US criticised at talks on troubled nuclear treaty

VIENNA, May 10 (Reuters) The United States today argued that Iran and North Korea's nuclear activities could harm developing nations' access to peaceful atomic energy, but drew criticism for its own ties with nuclear-armed Israel and India.

Washington and European allies said at a meeting to review the troubled nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that the right it gives members to peaceful atomic power could not be fulfilled without trust that the technology would not be diverted to covert bombmaking.

''Confidence (underpinning) cooperation for a worldwide sharing of the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy can be eroded by noncompliance by states like Iran and North Korea,'' US delegation chief Christopher Ford told the 130-nation assembly.

Unless Pyongyang and Tehran were restrained, he said, it would be hard to free up transfers of civilian nuclear know-how to developing nations as the 37-year-old NPT envisages.

North Korea bolted from the NPT in 2003 and test-exploded a nuclear device in 2006. Iran is under UN sanctions for refusing to halt uranium enrichment, which world powers suspect is meant to yield atom bombs, not electricity as Tehran says.

North Korea's misuse of NPT membership to weaponise nuclear technology is undisputed. And Iran's nuclear ambitions -- marked by evasions of UN watchdog investigations -- disturb many fellow members in the Non-Aligned Movement of developing states.

But speakers from the NAM told the meeting that disrespect for the NPT was also being bred by US military ties with Israel, widely assumed to have the West Asias's only nuclear arsenal and one of just three nations outside the treaty.

Some non-nuclear-armed states also cited Washington's nuclear technology accord with India, which developed nuclear firepower in secret without penalty by shunning NPT membership.

''MASSIVE IMBALANCES'' ''We express serious concern over a continuing development whereby Israeli scientists are provided access to the nuclear facilities of one nuclear weapons state,'' said Indonesian envoy Triyono Wibowo, speaking for the 115-nation NAM.

''Stability cannot be achieved in a (West Asia) region where massive imbalances in military capabilities are maintained ... with potentially negative implications for the reliability of the global non-proliferation regime.'' Ford denied Washington was helping any non-NPT country with a nuclear weapons programme.

He said the US-India pact, which analysts see as a US bid to cultivate a strategic ally against foes like Iran, would boost the NPT by requiring India to submit some of its nuclear plants to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

New Zealand and Norway suggested such deals could send the wrong message by appearing to reward nuclear proliferators.

Disarmament campaigners at the meeting said the US-India deal would violate the NPT by letting India devote more of its uranium to expanding production of plutonium for nuclear arms.

The NPT binds members without nuclear arms not to acquire them, promises nuclear ''have nots'' access to the technology for modernisation, and obliges the original five nuclear powers from the post-World War Two era to phase out their arsenals.

The two-week NPT gathering, which ends on Friday, was stalled by Iran for six days over objections to the agenda for debate, which it feared would heap blame on it for treaty woes.

Today, Iran blasted Western efforts to brand it an NPT villain. It again vowed never to mothball uranium enrichment and, taking up a NAM grievance, accused Western powers of illegally withholding nuclear energy from developing nations.

''Arbitrary, self-serving criteria about proliferation-proof and proliferation-prone technologies can and will only undermine the treaty,'' said Iranian delegate Reza Pourmand-Tehrani.

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