SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNITED NATIONS
AUSTRALIA AND A WORLD WITHOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, 24 OCTOBER 1995

Thank you for coming today to this commemoration of the 50th anniversary of
the signing of the Charter of the United Nations.
I want to give particular thanks to the members of Australia's National
Committee for the 50th Anniversary and to its co-chairs, Gareth Evans and
Roger Shipton.
The Committee encouraged debate about how the United Nations should
respond to the challenges of the next century. It has played a great role as a
catalyst, encouraging a very wide range of organisations to create their own
anniversary activities. And in a particularly appropriate focus, it has
encouraged the involvement of youth in these discussions. We have a vivid
illustration of that in the postcards from primary schools all over the country
which are displayed around the room.
As we have seen again over the past few days, this 50th anniversary has
already generated another round of critical debate about the role and
functions of the United Nations. Practically everyone, it seems, has a view of
how the UN could operate more effectively, or cost less, or do more, or do
less.
This is no bad thing when an organisation matters as much as the United
Nations does. I've done it myself. And no doubt I will do it again. But not
today. Or not much, anyway.
Because on its 50th birthday the UIN is entitled to a bit of a celebration, a
reminder to us all of what it has done in that half century to build a more
humane, enlightened, tolerant and secure world.
And Australians, especially, should join in the celebrations. Because through
all the ups and downs of those fifty years, the UN has had few better friends
than this country.
When the Secretary General, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, visited Australia in
April to take part in our conference on global cultural diversity he said to me

that he judged countries not so much by their size and GDP as by their ideas
and commitment.
In financial terms, Australia is the thirteenth largest contributor to the United
Nations. We pay our dues on time and in full. But I think that by the
Secretary General's measure we have been even more important to the
organisati on.
We were there at the beginning of course.
Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, was instrumental in drawing up the Charter. He
battled long and hard to ensure that the voice of the smaller nations would be
heard in its deliberations.
And the great feminist pioneer Jessie Street, the only woman in the
Australian delegation to the 1945 San Francisco Conference, helped to
secure in the preamble to the Charter a reference to equality between men
and women the only human right explicitly so mentioned.
Fifty years on, most of you in this room are here because in one way or
another you have been carrying on the work of those Australian pioneers.
And many other Australians have been there before you.
Australians were the first peacekeepers to serve under United Nations
auspices when we sent military observers to Indonesia in 1947 during the
independence struggle. Since then, Australian military and police personnel
have served with great courage and distinction in Europe, Asia, Africa, the
Middle East and the Caribbean.
Australians have a distinguished record as aid workers, as diplomats working
on disarmament, as health experts dealing with smallpox or AIDS.
The Australian government and ordinary Australians have been able to
contribute, including through one of the world's largest humanitarian
resettlement programs, to the wonderful work of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, in providing help and sanctuary to the millions of people who have
been forced from their homes by conflict and disaster over the past fifty
years. Australians have played a prominent role in the system of human rights
protection created under the UN's auspices. Eminent Australians, including
people such as Phillip Alston and Elizabeth Evatt, have served in their
personal capacity on the expert committees which monitor implementation of
the core human rights treaties.
Part of the reason for holding this reception today is publicly to thank all of
you and your predecessors for your service to the interests of this country
and the international community through the United Nations.

But another reason for this gathering today is to thank the United Nations for
what it has done for Australia.
Because the United Nations has given us a forum where nations can resolve
differences in an environment bounded by agreed rules and norms. It has
provided a space in which the challenges facing humanity can be discussed
and our experiences shared.
For all its faults and imperfections, it is impossible to imagine a world without
it without international forums for the discussion of human rights, setting
universal standards, and developing measures to prevent human rights
abuse. A world without bodies to address issues like the status of women
and racial discrimination or to give voice to the aspirations of indigenous
peoples.
A world without the capacity to negotiate the pressing trans-national
challenges of the environment or to tackle the most difficult problems of
economic development.
But in addition to these large issues the United Nations also affects for the
better the lives of ordinary Australians through the web of international
agreements which have been negotiated under its auspices. These cover
issues as diverse as weather monitoring and prediction through the World
Meteorological Organisation; improved labour standards and protection of
workers' rights through the International Labor Organisation; safety standards
in civil aviation and maritime transport; the placement of satellites and even
the transfer of mail between countries.
But for all the good work which the UN does in such areas, its ultimate
success or failure will have to be judged by the impact it has on international
security. Because above all else, the people who drafted the Charter 50 years ago,
who had just experienced a global conflict the most destructive in all of
human history were motivated by the desire to rid the world of the scourge
of war. But their hopes were almost immediately crushed with the coming of
the cold war. For the first time, the international community had to
contemplate the possibility that another world war would destroy our
civilisation.
The UN system has a great responsibility to help the world avoid such a
catastrophe. The disarmament goals of the international community are set
in resolutions adopted by the General Assembly.
The vital international treaties to turn these goals into reality are negotiated in
the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. And the ultimate recourse for
enforcing compliance with international disarmament obligations lies with the
UN Security Council, as we have seen in the Council's actions on Iraq and
North Korea.

