Nuclear disarmament of Libya

The disarmament of Libya was a process of eliminating the weapons of mass destruction when Libya under Muammar Gaddafi voluntarily agreed upon disbanding its chemical weapons and ending the long pursuit of nuclear weapons on 19 December 2003.[1] Upon inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the IAEA, had said: Libya's nuclear program was "in the very initial stages of development" at the time.[2]

In 1968, Libya under King Idris had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), ratified the treaty in 1975 under Gaddafi, followed by concluded a safeguards agreement in 1980 in a view of starting nuclear power generation with the Soviet Union. Despite Libya's official commitment to the NPT and its international obligations, Libya under Gaddafi attempted to engage in pursuit of acquiring nuclear weapons with numbers of nuclear-armed nations and later used proliferation network to localized its efforts for acquiring nuclear weapons.

In 1970, Libya under Gaddafi secretly acquired the chemical weapons capability from the Soviet Union and maintained Soviet missiles in its ballistics missile program. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, followed by the tightened sanctions in 1996, Libya under Gaddafi began to negotiate with the Clinton administration to resolve its crises with the United States. After the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, followed by the Iraq war in 2003, Gaddafi agreed upon voluntarily disarmament of Libya's pursuit of nuclear and chemical weapons on 19 December 2003. The United States assisted Libya on nuclear disarmament with independent verification by the IAEA.

On 6 January 2004, Libya under Gaddafi acceded to become a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) worked on destruction of Libyan chemical weapons by January 2014 as the deadline. In response to the Libyan civil war in 2011, the NATO reportedly destroyed Libya's ballistics missile program in series of successful airsrtikes.

In February 2014, the Libyan government announced that it had finished destroying Libya's entire remaining Gaddafi-era stockpile of chemical weapons. Destruction of Libya's chemical weapon precursors was completed in November 2017.[3]

Libya signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on 20 September 2017, but has not ratified it.[4]

Precursor events

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Libya under Gaddafi Muammar Gaddafi sought more respectability with the Clinton administration in the United States in early 1990s, according to the U.S. diplomat Martin Indyk.[5] With the tightened tightened sanctions in 1996, Gaddafi gave up supporting pan-Arab and African nationalist movements and instead began focusing on getting sanctions against Libya removed, according to the article written by Indyk in 2004.[5] Indyk stated that Gaddafi offered to give up his weapons of mass destruction programs and open his facilities to inspection in 1999 in (then-)secret talks with the Bill Clinton administration.[5]

After the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, a message was convened to Gaddafi through his former Foreign Minister, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, in which, U.S. President George W. Bush told Gaddafi that "either you get rid of your weapons of mass destruction or [the United States] will personally destroy them and destroy everything with no discussion."[6]

Following this message, the Libyan officials began to meet covertly with British, Russian, and U.S. officials to officially dismantle the program. In March 2003, days before the invasion of Iraq, Gaddafi's personal envoys contacted U.S. President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about Libya's willingness to dismantle its nuclear program.[7]

Based on an intelligence source in October 2003, the U.S. intelligence agencies raided a cargo ship and seized a consignment of centrifuge-related equipment bound for Libya in a northern Mediterranean port.[8]

The U.S. investigations revealed that many of these components were manufactured by a Scomi in Malaysia and implicated many various nationals from the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Pakistan, and Israel.[8] With the scandal becoming public, the United States then confronted Libya over its ambitions and Gaddafi subsequently ended his pursuit for acquiring nuclear weapons.[8]

Disarmament

The 2001 September 11 attacks in the United States were denounced by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.[9] Following the U.S. military response in the War in Afghanistan, Gaddafi increasingly sought to normalize relations with the United States, initially focusing on the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Libya. On 19 December 2003, Gaddafi made a surprise announcement of his intention to dismantle Libya's WMD programs.[10][11] The Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials were quoted "Libya had bought nuclear components from various black market dealers", and provided the various designs of centrifuges to U.S. officials and gave the name of its suppliers.

