Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

The future of the nuclear non-proliferation regime: the 2010 NPT review conference
matic measures, to this situation, which was starting to get out of hand.
And so 1965 saw the beginning of negotiations for what became known a
few years later (in 1968) as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons. The negotiations were preceded by a vote taken by the United
Nations Disarmament Commission in June that year (Omnibus Resolution
DC/225) calling for the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament
(ENDC) to urgently examine the issue of the non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons with a view to adopting a related international treaty. Months
later United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2028 (XX) was adopted,
formally establishing the principles of the treaty, which is based on five
elements (13):
1. it should be void of any loopholes which might permit Powers
(nuclear or non-nuclear) to proliferate, directly or indirectly, nuclear
weapons in any form;
2. it should embody an acceptable balance of mutual responsibilities
and obligations of the nuclear and non-nuclear Powers;
3. it should be a step towards the achievement of general and complete
disarmament and, in particular, nuclear disarmament;
4. there should be acceptable and workable provisions to ensure the
effectiveness of the treat; and
5. nothing in the treaty should adversely affect the right of any group
of States to conclude regional treaties in order to ensure the total
absence of nuclear weapons in their respective territories.
The novelty of this resolution lay in its broadening of the concept of
non-proliferation to embrace simultaneously an increase in the number
of atomic weapons in the hands of established nuclear states, their geographical
distribution by these states and also the manufacture or procurement
of such weapons by non-nuclear countries(14). Until then the
definition of the concept had never taken into account an increase in the
nuclear weapons in the hands of the nuclear-weapon powers—only an
increase in the number of states possessing weapons of this kind. The
Indian physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha, who later played a decisive role
(13) General Assembly Resolution 2028 (XX) on The non-proliferation of nuclear weapons,
19 November 1965.
(14) For further information on the NPT vid., GARRIDO REBOLLEDO, V., «El futuro del
Tratado de No proliferación Nuclear (TNP): apuntes para el debate» in Anuario del CIP
1994 - 1995, Edit. Icaria, Barcelona, 1995, pp. 289-299; «La Conferencia de Revisión del
TNP: entre el desarme y la no proliferación», Análisis del Real Instituto Elcano (ARI), No.
63/2005, 17 May 2005; «Tratado de No proliferación de Armas de Destrucción Masiva
(TNP)» in REYES, R. (dir.), Diccionario Crítico de las Ciencias Sociales, Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, .
— 186 —