World powers N deals aimed to distract

A senior Iranian diplomat says bilateral agreements between nuclear states aim to distract world public opinion from global disarmament.

“Over the past four decades, bilateral agreements regarding nuclear-arms reduction such as [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks] SALT II and [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] START I between the US and [the former] Soviet Union and finally START I between the US and Russia were in fact aimed at reducing the pressure stemming from the security concerns of the international community,” Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency Ali-Asghar Soltanieh said on Monday.

START, signed between the US and the former Soviet Union in 1991, was a bilateral treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.

Under the treaty, both countries were barred from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads.

“Experience from past few decades shows that nuclear arms have not reduced and the world is currently facing the threat of 27,000 nuclear weapons,” Soltanieh said in his speech at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban summit, a copy of which was sent by his office to Press TV.

The Iranian envoy added the fact that nuclear armed countries opposed with appointing 2025 as the deadline for the complete nuclear disarmament at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York left no doubt that these countries do not plan to omit nuclear arms from their military doctrine.

Soltanieh said the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology and nuclear tests with unconventional methods has caused serious concern for the international community.

Referring to former US president Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” slogan and incumbent President Barack Obama’s “world free of nuclear weapons” vision, Soltanieh said, “Undoubtedly the international community does not trust the US, the only country to have used and which possesses thousands of nuclear arms, and questions this country’s political will and integrity in nuclear disarmament and elimination.”

“Iran, as a responsible country, is committed to international obligations regarding the NPT and Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban and wants a world free of nuclear weapons,” he concluded.