Curb urged on Iranian nukes

TheAge.com.au

AUSTRALIA hit out at Iran's nuclear ambitions yesterday, backing a chorus of Western countries warning Tehran must be stopped from building an atomic weapon.

But the federal government itself came under fire on nuclear issues, accused of a ''shallow'' response to its own multimillion-dollar investigation into nuclear threats.

In New York for a 189-nation review of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith called for tighter global nuclear safeguards to tackle deep concern over Iran's program.

He also warned North Korea should fall back into line after it abandoned the treaty in 2003 and went on to test a nuclear device.

But on general cuts to the world's nuclear stockpiles, Mr Smith rejected a key finding of the joint Australia/Japan-sponsored report delivered in December - one that called for reducing the total number of nuclear weapons to 2000 warheads by 2025.

Mr Smith said while Australia backed many of the report's findings, such a cut - whether it was aiming for too much or too little - was open to debate. He said Australia believed it was more important to push for general nuclear reductions without setting a target.

But anti-nuclear campaigners and the federal opposition yesterday criticised the government's response, saying a four-page press release was a disappointing way to recognise the 294-page document, known as the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Report.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd set up the expert panel two years ago to chart ideas to abolish nuclear arms, chaired by former foreign ministers Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi.

The 15-member panel undertook 18 months of worldwide consultations in drafting the report, with Mr Evans travelling extensively to promote the findings ahead of the NPT review summit.

Shadow foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the government's response was full of platitudes and no substantive action.

''This commission was a personal initiative of Mr Rudd with over $9 million of taxpayers' funds provided to the work of the commission, and its major report has largely been dismissed. That's simply not good enough,'' Ms Bishop said.

She would not identify areas in the report the Coalition would back in the coming election.

But she said the report's 76 recommendations deserved more attention and likened the government's response to its cherry-picking of the Henry review into taxation.

Tilman Ruff, a consultant to the report and Australian chairman of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said the response gave no specific backing on how Australia supported the work of the commission in the future.

The report's recommendation to establish a global centre on nuclear non-proliferation was not considered, he said.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department said Australia would watch the result of the commission's final meeting in July but said setting up a global centre on non-proliferation would require broad support from the international community.