Washington is seeking to use the meeting to press its campaign to halt the Iranian government’s efforts to develop a nuclear power industry, which U.S. officials assert is a cover for a weapon’s development program. Washington is also seeking to use the gathering to ratchet up its pressure on north Korea. The chief U.S. representative to the conference said his delegation would seek a condemnation of north Korea from the meeting.

Countries without nuclear weapons are pressing to focus more of the agenda on the commitments made during the last conference by Washington and other nuclear powers toward a reduction of their nuclear arsenals and testing and development of new nuclear weapons.

Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said the conference has a special responsibility to review the progress made by nuclear powers, such as Washington, in complying with 13 steps to reduce nuclear arms agreed to at the 2000 conference. Among its provisions were the signing of a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty, and a moratorium on test explosions.

“Concerns continue,” said Kharrazi, “over the research and development of new non-strategic and low yield nuclear weapons.” The Bush administration has asked Congress for money to study the feasibility of the development of “nuclear bunker buster” bombs. “It is unacceptable,” Kharrazi said, “that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of non-proliferation.”

The 35-year-old treaty provides cover for the imperialist powers in Washington, London, and Paris, as well as Moscow and Beijing, to have nuclear weapons, but bars other nations from acquiring them. It also subjects governments—primarily those of semicolonial countries—to a range of requirements, including regular reports and inspections of their nuclear research and energy facilities.

Last November Tehran suspended uranium enrichment—a step in the manufacture of nuclear fuel for power generation as well as weapons—as part of an agreement with Berlin, Paris, and London, in exchange for access to trade and modern technology. Under pressure from Washington and the European imperialist powers, the Iranian government has also agreed to allow unannounced inspection of its nuclear facilities by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

But Kharrazi said Iran insists on its right to “all legal areas of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

Kharrazi lambasted the extensive restrictions that have been enforced by the IAEA against Iran, a signatory to the NPT, while Israel has been given unrestricted access to nuclear technology and possesses a significant nuclear arsenal. Tel Aviv, which has never signed the NPT, has refused to acknowledge publicly its nuclear arsenal.

In April, the U.S. government announced plans to sell 100 “bunker buster” bombs to Israel, potentially the first sale of the weapon to a foreign country. The sale of the bombs, conventional warheads designed to penetrate the earth and destroy underground facilities, were widely viewed as a direct threat to Iran.

In February the Washington Post reported that the U.S. military has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in Iran’s air defenses.

The small, pilotless planes, which penetrated Iranian airspace from U.S. military facilities in Iraq, use radar, video, still photography, and air filters designed to pick up traces of nuclear activity to gather information that is not accessible by satellites, the officials said. The aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack and is also employed as a tool for intimidation.

In his statement to the conference, U.S. assistant secretary of state Stephen Rademaker accused Iran and north Korea of secretly enriching uranium to produce nuclear weapons. Rademaker said that any diplomatic agreement between Iran and the EU governments must include an end to Iran’s enrichment of uranium and the dismantling of equipment and facilities for that purpose.

Rademaker also called on the governments represented at the conference to endorse a seven-point U.S. government plan to “criminalize proliferation-related activities.” Most of the seven points are outside the formal framework of the NPT. Among them is the Proliferation Security Initiative, under which Washington and its allies claim the right to board and inspect on the high seas any vessel suspected of carrying so-called weapons of mass destruction.

One of the recommendations from the conference held five years ago was that the nuclear powers would provide countries without nuclear arsenals, who are parties to the NPT, an assurance not to use nuclear weapons against them. The recommendation was to be discussed and acted on at this year’s conference, but so far Washington has balked. “Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have taken the position that that would be a bad idea,” said Rademaker.

“We want to be creative with the tools we have at our disposal,” added Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. delegation.

The White House has proposed a ban on sales of enrichment and reprocessing technology for uranium to countries other than the dozen or so that already have it. Instead, countries like Iran would supposedly be guaranteed fuel for nuclear power plants from the powers that produce it.  
 
 
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