Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 188: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of states that remain non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39436/05]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, is the most universal of all the multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation agreements. Of the 191 members of the United Nations, only three countries, India, Israel and Pakistan, have not signed the NPT. The NPT review conference in 2000, for the first time, named those states which were not party to the treaty and urged them all to accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states, promptly and without conditions.

That conference also deplored the nuclear tests that had been conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998 and declared that such actions did not in any way confer nuclear weapon state status or any other special status. The conference called upon these two countries to undertake the measures set out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1172, which, inter alia, called upon India and Pakistan to cease their nuclear weapon development programmes, to refrain from the deployment of nuclear weapons and to become parties to the NPT without delay and without conditions. The conference also urged all states parties to the NPT to refrain from any action that might contravene or undermine the objectives of that resolution as well as those of the treaty itself.

The conference also reaffirmed the resolution on the Middle East which had been adopted at its previous meeting in 1995 and which called on all states in the Middle East to accede to the treaty and to place their nuclear facilities under full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

At the last NPT review conference in May, I stated that it was a matter of serious concern that Israel, India and Pakistan continue to remain outside the NPT regime and I urged them to accede to the treaty unconditionally and at an early date. Such a call has also been made in recent statements by the European Union. All EU member states are legally obliged to pursue this objective in accordance with an EU common position, agreed in November 2003, promoting the universalisation of key multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation agreements, including the NPT.

We will continue to press for the universalisation of the treaty. Our most recent initiative in this regard was the submission of a resolution on the NPT with our partners in the new agenda coalition to the first committee of the United Nations General Assembly in October. A separate vote was called on the paragraph in the resolution which urged India, Israel and Pakistan to accede to the treaty. The paragraph was supported by 148 countries. Last Thursday, when the issue was taken up in the plenary of the General Assembly, some 158 UN member states endorsed this call.