Nuclear non-proliferation

A global conference on nuclear non-proliferation was held during the past month at the United Nations in New York. It ended in failure this week. The biggest obstacle to the process was the United States stance that the conference focuses on Iran and North Korea. The rest of the world wanted to discuss other issues that could help get actual results and strengthen the treaty. They also wanted to discuss commitments made by the United States to ban the testing of nuclear weapons, reduce arsenals and explicitly promise not to launch first-strike nuclear attacks. During the Presidential debates the question was asked, "What is the most urgent problem we face in the world today"? Kerry answered the question first and replied immediately that nuclear proliferation was without a doubt the most dangerous threat to the world today. He was adamant with his answer and left you with no doubt that this was the most important issue the world faces today. Bush then agreed that nuclear proliferation was the biggest problem we face. I wonder if he had answered first if he would have given the same answer. Bush refuses to negotiate directly with North Korea and Iran, yet used them as a tactic to stall any progress to contain nuclear weapons at this conference. Canadian representative Paul Meyer scolded countries for failing to make progress on a host of nuclear threats confronting the global community. "We have witnessed intransigence from more than one state on pressing issues of the day, coupled with the hubris that demands the priorities of the many be subordinated to the preferences of the few," Mr. Meyer said. "For the United States, this is a tremendous failure of leadership. In the past, it has been a positive force at these conferences. . . . But at this conference, the U.S. went in simply seeking to avoid discussion on issues it did not want to discuss and [instead] to focus attention on Iran and North Korea," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. The administration did not send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the conference, leaving arguments to midlevel diplomats. This is not the leadership the rest of the world expected. They spent a month wasting time and accomplished nothing. In an interview from Vienna, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who had proposed new mechanisms for international control of nuclear material so nations could not secretly produce weapons-grade fuel, said "absolutely nothing" had come out of the meeting. "The NPT Conference was a missed opportunity to strengthen the foundation for global cooperation to reduce nuclear threats," said Sam Nunn, the former senator, who has championed efforts to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. "We can't accept this as the last word. The U.S. must take a post-conference leadership role in bringing the international community together on this critical agenda." This was a missed opportunity to take the leadership role in the world and regain some lost respect. Instead the world is a more dangerous place.