This central role of the United Nations makes today's occasion an appropriate
one to make a major announcement about Australia's arms control and
disarmament policy.
In all the debate and anger over the past months about the French
Government's decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific, there is
one point which consistently recurs in our thinking about the issue.
I have made that point publicly. It is that, however strong our opposition to
them, those tests at Mururoa, and China's continued testing, are not
themselves the core of the problem. They are instead a symptom of the
problem the deeper and more troubling problem of nuclear weapons in the
world. The reason we have seen such a huge outpouring of public concern about
the French tests, not only in this region where they are being held, but also in
Europe and Japan and elsewhere, has been a feeling that we have been
cheated robbed of the chance of a world free of nuclear weapons.
With the end of the cold war, we all breathed more easily. We allowed
ourselves to think that the nuclear threat, the nightmare of two generations,
had finally passed. The thought of nuclear weapons and nuclear war faded
from our minds.
But the reality has not faded. Fifty thousand nuclear war heads remain in the
arsenals of the five declared nuclear powers. And it is no less real and
frightening that others not just the so-called threshold states of India,
Pakistan and Israel, but others like Iraq wait and work to acquire nuclear
weapons. The French decision to resume testing announced within weeks of the
indefinite renewal of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was an outrage
and a folly. It has produced an entirely understandable wave of anger around
the world. But we may yet be able to derive something positive from it
because it has jolted us back to the reality of nuclear weapons in the world.
I now feel a growing certainty that some great good might yet be got out of
the present bitterness if we make this the moment to take on the challenge of
nuclear weapons.
I believe we can turn the global outrage at French and Chinese testing into
something broader and more ambitious I mean the creation of a world totally
free of nuclear weapons.
This has often been talked about in the past, of course. It is a goal which has
been forcefully articulated by Professor Joseph Rotblat, who won this year's
Nobel Peace Prize. It has long been an aim of Australian policy.
However, to most people, including me, it has always seemed an
unachievable ambition, at least in our own lifetimes.

The strategic uncertainties and deep political suspicions of the cold war
would surely have made this goal impossible.
But that world has now changed.
We still have conflict, of course. We still have competing national interests.
But the strategic framework in which nations operate has changed profoundly
and I believe it is now possible to contemplate getting a concrete program to
achieve a nuclear weapons free world.
Because the truth is that the sort of world we now have, with nuclear powers
committed to reducing their arsenals and unlikely to use their weapons
offensively, will not continue forever. We can be certain of this.
Unless we take action now, the nuclear competition that characterised most
of the second half of this century will very likely return and probably in a
much more unstable and multipolar form.
The world must extricate itself from the circular argument that we need
nuclear weapons because we have nuclear weapons.
The nuclear powers cannot be excluded from this: they must understand that
the most likely threats to their security lie in the proliferation of nuclear
weapons. This is a point we have made often about the French tests and the way they
cut across the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the most important arms
control treaty ever negotiated within the UN system.
I notice that former French President Giscard D'Estaing made a similar point
in an article in the French press on 12 October. He said that " the increase in
the number of states, be they big or small, who manage to develop nuclear
weapons, now constitutes for France a threat just as serious, if not more
serious, than that of a strategic strike decided by one of the rare countries
with nuclear weaponry."
I believe that a world free of nuclear weapons is now attainable. It can be
done and it will be in the best security interests of Australia and our allies and
friends if we do it.
As we saw in the Gulf War, new technology has given weaponry an accuracy
that substitutes precision for brute explosive force, and with far less risk to
civilians than those from nuclear weapons.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have also seen how real is the
potential for catastrophic nuclear accidents.
The Government believes the time has come for more determined movement
towards the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

