Obama seeks nuclear clearout

L'AQUILA - Barack Obama has called a global summit on reducing the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons which could eventually result in Britain's Trident system being scaled back.

The United States President told G8 leaders in Italy yesterday that between 20 and 30 nations would be invited to the non-proliferation summit in Washington next March.

He hopes to build on his successful disarmament talks held this week with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The US-led initiative could pave the way for the world to warn Iran and North Korea that they would be treated as "pariah states" unless they stop developing nuclear weapons.

The burden of proof would be on countries not yet members of the nuclear club to show they had not breached the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, raising the prospect of attempts to send weapons inspectors in if they refused to comply.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will publish Britain's proposals for a historic "new deal on nuclear security" in the world in the next few days.

Britain will take part in the Washington summit. British officials insisted that Trident would not be "on the table" in March, but confirmed it could eventually form part of the talks if they resulted in a process of multilateral disarmament.

They played down the chances of the £25 billion ($64.83 billion) Trident programme being axed to cut public spending, saying the "fixed costs" of the four submarines which carry the weapons accounted for the bulk of the budget, so reducing the number of warheads would not save much.

Brown has told Obama he believes there is a chance of securing a trade-off under which countries promise not to develop nuclear weapons in return for help with developing civil nuclear power.

Brown said: "Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon. North Korea is attempting to build a nuclear weapon. We have got to show we can deal with this by collective action.

"Unilateral action by the United Kingdom would not be seen as the best way. What we need is collective action by the nuclear weapons powers to say we are prepared to reduce our nuclear weapons, but we need assurances also that other countries will not proliferate them. And we need new kinds of assurances to prevent a situation such as we have got in Iran emerging in exactly the same way again."

At talks in the Kremlin, the US and Russian Presidents agreed to limit their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to a range of between 1500 and 1675 each and their strategic delivery vehicles to between 500 and 1100 each . The current maximum levels are 2200 warheads and 1600 launch vehicles.

Brown said nuclear proliferation and the danger of material falling into the hands of terrorists was "one of the big issues of the world".

- INDEPENDENT