Warnings about nuclear proliferation at opening of meeting in Vienna
The United States called for cracking down on nations that withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as North Korea did, at an NPT conference that opened in Vienna Monday.
"It is important . . . for us to make such withdrawal more unattractive before any other State Party violator is tempted to follow such a course," US head of delegation Christopher Ford told the 188-nation meeting, which gathered as the Iranian nuclear crisis escalated.
"Let us not mince words, the NPT is in a serious crisis today," Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said in an opening address.
The meeting on the landmark 1970 NPT came with Iran under UN sanctions for failing to stop uranium enrichment and as an agreement to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program, which unlike Iran has actually produced atomic bombs, has stalled.
Japanese ambassador Yukiya Amano, the chairman of the meeting in Vienna, said: "It is no secret that the NPT has had serious challenges," adding that "issues related to the DPRK (North Korea) and Iran have become more pressing."
The international community "cannot afford to be complacent," Amano said.
Plassnik proposed setting up a multilateral, international nuclear fuel bank so that there "should no longer (be) concern about potential misuses of fuel" for military purposes by individual nations, such as Iran.
Ford said states that withdraw from the NPT, thus freeing themselves from UN inspections, should "remain accountable for violations".
He also said the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency should have the authority "to terminate assistance and withdraw any material or equipment" made available by the agency or a nation to help with peaceful nuclear development.
The NPT, which went into effect at the height of the Cold War and was extended indefinitely in 1995, is reviewed every five years. The last such meeting in 2005 failed to resolve any key questions, with non-aligned countries and nuclear powers bickering over an agenda.
Such delays threatened to hurt the Vienna meeting however as Iran was holding up adoption of an agenda, objecting to items on compliance with IAEA safeguards and on penalties against withdrawing from the NPT.
The Vienna meeting is the first of a series of preparatory sessions ahead of the next overall review in 2010.
Beyond the proliferation concerns raised by Iran and North Korea, there is also concern that the NPT, a deal under which nuclear weapons states agree to disarm while those nations without the bomb agree not to seek it, is threatened by the new US strategy to use pre-emptive force if judged necessary and Britain's upgrading of its nuclear arsenal.
Experts agree that the NPT is ill adapted to the modern era, where so-called rogue states seek to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity by first developing peaceful programs under the terms of the treaty.
Proposed fixes include having all states sign on to tougher UN inspections under an Additional Protocol to the NPT.
North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003, shortly after kicking out United Nations inspectors. Pyongyang tested an atomic bomb last October.
Iran justifies its nuclear work under Article IV of the NPT, which guarantees "the inalienable right . . . to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
But the United States charges that Iran is using this as a cover for the secret development of nuclear weapons, something that is banned by the treaty.
There are believed to be nine nuclear weapons states.
They are the five allowed under the NPT -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States; North Korea which withdrew from the treaty; and three nuclear states -- India, Israel and Pakistan -- which have refused to sign it.
AFP
