NUCLEAR-WEAPON-FREE STATUS
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MONGOLIA'S
NUCLEAR-WEAPON-FREE STATUS
With the last Russian troops leaving Mongolia in
1992, on September 25th of that same year, Mongolian President H.E. Mr. Punsalmaagin Ochirbat, announced before
the 47th session of the United Nations General Assembly that Mongolia's territory would be a nuclear-weapon-free
zone and that it would work to have its status internationally recognized.
This initiative was welcomed by the nuclear-weapon States, including the two immediate neighbours, China and Russia; as well as by the non-nuclear States and with the full support of the non-aligned movement as a whole. This is quite undestandable, taking into account that almost every fourth registered nuclear-weapon test in the world had been conducted in its vicinity.
With the end of the Cold War and the Soviet dissolution, Mongolia's geopolitical situation had changed from its historical quagmire of both an important buffer and strategic springboard between the two regional powers to a country in pursuit to define and pursue its own national interests and priorities. Mongolia's idea of a denuclearized territory borned from the tensions and confrontation between its neighbours, China and the former Soviet Union in the late 1960s and early 70s where like Latin America, Mongolia too could have been caught in the middle of a nuclear conflict.
The Mongolian initiative remains unique and innovative with respect to the theory nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) in that it is not comprised of a group of countries covering a vast geographic area but rather a single-State declaring its sovereign territory nuclear free.
In 1976 a comprehensive study on the question of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZs) in all its aspects, in accordance with the Resolution 3261 F of the General Assembly on December 9, 1974 provided the possibility of a single-state zone. This study in its first principles concludes that:
"obligations relating to the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones may be assumed not only by groups of states, including entire continents or large geographical regions, but also by small groups of States and even individual countries."
The term "individual countries" as a variation of the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZs) was unanimously recognized in the study.
The hard work and all the working papers among the differents sessions of the United Nations Disarmament Conferences yield the Resolution 53/77 D adopted by the 53 General Assembly of the United Nations on December 4, 1998, in which all the States welcome the decision of Mongolia to declare its territoty a nuclear-weapon-free zone and to includes with the item "Mongolia's international security and nuclear-weapon-free status" in the agenda for the next general assemblies.
On 28 February 2000, the Ambassador Jargalsaikhany Enkhsaikhan, Permanent Representative of Mongolia, transmit to the Secretary General of the United Nations the text of the "Law of Mongolia on its nuclear-weapon-free status", adopted by the Parliament of Mongolia on 3 February 2000 and entering into force on the same day. This document was circulated in the 55 General Assembly with the number A/55/56 S/2000/160.
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