After two weeks of negotiations in Vienna’s UNO-City, the first meeting of the preparatory committee, which is dealing with a review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled for 2026, ended unsuccessfully on Friday. Discussions ran along current geopolitical fault lines and NPT member states could not agree on a summary of the meeting presented by Finnish President Jarmo Viinanen.
“The outcome of this meeting, marked by major differences of opinion, is disappointing. It shows both the strong divisions among the NPT member states and the difficulties in achieving results based on the consensus regulation,” a spokeswoman for the Austrian Foreign Ministry said Friday evening when asked by APA. Viinanen had acted prudently and made every effort done to summarize the discussions of the past two weeks in a reserved way.The Finn failed, among other things, because of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia threatened to end the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
Sweden’s representative on Friday morning missed, among other things, the clear naming of Russia’s responsibility for the situation at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, currently under Russian control, in Viinanen’s draft text. “It is the Russian war of aggression that is at the root of member states’ concerns about nuclear safety and the implementation of security mechanisms in Ukraine,” she said.
However, her Russian colleague made it clear that he would rather have deleted all passages about Ukraine. However, if that does not happen, one would ensure a balance in these paragraphs from his perspective. “The Russian delegation will not accept without comment any position that is contrary to the laws of my country and its interests,” he said. Moreover, the summary does not mention that NATO countries are using the Non-Proliferation Treaty for political purposes, he complained. This is a dangerous trend that can lead to the termination of the contract.
Summary surprisingly withdrawn
Surprisingly, after the Iranian and Russian resistance made it clear that no consensus between the NPT participating states would be feasible, Viinanen completely retracted his summary after the Friday lunch break. He also caused it to be removed from the official UN website.
Representatives of the West, including the head of the disarmament department of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, Alexander Kmentt, deplored this development. In several speeches over the past two weeks, Kmentt has called for concrete progress on nuclear disarmament, greater transparency in nuclear-weapon states and a strong focus on safety at nuclear power plants. He also explicitly called on Russia to withdraw military equipment and personnel from the Zaporizhia power plant and return control of the plant to its rightful owner, Ukraine.
Source: Krone
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