BERLIN - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on Thursday for progress to be made on strengthening measures to prevent nuclear proliferation at next week's international conference in New York.
"We have two expectations from the talks," Schroeder said in a press conference with visiting New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
"The first is that we reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as it is now and we need to put all our efforts into that.
"The second is that there is a credible disarmament mechanism and we hope we will see movement from countries on this point."
Clark said she expected the meeting to focus on "striking a balance and ensuring that a country's right to produce nuclear energy does not provide cover for developing nuclear weapons".
She said Germany, Britain and France should be congratulated for their efforts on attempting to obtain guarantees from Iran that it will not use its nuclear programme to build weapons.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will lead the German delegation at the conference in New York which begins on Monday and lasts until May 27.
It will provide the five-yearly re-examination of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was first introduced in 1970.
North Korea is expected to be a major talking point at the conference.
The communist state said this month it had shut down a nuclear power plant and was preparing to re-process the plant's spent fuel, a move that could result in the production of enough plutonium to build up to six more nuclear bombs.
04/28/2005 13:58 GMT