The US has drafted a UN Security Council resolution calling on all countries with atomic weapons to get rid of them, a text Washington hopes will be approved by a special council session presided over by US President Barack Obama.
The 15-nation council will debate the draft resolution on Sept. 24 on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the General Assembly, where Obama is making his debut appearance at the UN. Washington holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council during September.
The draft resolution was circulated to the full council on Friday, diplomats said.
The text, obtained by Reuters, calls for signatories of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to begin talks on nuclear arms reduction and to negotiate “a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and calls on all other states to join in this endeavor.”
Diplomats said the US draft was yet another example of the sharp shift on disarmament policy taken by the Obama administration. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, had angered many NPT members by ignoring disarmament commitments made by previous US governments, analysts say.
The five permanent council members — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China — all have nuclear weapons. The “other states” — referred to but not named in the text — are Pakistan and India, which have not signed the NPT but are known to have atomic arsenals, and Israel, which neither confirms nor denies having nuclear arms but is presumed to have a sizable stockpile of warheads.
Council diplomats told reporters it also referred to North Korea, which withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and later tested two nuclear devices — one in 2006 and another earlier this year.
It also urges those countries outside the NPT to join it. Becoming a party to the NPT would require scrapping their nuclear arsenals, something the nuclear powers outside the pact have refused to do so far.
The draft resolution does not name specific countries, but it clearly has North Korea and Iran in mind when it says the council “deplores in particular the current major challenges to the nonproliferation regime that the Security Council has determined to be threats to international peace and security.”
The West suspects Iran is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program and have pushed three rounds of UN sanctions against it, despite initial objections raised by Russia and China. Tehran says its atomic program is entirely peaceful and is aimed solely at the production of electricity.
Without referring to any specific regions, the draft resolution has the council “welcoming and supporting the steps taken to conclude nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties.” Egypt and other Arab states have long called for the establishment of such a zone in the Middle East — which would mean Israel would have to get rid of any atomic bombs it possesses.
The US resolution would also urge “all states to refrain from conducting a nuclear test explosion and to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, thereby bringing the treaty into force.”
The US signed the treaty, which would ban all nuclear tests, in 1996 during the administration of then-president Bill Clinton, a Democrat. In 1999, the then-Republican-majority US Senate made clear that it opposed the treaty as an unnecessary limitation on its military research options.
When Bush took office in 2001, his administration said it did not want its options limited by such a treaty and never asked the Senate to vote on the test ban treaty.
Washington is joined by China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel and Pakistan as hold-out countries whose ratification is necessary for the treaty to enter into force. There will be a major conference on the test ban treaty on Sept. 24 and Sept. 25 at UN headquarters in New York.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS