ANALYSIS Talks could strengthen weakened treaty

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is the subject of a monthlong conference.
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
UNITED NATIONS -- "Considering the devastation that would be visited upon mankind ..." is how it begins, a 2,400-word contract some would say saved the world.
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has helped keep the lid on that threat of devastation since 1970. Without it, dozens more countries might have joined the atomic-weapons club by now.
But the heart of the contract, the deal, grows weaker year by year. Cheaters are found on the inside, nuclear bombs on the outside. And some of the "undersigned" themselves wonder whether the deal they were handed 35 years ago was a raw one.
Kofi Annan last week opened a monthlong conference on the NPT with an appeal to its 188 member nations to repair the troubled treaty regime.
"You must come to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity," the U.N. secretary-general said.
Those dangers lie not only in the Hamgyong Mountains, where North Korea may be readying its first nuclear test blast, and outside ancient Isfahan, where a long-secret uranium-fuel plant could help Iran build a bomb. Many see danger, too, in the corridors of the Pentagon, where planners talk of new nuclear arms.
NPT promised
The NPT deal is easily summed up: Countries without the doomsday weapons forever renounce them, in exchange for a commitment by five with the weapons -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to negotiate toward giving them up. The "have-nots," meantime, are guaranteed access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
In an early blow to the treaty, three nations refused to sign on. Those outsiders -- Israel, India and Pakistan -- now have nuclear arsenals.
Then insiders Iraq, North Korea and Libya turned out to be cheaters. Two of those programs -- Iraq's and Libya's -- were shut down, but now Washington charges that Iran is a fourth case of "noncompliance," building its uranium-enrichment plant with weapons in mind, not civilian energy.
Treaty members recognize that rules must be tightened up: U.N. nuclear inspectors must have more resources and authority to uncover cheaters; bomb-capable technology like uranium enrichment must be better controlled, perhaps even by U.N. or regional bodies; members must not be able to exit the treaty, as North Korea did, with no consequences.
The Americans and French, in particular, say the noncompliance issues must top the agenda of the NPT conference, convened only once every five years.
"The priority in 2005 is to meet the serious challenges of the proliferation crises," France's Francois Rivasseau told fellow delegates Thursday.
Eyeing the 'five'
But many of those delegates are pointing to the contract language and demanding that the five nuclear powers' obligations on the disarmament side of the deal be viewed as critically as the nonproliferation commitments of 183 others.
The "five" don't act as though they'll disarm anytime soon. Britain is studying an upgrade of its submarine-borne nuclear missiles. Russia boasts it's developing the world's best new strategic weapons.
The non-nuclear majority is troubled most by the Bush administration, and its proposals for "bunker busters" and other new warheads, its talk of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, and its rejection of the nuclear test-ban treaty, viewed as key to future disarmament.
Washington and Moscow have trimmed their arsenals considerably since the Cold War. But U.S. plans allow for keeping 5,000 warheads indefinitely, and the longer "indefinitely" goes on, the greater may be the urge for some -- feeling threatened -- to reach for the bomb.
Iran's foreign minister, reiterating Tehran's denial that it has a weapons program, called on the delegates here to press for more decisive steps to rid the world of the thousands of atomic warheads that do exist.
"The credibility of the NPT is at stake," he said.
But the dealmaker's art that forged the grand bargain of 1970 was so far lacking in 2005. The central argument, of nonproliferation vs. disarmament, deteriorated last week into backroom bickering over diplomatic language, the meaning of words.
Despite Annan's admonition that "the consequences of failure are too great," the world's nations, with one week down and three to go, had failed even to agree on an agenda, on what to talk about at a conference meant to preserve their historic but imperiled old deal.