"We are ending after a month of rancor - when everyone agreed that the system is ailing but not busted - and the same issues continue to stare us in the eyes," he said. He urged President Bush and other national leaders to deal with the problem at a much higher-level meeting, because he said the questions raised in recent years about the spread of nuclear technology were "fundamental to our survival."

But the conference revealed a huge gulf that left Mr. Duarte musing aloud whether the 1970 treaty was further weakened by the session. Asked what the fundamental cause of the failure was, he said, "I think you can write several books on that."

The signatories - which include all nations except Israel, India and Pakistan, which all have nuclear weapons, and North Korea - cannot agree "on the best ways to achieve the purposes and objectives of the treaty." In fact, it took three weeks to agree on an agenda.

A number of nations, led by Iran and Egypt, demanded that any change in the system of restraining the spread of nuclear arms technology begin with assurances that no nuclear power would ever attack a non-nuclear nation. They also wanted an agreement to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Bush administration has said is dead.

Mr. Bush's representatives tried to steer the discussion toward how to deal with a country like Iran, which hid much of its nuclear activity from the I.A.E.A. for nearly two decades, or North Korea, which so far has not suffered any penalty for leaving the treaty.
 

The U.S. undersecretary, who has questioned the value of some arms-control treaties, also disparaged what he called "endless international negotiations whose point seems to be negotiations rather than decision."

The treaty at issue here, the 1970 nonproliferation pact, with 188 member nations, is regarded by many as a keystone of the nuclear age, often credited with having kept nuclear arms from spreading to dozens of countries.

The treaty was negotiated as a grand bargain: Those without atomic arsenals pledge not to pursue them, and in exchange five countries with the weapons _ the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China _ commit to eventually eliminating them. The "have-nots," meanwhile, are guaranteed access to peaceful nuclear technology.

Treaty members meet every five years to assess its workings and agree on new approaches to solve problems, such as the potential for civilian nuclear fuel technology to also make material for atom bombs _ the heart of the Iran dispute.

This time delegates wanted to deal as well with what many see as U.S. backsliding on nuclear disarmament commitments made at the 1995 and 2000 conferences. But Bolton made clear, more than a year ago, this wouldn't happen.

At a preparatory meeting last year, the undersecretary said complaints about the slow pace of disarmament, and Bush administration proposals for new nuclear weapons, were "issues that do not exist." In fact, he dropped disarmament from the equation when he spoke of the treaty's "central bargain."

By the time the U.N. conference opened, a State Department brochure distributed to delegates had skipped the 1995-2000 commitments in its chronology of steps in arms control.

In the U.N. meeting halls, meanwhile, the Americans blocked every attempt to have nuclear-weapons states reaffirm past disarmament commitments, and thereby contributed to the paralysis and lack of consensus at the conference.

The U.S. delegation devoted much of its speechmaking to descriptions of Bolton's reinvented regime _ unilateral or U.S.-led steps outside the treaty's multilateral forum.

They include the Proliferation Security Initiative, a series of U.S. agreements with individual governments to intercept illicit nuclear trade, and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, requiring governments to outlaw dealings related to weapons of mass destruction.

Critics say the Bolton approach _ downgrading multilateral negotiations, dismissing past disarmament pledges, pushing ahead with made-in-the-USA counter-proliferation programs _ could weaken the nonproliferation treaty. Countries like Iran, mindful of the U.S. attack on Iraq, might develop nuclear weapons in self-defense, they say.

Bolton and his aides reject this, particularly any suggestion that perpetuation of the U.S. nuclear arsenal might justify nuclear proliferation elsewhere.

"Such thinking is, simply put, dangerous in the extreme," Bolton deputy Jackie Sanders told delegates.

One who thinks that way is Robert S. McNamara, the 88-year-old former U.S. defense secretary, who came to New York to observe the conference.

"I agree it's dangerous," he told reporters. "But it's realistic."
 

