Agreement Reached on U.N. Nuclear Pact

The five nuclear powers on the Security Council agreed Saturday to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as part of a disarmament agenda agreed to by 187 countries.

The agreement by the signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, was reached after all-night deliberations and intense pressure on Iraq and the United States to settle a dispute over Baghdad’s compliance with U.N. sanctions.

The conference to review the global treaty--aimed at controlling and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons--required a consensus, and the U.S.-Iraqi dispute threatened to sabotage approval of a final deal.

Signaling the importance Washington places on the issue of Iraq’s compliance with nuclear agreements, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn, who is in charge of nonproliferation, flew to New York to take part in the final talks.

Delegates to the conference said the new nuclear agenda was significant because it represented the first time in 15 years that the 187 nuclear and nonnuclear states were able to reach a consensus.

On Thursday, the five nuclear powers--the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China--agreed to “an unequivocal undertaking” to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

Even though the agreement gave no timetable, and delegates said it would take many years to achieve a nuclear-free world, it marked the first public statement by the major nuclear powers of their obligation to disarm.

The NPT, which came into force in 1970, has only four holdouts: India and Pakistan, which conducted rival nuclear tests in 1998; Israel, which is believed to have nuclear weapons; and Cuba, which has no nuclear weapons.

Delegates repeatedly stressed the importance of getting those nations to sign--a step many concede is crucial to the cause of disarmament.

The nuclear haves and have-nots also agreed on other important steps: a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests pending activation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals and making weapons safer by taking them off “hair-trigger” alert.

They also agreed to permanently and irreversibly remove plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads and to negotiate within the next five years a treaty banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material.

The U.S.-Iraqi dispute centered on Iraq’s compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions, which placed Iraq under sanctions until its facilities for producing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons had been shut down. The U.S. maintains that Iraq has not adequately accounted for its weapons programs.