United Nations, May 28: A month-long UN nuclear conference was down to the wire Friday as it prepared to close amid disagreement over setting up a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, diplomats said.
Arab countries were meeting to consider their position on the matter ahead of a plenary session scheduled for 11:00 am (1500 GMT) on a landmark review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Stalemate on this issue could block consensus on all matters at the conference, such as disarmament and verification that national nuclear programs are peaceful, a Western diplomat said.
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he said.
The NPT has set the global agenda for fighting the spread of nuclear weapons since 1970. Reviews are held every five years.
But the accord is in crisis over how to monitor suspect nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and how to get nuclear weapon states to honor their disarmament promises under the treaty.
Another hot point is that states without nuclear weapons charge that Israel — widely believe to be the Middle East’s sole, albeit undeclared nuclear power — unfairly avoids scrutiny by not signing on to the treaty.
An NPT review in 1995 proposed to create a zone free of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Non-nuclear weapon states, led by the non-aligned movement, say there has been no progress for 15 years and that the time has come to move ahead.
But in a key sticking point, Egypt and Iran are leading calls for Israel to join the NPT, which would mean the Jewish state would have to reveal the state of its nuclear arsenal.
Israel, which opposes creating a nuclear-free zone until Middle East peace has been achieved, has never acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons.
It might agree to a non-binding conference but staunchly opposes mention of its joining the NPT in the text being prepared to close the review conference at United Nations headquarters in New York, diplomats said.
The United States and Egypt have spearheaded talks between nuclear powers and non-aligned nations to find a way forward.
A 28-page draft final statement under consideration calls for holding a conference in 2012 “to be attended by all states of the Middle East, leading to the establishment¨ of a nuclear-free zone.
It also mentions ¨the importance of Israel’s accession to the treaty and the placement of all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards.¨
Iran was not cited despite its defiance of successive UN resolutions calling for the Islamic republic to halt uranium enrichment and be more transparent about its suspect nuclear program.
Western states had wanted Iran singled out but do not want to sabotage the chance of a consensus.
The NPT establishes a bargain whereby nuclear powers move to disarm while others forego seeking the bomb in return for help to develop peaceful nuclear programs.
But nuclear powers and non-aligned states clashed Wednesday over how rid the world of atomic arms.
Non-aligned states proposed some 200 amendments to an earlier draft statement, particularly to get nuclear powers to agree to a timetable to disarm, diplomats said.
Nuclear powers Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States reject the proposal.
Approval of a final text, which requires consensus, would not be a cure-all for the world’s nuclear proliferation problems, but it would mark a new tone of cooperation.
It also would be a success for US President Barack Obama’s ambitious non-proliferation agenda, which favors multilateral diplomacy and is a marked departure from the confrontational tactics of his predecessor George W. Bush.
Yet Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh sounded a somber note, telling reporters that Iran could not accept the text unless the date of 2025 was set “to eliminate all nuclear weapons,” a proposal absent from the disarmament draft text.
—Agencies