UNITED NATIONS, April 28: The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution aimed at keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.

The 15-0 vote approved a resolution crafted in months of negotiations by the council's five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - all of which are nuclear powers.

The text was revised three times to answer objections from some of the council's 10 non-permanent members, and finally won the support of the last hold-out Pakistan, also a nuclear-armed state.

US President George W. Bush first called for the resolution in September in a speech before the United Nations. The resolution calls on the 191 UN member nations to stop terrorists, black market traders and all so-called "non-state actors" from acquiring weapons of mass destruction or the materials and technology to obtain them.

It also calls on them to adopt laws to prevent sensitive materials and technology from getting into the hands of non-state actors. Diplomats said there was broad agreement on the need to plug the gap in the existing non-proliferation treaties, which deal only with interactions between nations. -AFP