NPT Review Conference fails to reach agreement on final document

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
27 Aug 2022 09:11
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NPT Review Conference participants fail to reach an agreement on the final document after Russia argued that the text is unbalanced with major issues left unaddressed.

10th Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference 2022, from August 1 till 26 (UN)

UN Under-Secretary-General of Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu said that the participants in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference have failed to reach an agreement on a final document, owing principally to disputes on the Ukrainian problem. Every 5 years, 191 signatories review the provisions of the document and reach an agreement for a new one.

UN Under-Secretary-General of Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu said, "I would say that the implication of the Ukrainian war was the biggest reason for this conference now to be able to adopt the consensus document.”

While the US blamed Russia for that shortcoming, Andrey Belousov, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva, argued that the termination of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was not reflected in the final draft text of the tenth Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference.

"The termination of the INF Treaty... all of these issues are relevant to the NPT and to international security," Belousov said at the conference adding that "despite the concerns of a significant number of states, they are not reflected in the draft report."

Other issues not addressed in the draft document, according to Belousov, include the development of increasingly close military and technical cooperation between non-nuclear weapon states and nuclear strategic partners. Another unaddressed issue is non-nuclear weapon states' participation in nuclear sharing, as well as NATO members' collective consent to use nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, the deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of non-nuclear weapon members of the alliance was also one of the highly important topics that were equally unaddressed in the draft according to the Russian representative.

Another central topic that Russia refuted the draft for was a particular text pertaining to the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, on August 9, that heightened activity from Ukrainian forces made the situation around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) increasingly dangerous. Zakharova added that Kiev, through targeting the facility, is holding all of Europe hostage.

It is noteworthy that in 2015, participants were also unable to reach an agreement. At the opening of this year's conference, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world faced "a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War," adding, "Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation."