UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16: Pakistan has rejected allegations levelled by some western countries that it was responsible for blocking an agreement on a treaty to ban the production of fissile material used as fuel for nuclear weapons.

Pakistan’s delegate told the UN General Assembly on Monday that a lack of consensus in the Conference on Disarmament on negotiating an agreement could not be attributed to the position of one state, Pakistan, as claimed by some western delegates.

The conference was not a body to negotiate only one item on its agenda: FMCT (Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty), Ambassador Zamir Akram said in a statement.

“If there is no consensus on negotiating FMCT, there is also no consensus on negotiating Nuclear Disarmament, Negative Security Assurances or PAROS (prevention of an outer space arms race),” said Ambassador Akram, who is Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN’s European offices in Geneva.

Ambassador Akram referred to what he called “contrived lament” over the failure of the disarmament machinery, and said in Pakistan’s view the diagnosis was partial and focused almost exclusively on symptoms rather than causes.

Even worse, he noted that the solutions put forward were selective, discriminatory and inconsistent.