GENEVA (Reuters) - China, stepping up attacks on a planned U.S. anti-missile system, said on Thursday that its top priority was preventing an arms race in outer space.
In his first speech to the Conference on Disarmament (CD), China's new ambassador Hu Xiaodi called for the United Nations forum to launch negotiations aimed at banning the testing, deployment and use of weapons in outer space.
Major non-aligned powers -- including nuclear-capable India and Pakistan -- also took the floor to back starting substantive work in Geneva designed to avoid an arms race in outer space.
But the United States, which is considering whether to build a national missile defense system, is the only one of the 66 member states against setting up a negotiating committee, according to diplomats. The U.S. delegation is expected to continue to block the required consensus, they add.
U.S. President Bill Clinton is due to decide this summer about deploying a limited national defense scheme designed to counter missiles fired by rogue states such as North Korea.
The U.S. military failed last week to shoot down a warhead in space in the second of three critical tests for the scheme.
China and Russia have denounced the tests and say developing an anti-missile defense system would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The 1972 pact limits the type of systems Russia and the United States may deploy to intercept incoming missiles.
"As far as China is concerned, the preventing of an arms race in outer space, including the prohibition of outer space weapons as well as the prohibition of anti-ballistic missile systems which undermine the strategic stability, is the top priority,'' Hu said. "The negative developments in this field have stalled the nuclear disarmament process and undermined the basis for non-proliferation.
"The Chinese delegation maintains that the CD should reestablish an ad hoc committee on the prevention of an arms race in outer space...and commence negotiations on the prohibition of testing, deployment and use of weapons, weapon systems and their components in outer space,'' he added.
China also favored starting serious multilateral negotiations in Geneva on nuclear disarmament "with a view to their complete elimination at an early date," the envoy said.
But the other four official nuclear powers -- Britain, France, Russia and the United States -- oppose multilateral talks on total nuclear disarmament. They say the United States and Russia are reducing their huge arsenals bilaterally.
Non-aligned countries reiterated their call for beginning negotiations aimed at total elimination of nuclear weapons.
Preventing an arms race in space has assumed "greater urgency," according to the non-aligned consensus statement read out to the Geneva talks by Malaysia's ambassador Hamidon Ali.
There were "legitimate concerns that existing legal instruments are inadequate to deter imminent attempts for the further militarization of outer space," he added.
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