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2009-09-25 08:04:33
by Jo Biddle Jo Biddle Thu Sep 24, 8:16 am ET
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) US President Barack Obama will on Thursday chair an unprecedented summit at the UN Security Council to rally world support for nuclear non-proliferation and advance nuclear disarmament.
The talks come as Iran's suspect energy program has once again been thrust into the spotlight, with world powers warning more sanctions could follow if Tehran refuses to comply with UN demands to rein in its nuclear ambitions.
The summit will be the first time the 15-member council will be chaired by an American president, with Obama having set combating nuclear proliferation as a priority of his new administration.
US officials have stressed the aim of the summit is to reinvigorate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which will be the subject of a key review conference next year.
In his maiden address to the UN General Assembly, Obama on Wednesday renewed a pledge he made in Prague earlier this year to work toward his goal of "a world without nuclear weapons."
"This institution was founded at the dawn of the atomic age, in part because man's capacity to kill had to be contained," he told the assembly, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad listened intently.
"For decades, we averted disaster, even under the shadow of a super-power stand-off. But today, the threat of proliferation is growing in scope and complexity," he warned, in a speech was warmly welcomed by some 120 heads of state and government.
"If we fail to act, we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine."
White House officials said there were three main elements to Obama's strategy -- non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and encouraging the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
US National Security Council advisor Gary Samore said they expected the Security Council would "pass a resolution that would endorse the key parts of the president's overall strategy, including some fairly technical matters which the Security Council has never spoken on before."
Part of the plan appears to be setting out a strategy to deal with states which leave or violate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Council members are expected to adopt a US-drafted resolution calling on states that have signed the NPT "to comply fully with all their obligations."
White House officials said they did not want to get into the detail of the resolution to be adopted Thursday at a meeting which takes place alongside the annual meeting of the General Assembly.
But Samore acknowledged: "The Security Council has a unique and distinctive role in the international regime, because it's the only body that has the authority and the responsibility to address issues of non-compliance."
The draft text makes no direct reference to Iran and North Korea but points to Security Council resolutions enjoining Tehran to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work and Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
US deputy permanent representative to the UN, Alex Wolff said: "There is a deliberate effort here to focus on this issue comprehensively, and not use this meeting to focus on any specific country or problem.
"The resolution reflects that as well. It is, in effect, a framework for how we deal with these issues."
Obama also said he was confident the United States -- the only country to unleash a nuclear bomb in wartime -- and Russia would meet an end-of-year deadline to agree on a replacement to the START nuclear arms reduction treaty.
"Both of us are confident that we can meet our self-imposed deadline" to reach an agreement to reduce the number of nuclear missiles and launchers "by the end of the year," Obama said after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
The United States and Russia are seeking to agree on a successor to the landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) before it expires on December 5.
The US resolution to be debated on Thursday also urges all nations to "refrain from conducting a nuclear test explosion" and to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in order to "bring the treaty into force."
A separate high-level UN conference is scheduled for Friday to facilitate the entry into force of the CTBT.
Drawn up in 1996, the CTBT has been signed by 181 countries and ratified by 149. But it needs to be ratified by nine others, including China and the United States, before coming into force.