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World split on nuclear arms despite danger
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-27 22:35
UNITED NATIONS - The danger of a nuclear holocaust may never have been
greater, yet the 188 signatories to the global pact against nuclear weapons have
rarely been more divided, arms experts and diplomats said.
Friday is the final day of the review conference of the 1970 nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, a monthlong meeting held once every five years to take
stock of the landmark accord.
Delegates at the conference, which began on May 2, had hoped to agree on a
plan of action to repair loopholes in the treaty that enable countries to
acquire sensitive atomic technology and to hear from the five NPT members with
nuclear weapons that they remained committed to disarming.
But it descended into procedural bickering led by the United States, Iran and
Egypt.
"Beneath all the rhetoric and procedural games that have been played out in
the NPT review conference lies a stark and unpalatable fact -- defending these
privileges is put before protecting peoples' lives," said Rebecca Johnson, head
of the Acronym Institute, a British think-tank.
As the United States backed down on its previous pledge to support a ban on
testing nuclear weapons or developing new bombs, Iran made sure the conference
did nothing to increase the pressure on Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment
program, which could be used to make fuel for weapons.
Egypt delayed work at the conference after failing to focus criticism on
Israel's assumed nuclear arsenal.
"Why does it matter that it's a dismal conclusion? It's the most important
nuclear conference and takes place at a very critical stage," said arms expert
Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S.
think-tank.
30,000 NUCLEAR BOMBS IN THE WORLD
The delegates had been trying to reach agreement in three committees that
cover the three pillars of the accord -- disarmament, verification of safeguards
on national nuclear programs and the peaceful use of atomic energy. The
committees failed to reach any conclusions.
Nine countries possess some 30,000 atomic weapons, nearly all of them in the
United States and Russia -- enough to destroy the planet many times over. And
dozens more nations could build a bomb if they wanted to.
By signing the treaty, the acknowledged nuclear powers, the United States,
Russia, Britain, China and France, pledged to eventually scrap their deadly
arsenals but have not done so.
Israel is assumed to have around 200 nuclear weapons but neither confirms nor
denies it. Like atomic-armed India and Pakistan, Israel has never signed the
NPT. North Korea, which says it has the bomb, withdrew from the treaty in 2002.
Before the meeting began, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N.'s
Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, said there were three reasons the treaty is in
urgent need of an upgrade.
"They are the emergence of a nuclear black market, the determined efforts by
more countries to acquire technology to produce the fissile material usable in
nuclear weapons, and the clear desire of terrorists to acquire weapons of mass
destruction," ElBaradei wrote.
Ambassador Thomas Graham, a former U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate every
major arms control agreement over the last three decades, said some delegates
believed the nuclear threat was similar to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when
the United States and Soviet Union were close to nuclear war.
"There's a lot to worry about out there, and this treaty is at the heart of
it," he said. This conference "is definitely going to have a somewhat negative
effect on efforts to keep the non-proliferation regime afloat and to strengthen
it."
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