UN security council passes resolution on nuclear disarmament

Obama hails resolution as a milestone along the way to 'a world without nuclear weapons'

Barack Obama presides over a UN security council meeting on nuclear weapons. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP

Barack Obama today hailed a UN security council resolution on disarmament and non-proliferation as a milestone along the way to "a world without nuclear weapons".

Obama, the first US president to preside over a security council session, said the next twelve months would be "absolutely critical" in ensuring whether the resolution would succeed in reversing the spread of nuclear weapons and setting the world along the path of multilateral disarmament.

He said he had no illusions about the difficulties ahead, but he added "there will also be days like today" when the world came together for the common goal of disarmament and countering proliferation.

Today's resolution calls for the nuclear weapons states to ratify a ban on nuclear testing - something the US senate has yet to do - and negotiate a new treaty to stop the production of fissile material. It also calls for on them to join the disarmament process being led by the US and Russia, who account for more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons between them.

The document also endorses a string of measures intended to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), ahead of a major review conference next May.

Those measures focus on attempts to raising the costs of exiting the treaty, so that states cannot import nuclear technology as NPT signatories, build up a civil nuclear programme legally, and then walk out of the treaty and divert their programme to building weapons, all without breaking international law.

The resolution urges exporting countries to make sales of nuclear technology conditional on the customer nation agreeing to intrusive UN inspections, and requiring the return of the technology in the event of withdrawal from the NPT.

The relevant clauses are all non-binding representing the difficulty of finding consensus among the council members. France, in particular, had objected to strong language calling directly for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Mexico wanted more of the resolution to require action from the weapons states with less onus on the non-weapons states.

However, it will be presented by Obama as the first significant step towards the repair of the NPT, and to the distant goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. Link...