P5 agree to protect nuke treaty
Global Times
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Delegates from the UN Security Council's five permanent members - China, France, Russia, Britain and the US - attend a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons conference in Beijing on Wednesday. (Photo: AFP)

China, as the host of the meeting in Beijing among the five nuclear weapon countries, said that it will continue to promote consensus-building among the major powers and replace confrontation with coordination, while Russia and the US failed to reach an agreement on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The five recognized nuclear weapon states in the Treaty on the (NPT), China, Russia, the US, the UK and France (also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council), concluded their meeting, also known as the P5 Conference, in Beijing on Thursday. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks urging coordination and strategic dialogue between nuclear weapon states after the P5 Conference at the daily routine press conference.

The five nuclear-armed states reached an agreement at the P5 Conference in Beijing to jointly safeguard the mechanism of the NPT and will try their best to solve non-proliferation issues through political and diplomatic means, said Geng.

The five nuclear weapon states agreed to keep strategic dialogue to enhance coordination of the NPT agenda, to realize a successful NPT Review Conference in 2020, Geng added.

The conference in 2020 will seek reform to solve some recent problems and disputes, including the INF Treaty issue between Russia and the US, nuclear issues in the Korean Peninsula and the Iranian nuclear deal, Xu Guangyu, a senior consultant at the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association and a participant of open activities at the P5 Conference, told the Global Times on Thursday.

According to a TASS report on Thursday, no progress on the issue of the INF Treaty was made at the meeting in Beijing between Russia and the US.

"Unfortunately, there is no progress. The US position remains rather tough and ultimatum-like," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Thursday. "We told the US side that it is impossible to hold a dialogue based on an attempted blackmail of Russia," TASS reported.

The INF Treaty is extremely important for global nuclear disarmament, and if the US unilaterally withdraws from the treaty, countries like Russia will be forced to join a new arms race, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, said.

"The US is always making excuses to pull out of the treaty since it wants to get rid of the limitations of the treaty and increase its nuclear deterrence against Russia and others, and this is dangerous because the balance among nuclear weapon states would be broken," Song noted.

The US is unlikely to withdraw from the treaty even if the dispute is difficult to resolve, Xu said. "Both sides are more likely to extend the deadline [the US gave Russia 60 days to reach an agreement on the INF Treaty on December 4. Otherwise, the US will pull out of the treaty]."

Xu noted that "among the five on the INF issue, the UK and France are standing closer with the US to pressure Russia, and China has to mediate the dispute fairly."