U.N. Chief Seeks to Strengthen Nuclear Pact

UNITED NATIONS — With the international treaty seeking to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons already wobbly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called for it to be buttressed with renewed commitments toward disarmament and for tackling the knotty issue of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.



An international conference on the treaty will convene here on Monday. A similar effort five years ago collapsed, with nonnuclear states critical of the nuclear powers for not reducing their arsenals enough and with extended bickering over how to grapple with the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.



With President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran expected to lead his country's delegation, Mr. Ban suggested that Iran needed to convince other states that its nuclear program was strictly peaceful.



"If he brings some good constructive proposal in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, that will be helpful," Mr. Ban told reporters. He said he had been telling Iran that "the onus is on you, and you have not satisfied the requirements of the international community that your nuclear development program is for peaceful purposes, as you claim."



Facing a fourth round of Security Council sanctions over the lack of transparency in its nuclear program, Iran has embarked on a global diplomatic campaign. Mr. Ahmadinejad's presence in New York is evidently part of that effort because heads of state are relatively rare at the conferences, held every five years.



Mr. Ahmadinejad wants to attend the conference to reaffirm Iran's commitment to the nonproliferation treaty, said Muhammad Reza Sahraei, the spokesman for the Iranian Mission.



Western Security Council members had sought to avoid negotiating a new round of Iran sanctions at the time of the conference, to prevent the Iranian issue from becoming a rallying cry for nonnuclear states, which often accuse nuclear weapons states of using the treaty to keep their club exclusive.



But the six states negotiating over new sanctions — the five permanent Security Council members and Germany — have no end in sight for their negotiations, according to diplomats from the nations involved. They said negotiators were going over each proposed sanction line by line, and because some of them involve technical financial issues, they have to be referred back to finance ministries for advice.



At the 2005 conference, the United States engendered widespread hostility by playing down disarmament issues, diplomats and analysts said. The Obama administration created a better atmosphere this time by endorsing disarmament, they said, and by curbing the scope of when American weapons might be used and convening a summit meeting on security for nuclear materials in Washington earlier this month.



Mr. Ban said the world should take inspiration from the recent agreement between the United States and Russia to further reduce their active warheads.



Although Israel does not take part in the treaty, its nuclear arsenal has overshadowed recent conferences. Egypt and other nonnuclear states have refused to back stricter inspections and other global measures as long as Israel is outside the treaty.



Maged A. Abdelaziz, the Egyptian envoy to the United Nations, said the cases of Iran and Israel should be dealt with simultaneously. "To be able to deal with the Iranian issue, you have to deal with the nuclear capabilities of Israel," he told reporters.



A version of this article appeared in print on April 29, 2010, on page A8 of the New York edition..Sign In to E-Mail



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