UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, highlighting the growing threat of the spread of nuclear weapons and terrorism, warned today of the danger of "diplomatic brinkmanship."
The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan gives his report on the work of the organization.
He was addressing the UN General Assembly session hours before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to unveil new proposals intended to ally international suspicions about Tehran's secretive nuclear program.
Mr Annan said the global consensus underlying the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was badly frayed and months of negotiation had ended in failure twice this year.
"Yet we face growing risks of proliferation and catastrophic terrorism, and the stakes are too high to continue down a dangerous path of diplomatic brinkmanship."
He was speaking against a backdrop of stalled negotiations over the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, with potentially far-reaching consequences for security in the fragile regions of Northeast Asia and the Middle East.
Mr Annan took a veiled swipe at the United States, which thwarted agreement at this week's world summit on how to combat weapons of mass destruction because it was unwilling to renew an old pledge by nuclear powers to move toward disarmament.
"States could not even agree to reaffirm their existing commitments, or find a way forward, even at the level of principles.
"They have been content to point fingers at each other, rather than work for solutions," the UN chief said. "We must urgently begin to remedy our distressing failures on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament," he said.
He endorsed the efforts of a group of countries led by Norway to build a new consensus, which foundered chiefly due to US resistance in the hours before the summit. "All states should support their initiative to address this existential threat," Mr Annan said.
Agencies