There is no magic wand we can wave to make this happen. As with the long
negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament to get rid of chemical
weapons, ultimate success may be decades away. And getting there
involves security issues of the greatest complexity and profundity. We do not
minimise the difficulties or the dangers.
Success depends ultimately on having the will as well as the ambition. The
Chemical Weapons Convention, endorsed by the UN General Assembly in
1992, has shown that where there is a will there is a way to put the genie
back in the bottle. We proved it was possible to rid the world of a whole class
of weapons of mass destruction. And the verification problems for a total ban
on nuclear weapons should be easier to solve than those for a ban on
chemical weapons.
A key building block for a nuclear weapons-free world is already in place with
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, article VI of which commits the nuclear
weapon states to " pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures
relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament". But this generalised statement of principle is not nearly enough.
What we need now is action to achieve the abolition of all nuclear weapons.
These are the next steps the Government has in mind.
In our own region we want an end to nuclear testing by France and the
closure of the Mururoa test site.
For nearly 50 years since the beginning of the nuclear weapons era the
Pacific has been used as a testing ground. The Americans began testing in
the Pacific in 1946 and continued until 1962; the British tested in Australia
from 1952 until 1963; and the French are still testing in French Polynesia.
In 1983 the Australian Government set the objective of ridding the region of
testing and began its campaign to declare a South Pacific Nuclear Free
Zone. With the announcement on 20 October by France, the United
Kingdom and the United States that they would sign the protocols of the
South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty in the first half of 1996, we can say
that we are on the point of achieving our objective and ending a dark period
of the region's history.
The Government's deep regret, of course, is that France is not drawing the
logical conclusion from its intention to sign the SPNFZ protocols and ending
its tests now as we urge it to do.
We also want the nuclear weapons states to support the African Nuclear
Weapon Free Zone Treaty, which is being presented to the current session of
the General Assembly, as well as the South East Asian Nuclear Weapon
Free Zone which is nearing completion.

We believe that progress towards a nuclear weapons free world would be
given a major boost through the creation of linkages between existing or
potential nuclear weapons free zones in the South Pacific. Latin American.
Africa and the Indian Ocean which already cover most of the southern
hemisphere. Globally, the most immediate priority has to be the conclusion of a genuinely
comprehensive test ban treaty by mid-1996, followed by its early entry into
force. Australia, together with Mexico and New Zealand, is presenting a
resolution to the current session of the General Assembly to entrench this
deadline. In Geneva, Australia has been consulting closely with key countries on ways
to expedite the CTBT negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament to take
advantage of this opportunity. Over the next few months the Government will
be devoting substantial resources as we did for the Chemical Weapons
Convention to doing what we can to help bring this about.
Next, we want to see the immediate start and early conclusion of negotiations
on a convention to ban the production of fissile material for weapons
purposes the so-called " cut-off" convention. And we want to see the
development of a regime requiring all states to declare and account for their
present stocks of fissile material, as another necessary prelude to the
elimination of nuclear weapons.
We want to encourage the further strengthening of international safeguards,
in particular by building up the International Atomic Energy Agency's ability to
detect illegal undeclared nuclear facilities.
We want universal membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
particularly by the nuclear threshold states of India, Israel and Pakistan.
But as I said earlier, Australia is determined to pursue the complete
elimination of nuclear weapons.
We want the nuclear weapons states to carry out their commitment to the
elimination of their nuclear stockpiles by adopting a systematic process to
achieve that result.
The next steps towards this are the adherence by the United States and
Russia to the destruction timetable under START, and further nuclear
reduction agreements between the United States and Russia, with the
earliest possible involvement of the United Kingdom, France and China.
We acknowledge the need as we always have, for a system of stable
deterrence to be maintained while the reduction and eventual elimination of
nuclear weapons is being achieved.

All these elements constitute a program which will set norms for international
behaviour, establish new international legal obligations and further develop
international control mechanisms which will serve as an essential framework
for the safe and secure elimination of nuclear weapons.
I am writing to other heads of government who share Australia's concerns,
suggesting that we look at the means by which we can advance the cause of
a nuclear-weapons free world. I hope a new coalition of international
interests will emerge from these consultations.
As its contribution to this, the Government will establish a group of
knowledgeable and imaginative individuals from around the world. In a major
series of meetings in Australia, this group will be tasked to produce a report
to be submitted to the next United Nations General Assembly and to the
Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
The group will examine the problems of security in a nuclear weapons-free
world and suggest practical steps towards the goal, including the ways of
dealing with stability and security in the transitional period.
Next week, the International Court of Justice will be hearing a case referred
to it by the UN General Assembly, asking it to give an advisory judgement on
the legality of the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. We believe, and
will argue before the Court, that it would be best for the Court not to make a
judgement the legqality of nuclear weapons is a different matter, of course,
from their utility or strategic value or even their morality.
A judgement by the Court that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is
gal, even if only in some limited circumstances, runs the profound risk of
achieving precisely the opposite of what those seeking the Court's opinions
want namely the encouragement of others who want to join the nuclear club.
Even a judgment that nuclear weapons use or threat is illegal unless very
carefully framed to deal with how that conclusion might be put into practical
effect would likely be ignored by the nuclear powers and, as a result, serve
no purpose other than to weaken the standing of the Court itself.
The Government has now decided, however, that Australia will also argue to
the court that if, despite the good reasons for not making a decision, the court
is minded to make a decision in the case, it should decide in favour of the
illegality of those weapons. The Foreign Minister, Senator Evans, will travel
to The Hague to present this case on the Government's behalf on
October. We are not naive about our role in this enterprise to make the world free of
nuclear weapons. We are a nation of only medium size and weight in the
world, and we are not a nuclear power.

