Global Security Newswire

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday called for a high-level meeting this fall to discuss initiating formal negotiations on a new treaty that would prohibit the production of new fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Jan. 27).

"I have repeatedly urged the Conference on Disarmament to immediately start negotiations on the [fissile material cutoff treaty]," Ban said in a speech at the Washington nuclear security summit.

"To spur this process along, I will consider a meeting of CD at the ministerial level in September in New York," he said.

The 65-nation, U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament agreed in 2009 to a work plan that included starting talks on the fissile materials pact. Progress has faltered, though, with nuclear-armed Pakistan objecting to any measures that it believes would give a strategic advantage to its South Asian rival, India (see GSN, Feb. 12).

"Without a verifiable and legally binding fissile material treaty, other efforts will amount to only half-measures," Ban said (Kyodo News/Breitbart.com, April 13).