Britain proposed on Tuesday that the five major nuclear powers develop clearer ways to prove they are dismantling their warheads
and not secretly hanging on to them.
Defence Secretary Des Browne offered to host talks on verification techniques in a speech to the Conference on
Disarmament, saying it would boost international confidence.
The chances of eliminating nuclear arms would be enhanced if states without them could see those that possessed the weapons were taking irrevocable steps towards disarmament, he told the UN-backed forum in Geneva.
‘If we are serious about doing our bit to create the conditions for complete nuclear disarmament, we must now also begin to build deeper
technical relationships on disarmament between nuclear-weapon states,’ Browne said.
‘It is therefore of paramount importance that verification techniques are developed which enable us all-nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapons states-to have confidence that when a state says it has fully and irrevocably dismantled a nuclear warhead, we all can be assured it is telling the truth.’
The United States and Russia have made huge cuts in their nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War, while Britain and France have made smaller reductions, but thousands of atomic warheads remained worldwide, according to Browne.
Britain was willing to host a technical conference linking nuclear officials in the five official nuclear-weapon states (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States), he said.