HILLARY CLINTON'S REMARKS TO PRESS FOLLOWING SPEECH AT U.N. NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE - 05/03/10

SECRETARY CLINTON: Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. I just finished speaking to the 2010 NPT Review Conference. This is the eighth time that parties to the treaty have come together like this over the last 40 years since the NPT came into force. Nearly 190 nations are represented here and almost every one of them has met its nonproliferation obligations and comes to New York with constructive ideas for strengthening the treaty. This conference will provide strong impetus for a reinvigorated nonproliferation regime and the United States is doing its part.

In the past several months, we have taken a number of important steps to strengthen the global nonproliferation regime and to make the world safer for us all. Under President Obama�s leadership, we signed a new START treaty with Russia that limits our deployed strategic nuclear weapons to levels not seen since the 1950s. We completed a Nuclear Posture Review that rules out the development of new nuclear weapons and states clearly that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapons state that is party to the NPT and in compliance with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations while maintaining a safe, effective, and credible deterrent for as long as nuclear weapons exist. We committed to ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to starting multilateral negotiations on a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty.

This afternoon, I made some additional announcements that we think will strengthen the three pillars of the NPT. I announced, beginning today, we will make public the number of nuclear weapons in our stockpile and the number dismantled since 1991. I announced $50 million in support for a new IAEA Peaceful Uses Initiative that will spread the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy. I announced we will seek U.S. Senate ratification for our participation in existing nuclear-weapons-free-zone agreements among the nations of Africa and the South Pacific, and I reaffirmed our longstanding policy to support efforts to realize a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the Middle East in accordance with the 1995 Middle East Resolution.

Now, given the lack of a comprehensive regional peace and concerns about some countries� compliance with NPT safeguards, the conditions for such a zone do not yet exist. But we are prepared to support practical measures for moving toward that objective.

Together, these measures represent our commitment to ensuring that the NPT is stronger when our work is done than it is today. And in both public appearances and private conversations, many others have made the same commitment.

But we�ve also heard some destructive rhetoric, rhetoric meant to divide and obstruct us. And we cannot let that rhetoric stand. Iran is the only country represented here found to be currently in violation of its obligations under the NPT. As the IAEA Board of Governors has stated clearly and publicly, the Iranian Government has repeatedly rejected the injunctions of the UN Security Council and refused to cooperate with the IAEA�s investigation of its activities. It appears that Iran�s president came here today with no intention of improving the NPT. He came to distract attention from his own government�s failure to live up to its international obligations, to evade accountability for defying the international community, and to undermine our shared commitment to strengthening the treaty.

But he will not succeed. Time and again, the Iranian Government has tried to make its own failures to abide by its duties into an issue between Iran and the United States. But this conference itself underscores that the issue at stake is much larger. It is about the responsibility of all nations, including Iran, to comply with their international obligations and to advance rather than undermine regional and global security. For all the bluster of its words, the Iranian Government cannot defend its own actions, and that is why it is facing increasing isolation and pressure from the international community.

Among other things, Iran�s president today claimed that Iran had accepted the IAEA�s proposal to refuel the Tehran research reactor. Iran has a history of making confusing, contradictory, and inaccurate statements designed to convey the impression that it has adopted a flexible attitude toward the proposal. But we have seen no indication that Iran is willing to accept the IAEA�s October proposal or any variant of that proposal that would achieve the confidence-building goals that were intended. If Iran has truly changed its position, it should provide a clear indication of that to the IAEA.

Additionally, we repeat our call, on humanitarian grounds, for Iran to release the three young hikers who have been detained without charge or trial for more than nine months.

In the meantime, it is up to the rest of the countries represented here to show that our shared commitment is greater than any effort to undermine it. We must use this conference to send potential violators a strong message that they will pay a high price for breaking the rules. Only if Iran hears that message clearly will it accept our standing offer to engage in good-faith negotiations, to live up to its obligations, and join with the rest of us here in making the world safer.

I�m hopeful we will make progress during this conference, but the real progress will come from a sustained, long-term commitment to strengthening the NPT this month and for many months ahead. If we fail, we face the prospect of a new wave of proliferation. But if we build on our common vision, recognizing there is much more that unites us than divides us, we have an opportunity to set a new course, a new course for global nonproliferation efforts. And it is a course that the United States has embraced, and we are eager to move forward with the international community.

Thank you very much.

 

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