NPT review conference - Did anyone notice?

From May 2 to May 27, the 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was held in New York. The course of the conference and the outcome was largely unnoticed by the international community - despite the fact, that its result sheds a light on the probable future of the NPT, certainly the most important and most universal treaty in the field of disarmament and nonproliferation of weapons of mass distruction (WMD). And, unfortunately, the future seems to be gloomy. At the conference, the parties spend more than two weeks in discussion about procedural questions, not being able to even agree on an agenda. After finally consensus was reached on the agenda, substantial discussions lasted only for a few days and ended whithout the parties even being able to agree on any substantial question.

Prof. Harald Müller of the Hesse Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (Hessische Stiftung für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung) was present at the conference and wrote a comprehensive report about the negotiations which is worth reading and can be found here. Unfortunately, it is only available in German.

He notes that the nuclear weapon states, especially the USA, refused to talk about nuclear disarmament - an obligation enshrined in Article 6 of the NPT. Indeed the USA even opposed talking about the 13 steps to nuclear disarmament already agreed upon at the 2000 NPT reviewe conference. This lead to a confrontation with countries of the Non-Algined-Movement, especially Iran and notably Egyt, who refused to negotiate about how to achieve a thorough non-proliferation regime. According to Prof. Müller, the majority of the parties, who were ready´and willing to find a compromise, were grinded between those extremes. He concludes that the NPT was significantly weakened and that this does bode ill for global security: It is easily imaginable that within the next ten years there will be 15-20 nuclear weapon states instead of eight (plus the cryptiv case of North Korea) today - some of them in conflict-prone regions such as the Middle East.

But what is most astonishing is the fact, that this whole process was largely unnoticed by the public - the press totally failed. And there was no public outcry. Indeed, even the official website of the 2005 NPT review conference does not offer coverage of the conference outcome - instead it only announces that the conference "will be held (sic!)...".