The 1995 NPT Extension Conference: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

When the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Conference was negotiating the NPT in Geneva from 1965 to 1968 the participating NWSs — the US, the Soviet Union and Britain — made it clear that they wished to conclude a treaty of indefinite (in other words permanent) duration. West Germany and Italy were not unreservedly in favour of the draft Treaty and proposed a duration of five or ten years.¹ The compromise reached was to set no specific duration but to stipulate that 25 years after the NPT entered into force (this came to mean 25 years after 1970: i.e., in 1995) a conference of the parties would decide ‘whether the Treaty shall continue in force indefinitely or shall be extended for an additional fixed period or periods’.² The conference will thus be charged with deciding not whether the NPT should be extended but for how long. The Treaty does not expire in 1995 as some, who dislike it, have suggested.³