After a tense standoff that carried several hours past the scheduled closing of the 2015 Review Conference for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States, United Kingdom and Canada on 22 May refused to accept text on the Middle East contained in the president’s draft outcome document covering nuclear weapons, energy, safety and security issues. They were heavily criticized for blocking, especially by states that also considered the document to be fundamentally inadequate following removal of most if not all humanitarian and disarmament commitments. For the sake of the NPT, however, the majority had decided to accept the efforts of the conference president, Ambassador Taous Feroukhi of Algeria, recognising the pressure exerted by the nuclear-armed states to strike out all controversial references, including nuclear disarmament objectives and steps put forward by an overwhelming majority of nuclear free nations.
Thus it was that after three years of meetings and four intensive weeks of talks at the United Nations, the failure came down to three states’ refusal to compromise on the organization and timeline for another proposed conference to rid the Middle East of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as mandated in 1995, given practical agreement in 2010, and still undelivered.
The president’s text amalgamated proposals from Egypt, supported by the Non-Aligned Movement, Russia, and a ‘subsidiary body’ of the conference chaired by Spanish diplomat Juan Ignacio Moro. An emerging deal broke down because the US backed Israeli concerns over the organizational terms and “arbitrary deadline” that did not allow for the conference to be postponed beyond March 2016. The proposals and pressure for a deadline arose because of frustrations about how the 2010 NPT agreement for a Middle East conference in 2012 failed to be implemented and then lost urgency when the deadline passed. While the US blamed Egypt, others from the Middle East expressed anger that the interests of Israel, a nuclear-armed state outside the NPT, had been prioritized over the interests of NPT member states. A day later, their criticisms seemed to be borne out when Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly thanked the US, UK and Canadian governments for “blocking an Egyptian-led drive on a possible Middle East nuclear arms ban”.
