudeau's final administration, which ended in 1984. Official party policy calls for the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world. Yet the Liberals, in and out of power, have supported NATO's policy of keeping the option to be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.
Mr. Axworthy is now trying to wean NATO away from this Cold War-era "first-use" doctrine.