Obama's atomic promise a bomb - Sydney Morning Herald

Nuclear-armed countries - including Australia's chief ally, the US - are at best paying only lip service to the high-flung promise of President Barack Obama to rid the world of atomic bombs.

The disturbing findings come in a ''report card'' into the almost 18,000-strong global arsenal of nuclear warheads.

The report, a brainchild of former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, claims early optimism for disarmament after Mr Obama won power has all but evaporated, with the nuclear-weapons programs in India, Pakistan, and China actually accelerating in recent years.

The US deployed extra missile interceptors on its west coast on the weekend, adding to fears the nuclear option is no longer seen as a weapon of last resort.

Adding to concern over the nuclear intentions of North Korea and Iran, the report also warns that the computer systems in control of existing nuclear weapons could be vulnerable to cyber attack.

''The unhappy reality is that while nuclear weapons continue to pose an existential threat to humanity, progress on their abolition, and on strengthening barriers to their proliferation, remains achingly slow,'' the report notes.

''Even a 'limited' regional nuclear war would have catastrophic global consequences.''

The report, Nuclear Weapons: State of Play, to be launched in Geneva this week, is a follow-on to an extensive study sponsored by Australia and Japan in 2009 and provides a traffic-light code to easily signal progress - or lack of - on disarmament.

Stuck at a red light is the ultimate goal of abolishing nuclear stockpiles, with ''no progress'' made since Mr Obama made a landmark pledge in April 2009 to ''take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons''.

The enforcement of nuclear regulations gets a red light too, although the report notes progress on technical co-operation short of a green light. ''All nine nuclear-armed states foresee indefinite retention of nuclear weapons.''

The US and Russia - together accounting for about 94 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons - have slightly smaller nuclear stockpiles. But many of these weapons remain on ''high-alert'' and ''talks on further drawdowns [are] going nowhere''.

Arms control treaties permit China, France and Britain nuclear weapons, but India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan have also developed atomic bombs.

The report - produced by Professor Evans and the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, based in Canberra - notes there are already extensive ideas set out for eliminating nuclear threats.