Letter: Another treaty that has been ignored

Sir: As Raymond Whitaker points out ('A dictator's deadly legacy', 5 August), North Korea's activities undermine regional security and threaten the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

But South Korea also ignores the 1991 North/South Denuclearisation Declaration. However, instead of building its own fissile material production facilities, it ges someone else to do its dirty work. Britain. British Nuclear Fuels now admits that it is negotiating to process South Korean spent reactor fuel at THORP.

Meanwhile, Japan builds up ever-increasing stocks of plutonium to the alarm of its neighbours. Once again, Britain helps in the process.

Yet none of this activity, according to our government, breaks the existing Non-Proliferation Treaty - a treaty that Britain wants to see extended indefinitely and unamended in 1995.

No wonder that CND wants a short-term NPT extension only while a complete global ban on nuclear weapons, along the lines of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, is worked out.

Hardly a radical proposal since, under Article VI of the treaty, we have been committed to it for 25 years. Just one more treaty obligation that has been completely ignored.

Yours in peace,

JANET BLOOMFIELD

Chair

Campaign for Nuclear

Disarmament

London, N7