Global Policy Forum

By Dafna Linzer

In a significant shift of US policy, the Bush Administration has announced that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty to ban production of nuclear weapons materials.

For several years the US and others have been pursuing the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At an arms control meeting in Geneva last week the US told other countries it supported a treaty, but not verification.

US officials, who have demonstrated scepticism in the past about the effectiveness of international weapons inspections, said they made the decision after concluding such a system would cost too much, require overly intrusive inspections and would not guarantee compliance with the treaty. However, they declined to explain in detail how they believed US security would be undermined by creating a plan to monitor the treaty.

Arms control specialists said the change in the US position would greatly weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. They said the US move virtually killed a 10-year international effort to persuade countries such as India, Israel and Pakistan to accept some oversight of their nuclear production programs.

The announcement at the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament comes several months after President George Bush declared it a top priority to prevent the production and trafficking in nuclear materials, and as his Administration works to blunt criticism by Democrats and others that it has failed to work effectively with the UN and other international bodies on such vital matters.

Daryl Kimball, director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said it was "surprising and baffling that the Administration is not supporting a meaningful treaty".

The UN conference includes 66 countries. It had announced its intention to start negotiations this year towards a verifiable international agreement that would ban production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. The two ingredients are used for setting-off a chain-reaction nuclear explosion. The treaty was designed to impose restraints on India, Israel and Pakistan. In 2000 all three countries, the Clinton administration and the other conference members agreed to pursue negotiation of the treaty. But last year the US decided to review its position.

The State Department said that an internal review had concluded that an inspection regime "would have been so extensive that it could compromise key signatories' core national security interests and so costly that many countries will be hesitant to accept it". This year, after revelations that a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea, Mr Bush delivered a speech in which he proposed several new measures, including encouraging all countries to criminalise proliferation and secure sensitive materials within their borders.