Asked about Iran-Europe objective guarantees, he said, "objective guarantees for political, economic and security have been raised by Iran in return for similar one the EU seeks from Iran to ensure civilian nature of nuclear program. The Europeans said will adopt such measure."

Charter of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) envisaged Additional Protocol to NPT which grants short-notice inspection rights to the agency as objective guarantee. Iran signed the additional protocol to relieve any concern about national nuclear program.

Iran has set up full fuel cycle for low grade uranium enrichment to produce fuel for nuclear power plant and does not see economical the import of fuel for generating electricity.

On recent remark by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf quoted by German Der Spiegel magazine on Iran's nuclear program, the spokesman said, "President Musharraf knows well that the Islamic Republic does not seek nuclear weapons."

"We hope Pakistanis will clarify that the report has been distorted."
Asefi rejected news on Al Qaeda leader of Iraq Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi entry to Iran for treatment, saying "Iran is a very transparent country. The news on al-Zarqawi's presence in Iran is a smear propaganda campaign.

He expressed hope Iran-Europe negotiations would end to satisfactory results and said Iran has made efforts to build confidence and the Europeans understood this fact. Their call to hold another round of talks showed they believe the case will bear fruit just through negotiations.

Asefi added the Europe will sustain damage more than Iran over referral of Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council and hoped the Europeans' upcoming proposal would meet Iran's interests.

He further noted he will pay a visit to Kuwait to discuss bilateral cooperation in the fields of dissemination of information and parliamentary and consular ties.
 

The non-nuclear nations hit sharply at the failure of the nuclear powers, and particularly the United States, to honor their commitments to nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, a number of countries, led by Egypt and Iran, demanded that the nuclear powers pledge never to attack non-nuclear nations and that Washington ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The U.S. government, in turn, sought to keep the spotlight on the alleged transgressions of North Korea and Iran. In one of the conference's opening addresses, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Semmel also accused the International Atomic Energy Agency of failing to report Iran's non-compliance with the treaty to the U.N. Security Council. At the same time, U.S. officials argued that the United States was complying with the treaty's requirements.

Even many of Washington's traditional allies found the U.S. position unconvincing. Apparently referring to the Bush administration, Paul Meyer, the Canadian representative at the conference, remarked acidly: "If governments simply ignore or discard commitments whenever they prove inconvenient, we will never be able to build an edifice of international cooperation."

U.S. credibility was further undermined by the Bush administration's decision to send lower-echelon officials, rather than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to represent it at the conference. According to observers, this snub represented an attempt to undercut the significance of the review conference and, thereby, mute the criticism that would emerge there of the U.S. government's disdain for nuclear disarmament -- or at least for U.S. nuclear disarmament.

Criticism of the U.S. role at the conference was particularly sharp among peace and disarmament groups. "The United States has had four weeks to demonstrate international leadership on nuclear proliferation," remarked Susi Snyder, secretary general of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. "Clearly, the U.S. delegation never wanted to strengthen the treaty. Instead, they have spent four weeks . . . refusing to recognize agreements they made 5 and 10 years ago." According to Alyn Ware of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, it was "impossible to prevent" nuclear proliferation "while the nuclear weapons states insist on maintaining large stockpiles of weapons themselves." It was "like a parent telling a child not to smoke while smoking a pack of cigarettes."

Given the obviously self-defeating nature of U.S. nuclear policy, why does the Bush administration cling to it so stubbornly? Why has it spurned the efforts not only of the world community, but of the U.S. government's closest allies to strengthen the NPT and continue progress toward a nuclear-free world?

One possible explanation is that the Bush administration believes that it has the military capability to deter current nuclear nations and to destroy hostile nations that reach the brink of becoming nuclear powers. For example, if Iran continues to produce fissionable material, Washington will simply launch an all-out military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Therefore, the Bush administration sees no need to maintain the bargain between non-nuclear and nuclear powers that was struck decades ago through the NPT. As Bush administration officials frequently say, conditions in the world have changed, and U.S. policy will change with them.

