With President Barack Obama presiding, the U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously endorsed a sweeping strategy aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminating them, to usher in a world with "undiminished security for all."
"That can be our destiny," Obama declared after the 15-nation body adopted the historic, U.S.-initiated resolution at an unprecedented summit session. "We will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal."
The lengthy document was aimed, in part, at the widely denounced nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, although they were not named. It also reflected Obama's ambitious agenda to embrace treaties and other agreements leading toward a nuclear weapon-free world, some of which is expected to encounter political opposition in Washington.
On both counts, Thursday's 15-0 vote delivered a global consensus — countries ranging from Britain to China to Burkina Faso — that may add political impetus to dealing with nuclear violators, advancing arms control in international forums and winning support in the U.S. Congress.
"This is a historic moment, a moment offering a fresh start toward a new future," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, saluting the first such Security Council gathering of presidents and premiers to deal with nuclear nonproliferation.
No concrete actions
The 2,300-word document did not authorize any concrete actions, but it urged action on a long list of proposals before the international community.
It called for negotiation of a treaty banning production of fissile material for nuclear bombs and establishment of internationally supervised nuclear fuel banks, to keep potential bomb material out of more hands — both items on Obama's agenda.
It also urged states to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the 1996 pact banning all nuclear bomb tests, another Obama goal.
The United States is among nine nations with nuclear weapons or technology whose approval is required for that treaty to take effect, but which have not ratified the CTBT.
Republican opposition defeated the test-ban pact in the U.S. Senate in 1999, and Obama is expected to face similar GOP opposition in pushing for ratification next year. The Senate objected to the measure because the U.S. might need to test its weapons to assure reliability, and there were concerns international monitoring might fail to detect cheaters.
Demand for compliance
The resolution in various ways reaffirmed support for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1968 accord aimed at preventing the spread of atomic arms beyond five original weapons powers — the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China.
It bolstered a slew of earlier council resolutions that slapped sanctions on North Korea, for its testing of nuclear weapons, and on Iran, whose uranium-enrichment program is suspected to be intended for nuclear weapons. It demanded that these "parties concerned" comply fully with such requirements.
Obama, leading the meeting because the U.S. is council president for the month of September, said the resolution was not "about singling out an individual nation." But French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his council speech, directed sharp words at both countries.
"We may all be threatened one day by a neighbor, by a neighbor endowing itself" with nuclear weapons, Sarkozy said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on the council to consider "far tougher sanctions" against Iran.
In reaction, the Iranian U.N. mission later issued a statement denouncing "fear-mongering" and "falsehoods," and repeating its claim that its nuclear program is designed for civilian energy purposes only.
The flare-up came just a week before a scheduled Oct. 1 meeting in Geneva between the Iranians and European, U.S. and Chinese representatives to try to move toward resolving the long-running standoff.
In his speech, Libya's U.N. ambassador, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, filling in for absent leader Moammar Gadhafi, targeted another suspected nuclear weapons program, that of Israel, which rejects the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Israel's nuclear sites should be subject to international oversight, Shalgam said. "Otherwise, all the states of the Middle East will say, `We have a right to develop nuclear weapons. Why Israel alone?'"
Thursday's omnibus resolution also expressed "grave concern" about the threat of nuclear terrorism, and urged states to take firmer steps to keep potential bomb material out of terrorist hands. It encouraged governments to lay down stricter guidelines for exporting nuclear technology, for example, and to do more to detect and disrupt nuclear trafficking.
The White House said Thursday's action demonstrated "growing international political will behind the (Obama) nuclear agenda." It also endorsed ideas that have not always found favor in Washington.
China's president focused on one of those ideas, a late addition to the final resolution referring to "negative security assurances," guarantees to non-nuclear-weapon states that they will never be attacked with nuclear weapons. The U.S. has resisted making such assurances all-encompassing and legally binding.
Addressing this, China's Hu Jintao said all weapons states "should make an unequivocal commitment of unconditionally not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states."
The resolution also identified global nuclear disarmament as a "pillar" of the Nonproliferation Treaty, a point much ignored in past years by the Republican White House of George W. Bush. The resolution called on states to negotiate "a treaty on general and complete disarmament."
In his agenda-setting speech in Prague last April, Obama embraced such a goal, as he did earlier in a joint statement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
He repeated that commitment on Thursday.
"The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," he told the summit. "And it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal."
Arms-control advocates applauded the unprecedented Security Council action.
It "brings much-needed global focus to the risks posed by the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material," said a statement from four leading U.S. ex-statesmen — former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and ex-U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn. The four have led a 2-year-old campaign to move toward abolition of nuclear arms.