India’s National Magazine
The U.S. supports a document calling for a nuclear-free West Asia at the NPT Review Conference and then says the decision was a mistake.
U.S. President Barack Obama has been preaching non-proliferation at all his international stops. There was the danger of the NPT conference being derailed if U.S. continued with its old practice of vetoing all documents that compromised Israel’s �nuclear ambiguity�. However, despite strenuous opposition from Israel, Obama chose to go along with the final document, which explicitly stated, for the first time, that the West Asian region should be declared nuclear-free.
To add to Israel’s discomfiture, the NPT Review Conference called for an international conference in 2012 with the aim of establishing a nuclear-free West Asia. The declaration called on the United Nations Secretary-General and also the U.S., Russia and the United Kingdom to name a facilitator to organise the 2012 conference. Under an NPT Action Plan announced during the conference, the five recognised nuclear powers—the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China—committed themselves to speeding up the disarmament process and reporting on the progress in 2014. Ever since the NPT came into force in 1970, the major powers have been paying lip service about reducing their arsenals and establishing nuclear-free zones. More