A second possible explanation, which does not exclude the first, is that the Bush administration is getting ready to use nuclear weapons in future wars. Despite the massive advantage the U.S. government enjoys over other nations in conventional military forces, these U.S. forces are now overstretched in fighting an insurgency in a small country like Iraq. Furthermore, dispatching substantial numbers of U.S. combat troops overseas is quite expensive, and their death in large numbers undermines political support for a war -- as it is now doing. In this context, the development and use of nuclear weapons to maintain what the Bush administration defines as U.S. "national interests" seem quite logical to U.S. national security managers. Ominously, the new nuclear weapons for which the Bush administration has requested funding from Congress are considered "usable" nuclear weapons: so-called "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes."

As a result, the collapse of the NPT review conference of 2005 and the hard-line nuclear policies of the Bush administration that have contributed to it have seriously undermined the willingness of nations to dispense with nuclear weapons. Indeed, these factors seem to place the nations of the world back in the nuclear arms race and, perhaps, on the road to nuclear war. Of course, popular protest and wise statesmanship have turned around situations like this in the past, and they might well do so again. But, in the meantime, we should recognize that evading disarmament commitments and plunging forward with nuclear weapons development and use is a surefire recipe for disaster.

Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).
 

For 35 years, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, has been a cornerstone of our global security. With near universal membership, the treaty has firmly entrenched a norm against nuclear proliferation and helped confound predictions that today there would be 25 or more countries with nuclear weapons. But today, the treaty faces a dual crisis of compliance and confidence. Delegates at the month-long conference, which is held once every five years, could not furnish the world with any solutions to the grave nuclear threats we all face. And while arriving at an agreement can be more challenging in a climate of crisis, it is also at such times that it is all the more imperative to do so.

Let me be clear: Failure of a review conference to come to any agreement will not break the NPT-based regime. The vast majority of countries that are parties to the treaty recognize its enduring benefits. But there are cracks in each of the treaty's pillars - nonproliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear technology - and each of these cracks requires urgent repair.

Since the review conference last met, in 2000, North Korea has announced its withdrawal from the treaty and declared itself in possession of nuclear weapons. Libya has admitted that it worked for years on a clandestine nuclear weapons program. And the International Atomic Energy Agency has found undeclared uranium enrichment activity in Iran.

Clearly, the NPT-based regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalization. Whereas proliferation among countries was once considered the sole concern of the treaty, revelations that the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan and others were extensively trafficking in nuclear technology and know-how exposed the vulnerability of the nonproliferation regime to non-state actors.

The treaty's framers could hardly have imagined that we would have to work tirelessly to prevent terrorists from acquiring and using nuclear weapons and related materials. And while progress toward disarmament has taken place, there are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world, many of which remain on hair-trigger alert.

At the same time, the intergovernmental bodies designed to address these challenges are paralyzed. In Geneva, the Conference on Disarmament has been unable to agree on a program of work for eight years. The UN Disarmament Commission has become increasingly marginal, producing no real agreement since 2000. And at the NPT review conference, nearly two-thirds of the proceedings were consumed by debate about agenda and logistics, instead of substantive discussions on how to strengthen the nonproliferation regime.

In my opening address to the conference, I argued that success would depend on coming to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity. I warned that the conference would stall if some delegates focused on some threats instead of addressing them all. Some countries underscored proliferation as a grave danger, while others argued that existing nuclear arsenals imperil us. Some insisted that the spread of nuclear fuel-cycle technology posed an unacceptable proliferation threat, while others countered that access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology must not be compromised.

In the end, delegations regrettably missed the opportunity to endorse the merits of all of these arguments. As a result, they were unable to advance security against any of the dangers we face. How, then, can we overcome this paralysis?