On the other hand, we are skilled at multilateral diplomacy and have
demonstrated on issues like the peace process in Cambodia and APEC and
the Chemical Weapons Convention and the protection of Antarctica as a
wilderness reserve and the campaign against apartheid, that we have the
energy and ideas and the capacity to create coalitions with others, to make a
real difference in the world.
With the same energy we gave to those projects we will now commit
ourselves to the goal of a nuclear free world.
Reflecting on the history of nuclear strategy, the American writer Fred Kaplan
says that nuclear strategies were contrived to disguise the real nature of the
nuclear bomb. It is in fact, he writes, " a device of sheer mayhem, a weapon
whose cataclysmic powers no-one really had the faintest idea of how to
control. The nuclear strategists had come to impose order but in the end
chaos still prevailed."
The world has a chance just now to find a way out of the chaos. The chance
will not last long. We can help the world to grasp it, even show the way.
At the beginning of the United Nations' second fifty years, there could be no
better way for us to show our commitment to the ideals which motivated the
men and women who drew up the Charter than by working, like them, to turn
a coalition of noble ideas into a concrete and enduring reality.

READ MORE:

https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-9808

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AND PLEASE DO NOT BLAME THE RUSSIANS: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171 

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Back in February, France's Defense Ministry announced an ambitious deal with Indonesia that would see Jakarta purchase 42 Rafale fighter jets for an estimated $8.1 billion, along with a spate of separate agreements pertaining to submarine development and ammunition.

Indonesia is set to become one of France’s biggest arms clients in the Indo-Pacific region, as French President Emmanuel Macron was reported as touting boosted cooperation with Jakarta on everything from warplanes to submarines on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bangkok on November 17. 

The French president was referring to a series of arms purchase agreements struck between Paris and Jakarta earlier in the year. In February, the two countries agreed a deal worth $8.1 billion for Jakarta to acquire 42 Rafale fighter jets, produced by Dassault Aviation. Indonesia was also to order two Scorpnene-class submarines. The diesel-electric attack vessels are developed jointly by the French Naval Group and the Spanish company Navantia. Other agreements between the countries pertained to satellite procurement and ammunition production.

The issue of submarines is particularly sensitive for France after the humiliating loss of a multi-billion dollar deal for the vessels last year in the wake of the announcement of a trilateral defense partnership called AUKUS in September 2021 by Australia, the US, and the UK. At the time, the first initiative announced under the AUKUS pact was the creation of nuclear-powered submarine technology for the Royal Australian Navy, which prompted the Australian government to scrap a $66 billion agreement with France's Naval Group company for the construction of diesel-electric submarines. 

At the time, Paris slammed the move as "backstabbing." Australia eventually agreed on a generous compensation deal worth 555 million euros ($584 million) with French submarine builder Naval Group to end the contract and draw a line under the row.

In February, when asked if the developments surrounding the AUKUS alliance and the failed submarine purchase impacted the deal with Indonesia, a French Defense Ministry spokesperson told media:

"I don't think so, neither in one way nor the other... We have an Indo-Pacific strategy, we have the determination to maintain our defense industry and thus to export."

Indonesian President Joko Widodo hailed the deals with France, saying:

"I hope that defense partnerships aren't just focused on munition purchases, but also keeping in mind the development and joint production, technological transfer, and investment in defense industries."

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/20221117/france-to-boost-cooperation-with-indonesia-on-warplanes--submarines-in-wake-of-aukus-humiliation-1104334074.html

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SEE ALSO: many articles on this site about the AUKUS  deal and the Aussie nuke subs..... AND KEEPING WEAPON INDUSTRIES BUSY......

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