Obama à la tête des efforts pour un monde dénucléarisé[en] 

All five permanent Security Council members - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - have nuclear weapons. The five nations are also referred to as "the nuclear club," a status recognised by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which entered into force in 1970. 

Since 1970, India, Pakistan and North Korea have conducted nuclear tests. Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons. South Africa had developed its own nuclear arsenal before later disassembling it. 

In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency found Iran in non-compliance with NPT standards. 

According to official data and to estimations, in number of warheads Russia ranks first, with a total of 13,000, followed by the US with 9,400, France 300, China 240, UK 185, Pakistan 70-90, Israel 80, India 60-80, and less than 10 for North Korea. 

The resolution also called for an end to the proliferation of atomic weapons, but did not name either Iran or North Korea, which Western countries regard as the top atomic threats. 

However, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy specifically called for tougher sanctions against Iran for defying UN demands to halt sensitive nuclear work. 

Obama presided over the two-hour meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, the fifth time the Council has met at the head-of-state level and the first time it was chaired by a US president since its formation in 1946. 

"I called for this so that we may address at the highest level a fundamental threat to the security of all peoples and all nations - the spread and use of nuclear weapons," Obama said, adding that the next year would be "absolutely critical" in determining whether efforts to stop the spread and use of nuclear weapons were successful. 

The US-drafted resolution called for "further efforts in the sphere of nuclear disarmament" to achieve "a world without nuclear weapons" and urged countries that had not signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to do so. 

Critics of the resolution said it failed to include mandatory provisions that would have required nuclear weapons states to take concrete disarmament steps. 

Non-proliferation first priority

Chinese President Hu Jintao made clear that Beijing had no plans to scrap its nuclear arsenal. "We will continue to keep our nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security, and make efforts to advance the international disarmament process," Hu said. 

Some UN diplomats said the nuclear powers were more interested in non-proliferation than disarming. 

But Mohamed El-Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said non-proliferation and disarmament were inextricably linked. 

"By demonstrating their irreversible commitment to achieving a world free from nuclear weapons the weapons states gain the moral authority to call on the rest of the world to curb the proliferation of these inhumane weapons." 

Signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty without nuclear arsenals have complained for decades that the nuclear powers have failed to live up to their commitments while seeking to prevent other countries from joining the "nuclear club". 

The US refrained from naming countries in the resolution to avoid disagreements with Russia and China, UN diplomats said. But Brown and Sarkozy had no such qualms in their speeches to the council. 

"As evidence of its breach of international agreements grows, we must now consider far tougher sanctions together," Brown said. 

"If we have the courage to affirm and impose sanctions together against those who violate resolutions of the Security Council, we will be lending credibility to our commitment toward a world with fewer nuclear weapons," Sarkozy said. 

(EurActiv with Reuters.) 

The last head of state of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, said there was a link between Obama's nuclear disarmament initiative and his recent decision that the US would not deploy a missile shield in Central Europe. In an op-ed published by the New York Times, Gorbachev argues: 

"Is there a link between the two events? I believe there is […] In Russia, President Obama's decision has been well received. It also met with support in Europe, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy of France lauding it […] Indeed, if the president's decision is followed by further serious steps, it will provide an opportunity for us to strengthen global security as well as reach a new level of cooperation in ridding the world of nuclear danger," Gorbachev writes.