When multilateral forums falter, leaders must lead. This September, more than 170 heads of state and government will convene in New York to adopt a wide-ranging agenda to advance development, security and human rights for all countries and all peoples. I challenge them to break the deadlock on the most pressing challenges in the field of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. If they fail to do so, their peoples will ask how, in today's world, they could not find common ground in the cause of diminishing the existential threat of nuclear weapons.

To revitalize the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, action will be required on many fronts. To strengthen verification and increase confidence in the regime, leaders must agree to make the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol the new standard for verifying compliance with nonproliferation commitments.

Leaders must find ways to reconcile the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy with the imperative of nonproliferation. The regime will not be sustainable if scores more countries develop the most sensitive phases of the fuel cycle, and are equipped with the technology to produce nuclear weapons on short notice.

A first step would be to create incentives for countries to voluntarily forgo the development of fuel-cycle facilities. I commend the nuclear agency and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, for working to advance consensus on this vital question, and I urge leaders to join him in that mission.

Leaders must also move beyond rhetoric in addressing the question of disarmament. Prompt negotiation of a fissile material cutoff treaty for all countries is indispensable. All countries also should affirm their commitment to a moratorium on testing, and to early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. And I hope leaders will think seriously about what more can be done to reduce - irreversibly - the number and role of nuclear weapons in the world.

Bold commitments at the September meeting would breathe new life into all forums dealing with disarmament and nonproliferation. They would reduce all the risks we face - of nuclear accidents, of trafficking, of terrorist use and of use by countries themselves. It is an ambitious agenda, and probably daunting to some. But the consequences of failure are far more daunting. Solutions are within are reach; we must grasp them.

(Kofi A. Annan is secretary general of the United Nations.)
 

Brushing aside the US insistence that the experience of North Korea's 2002 withdrawal from the NPT demanded amendments to this founding principal, Kharrazi said: "It is unacceptable that some want to limit the access of peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of non-proliferation."

It was a performance that set the tone for other anti-US themes taken up with varying degrees of hostility and varying degrees of justification by other nations over the following four weeks.

These included the need for faster and more transparent disarmament by the nuclear weapons states; disarmament measures that go beyond just removing nuclear warheads from deployment; the need for the US to stop its development of new nuclear weapons and its plans to deploy nuclear weapons in outer space.

Eygpt's focus on the US's refusal to support action against Israel, with an estimated 200 warheads, was a particular sore point. Israel refuses to join the NPT.

In the end there was no consensus for anything, not even how best to punish states such as North Korea that leave the NPT or how to deal with the alarming signs of growth in the nuclear black market.

The father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, ran a smuggling network that supplied nuclear technology and materials to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The review's outcome has now increased fears the NPT might collapse altogether unless responsibility for it is handed to the Security Council.

How the US might feel about that - especially if it was to involve a suspension of the veto power - remains unclear.

But according to Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, nobody should expect too much from the US because it was largely the "deep disdain" for international agreements and institutions by the neo-conservatives holding sway in the White House that produced the failure of the conference in the first place.

"Many neo-conservatives in Washington believe these multilateral meetings are worthless," Cirincione wrote for YaleGlobal Online last week.

"They see them as a trap where global Lilliputians can tie down the American Gulliver."

Former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, who made a surprise appearance at a press conference during the final week, said the Security Council was now the only body capable of preventing other nations from following North Korea and Iran and developing nuclear weapons.

He named Japan and South Korea in Asia and Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East as the most likely nations.

McNamara, 89, also offered a chilling assessment of the dangers of proliferation.

"If proliferation continues, these weapons will be used," he said.

"The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to their use."
 

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami reiterated on Saturday Iran's determination to peruse nuclear technology, stressing that the Islamic Republic will restrict nuclear research into civil use.

"In view of the ongoing progress in the world today, Iran is entitled to peaceful use of nuclear technology," IRNA quoted the Iranian President as saying during his meeting with Mohammad-Mehdi Akhundzadeh, Iran`s ingoing ambassador and permanent envoy to the UN.