Among the list of suppliers included the revealing role of A.Q. Khan, a notable and famed scientist of Pakistan. Events in Libya led to the debriefing of A.Q. Khan in 2004 by the Government of Pakistan while the United States, aided by IAEA and Interpol, apprehended the former Libyan nuclear program's head and Swiss, Friedrich Tinner in Switzerland. On 22 January 2004, U.S. military transport planes carried around 55,000 pounds (25,000 kg) of documents and equipment related to Libya's nuclear and ballistic missile programs to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. In March 2004, over 1,000 additional centrifuge and missile parts were shipped out of Libya.

At the time of Libya's nuclear disarmament, its nuclear program was in the very initial stages of development.[2] The Director-General of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei stated to the media that it was his "gut feeling" that Libya was three to seven years from successfully building a nuclear weapon.[2]

Aftermath

See also: Libya and weapons of mass destruction

Libya's decision was praised by many in the West but criticized by many in the Arab world.[6] In 2004, Paula DeSutter, the-then United States Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance stated that “we want to have lessons learned from [Libya's disarmament] because we want Libya to be a model for other countries.”[6] Some prominent politicians and diplomats hoped that Iran, North Korea, and Syria would decide to follow the Libyan model of disarmament.[6] Gaddafi stated that the West asked him on several occasions to advise Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons programs.[6] In contrast, many participants on Al Jazeera TV criticized Gaddafi for agreeing to disarm just days after Gaddafi made his decision.[6] Gaddafi was criticized by some Arabs for giving Israel a stronger strategic edge in the region, giving legitimacy to the U.S. doctrine of preemptive war, and for not getting security concessions for Libya and the Arab world in exchange for his disarmament.[6]

In response, the Libyan government and its supporters stated that Libya returned to the international community, got a temporary United Nations Security Council seat, and saved some money due to it giving up its nuclear weapons program.[6] Likewise, in an Al-Sharq al-Awsat interview, Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam stated that the United States did offer security guarantees for Libya in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program and that he expected military and security cooperation agreements with the U.S. in the future.[6]

Eventually Gaddafi grew disillusioned with the things that the West offered Libya.[6] He considered it too small of a reward for Libya for giving up its nuclear weapons program.[6] Gaddafi was also dissatisfied at the United States' slowness in normalizing relations with Libya and in pressuring Israel to denuclearize.[6] According to Gaddafi's son Saif, this was one of the main reasons why Gaddafi temporarily suspended shipping Libya's enriched uranium abroad in 2009 like he promised he would in 2003.[6] Gaddafi wanted to use the remains of his nuclear weapons program to gain more leverage.[6]

As of September 2013, 1.6 metric tons of mustard blister agent loaded in artillery rounds, 2.5 metric tons of congealed mustard agent, and 846 metric tons of chemical weapons ingredients remained to be destroyed.[12] According to The New York Times, in February 2014, the remnants of Libya's chemical weapons had been discreetly destroyed by the United States and Libya, using a transportable oven technology to destroy hundreds of bombs and artillery rounds filled with deadly mustard agent.[13]

Libya signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on 20 September 2017, but has not yet ratified it.[14]

In May 2018, North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan rejected an assertion by U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton that North Korean denuclearization should follow the Libyan disarmament model.[15]

Arab Spring and NATO intervention

Main articles: First Libyan Civil War, 2011 military intervention in Libya, and Killing of Muammar Gaddafi

During the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, Gaddafi tried using Libya's voluntary disarmament to convince NATO to cease its Libya operations.[6] At the same time, Gaddafi's son Saif and others in the Libyan government expressed their regret about Libya's previous disarmament.[6] It was speculated in the media (especially in the Middle Eastern media) that NATO's 2011 intervention in Libya (which led to Gaddafi's overthrow and killing at the hands of anti-Gaddafi forces) would make Iran, North Korea, and possibly other countries more reluctant to give up their nuclear programs and/or nuclear weapons due to the risk of being weakened and/or double-crossed as a result.[6][16]

