Obama-led U.N. council backs broad nuclear agenda

UNITED NATIONS - With crisp efficiency and a gentle gavel, the new U.S. president shepherded a historic resolution through a rare U.N. Security Council summit meeting on Thursday, an all-embracing document on the world's nuclear future.

When the unanimous vote was in, endorsing a sweeping strategy to halt the spread of atomic arms and ultimately to eliminate them, a clearly satisfied Barack Obama leaned into his microphone at the head of the council's grand horseshoe table and cited the words of a predecessor in the White House.

"We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the Earth," he said, quoting Ronald Reagan.

"That can be our destiny," Obama declared. "We will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal."

The "goal" was a reflection of Obama's own ambitious agenda, to negotiate treaties and other agreements leading toward a nuclear weapon-free world, and the U.N. gave him a dramatic, unprecedented stage.

The vote by presidents and premiers of 14 nations - and by one ambassador - delivered a global consensus that may add political impetus to the Security Council's dealings with nuclear violators, to advancing arms control in international forums, and to countering opposition in Washington to some of Obama's vision.

"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.

It was only the fifth time the Security Council met at summit level since the U.N. was founded in 1945.

The U.S. holds the rotating council presidency this month and Obama was the first American president to preside over a Security Council summit, gaveling the meeting into session and announcing that "the draft resolution has been adopted unanimously."

The 2,300-word, U.S.-initiated document did not authorize any concrete actions, but it urged work 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. 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.

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 also 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 said the language 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 countries without nuclear weapons 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 countries with nuclear weapons "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."

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.