Pakistan opposes UN ban on fissile material

Pakistan

Pakistan opposes UN ban on fissile material

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Pakistan has opposed the UN ban on the production of nuclear of fissile material.

30 July,2011 05:12 am

Reaffirming its opposition to a US-backed treaty to ban the production of fissile material used as fuel for nuclear weapons, Pakistan warned that it would boycott any process to negotiate that treaty outside the deadlocked UN Conference on Disarmament—the sole negotiating forum for multilateral disarmament.Speaking in the UN General Assembly, Acting Pakistani Ambassador Raza Bashir Tarar struck a “note of caution” against taking negotiations for the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) outside the 65-member Conference, saying, “Pakistan will not join any such process nor would it consider accession to the outcome of any such process”. Despite pressure from some nuclear powers over the last two years, Pakistan has been blocking the launching of negotiations on the proposed treaty at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament on the ground that it is prejudicial to its national security interests. The Pakistani delegate also said that the discriminatory policies pursued by some major powers regarding nuclear cooperation—an obvious reference to US-India nuclear deals—have created insecurities and imbalances. “These policies, by sacrificing international non-proliferation goals at the altar of power and profit, have accentuated the asymmetry in fissile material stocks in our region,” he said while addressing the 192-member Assembly’s follow-up gathering on last year’s high-level meeting on the Conference on Disarmament and Multilateral Disarmament Negotiations. Regrettably, those policies continued and had found no opposition amongst the members of Nuclear Supplier Group, which,he said, comprised of some of the most ardent supporters of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and strongest critics of “lack of progress in the CD (Conference on Disarmament)”. During the discussion in the Assembly, some major powers debated options for reforming the CD, or even abandoning, that ‘dysfunctional’ body.