According to Iran, whose representative to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference spoke with press this afternoon while on his way to a plenary session at which the latest draft of the final document was distributed, there are three things holding up consensus on this NPT RevCon. In particular, he said “there are three issues that have been serious obstacles for the success of the conference so far, and the [nuclear] weapons states have not cooperated:
“One is the Non-Aligned Movement – 116 countries – have demanded setting a definite timeline of 2025 to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapon states have not accepted that.
“Second point is there should be negative security assurances. This means that nuclear weapon states should give us a legally binding, unconditional assurance that they will not use nuclear weapons against other countries which do not have nuclear weapons. They have not accepted yet.
“The third point is to promptly commence negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. We have non-proliferation convention, what about nuclear weapons convention. Again they have not accepted this yet.”
He went on to say that nuclear weapon states and the Non-Aligned Movement states “have been facing a stalemate situation up until now” because of these issues.
