Ottawa — Canada is trying to get the United States and other countries to agree to a treaty banning weapons in outer space.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham has asked his counterparts in the Group of Eight leading industrial countries to consider how the nations of the world can keep space free of weapons.
Long a dream of peace activists, a ban on space weapons is an issue that could make its way back on to the international arms-control agenda as a result of the debate about the U.S. ballistic-missile defence program, senior Canadian officials said yesterday.
Mr. Graham wrote the other G-8 foreign ministers recently to see if they would join Canada in pushing the idea at the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, said Jim Wright, the assistant deputy minister of foreign affairs for security.
There has been no response yet to Mr. Graham's letter.
However, many of the other countries that are, like Canada, in discussions with Washington about possible participation on missile defence are also interested in an international ban on space weapons, Mr. Wright said.
China and Russia in particular are showing fresh interest.
Thus the time might be ripe to revisit what had been a stalemate in Geneva on a space-weapons ban and another arms-control proposal to cut off production of new fissile material that could be used to make nuclear weapons, Mr. Wright said.
The United States first tested a nuclear warhead in space in 1962, but reached agreement with the former Soviet Union and more than 80 other countries to ban weapons of mass destruction in the Earth's orbit, on the moon or on other planets in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
U.S. military scientists are researching new kinds of weapons, such as high-energy directed lasers and "kinetic kill" interceptors. These weapons are not covered by the Outer Space Treaty.
The chairman of the Senate committee on national security, Liberal Colin Kenny, suggested weapons in space are inevitable. He asked why the Canadian government is "making a big deal" out of the issue of space weapons when the military of the U.S. and Canada already make extensive use of space for communications and surveillance.
Mr. Wright said "we make a clear distinction between the military in space and the weaponization of space. Space is a pristine environment" in regards to weapons.
Space is already crowded with satellites and debris. Putting weapons into space that could blast apart satellites will only make it more difficult for countries who want to use space for commercial purposes, such as telecommunications, global navigation, weather forecasting and for peaceful research, Mr. Wright said.
Mr. Wright, the government's chief negotiator in ballistic-missile defence talks with Washington, said the Americans fully understand Canada's strong opposition to weapons in space. "This policy will not change."
Many Americans in the U.S. Congress, and even the Pentagon, oppose space weapons, he said, if for no other reason than the huge estimated costs.
Meanwhile, the political debate about missile defence continued in the Commons yesterday with NDP critic Alexa McDonough angrily accusing the government of already committing itself to allowing the U.S. to put components of the system on Canadian territory. Mr. Pratt has left open the possibility that Canadian territory might be used for ballistic-missile defence facilities as the program grows.
This is still speculation, Mr. Pratt said, because no decision has been made yet about participating in the U.S. program. If all goes according to plan, the initial U.S. deployment of the system this fall involves putting missile interceptors in Alaska and California and advanced radars in Greenland and Britain.
