The United States said on Thursday it wanted to revive global arms control and no country had the right to block nuclear negotiations, in what diplomats claimed was clear criticism of Pakistan. Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant US Secretary of State for arms control, verification and compliance said protracted deadlock at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) may spell the end of its usefulness.
The UN-sponsored forum has not negotiated an arms control deal since the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans underground nuclear explosions. Fifteen years later, the institution finds itself "dead in the water", Gottemoeller said in a bluntly worded speech. She said negotiations on halting production of fissile material that could be used to make nuclear bombs were the next logical step in the nuclear disarmament process.
"No country should feel it necessary to abuse the consensus principle and frustrate everyone else's desire to resume serious disarmament efforts on negotiations," she told the forum. Pakistan reiterated on Tuesday it was unable to support the launch of negotiations on halting production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. Diplomats and UN officials claim it is the only one of the forum's 65 member states refusing to join a consensus. Pakistan insists and rightly so that existing fissile stocks should also be included to counter India's perceived strategic advantage.
"If we cannot find a way to begin these negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament, then we will need to consider other options," Gottemoeller said. Washington will send technical experts on fissile material to discussions in Geneva in the coming weeks, she said. On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the deadlock had increased the risk that nuclear weapons could spread or fall into terrorists' hands. US President Barack Obama laid out his vision of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons in a landmark speech in Prague in April 2009.
"The US administration has been working diligently on this agenda, which includes stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, reducing nuclear arsenals and securing nuclear materials," said Gottemoeller, chief US negotiator for the New START treaty.
Russia and the United States clinched the New START treaty last year and both sides have now ratified it. The pact commits the countries to ceilings of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads in seven years. "The New START Treaty sets the stage for further limits on and reduction in nuclear arms," Gottemoeller said.
"We are making steady progress toward the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons. This step-by-step approach will require time, effort, and the commitment and imagination of us all," she said. "It is time for the CD to get back to work and make its rightful contribution to international peace and security."