It's their future: a choir performs at Oslo City Hall during the conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons organised by the Norwegian government in 2013. Demotix / Alexander Widding. All rights reserved.
After four weeks of statements, deliberations and often bruising negotiations at the UN headquarters, the states party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) could not agree a plan for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation to guide their work over the next five years.
The draft outcome was blocked on 22 May by the United States, with cover from Canada and the UK. The US blamed an “unrealistic and unworkable” demand from Egypt to set a deadline for the convening of a conference on a zone in the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction—a conference the last NPT review in 2010 had stipulated must take place by 2012.
