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NPT Conference Runs Into Saturday
The 200 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) ran into Saturday morning, rather than end late on Friday as scheduled, sources close to the meeting said Friday.
The meeting, attended by 187 NPT signatories, was deadlocked as Iraq counterattacked the U.S. insistence on the inclusion of Iraq's difficulties with inspectors as a condition for naming Israel in the final document by threatening to block the entire meeting, which kicked off at the U.N. Headquarters in New York on April 24.
Shortly after 5 a.m. EST, and still without an agreement, the conference president, Algerian U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Baali, sent delegates from 187 state signatories home to get some sleep. He said a new attempt to reach agreement would begin later in the day.
The NPT conference works by consensus, which means one country can block agreement. It is to set goals for the all signatories to the 30-year NPT, the cornerstone of arms reduction treaties.
Central at issue was language in a side document on the Middle East reviewing Iraq's difficulties with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), responsible for scraping any nuclear weapons material.
The United States, the sources said, insisted this as a condition for naming Israel in the document, the only Middle East country which remains outside NPT. The conference would appoint an envoy to discuss with Israel in order to secure Israel's early accession to the treaty.
However, Iraq rejected any reference to its difficulties with the inspectors. Instead, it wanted language limited to the IAEA's January inspections of its nuclear reactors.
Delegates will meet again on Saturday morning to work hard on the final document, which is expected to give a stronger pledge on disarmament.
The commitment toward a total nuclear disarmament has survived in the draft agreement after France withdrew a proposal to soften the draft language.
The 187 countries representing the NPT review conference are expected to agree on the document, which is also expected to include "further reduction of nonstrategic nuclear weapons," with Russia having withdrawn its objection, the sources said.
The NPT conference is the first since the Treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995.
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