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GENEVA: China on Thursday proposed a treaty to ban weapons in outer space because of the imminent "danger" stemming from US missile defense plans.
"All space-based weapons and all weapons attacking outer space targets from the earth are to be prohibited once and for all," Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi told the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament.
Hu introduced a draft for the treaty in an attempt to get the conference moving on the accord.
Western diplomats said the proposal only added details to China's known position on the issue.
There was no immediate US reaction to the speech.
China, a bitter critic of American plans for a national missile defense system and the expectation that it would involve deployments in space, has long been calling for a treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space.
The United States has said it was willing to discuss outer space issues, but that it is too soon to say that a new treaty is needed or that negotiations should begin.
A congressionally appointed US panel, of which Donald H. Rumsfeld was a member before becoming President George W. Bush's defense secretary earlier this year, urged in January that Washington pay more attention to defending the country's assets in space.
The panel said the United States depends on space more than any other country for a range of activities from military surveillance to weather forecasts and communications.
Hu noted the panel report urged steps be taken to protect against the danger of a "space Pearl Harbor" and said the report and US plans "clearly demonstrate that the weaponization of outer space is by no means a remote issue."
"The danger is imminent," he said.
Following diplomatic practice Hu never named the United States, but his direct reference to US plans left no doubt that he was talking about the Bush administration.
"Outer space is now faced with the danger of being weaponized, which manifests itself in two aspects, namely the development of the missile defense program and the 'space control' plan," Hu said.
He was referring to the US Air Force's long advocacy of "space control," which could include weapons to deny an enemy the use of space for combat operations against the United States or its allies.
The Bush administration has been trying to allay fears of China, Russia and other countries about the plan to construct a system to defend against limited missile attacks from what it considers to be "rogue" states, like Iraq or North Korea.
It has indicated that it hopes the key other countries can be won over to its approach in the long run, but the Chinese speech showed Beijing remains deeply skeptical.
The conference, the world's main multilateral disarmament forum, has been deadlocked over starting any new negotiations since 1996, when it wrote the treaty to ban nuclear test explosions.
Washington has been urging the conference to work on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons by negotiating a treaty to ban the "fissile materials" - plutonium and highly enriched uranium - needed for their manufacture. (AP)
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