U.S. Proposes New Disarmament Treaty

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, waves to the crowd during a public gatheing in the city of Zarandieh as a part of his tour to the Markazi province southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Thursday, May 18, 2006. Ahmadinejad on Wednesday mocked a package of incentives to suspend Uranium enrichment, a defiance that appeared certain to complicate U.S. efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions. (AP Photo/Sajjad Safari, Mehr News) (Sajjad Safari - AP)

GENEVA -- The United States proposed a treaty Thursday it said would curb proliferation of nuclear weapons and improve the world's leverage against "hard cases" like Iran and North Korea by banning production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.

Stephen G. Rademaker, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, told the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament that it should aim to approve a treaty by September.

He said current measures to prevent terrorists and governments from developing weapons of mass destruction may be insufficient "in the case of governments that are absolutely determined to acquire such weapons."

Rademaker said Iran was "an obvious case in point," and that the Islamic republic and North Korea were "the hard cases."

The proposal contains no verification measures and stockpiles of fissile material would not be affected, allowing existing nuclear powers to build weapons with their reserves.

And with Iran and North Korea accused by Washington of flouting current international accords on nuclear weapons development, Rademaker did not specify how the United States thought the new agreement would help.

In Washington, Wade Boese, research director at the private Arms Control Association, said the United States, Russia, France and Britain already have officially declared they have stopped production for nuclear weapons and China is understood to have done so as well.

"The value of the agreement would be getting India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and potentially Iran to sign on to this agreement, but the likelihood is very small," Boese said.

One reason, he said, is the lack of verification measures, which most countries at the conference want in any treaty. "It is essentially a nonstarter" Boese said. "The prospect of negotiations starting on this is about nil."

Hamid Eslamizad, a senior official at Iran's mission in Geneva, questioned the link between the proposed treaty and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful, Eslamizad said, a position he maintained was supported by findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Rademaker responded that Iran was merely repeating its usual defense against accusations that its purportedly civilian nuclear program is cover for building a bomb.