UNITED NATIONS, May 8: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review under way since May 2 is bogged down in the proverbial North-South row over the failure of the signatories to the treaty to keep promises they made to stem the flow of nuclear weapons.

The conference delegates have not been able to agree on an agenda as yet and as of Friday they continued to quarrel about priorities for a nuclear regime. “If the NPT conference ends in disagreement, if it fails to reach a consensus, many nations will see this as a sign that the (non-proliferation) regime is unravelling,” said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Nations with ample technological ability to develop nuclear weapons may be reconsidering their political decisions not to do so,” he told the panel in written testimony.

At the outset the conference review went into a tailspin when United States ruled out making concessions to induce other countries to accept steps to strengthen the treaty. Instead the US Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker defended the US disarmament record as “excellent” and said Washington would use the conference to focus attention on alleged nuclear weapons ‘violators’ Iran and North Korea. “This notion that the United States needs to make concessions in order to encourage other countries to do what is necessary in order to preserve the nuclear non-proliferation regime is at best a misguided way to think about the problems confronting us”.

Simply put the NPT stipulates that countries without the nuclear weapons would renounce them, in exchange for a commitment by five recognised nuclear powers — the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China — to eventually destroy their arsenals. Easier said than done.

The so called non-nuclear states were guaranteed access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. However, many non-nuclear states are pointing to the NPT language and demanding that the five nuclear powers’ obligations on the disarmament side of the deal be viewed as critically as the non-proliferation commitments of 183 others. The ‘five’ don’t act as though they’ll disarm anytime soon. Britain is studying an upgrade of its submarine-borne nuclear missiles. Russia boasts it’s developing the world’s best new strategic weapons. The non-nuclear majority is troubled most by the Bush administration, and its proposals for “bunker busters” and other new warheads, its talk of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, and its rejection of the nuclear test-ban treaty, viewed as key to future disarmament.

The United States accuses Iran of a nearly two-decades long programme to develop nuclear weapons in violation of its NPT obligations, a charge denied by Iran. Review conference decisions are by consensus. Iran’s presence is expected to set up a confrontation with the United States and thwart agreement.

North Korea, which withdrew from the NPT and said it has nuclear weapons, will not attend. In the meanwhile when asked what the effect of a North Korean nuclear test would be, Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters: “There will be disastrous political repercussions in Asia and the rest of the world. I think there could be major environmental fallout, which could lead (to) dissemination of radioactivity in the region.” Mr ElBaradei asked North Korea to return to the negotiating table and to stop trying to extort concessions from the world. “I think it will just get things from bad to worse. I’m not sure North Korea will gain anything by continuing ... to escalate the situation, by continuing to pursue nuclear blackmail,” he said.

Six-party talks involving the United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme have been stalled for almost a year and recent efforts to restart them have shown little progress.