'Nuclear tribunal' proposed at international summit

http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2524671.ece/Nuclear_tribunal_proposed_at_international_summit

'Nuclear tribunal' proposed at international summit
Published: 14 April 2010 16:49 | Changed: 15 April 2010 08:43

The Dutch prime minister has high hopes for the institution of a ‘nuclear tribunal’ in The Hague after the first day of the nuclear conference in Washington.
By Tom-Jan Meeus in Washington D.C.

The Netherlands has played a peculiar role in the history of nuclear security, a topic that has brought 48 heads of state and government together in Washington this week.

In the 1970s, the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan learnt what he needed to know about nuclear technology working for a Dutch company. He went on to help his native Pakistan develop its nuclear weapons. The know-how Khan supplied finally ended up in North-Korean and Iranian hands, countries that have or want to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

Still, the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, seemed satisfied after the first day of the nuclear conference in the US capital, where he proposed creating a special tribunal in the Hague, "the judicial capital of the world", to prosecute "nations that supply terrorists with nuclear secrets or material".

In an interview with NRC Handelsblad after the meeting, Balkenende said presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Nicolas Sarkozy of France and German chancellor Angela Merkel had also hinted at such a tribunal. "The best thing was that Obama recalled the idea at the end of the discussion," the prime minister said.

Had such a tribunal existed at the time, would the Netherlands have been liable to prosecution because Khan smuggled nuclear technology out of the country?

"That is too speculative for my taste. I do not want to discuss the Khan affair. It lies in the past."

A past that is pretty important in the context of this conference.

"But still a different story. You can’t say that the Dutch government knowingly gave material to a terrorist organisation in the Khan case. My proposal only pertains to states that knowingly provide nuclear material to terrorist organisations."

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