Arms negotiators failed to start talks on Tuesday on cutting nuclear weapons when Pakistan blocked the adoption of the 2010 agenda for the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament. The conference, the world's sole multinational negotiating forum for disarmament, spent much of 2009 stuck on procedural wrangles raised by Pakistan after breaking a 12-year deadlock to agree a programme of work.

The impasse on Tuesday suggested 2010 would be another year of halting progress. Pakistan, which tested a nuclear weapon in 1998, is wary of the proposed focus in the programme on limiting the production of fissile material, which would put it at a disadvantage against longer-standing nuclear powers such as India.

It therefore has an interest in delaying the start of substantive talks, diplomats say. "Even in the darkest days the agenda was adopted, because everything can be discussed under the agenda," said one veteran official, unable to recall a similar delay in the past.

FROZEN IN TIME Adoption of the agenda at the start of the annual session is normally a formality, but Pakistan Ambassador Zamir Akram took the floor to call for the agenda to be broadened to cover two other issues.

Copyright Reuters, 2010