Iran accepted talks with the European Union big states as a principle and had thus far extended its "utmost cooperation" in that field, Khatami said, reiterating that Iran`s activities in the field of nuclear energy are "free from any ambiguity."
 

While the United States mounted strong criticisms of North Korea and Iran, Tehran stood its ground in insisting on its right to the peaceful use of atomic energy, and Egypt supported Iran's position. Conference members also felt frustrated at the U.S. policy on Israel, which has refused to be a party to the NPT even though it is a practical nuclear power.

The failure of the review conference will not lead directly to the collapse of nuclear nonproliferation arrangements. There is no doubt, however, that a good opportunity was missed for regaining the public's trust in the nonproliferation regime. If the international community is divided, there is no hope for the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Countries of the world should keep that fact firmly in mind and make a fresh start in their diplomatic efforts.

Countries that possess nuclear weapons should, first of all, demonstrate their seriousness about nuclear disarmament, if only for requesting the cooperation of non-nuclear power to prevent more nations from acquiring the technology.

If the United States ratifies the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it will be helpful in prodding China and other countries that have not yet ratified it to do likewise. Eliminating nuclear tests will put a halt to the growing number of nuclear powers. That, we believe, is in the interest of the United States.

It will also be necessary to plug all the loopholes in the nonproliferation regime. This can best be accomplished by working through the United Nations and the IAEA. Measures need to be drawn up to disallow countries to bolt from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty whenever they feel like it. In addition, more countries need to accept the Additional Protocol for strengthening the IAEA's power to undertake nuclear inspections. These are among key tasks that were not tackled by the review conference. These are matters that must be discussed intensively at existing international forums. Decisions must be reached on these issues as soon as possible.

If the problems concerning nuclear development by North Korea and Iran continue to fester, the nuclear nonproliferation regime will suffer a fatal blow. The road to de-nuclearization must be tackled at the six-way talks with North Korea and through negotiations between Iran and European countries.

Nor can discussion on the problem of Israel be put off any longer. Talk on disarmament in the Middle East and abandoning weapons of mass destruction in the region should be part of the continuing peacemaking process in that part of the world. If the world continues to beset lack of action by the review conference, the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime will only grow darker.
 

The NPT aims to reconcile three sets of interests. It is intended to halt the stem of nuclear weapons and related technologies, to facilitate the spread of peaceful nuclear technologies and to bring about the eventual elimination of existing nuclear arsenals. Two bargains are embodied in the treaty. In one, countries forgo the right to develop weapons in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology. In the other, nuclear "have nots" accept permanent nonnuclear status in exchange for the commitment of the nuclear-weapons states to eliminate their own stockpiles.

Every five years, the treaty signatories -- currently there are 188 -- meet to review the status of the NPT and the global nonproliferation regime. The most recent conference concluded last week in New York and it was an unmitigated failure. Despite the imminent threat of proliferation by Pyongyang and Tehran, and the nuclear black market that has been exposed by the revelations about the activities of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, treaty members could not agree on priorities.

Nonnuclear-weapons states insist that the "haves" cut their nuclear arsenals. The nuclear-weapons states, in particular the U.S., demand that the group focus on the activities of Iran and North Korea. The gap proved unbridgeable. The seeming lack of progress in dismantling the U.S. arsenal -- which in fact has been cut by 13,000 weapons since the 1980s -- undermined any willingness by nuclear "have nots" to accept tighter restrictions on their access to nuclear technology.

The conference concluded in acrimony. Unable to even agree on an agenda until after three weeks of meetings -- and this followed several equally fruitless preparatory conferences -- the review conference ended without even issuing a chairman's statement. Mr. Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was blunt: "Absolutely nothing" came out of the meeting.

