Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty
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The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is a proposed international treaty to prohibit the further production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. It would not prevent the production of fuel-grade uranium and plutonium, nor of other components in nuclear warheads. It is currently being negotiated in the United Nations Conference on Disarmament. In a 27 September 1993 speech before the UN, President Clinton called for a multilateral convention banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear explosives or outside international safeguards. In December 1993 the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 48/75L calling for the negotiation of a "non-discriminatory, multilateral and international effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." The Geneva based Conference on Disarmament (CD) on 23 March 1995 agreed to a mandate for a committee to begin negotiations on the cutoff treaty. However, negotiations have been stalled for several years. In 2004, the United States announced that they opposed the inclusion of a verification mechanism in the treaty on the grounds that compliance with the treaty could not be conclusively determined by a system of international verification. The United States supports the treaty but advocates an ad-hoc system of verification wherein states would monitor the compliance of other states through their own national intelligence mechanisms.[1]
