In a speech before the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to urge the body to give greater attention to nuclear nonproliferation efforts, according to the New York Times (see GSN, March 5).

During his speech, Bush will describe stemming nuclear proliferation as one of the “next big challenges facing the United Nations,” a senior official said yesterday. 

Some senior U.S. officials had expected Bush to use his U.N. address to outline new proposals for strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by amending treaty provisions exploited by Iran and North Korea to develop their nuclear programs, according to the Times (see related GSN story, today).  Those proposals, however, have only been discussed in general terms within the White House and have not yet been examined by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, officials said.

“Nobody thinks they are ready for prime time,” a U.S. official said.

There are still several issues that would need to be resolved before attempting to strengthen the NPT, such as how to deal with countries that have never signed the treaty and whether it would be possible to prevent treaty members that have developed nuclear programs from leaving the treaty such as North Korea did, midlevel U.S. officials said.

In his speech, Bush is expected to focus on the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led effort to interdict WMD-related cargo shipments, the Times reported (see GSN, Sept. 17).  Four of the 11 initiative members recently completed the first of a series of interdiction exercises (David Sanger, New York Times, Sept. 22).

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