UN unanimously backs U.S. nuclear disarmament goal

Al-Shorfa
For Al-Shorfa.com
2009-09-26

U.S. President Barack Obama, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (R to L), at the Security Council Summit on Sept. 24. (Reuters)

UNITED NATIONS — With U.S. President Barack Obama in the chair at an unprecedented meeting of the UN Security Council on Sept. 24, major world powers endorsed the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world and pledged to strengthen the shaky international system for preventing the spread of nuclear arms.

The Security Council unanimously passed the U.S. draft of a resolution that endorses the eventual goal of "a world without nuclear weapons." It lays out steps for nuclear powers to trim their arsenals and make it harder for other nations to convert civilian nuclear programs to military ones.

While it isn't clear how quickly this will come about, diplomats and private security experts called it the most significant UN action on nuclear weapons proliferation in years.

Experts said the council's endorsement significantly boosted the disarmament agenda that President Obama laid out last April in Prague. Among his goals are new cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads and missile launchers; U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons tests; and a major effort to secure "loose" nuclear materials.

The six-page resolution mentions neither Iran nor North Korea, both the focus of major proliferation concern, because other nations rejected U.S. attempts to include the two.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for tougher sanctions on the two nations if they do not abandon their nuclear weapons programmes.

Diplomats representing the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, the P5+1, are to meet Iranian officials on Oct. 1. Sarkozy said Iran would have a final chance to halt uranium enrichment before an end-of-the-year deadline. If the talks fail, Iran is to be penalised with "massive sanctions in the financial and energy sectors,” he declared.

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