Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty

China formally acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on Monday and pledged to help prevent the spread of atomic weapons and to work for nuclear disarmament. Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen handed the articles of accession to British Prime Minister John Major and called the move a "major step in a process toward complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons."

This piece was written by six former ambassadors to Iran from European countries: Richard Dalton (United Kingdom), Steen Hohwü-Christensen (Sweden), Paul von Maltzahn (Germany), Guillaume Metten (Belgium), François Nicoullaud (France) and Roberto Toscano (Italy) As ambassadors to Iran during the last decade, we have all followed closely the development of the nuclear crisis between Iran and the international community. It is unacceptable that the talks have been deadlocked for such a long time.

The Clinton Administration, trying to bolster its campaign to prevent the spread of nuclear arms, hopes to persuade the four other nuclear powers to end production of a key weapons component. A senior Administration official said that Russia, Britain and France have agreed to join the United States in announcing that they will no longer produce weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.

The Obama administration Wednesday added several dozen Iranian individuals and organizations to its sanctions blacklist, its first steps to intensify pressure after new international sanctions were adopted last week by the United Nations Security Council. The penalties are aimed at entities tied to Iran's nuclear and missile program, including a bank, numerous front companies and energy and insurance concerns, and two individuals and several groups tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

France on Monday officially became the last nuclear-weapons nation to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 24 years after it was drafted to stop countries from spreading nuclear technology. Ratification documents were filed at the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said. The United States serves as the formal repository for the treaty. More than 150 countries have now agreed to the treaty, including all of the known nuclear powers, the State Department said.

The Kazakh Parliament on Monday overwhelmingly ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and hours later Vice President Al Gore announced that the United States will provide $84 million to assist in the destruction of Kazakhstan's nuclear arsenal. The action by the Kazakh Supreme Soviet followed a debate between reformers and former Communists over the future of the missiles, which conservatives see as a symbol of sovereignty.

Vice President Al Gore warned bluntly Wednesday that failure to make permanent a 25-year-old treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons could trigger regional arms races that could be even more dangerous than the atomic standoff of the Cold War.

The South African government, saying it is seeking to take its "rightful place in the world community," announced plans Thursday to sign the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty, ending years of suspicion about its weapons capability. The pledge to open its nuclear facilities to inspection and not to divert nuclear material for weapons "will allay any fears South Africa will ever use such devices," Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha told a news conference in Pretoria.

Spain joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty on Thursday, becoming the 136th nation to formally adhere to the pact. The Spanish government took the action by depositing the instruments of ratification with the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

North Korea has decided to retract its decision to withdraw from the international treaty on nuclear controls, South Korean news reports said. Another report quoted a North Korean diplomat as denying the retraction. The reports came amid a flurry of diplomatic moves aimed at bringing North Korea back into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, from which it decided to withdraw in March. U.S. officials said Washington is willing to hold high-level talks with Pyongyang to help ease the situation.

The Obama administration says the new economic sanctions against Iran adopted by the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday are the toughest ever against that country's military and financial interests, and demonstrate a consensus among the major powers that Tehran must not develop a nuclear weapon. Though this may be accurate, it is also true that the sanctions are far from crippling and are unlikely to be much more effective than the previous three rounds in persuading Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Israel on Saturday rejected as "flawed and hypocritical" a declaration by signatories of a global anti-nuclear arms treaty that urged it to sign the pact and make its atomic facilities subject to U.N. inspections. All 189 parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the United States, on Friday called for a conference in 2012 to discuss banning weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Their declaration singled out Israel. "As a non-signatory state of the NPT, Israel is not obligated by the decisions of this conference, which has no authority over Israel," the Israeli government said in a statement.

Iran's top political and religious authority lashed out at the United States at a nuclear disarmament conference Saturday in Tehran meant to counter a nonproliferation summit in Washington earlier in the week. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described the United States as the world's "only nuclear scofflaw." He called Washington hypocritical for advocating arms control while retaining a huge nuclear weapons stockpile, and for accepting the atomic arsenal of Israel.

A year ago in Prague, President Obama laid out his vision for a nuclear-free world, telling his international audience that the United States has a "moral responsibility" to lead in eliminating atomic weapons. His Nuclear Posture Review released Tuesday is a strong start down that long road, and although it is tempered by political realities, it creates momentum. On Thursday, Obama returns to Prague to sign a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia to draw down the two countries' nuclear stockpiles by nearly a third over several years to about 1,550 warheads each.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog for the first time Thursday explicitly voiced concern that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb, amid signs of fraying relations between the agency's inspectors and authorities in the Islamic Republic. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran last week produced its first batch of 20% enriched uranium, based on scientific data it was given by Iranian officials who plan to use the more highly purified nuclear fuel at a Tehran medical reactor.

The head of the world's atomic energy watchdog said Iran and world powers have until Friday to approve a proposed deal to transfer most of Iran's nuclear material abroad to be reformatted for medical purposes. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei disclosed no details about the draft deal, hammered out over 2 1/2 days of talks between Iranian, American, French and Russian diplomats in Vienna. But he said that it reflected a "balanced approach" that would help Iran fuel a medical research reactor for diagnosing and treating cancer while building confidence to resolve long-standing suspicions about the nature of Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Chinese legislators voted to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which limits transfers of nuclear materials, the New China News Agency reported. Until Sunday, China was the only one of the five declared nuclear powers that had not accepted the treaty's terms. Premier Li Peng had said in August that China agreed in principle to sign the treaty. The 1968 pact has been signed by 140 countries.

Christopher's column makes a compelling case for halting further proliferation of nuclear weapons. Regrettably, he overlooks one obvious recommendation: Our government should accept Mikhail Gorbachev's standing offer to immediately end all further testing of nuclear warheads. In fact, we and the Soviets promised we'd do just that when we signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The truth is that we lack authority to bring about an end to nuclear proliferation when we continue to test these hideous weapons.

The State Department rejected Iran's latest proposal for international talks Thursday in the latest sign of trouble for the Obama administration's top-priority effort to engage Tehran in nuclear negotiations. A five-page Iranian proposal distributed to foreign diplomats Wednesday "was not really responsive to our greatest concern , which is obviously Iran's nuclear program," said P.J. Crowley, the senior State Department spokesman. At the same time, Crowley said, "We remain willing to engage Iran."

Almost five years ago, Iran unilaterally stopped its uranium enrichment program. The West described it as a diplomatic breakthrough; Tehran called it a temporary suspension. Regardless, the world breathed a sigh of relief. The respite didn't last. A resentful Iran restarted its sensitive processing and enrichment program in 2005, shortly after the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, arguing that the West had insulted the country. In an interview in his finely decorated quarters in Vienna this month, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, described a "confidence deficit" on both sides.