HARDLY a good start. The opening of the month-long United Nations meeting in New York to take stock of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been overshadowed by noisy advertisements of its weaknesses.

On Sunday, North Korea test-fired a missile into the Sea of Japan. Yesterday Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Lower House of the Russian parliament, gave warning that “North Korea may test a nuclear device in June”.

Meanwhile, Iran, whose nuclear ambitions were always bound to dominate the talks, said that it might restart some of its most controversial work after talks with the European Union stalled on Friday.

Many would take these signs as evidence that the 35-year-old treaty to curb the spread of nuclear weapons has now been tested to destruction. But although it is fashionable to pronounce on the NPT’s impotence, that is too pessimistic.

The treaty always proposed an odd bargain; it is no surprise that now some are asking whether it should hold good. In the NPT, only five countries, the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, are permitted to have nuclear weapons, and they are supposed to work to reduce their stockpiles.

In return for other countries forgoing weapons, they have the right to receive help with peaceful nuclear power, from the Big Five and from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog. For many countries, this bargain has proved attractive. Many that long ago mastered civil nuclear power and would find weapons easily within reach if they chose — Japan and Germany, to name just two — believe that it is not worth their while. Turkey, Brazil, not to mention Saudi Arabia and Syria, may need more convincing. Others have found that the attractions of a weapons programme outweighed the censure that followed. India, Pakistan (known to have nuclear weapons) and Israel (presumed) all chose to remain outside the NPT. North Korea was a signatory, but quit in 2003 so that could it press ahead free of IAEA supervision. Recently, the rift between the nuclear and non-nuclear powers has grown so bitter that this month’s meeting, a regular five-yearly review, has opened without a formal agenda. There are three main rows:

Third, what exactly is the right, under the NPT’s Article IV, to pursue nuclear power? This is the problem illustrated by Iran, which insists that it has the right to enrich uranium, a process that can make nuclear fuel, but also bombs.

The real value of this meeting is likely to lie in the broader debate about the nature of incentives, and threats, that states might be offered to turn their back on nuclear weapons. Not all of those may lie within the NPT itself. Iran has been offered talks on joining the World Trade Organisation — to weigh against the threat of sanctions, even force. And Libya, although too idiosyncratic to support a case for optimism on its own, apparently found the offer of trade and general recognition sufficient to surrender its secret nuclear research. The bargain the NPT describes now looks less attractive. But that does not mean that there is no deal still to be struck to buy countries off the road to nuclear weapons.

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