4 May 2010.

NPSGlobal will keep this page updated on a daily basis with the latest news /comments on the NPT RevCon.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference opened yesterday with wild accusations by Iran against the United States and other nuclear weapons states. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused nuclear weapons states of threatening those who want to develop peaceful nuclear technology. The representatives of the US, UK and France walked out during his speech.  

Earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Iran to comply fully with UN resolutions on its nuclear programme.

The permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are discussing further sanctions against Iran for refusing to stop enriching uranium, which can be used in making nuclear bombs.

Iran was considered likely to oppose U.S. efforts to shore up the pact's safeguards against noncompliance. The Middle Eastern nation has faced pressure from Washington and several European governments to halt nuclear activities that could aid weapons development; Tehran has insisted its nuclear work is strictly peaceful.

"This meeting is all about Iran," one White House official said. "Because Iran poses the biggest threat to the survival of the treaty."

"We're not going to permit Iran to try to change the story from their failure to comply" with the treaty, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press."

In his speech on the opening day of the month-long NPT review conference at UN headquarters in New York, Iran's president insisted there was no "single credible proof" that it was breaching the agreement.
Mr Ahmadinejad criticised nuclear powers for failing to disarm, saying their "production, stockpiling and qualitative improvement of nuclear armaments... now serves as a justification for the others to develop their own".

"The nuclear bomb is a fire against humanity, rather than a weapon of defence. The possession of nuclear bombs is not a source of pride. Its possession is disgusting and shameful," he said. He then attacked the US for refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against other countries, including Iran.

NPT members should consider "any threat to use nuclear weapons or attack against peaceful nuclear facilities as a breach of international peace and security", and punish aggressors with suspension from the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he added.

Also expected on the agenda is Egypt's renewed press for a pact that would establish a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East (see GSN, April 28; Sheridan/Lynch, Washington Post, May 3). The Obama administration is in talks with Cairo on the proposal, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday (Wall Street Journal, May 1).

"We don't think that there should be first-class countries that are acquiring nuclear weapons and second-class countries that are not in possession of nuclear weapons in the Middle East," Egyptian Ambassador to the United Nations Maged Abdelaziz said last week. "We say that in order to be able to deal with the Iranian issue, you have to address the nuclear capabilities of Israel," the official said, referring to the widely held assumption that Jerusalem possesses nuclear weapons.

Tehran has bolstered support for its own atomic activities by noting Washington's tacit acceptance of Israel's secretive nuclear work. Jerusalem has not joined the nuclear treaty.

The review conference follows the 2005 session in which participants failed to issue a consensus document laying out plans for bolstering the nonproliferation regime. It comes amid efforts by the Obama administration to promote nuclear disarmament and security.

"If the non-nuclear weapons states don't step up to the plate" at the review meeting, U.S. President Barack Obama's nuclear agenda would be harmed and momentum for further nuclear rollbacks would "drop precipitously," former U.S. arms control official Lewis Dunn said.

The Obama administration has largely abandoned efforts to achieve consensus at the conference on strengthening the treaty's nuclear monitoring provisions and establishing penalties against countries in violation of their obligations under the pact. Instead, Washington would work to secure a "supermajority" of countries to pursue such measures, either within the International Atomic Energy Agency or another institution where Tehran would have less leverage than at the NPT meeting, officials told the Post (Sheridan/Lynch, Washington Post).

The administration believes such a coalition could endorse a statement at the end of the monthlong conference that would call for more robust penalties against nations in poor standing with the treaty, the Associated Press reported Saturday.

"It is not about a final communique or a product that comes out other than an ambition to move forward together on doing the things that we believe we can reach consensus on," U.S. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher said.

The recently signed U.S.-Russian arms control pact and last month's Global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington could boost the Washington's standing at the conference, administration officials said. Still, the United States could face disapproval for its lack of movement toward ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (see GSN, April 30). The Senate has little chance of taking up CTBT ratification this year, the administration believes (Desmond Butler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 1).

Negotiating a proposal with Egypt on a Middle Eastern nuclear weapon-free zone could help bolster international confidence in Washington's willingness to fairly address nuclear-weapon concerns in the area, U.S. officials told the Journal. Treaty members issued a resolution in 1995 calling for such a zone, but NPT signatories have made no further progress on the initiative.

"We've made a proposal to them (Egypt) that goes beyond what the U.S. has been willing to do before," said a high-level U.S. official participating in the talks. Still, officials emphasized that no nuclear weapon-free zone would be implemented without Israeli approval and meaningful gains in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.

"We are concerned that the conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate, which would be unlikely unless there is a comprehensive peace plan which is accepted," Tauscher said, noting that Washington has also discussed the proposed nuclear weapon-free area with Arab League and Nonaligned Movement member states.

Jerusalem backs a regional halt to nuclear armaments and weapons of mass destruction, but it "should be the culmination of a process that begins with bilateral and individual peace agreements between all the countries in the region," an Israeli government source said Friday.

The United States could propose designating a U.N. official to organize a meeting of Middle Eastern nations to help move toward establishment of the nuclear weapon-free zone, said arms control experts with knowledge of the discussions. "They are desperate to buy off Egyptian objections," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (Wall Street Journal).

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hinted in 2007 that his country could pursue a nuclear arsenal if it felt pressed to do so, the New York Times reported. “We don’t want nuclear arms in the area, but we are obligated to defense ourselves,” he said (Broad/Sanger, New York Times, May 2).

Before departing for U.N. headquarters in New York City to take part in the review conference, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday declared the nonproliferation treaty a failure and vowed to seek revisions to the document, Agence France-Presse reported.

"The biggest threat to the world today is the production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. For more than 60 years, the atomic threat has influenced world relations," he said.

"The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in the past 40 years has not been successful in its mission. We have no disarmament or nonproliferation and some countries have even procured the nuclear bomb during this period," said Ahmadinejad, who also spoke today at the conference. His address was to be followed later in the day by an anticipated retort from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Farhad Pouladi, Agence France-Presse I/Google News, May 2).

Republican senators called on the administration Friday not to grant Ahmadinejad a visa to attend the conference.

"This is preposterous, and allowing it to happen will make a mockery of the effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorist groups," 14 lawmakers said in a statement to Clinton.

"There is simply no compelling reason for Ahmadinejad to be allowed to enter the United States," the letter states. "The U.S. government has the legal authority to deny Ahmadinejad's request and bar his entry -- even if he is transiting only to the United Nations. We ask that you exercise that authority" (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, May 1).

Canada cautioned Iran against attempting to thwart progress at the meeting, the Canwest News Service reported yesterday.

"If President Ahmadinejad announces Iran will respect its international nonproliferation obligations, then I certainly and firmly believe he is welcomed," Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said. "But if he thinks he can derail the conference or disturb the world effort to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons, he is wrong and he shouldn't be present. I think no one will buy into provocative or manipulative language on his part" (Sheldon Alberts, Canwest News Service/Vancouver Sun, May 2).

Libran Cabactulan, the Philippine diplomat presiding over this year's NPT review, has said the main aim of many signatories was to press nuclear powers to move more rapidly toward disarmament.

The Non-Aligned Movement has submitted to a detailed "plan of action" for moving towards global nuclear disarmament by 2030. It includes full ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

To download the 2010 Review Conference Calendar of Official Meetings click here . Source: Reaching Critical Will.

Sources:

Global Security Newswire, BBC News, (see other sources below) , with comments by NPSGlobal, May 3, 2010.

Acronym Institute:  http://www.acronym.org.uk/ 

Reaching Critical Will: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/

United Nations: http://www.un.org/en/

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