Despite danger, world split on nuclear arms

Louis Charbonneau, Reuters:

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. READ MORE

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."