The disposition of existing weapons stocks and the related stocks of fissile materials for military purposes will take a time which nobody can assess accurately today - not only for political, but also for very simple technical and financial reasons. The NPT remains the basis for all nuclear disarmement efforts. It remains an absolutely indispensable precondition not only for further nuclear disarmament, but also for meaningful dispositioning of existing stocks of weapons plutonium. We need a clear commitment of the other three nuclear powers as to when and under what conditions they will participate in nuclear disarmament. The development with regard to nuclear Weapons Free Zones complements efforts about nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmement.
Steps are necessary with regard to tactical nuclear weapons.
There exist significantly more nuclear warheads for such delivery systems than for strategic ones. Beyond the unilateral declarations of President Bush and Presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin respectively there is no commitment in this field. Particularly from a European point of view it is clear that more transparency, preferably involving some monitoring or verification elements, is needed. We need a reliable, preferably verifiable data base about what exists in terms of nuclear weapons including tactical nuclear weapons and related materials. The further you reduce them, the bigger in relative terms grows the significance of errors and omissions.