THE HAGUE, Nov 25: More than 90 countries, including the United States, Russia and Libya, adopted on Monday a ground-breaking code of conduct aimed at preventing the proliferation of ballistic missiles, though several nations developing such weapons were absent from a conference in The Hague.

“Today a new non-proliferation instrument saw the light of day: The International Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (ICOC),” Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told journalists at a conference in the Dutch capital The Hague.

“It is the first global non-proliferation instrument that specifically deals with systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction,” he explained.

The 92 nations present at the Hague launching conference signed the code of conduct, among them all 15 EU members, plus nuclear powers Russia and the United States, though Iraq, Pakistan and India were noticeably absent from the gathering.

The code of conduct is designed to ensure greater transparency on the development and testing of the powerful weapons and requires signatory states to prepare an annual report on their programs and to signal any upcoming weapons tests.

But the code is also a paper tiger, since it does not have the formal status of a treaty, includes no sanctions for countries that flaunt its rules and lacks the backing of several states armed with ballistic weapons.

“It is a first step and an important step, 92 countries is quite substantial but we miss several important countries of concern like China, India, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran,” De Hoop Scheffer admitted.

He denied the code was weak because it did not lay down sanctions for non-compliance and stressed the element of peer pressure.

“I am in favour of peer pressure and I believe that in the end it will be more effective (than sanctions),” the minister said.

Other notable exceptions in signatory states included North Korea, Syria and Israel.

“At the moment they think there is not much to gain from transparency,” De Hoop Scheffer explained.—AFP