U.S. pledges to support arms control treaties
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
Associated Press

GENEVA — The United States pledged to support global treaties to control weapons of mass destruction, but said Thursday some accords may need to be strengthened or replaced because of threats from terrorists and “rogue” countries.

“It has become fashionable to characterize my country as ‘unilateralist’ and against all arms-control agreements,” Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament.

“Nonetheless, our commitment to multilateral regimes to promote nonproliferation and international security never has been as strong as it is today through numerous arms-control treaties,” he said.

He said widespread criticism of the United States for pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Moscow fails to take note of changes in the world since the end of the Cold War.

“Although our Russian friends did not agree with our withdrawal decision, the world is aware of the close and growing relationship between our two nations,” Bolton said.

Bolton said the chance of a nuclear attack by an individual country or terrorist group is now greater than the “comfortingly remote possibility” of a U.S.-Russian nuclear war.

“Almost every state that actively sponsors terror is known to be seeking weapons of mass destruction and missiles to deliver them at longer and longer ranges,” he said.
Bolton didn’t name any countries, but Iraq and North Korea are among the nations U.S. officials have accused of violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursuing other weapons of mass destruction.

Because of the new threats, Bolton said the conference — deadlocked since it created the nuclear test-ban treaty in 1996 — must redouble efforts to forge new treaties to control weapons of mass destruction.

He suggested that the conference should negotiate a treaty to halt the spread of the plutonium and highly enriched uranium that is needed to make nuclear weapons.

Iraqi Ambassador Samir al-Nima denied Iraq, which has refused to let U.N. weapons inspectors in since 1998, is pursuing nuclear weapons.

North Korean diplomat Ri Thae Gun also denied his country is developing nuclear weapons.

“We have no intention of attacking any country in the world unless we are attacked,” he said. “We will not tolerate any kind of threat or invasion. We will fight until the last person.”

Addressing concerns that the Bush administration is abandoning international treaties, Bolton cited several pacts he said the United States supports, including the chemical weapons ban produced by the conference in 1992 and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

At the opening session of the conference Tuesday, Russian Ambassador Leonid Skotnikov criticized the Bush administration for pulling out of the ABM treaty and accused it of torpedoing efforts to give teeth to a ban on biological weapons.

Bolton said the United States still supports the Biological Weapons Convention despite its withdrawal last year from six years of talks to create an enforcement mechanism for the accord.

He charged that the proposed mechanism was flawed and would “actually increase the specter of biological warfare by not effectively confronting the serious problem of BWC noncompliance.”

In his speech, Bolton made no mention of the nuclear test-ban treaty, which was pushed by the Clinton administration but was rejected by the Senate.

He later told reporters that the Bush administration had no plans to resume nuclear testing — halted by the United States in 1992 — but added that “there was a decision to try and upgrade our testing infrastructure.”“If the strategic circumstances in world changed dramatically we would be in a better position in terms of our testing and research infrastructure than we are now,” he said.

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