A pillar of the NPT regime is a bargain: non-proliferation for disarmament. Following the end of the Cold War considerable efforts to implement this bargain were made, particularly at the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences. More recently, however, progress has faltered.

On the disarmament side, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty has not yet entered into force, while negotiations for a fissile material cut-off treaty have not yet begun. More generally, the ‘13 Steps’ approach has been derailed in spite of the fact it remains at the core of many non-nuclear weapon states’ agendas. There has even been criticism that some states are enhancing the role of nuclear weapons in their national security doctrines.

On the non-proliferation side, efforts to encourage all states to adopt an additional protocol have met with limited success. Moreover, even though a nuclear ‘renaissance’ is widely anticipated, there is no agreement on how or whether enrichment or reprocessing technologies should be more tightly controlled.

To avoid a repetition of the failure of the 2005 Review Conference in 2010, disarmament and non-proliferation efforts must both be re-invigorated. This will require a renewed consensus between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states about the importance of all the undertakings in the NPT.

Against this background, the Government of Norway is convening an international conference to discuss how to move beyond the current impasse.

The specific aims of this conference are two-fold:

• To identify and formulate disarmament, non-proliferation and nuclear risk reduction proposals that can realistically be implemented in the medium-term (2-5 years);
• To discuss long-term objectives and how progress can be made toward achieving them.

It will help to shape Norwegian policy in these areas, both for the current NPT Review Cycle and beyond.

The Government of Norway is interested in hearing about viable and innovative strategies for realizing the NPT bargain. It is hoped that this conference will generate such ideas by taking the ‘long view’ of disarmament and consider the challenges posed by abolition of nuclear weapons and what can be done now to start overcoming them.