UNITED NATIONS: The rift between non-aligned states and nuclear powers opened wide Wednesday at a UN non-proliferation conference, diplomats attending the meeting told AFP.
In the closing days of a month-long review of the 189-nation Non-Proliferation Treaty, delegates were engaged in painstaking line-by-line debate on a draft final statement.
Non-aligned states suggested amendments to the 28-page draft, particularly to get nuclear weapon states to accept the principle of putting a time limit on achieving disarmament.
Nuclear powers Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States reject this.
At stake is reaffirming the validity of the landmark NPT treaty which has since 1970 set the global agenda for fighting the spread of nuclear weapons.
The differences were in clear evidence Wednesday. The conference ends Friday, after opening on May 3.
The non-aligned movement (NAM) proposed an amendment to add the phrase "within a specified framework of time" to the conference agreeing in the draft text on an "action plan on nuclear disarmament which includes concrete steps for the total elimination of nuclear weapons," a diplomat said.
The diplomat said Russian delegate Anatoly Antonov "made quite a strong statement to the NPT calling on the NAM to be more realistic."
Antonov said a nuclear weapons convention, which would set a specific date, and artificial timelines for destroying nuclear weapons were unacceptable, the diplomat said.
Antonov asked the NAM to "think again on these issues," the diplomat said.
NAM states reacted strongly, with South Africa saying that non-aligned positions "shouldn’t be diminished but were the product of careful deliberation," according to the diplomat.
But this envoy as well as other diplomats stressed that the real crunch would come later, possibly on the final day Friday.
The conference’s most contentious issue, the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East, was not even discussed in the plenary but by a small group on the sidelines of the conference, diplomats said.
The United States and Egypt are spearheading talks between nuclear powers and non-aligneds to find a way forward on this matter.
Israel opposes a zone until there is peace in the Middle East but might agree to a non-binding conference, diplomats said.
The draft calls for a conference in 2012 "to be attended by all states of the Middle East, leading to the establishment¨ of a zone.
Neither Israel nor Iran are mentioned by name in this paragraph, though the draft calls for Israel to join the NPT. Arab countries had wanted Israel denounced as a secret nuclear weapons state.
The draft also failed to mention Iran’s NPT violations in concealing its nuclear activities and its defiance of UN resolutions for it to prove its civil nuclear work does not hide bomb development.
Western states had wanted Iran singled out but do not want to sabotage the chance of a consensus here.
The previous twice-a-decade NPT review, in 2005, failed to even agree on a final document. The conference in 2000 approved steps to disarmament.
The 1995 meeting indefinitely extended the treaty and called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
NAM countries complain that concrete actions have not followed the reviews and that verification crackdowns, such as on Iran, put their right to peaceful nuclear technology at risk.