The conference failure does not spell the end of the NPT. At the 1995 review conference, signatories agreed to its indefinite expansion. The breakdown last week does not affect that. The nuclear nonproliferation regime is bigger than the NPT itself and the regime has proven remarkably adaptable. As loopholes have been identified, fixes have been prepared. After the discovery in the 1990s that Iraq had made considerable progress advancing its nuclear ambitions, the IAEA developed the Additional Protocols that strengthened the agency's safeguard mechanisms. Revelations surrounding A.Q. Khan prompted the creation of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which aims to interdict illegal transfers of nuclear weapons and related materials. Finally, the prospect of terrorists acquiring such weapons prompted last year's passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, which obligates all U.N. member states to strengthen laws to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

These steps have helped reinvigorate efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. More must be done, of course, and concerns about nuclear apartheid must be addressed. The world will never be free of the threat of nuclear annihilation until all nuclear arsenals have been dismantled. But hopes for that day must not become the enemy of more pragmatic, incremental efforts to build a safer world.
 

The timing of the presentation is significant because Mr. Bush's aides, in conversations where they insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, are talking with increasing urgency about using similar techniques to cut off North Korea's main sources of hard currency: shipments of weapons, illegal drugs and counterfeit currency.

The administration officials said that Ms. Rice would be joined by the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, and that they would announce that Iraq, Georgia and Argentina were joining the effort to stop weapons shipments en route.

"What we are looking to do is make clear that we have had many quiet successes that no one has heard about," said a senior official who has been involved in the program since it began. "This is the time to make it clear that there are many ways to stop proliferation activities."

Ms. Rice is expected to cite about a dozen cases in which material was either intercepted - largely at ports, during the transfer of containers - or Washington notified other countries that a shipment was about to leave their waters. But according to officials who are familiar with her presentation, she will be vague about most of the details. They say that is partly because some foreign governments are concerned about retribution if they are seen to be closely cooperating with the United States and other Western nations.

Because so few specifics are being released, it will be difficult for those outside the government to independently verify whether the interceptions were directly related to efforts by nations to obtain weapons or have another plausible explanation.

For example, Ms. Rice is expected to cite the interception of missile-related equipment, some from places within United States, that American intelligence agencies say was headed for Iran. But she will not say when, where or how the interception took place, or exactly what kind of equipment was involved.

The equipment was described Monday by several officials as "dual use," meaning that it could have been used for purposes other than missiles. Similarly, she will talk about the interception of missile-propellant equipment to a country "outside the Middle East," apparently in Asia. But again, she will withhold details, including the name of the country.

An effort at the United Nations to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended in failure last week, with nonnuclear nations blaming the United States while Washington argued that many of the countries were ignoring nuclear efforts in North Korea and Iran.

With tensions mounting over negotiations with those two countries - and the further souring of Washington's relationship with Syria, a major importer of missile technology - administration officials are eager to demonstrate that their own approach, which operates outside of treaties or the United Nations, is already choking off supplies to the three countries. But China is not part of the American program, and its participation would be critical to enforcing a quarantine on North Korea.

Pakistan is also not part of the effort. Its former chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, formed a global nuclear network that investigators say supplied Iran, North Korea and Libya with nuclear-related technology. Senior officials say Pakistan has been helpful in tracking down parts of the Khan network, but its reluctance to join the interception program is an example, they say, of President Pervez Musharraf's continued political sensitivities about appearing to cooperate too closely with President Bush.

Until now the administration has cited only one major success for its security program: the interception in the Mediterranean of the BBC China, a freighter that was carrying nuclear components to Libya in October 2003. The interception of the ship, which carried components for centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, is widely believed to have led Libya to decide to give up its nuclear weapons program two months later.

Since then, Ms. Rice and other American officials have been seeking to duplicate that success. Close to 60 countries are part of the program, though only about 40 have taken part in interceptions or in one of the 14 training exercises that have taken place around the world. Three nations where much of the world's shipping fleet is registered - Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands - have signed accords that allow for expedited approval for boarding their ships for inspection, sometimes with only a few hours' notice. A Bush administration official said that Cyprus and Croatia were about to sign similar agreements.