Regional Initiatives on Nuclear- and WMD-free Zones

Download or read book Regional Initiatives on Nuclear- and WMD-free Zones written by Michael Hamel-Green and published by United Nations Publications UNIDIR. This book was released on 2005 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The initial years of the new millennium have seen little substantive progress in nucleararms control. Recent challenges for nuclear non-proliferationinclude: the non-entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); the 1998India and Pakistan nuclear weapon tests; the withdrawal of North Korea from the NonproliferationTreaty (NPT); the ambiguous status of Iran's nuclear energy developmentprogramme and past Iraqi NPT violations under Saddam Hussein.The strategy of establishing regional NWFZs is generally seen as both a non-proliferation and security-enhancing measure for the regions themselves, and as a partial step towards the eventual global elimination of nuclear weapons. Currently some 107 countries and the larger part of the globe are part of regional NWFZs while NWFZs for such conflict-prone areas such as the Middle East, South Asia, Northeast Asia and Central and Eastern Europe are in various stages of consideration.