Annan petitions all sides for nuclear arms reductions

UNITED NATIONS – Amid rising nuclear tensions, more than 180 nations convened Monday to review the nonproliferation treaty, hearing calls from many sides for concessions by Iran and North Korea, America, Russia and others to move toward a world free of the nuclear threat.

“Ultimately, the only way to guarantee that they will never be used is for our world to be free of such weapons,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in opening the month-long conference.

The U.N. chief urged nonweapons states like Iran to renounce potential bomb technology in return for international guarantees of nuclear fuel. He also challenged Washington and Moscow to slash their nuclear arsenals irreversibly to just hundreds of warheads.

That call was echoed by a spokeswoman for a coalition of disarmament-minded nations.

“We are greatly disappointed” by “unsatisfactory progress” toward disarmament by the big powers, said New Zealand’s Marian Hobbs.

The U.S. representative rejected such criticism, pointing to recent arms-control agreements.

“We are proud to have played a leading role in reducing nuclear arsenals,” said Stephen Rademaker, an assistant secretary of state.

Rademaker made clear the United States would seek to focus the conference on Iran and North Korea.

Because of such differing priorities, treaty members were unable to agree on a complete agenda before the sessions began. Organizers hope to have agreement before the nuts-and-bolts work of committees begins next week.

Under the 35-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, states without nuclear arms pledge not to pursue them in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear powers – the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China – to move toward nuclear disarmament. Three nuclear states – Israel, India and Pakistan – remain outside the treaty.

The NPT is reviewed every five years at conferences whose consensus political commitments are not legally binding, like a treaty, but give valuable support to nonproliferation initiatives. At the 2000 sessions, the nuclear powers committed to “13 practical steps” toward disarmament, but critics complain the Bush administration – by rejecting the nuclear test-ban treaty, for example – has come up short.

The nuclear powers must find ways to rely less on nuclear deterrence, the U.N. chief said. He called on Washington and Moscow “to commit themselves – irreversibly – to further cuts in their arsenals so that warheads number in the hundreds, not the thousands.”

Under the 2002 Moscow Treaty, the United States and Russia are to cut back their deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 each by 2012.

But the agreement has been criticized for not requiring destruction of excess warheads taken off deployment or providing a transparent timetable and open verification of reductions.