An army guard at Fylingdales in Yorkshire
Diplomats from around the world have gathered for an international nuclear weapons control conference. The meeting will test the international community's resolve on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
The meeting, at the United Nations office in New York, is being held in preparation for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 2005.
At the last Review Conference in 2000, consensus was only just achieved on a series of 13 "practical steps" to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Those steps include vital issues, like finalising the global ban on nuclear testing. The meeting also agreed to start negotiations on a treaty banning the production, possession and use of nuclear materials for nuclear bombs.
Yet the US, Russia, China, France and Britain continually block these measures, because they have the most to lose: weapons of mass destruction.
The NPT has been in crisis since US President George Bush took office. Bush is spending over US$5,000 million every year maintaining an arsenal of over 10,000 nuclear weapons. He's planning to spend US$485 million over the next five years, developing and producing new nuclear weapons. He's even preparing the way to actually resume nuclear testing.
The US government refuses to enter into arms-control negotiations with Russia that would lead to 'real' reductions in nuclear arsenals. It also caused the collapse of negotiations on a treaty that would ban biological weapons.
We believe that the '13 steps' should neither be weakened nor renegotiated, but should be strengthened by the 2005 NPT meeting.
The NPT entered into force in 1970, after extensive negotiations in Geneva throughout the 1960s. The five nuclear weapons nations agreed to disarm while every other nation would renounce nuclear weapons in return for access to so-called civil nuclear technology.
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