Nuclear powers broke more than decade of deadlock on Friday by agreeing to restart talks in the Conference on Disarmament, a UN spokeswoman and diplomats said. The 65 nations in the permanent disarmament negotiating forum, which includes all nuclear weapons states, "agreed on a work plan for 2009," United Nations spokeswoman Elena Ponomareva told journalists.
It marked the first time since 1996 that member states had agreed on what they should negotiate, amid conflicting demands for full nuclear disarmament, a ban on the production of bomb-making material and the arms race in outer space. British disarmament ambassador John Duncan called the unanimous decision "a terrific result breaking 12 years worth of deadlock."
"As we've been saying we need to move from a decade of deadlock to a decade of decisions, and now we're on the path to making those decisions," he added. Ponomareva said the conference would release a statement shortly. The breakthrough came after a growing number of countries in recent weeks signalled they were ready to support a compromise proposal drawn up by a group of non-nuclear states led by Algeria earlier this month, as well as the thaw in US-Russia relations.
Even North Korea rallied around the decision, despite the sharp spike in tensions on the Korean peninsula since it tested a nuclear bomb on Monday as Pyongyang continued to defy international concern over its nuclear programme. "We were all concerned about the DPRK, how they would react," Duncan said. "The first reaction was a difficult one but they have come through and they support it today."
Following the nuclear test, the second since October 2006, North Korea reacted angrily when Seoul announced it had joined a US-led international initiative to halt the trade in weapons of mass destruction. One of the most contentious subjects in the Geneva conference has been a proposal for talks on a treaty to ban the production of fissile nuclear bomb-making material, championed mainly by Western countries.
Russia and China had countered with demands for a treaty preventing an arms race in outer space, which the United States had rejected, especially under the administration of former president George W. Bush. Other states, including younger nuclear weapon powers Pakistan and India, were demanding talks on full nuclear disarmament.
All those issues were included in the Algerian-brokered compromise proposal, which advocated parallel working groups on each topic. Among the nuclear states, Indian ambassador Hamid Ali Rao said Thursday that New Delhi supported negotiations on a Fissile Missile Cut-off Treaty and would not stand in the way of the adoption of the compromise work plan.
The United States on Tuesday signalled that it was ready to put aside its qualms and resume talks on the basis of the broad proposal, despite some doubts about the wording. In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov marked the recent thaw in relations between Moscow and Washington by underlining that Russia was prepared to start negotiations on a fissile material ban. Lavrov told the conference in Geneva that a fissile material ban would mark "an important milestone in the processes of nuclear disarmament and strengthening the nuclear non- proliferation regime."
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