U.S. criticised at talks on troubled nuclear treaty

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday 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) co-operation for a worldwide sharing of the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy can be eroded by noncompliance by states like Iran and North Korea," U.S. 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 U.N. 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 U.N. 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 U.S. military ties with Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East'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.