Deadlock feared in nuclear treaty talks Julian Borger in Washington Friday May 27

Deadlock feared in nuclear treaty talks

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday May 27, 2005
The Guardian

A global conference to review the non-proliferation treaty is due to end today, almost certainly in deadlock, jeopardising what is seen as the best chance of containing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Observers at the month-long conference in New York said there was broad agreement on how to tighten the 35-year-old treaty but substantive agreement had been blocked by hardline positions adopted by the US and Iran.

The US rejected references in any final text to the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), which Bill Clinton was the first US president to sign, in 1996, but which was never ratified by the Senate.

The Bush administration has said it will stick to its moratorium on nuclear tests but would not accede to a global treaty outlawing them.

Iran has opposed all attempts to constrain or even mention its nuclear programme, which it says is purely for peaceful purposes but which many countries fear could be a front for a weapons programme. "Why this conference matters is that it is a chance for all the member countries to come together and breathe new life into the treaty," said Joseph Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "What you see is that the vast majority of the countries are in basic agreement ... but they have been blocked by an uncoordinated but parallel action by the US and Iran."

The first two weeks of the conference were bogged down in disagreements about its agenda. On the eve of the final session, two out of three working committees had failed to agree on a final draft text and the third - on disarmament - produced a draft most of which had not been agreed.

Even the five acknowledged nuclear powers, the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, failed to agree a common position, principally because of US opposition to the CTBT.

Mr Cirincione said US intransigence had undermined the suggestions its delegation made on how to stop other countries following North Korea's example of withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty.

"The US shot itself in the foot at this conference," he said. "It came in with very useful ideas on compliance but it was unable to build a consensus ... because it was unwilling to give weight to the views of other countries."

The conference's chairman, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte, will be faced today with the choice of ending the meeting without a resolution or formulating a vacuous joint statement which all countries can agree on.

Three out of the six non-proliferation treaty conferences have ended without agreement, but this failure comes at a time when several countries are considering breaking free of the treaty and developing their own weapons.

"The worry is that countries will start hedging their bets and looking at ways of turning civilian nuclear programmes into options of making weapons," said Rebecca Johnson, of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, an arms control advocacy group.