'US nuclear summit bound to fail'

Nobel laureate Jody Williams has cast doubt on the fruitfulness of an upcoming Nuclear Security Summit in Washington given the US double standard in its nuclear policies.

In a March 29 interview with Inter Press Service, Williams said the Washington summit, as well as the conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), slated for May 3-28 in New York, would yield no results unless the US and Russia fulfill their commitments.

Williams won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on the Mine Ban Treaty, which was signed in December 1997. She is founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

"I don't see how the US or Russia, who hold most of the world's nuclear weapons, can go to the NPT conference in May and call upon states who have already given up the weapons to increase their commitment to not having them," she said.

On April 8, US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which requires both sides to reduce their nuclear arsenals to 1,550, or about one-third below current levels.

However, some analysts believe the agreement would in fact allow the two nuclear powers to dispose of their outdated first generation nuclear weapons, while keeping the more modern and powerful ones.

Williams criticized Washington's "double standard" on Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), while selling "nuclear technology to India," a non-signatory to the NPT.

India has signed major deals with both Russia and the US on nuclear energy cooperation.

The US is pushing for further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which the West claims to be directed at military purposes.

Iran's nuclear work is under the close inspection of the UN nuclear watchdog, which has stressed the non-diversion of nuclear material in its numerous reports.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=123013§ionid=3510203.