On 22 September 2011, near Sabha, Libya, toward the end of the Libyan Civil War, anti-Gaddafi forces discovered two warehouses containing thousands of blue barrels marked with tape reading "radioactive" and plastic bags of yellow powder sealed with the same tape.[17][18] The IAEA stated, "We can confirm that there is yellowcake stored in drums at a site near Sabha ... which Libya previously declared to the IAEA. [...] The IAEA has tentatively scheduled safeguards activities at this location once the situation in the country stabilises."[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Libya | Country Profiles". NTI. Archived from the original on 2013-10-06. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  2. ^ a b c Tyler, Patrick (2003-12-30). "Libya'S Atom Bid In Early Phases - New York Times". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2014-03-09. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  3. ^ "OPCW Director-General Praises Complete Destruction of Libya's Chemical Weapon Stockpile". www.opcw.org. Retrieved 2018-02-10.
  4. ^ "UNODA Treaties". treaties.unoda.org.
  5. ^ a b c Indyk, Martin S. (9 March 2004). "The Iraq War did not Force Gadaffi's Hand | Brookings Institution". The Brookings Institution. Brookings.edu. Archived from the original on 2015-06-10. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Cigar, Norman (January 2, 2012). Libya's Nuclear Disarmament: Lessons and Implications for Nuclear Proliferation. Marine Corps University. Archived from the original on 2014-09-07. Retrieved February 10, 2013.
  7. ^ Judith Miller. "How Gadhafi Lost His Groove: The complex surrender of Libya's WMD". Judith Miller. Archived from the original on 2015-06-10. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  8. ^ a b c Rohlfing, Joan. "Libya: Nuclear Programme Overview". Nuclear Threat Initiative. Archived from the original on 2011-08-27. Retrieved November 8, 2011.
  9. ^ Cockburn, Alexander (March 24, 2011). "Libya rebels: Gaddafi could be right about al-Qaeda". The Week, UK. Archived from the original on 2013-02-22. Retrieved April 24, 2013.
  10. ^ Judith Miller. "Gadhafi's Leap of Faith". Judith Miller. Archived from the original on 2013-05-31. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  11. ^ Press Contact: Kelsey Davenport (January 2013). "Chronology of Libya's Disarmament and Relations with the United States". armscontroltreatry. Archived from the original on 2013-05-13. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  12. ^ Barnes, Diane (11 September 2013). "Destruction of Libyan Chemical-Loaded Arms Remains on Hold". Global Security Newswire (NTI). Archived from the original on 2013-10-29. Retrieved 26 October 2013.
  13. ^ "Libya's Cache of Toxic Arms All Destroyed". New York Times. 2 February 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-03-09. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  14. ^ "UNODA Treaties". treaties.unoda.org.
  15. ^ "North Korea's statement on Trump summit". BBC News. 16 May 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-05-16. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  16. ^ Braut-Hegghammer, Malfrid. "Relinquished Nuclear Powers: A Case Study of Libya Archived 2015-06-10 at the Wayback Machine" in To Join or Not to Join the Nuclear Club: How Nations Think about Nuclear Weapons: Two Middle East Case Studies - Libya and Pakistan (Middle East Studies, April 2013).
  17. ^ "Libya military site yields possible radioactive material". CNN. 22 September 2011. Archived from the original on 2014-11-21. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  18. ^ "Libya's Ex-PM Held As Chemical Weapons Found". News.sky.com. 2011-09-23. Archived from the original on 2011-09-24. Retrieved 2013-10-09.
  19. ^ Dahl, Fredrik; MacSwan, Angus (22 September 2011). "Raw uranium stored near Libya's Sabha - IAEA". Reuters Africa. Reuters. Archived from the original on 28 September 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
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