The 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, which lasts about four weeks from May 3 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, offers a chance for the world to move forward toward nuclear disarmament and to strengthen efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, although optimism is unwarranted.
The NPT went into effect 40 years ago — on March 5, 1970. Under the treaty, the five nuclear weapons states — the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China — have the duty to push nuclear arms reduction. Other NPT parties are prohibited from possessing nuclear weapons but are accorded the right to pursue peaceful use of nuclear power. Japan ratified the NPT in 1976.
Every five years, an NPT review conference is held to examine the NPT regime's progress. Some 190 countries are parties to the treaty. But the NPT's weak point is that India and Pakistan, which possess nuclear weapons, and Israel, which is believed to possess nuclear weapons, are not parties to it. And North Korea, which is pushing its nuclear weapons program, withdrew from the NPT in 2003.