UN`s Ban Urges Disarmament Forum To Break Deadlock

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the world's only multilateral disarmament forum on Tuesday to overcome a decade-long deadlock and launch substantive negotiations on curbing nuclear and other weapons.

Diplomats hope that the administration of Barack Obama, due to be sworn in as U.S. president later in the day, will offer initiatives to revive the moribund Conference on Disarmament.

During the election campaign, Obama pledged to make the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide a central element of U.S. arms control policy and said he would not authorise development of new nuclear weapons.

"At a time of global economic and financial crisis, advancing the disarmament agenda could produce a tangible peace dividend when the world needs it most," Ban said in a speech read out on his behalf.

The Geneva forum "should seize this moment and be in the vanguard of efforts towards a world free of nuclear weapons," he said. The disarmanent forum has failed to reach the consensus needed to launch negotiations on any issue since clinching global pacts banning chemical weapons and underground nuclear blasts in the 1990s.

Its 65 members include the five official nuclear weapon powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States), as well as nuclear-capable India and Pakistan and Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arms.

NORTH KOREAN TEST

North Korea carried out a nuclear test in 2006 and Western nations believe Iran is also trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

The next step in multilateral disarmament is widely seen as a fissile material cutoff treaty to ban production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium used for making nuclear bombs.

The United States has strongly backed a fissile treaty, but others -- notably China and Russia -- have long argued that parallel progress is needed on other questions, including preventing weapons being deployed in space.

"I urge you once again to overcome the deadlock and reach a consensus on an agenda that will permit the resumption of substantive work," Ban said. Efforts should also continue on new bans on weapons such as missiles and space weapons, he said.

Russian envoy Valery Lshchinin said Moscow was ready to support negotiations on fissile material so as to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime -- but added "Ensuring security in space is a priority for Russia in the CD (Conference on Disarmament)."

Australian disarmament ambassador Caroline Millar welcomed what she called "signs of movement by key current and incoming policy makers" around the world.

She cited EU nuclear disarmament proposals set out by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last month and remarks by U.S. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton at her Senate confirmation hearings on negotiating a verifiable fissile pact.

"We hope these external policy shifts will indeed help break the deadlock and get the CD back to work," Millar said.