Nuclear treaty out of date, UN's Annan says

UNITED NATIONS - The non-proliferation treaty on the spread of nuclear weapons is out of date in the face of new threats and technology and needs to be fixed, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday.
"The plain fact is that the regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalization, and developments of many kinds in recent years have placed it under great stress," Annan said in opening a month-long UN meeting on the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Annan said the international community must act to strengthen the NPT before "the gap between promise and performance becomes unbridgeable."
The NPT faces a new era of "rogue" states with alleged nuclear weapons programs, international nuclear smuggling rings and transnational terrorist groups seeking weapons of mass destruction.
North Korea kicked out inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, in December 2002, withdrew from the NPT the following month, and now claims to have made atom bombs.
Annan said the 188 nations meeting at UN headquarters "must strengthen confidence in the integrity of the treaty, particularly in the face of the first withdrawal announced by a state."
"Unless violations are directly addressed, the most basic collective reassurance on which the treaty rests will be called into serious question," Annan said.
He also said the Vienna-based IAEA should be given more authority to inspect the nuclear programs of states that are party to the NPT by making an additional protocol for wider inspections apply to all.
Annan also dealt with the case of Iran, saying the non-proliferation regime "will not be sustainable if scores more states develop the most sensitive phases of the fuel cycle and are equipped with the technology to produce nuclear weapons on short notice."
"To prevent that, you must find durable ways to reconcile the right to peaceful uses with the imperative of non-proliferation," the UN chief said.
Iran is showing the strains in the non-proliferation treaty, as the United States claims the Islamic Republic is secretly developing atomic weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear power program that is under IAEA safeguards.
The NPT also received a rude blow with the unearthing two years ago of an international black market network in technology that could be used to make atomic weapons, run by the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Finally, Annan said that nuclear weapons states must keep their part of the bargain in the NPT and move forward on disarming.
"An important step would be for former Cold War rivals to commit themselves, irreversibly, to further cuts in their arsenals so that warheads number in the hundreds and not the thousands," he said.

05/02/2005 15:34 GMT