The Group of Seven summit in Moscow on nuclear safety has reached several useful agreements to mark the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. They go some way towards regulating this most international of environmental hazards by putting cooperation on a new plane. Nuclear reactor safety, waste management and disposal and smuggling are all covered in the declaration, along with an agreement on funding repairs and a possible closure of Chernobyl. Russia has given a qualified undertaking to subscribe to a nuclear test ban, including a ban on small laboratory based ones.
This is very much a self regulatory exercise among the most powerful states in the world, including all the major nuclear weapons ones with the exception of China. There is an obvious limitation on the credibility of the exercise for this reason, despite the fact that they recognise international regulation through the International Atomic Energy Agency and arms control treaties. A growing realisation among the nuclear weapons powers acknowledges not only that proliferation poses dangers to everyone, but that the weapons themselves have lost much of their capacity to deter aggression. Despite this, progress towards reducing the number of weapons is painfully slow and will not be appreciably speeded up by these agreements.
The Moscow declarations concentrate more on civilian than on military uses of nuclear energy bilateral meetings discussed the military treaties that regulate their relations. The horrendous consequences of the Chernobyl disaster are still not fully appreciated. The agreement to fund it is more convincing than previous ones, but still leaves many details to be completed, including a categorical agreement to fund its closure. There is also a much greater realisation that many more reactors in the former Soviet Union and in former east European states may be nearly as dangerous, quite aside from the dangers posed by more up to date and better equipped ones. The agreement to set up a "community of responsible nuclear powers", although self regulatory, is a contribution to more effective monitoring of these dangers. Just as the real costs of nuclear energy are being realised, with decommissioning costs properly factored in, so the costs of premature closure of unsafe reactors is now better appreciated.
This summit meeting has given a further boost to Mr Yeltsin's presidential election campaign, which has picked up sharply in recent weeks, in no small part due to the use of state power to boost media attention and, this weekend, international support. But the outcome is still highly uncertain. There are many Russians who will interpret Western support as simply reinforcing the Yeltsin regime's dependency and who will therefore not be impressed by this weekend's events. But for all its difficulties, Russia remains a great power, as was acknowledged candidly by Mr Clinton and Dr Kohl. Whoever wins the election will inherit a dangerous and volatile legacy both with military and civilian nuclear power, as well as wider diplomatic concerns.