UN wants India, Pak, Israel to join NPT, CTBT

Breaking the tradition of not naming countries, the first draft of the final document of 2010 Nuclear-Non Proliferation Treaty Review conference has asked India, Pakistan and Israel to join NPT and CTBT ''without conditions''.

''The conference calls upon India, Israel and Pakistan to accede to the treaty as non-nuclear weapon States, promptly and without conditions, thereby accepting an internationally legally binding commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices,'' the first draft of the document said.

"The conference also calls upon India and Pakistan to maintain moratoriums on nuclear testing and calls upon India, Israel and Pakistan to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) without delay and without conditions," it said.

The NPT Review Conference is held every five years to assess the progress in reaching the goals set out in the 1970 treaty to disarm and stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
This year it started on May 3 and would end on May 28 when the final draft is expected.

India, Pakistan and Israel have not signed the treaty and do not attend. The last conference in 2005 ended in failure.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Western diplomat said here that there were countries, which had accepted that India and Pakistan were not going to become part of the treaty and suggested a new track to reign them into the non-proliferation regime.

"We are going to try and put them in a cooperation system with obligations so that they would have the same obligations that NPT countries without being in the NPT," he said, noting that such an agreement was better than doing nothing.

Several experts, however, have pointed out that by the time the final document was prepared the names of the countries may be replaced by a more general call for the universal acceptance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Officials noted that naming Israel, for instance, would lead to the country not cooperating with the Arab nations on a plan to have a Middle East free nuclear weapons free zone.
"We want something so that all countries come to the table," the Western diplomat said. "But it's so fragile, it's so difficult."

Mark Hibbs, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who had attended the meetings noted that there seemed to be a "tacit agreement" not to retain the names by the end of the conference.