CYIL vol. 10 (2019)

CYIL 10 ȍ2019Ȏ VIENNA CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF TREATIES AND TREATIES ON ARMS … (Art. X, paragraph 1), the Treaty on the Prohibition of the Emplacement of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor and in the Subsoil thereof of 1971 (Art. VIII), the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction of 1972 (Art. XIII, paragraph 2), the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction of 1993 (Art. XVI, paragraph 2), the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 (Art. IX), and others. Multilateral treaties of a regional nature include for example the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean of 1967, the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty of 1985, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe of 1990 (Art. XIX), and the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty of 1996 (Art. 20). Also, the bilateral treaties between the USA and the USSR / Russia contain such provisions as the SALT I Treaty of 1972 (Art. VIII), the ABM Treaty (Art. XV) of 1972, the Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests (Art. V) of 1974, the SALT II Treaty of 1979 (Art. XIX), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) of 1987 (Art. XV), the START I Treaty of 1991 (Art. XVII), the START II Treaty of 1993 (Article VI), and the 2002 SORT Treaty (Art. IV, paragraph 3). Not every international treaty contains provisions on withdrawal from a treaty or termination of a treaty. In the treaties on arms reduction and disarmament the provision on withdrawal and termination is a security in case relations between states or the overall international situation fundamentally changes in a way that the very existence of the state could be jeopardized. Thus, the provision on withdrawal or termination of a contract is seen as security measure in case the state feels threatened by the fact that another state starts to arm or procure weapons of mass destruction, etc. Consequently, the arms restriction and disarmament treaties contain rules of the meaning of Article 54 (a) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969, according to which the termination of a contract or the withdrawal of a party may occur in accordance with the provisions of the treaty. 3.1 Provision for withdrawal in the treaties on arms control and disarmament The wording of the articles allowing withdrawal or termination of treaties are similar in most arms reduction and disarmament treaties concluded after 1945. It is a provision that was first used in the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water of 1963. Pursuant to Article IV (2) of this Treaty, each party shall have the right, on the basis of the exercise of its national sovereignty , to withdraw from the treaty, if such conclusion is made based on exceptional circumstances that are related to the content of the treaty and have jeopardized the supreme interests of the state. The state must inform the other contracting parties of the withdrawal three months in advance. Extraordinary events are a condition for withdrawal from the Treaty of 1963. The provision was included in the Treaty at the request of the US 23 delegation at the negotiation of this initially trilateral treaty. The other states were the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

27

23 AHLSTROM, Ch. Withdrawal from Arms Control Treaties. Stockholm: SIPRI Yearbook, 2004, p. 767.