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North Korea, which pulled out of the NPT in January 2003, will
not attend the review meeting. In February 2005 North Korea announced
that it had created nuclear weapons. Weapons experts fear that
this could create a domino effect in which other nations in the
region acquire nuclear weapons, too.
 "If
North Korea becomes a nuclear weapon state, it won't be too long
before Japan becomes a nuclear weapon state," Graham Allison
of Harvard University told Voice of America.
If that happens, Allison says, it could start a nuclear arms
race between Japan and China. Feeling threatened on all sides,
South Korea would also want to possess nuclear weapons.
Experts also fear that North Korea, isolated with a failing economy,
is likely to sell nuclear weapons to a terrorist organization
or individual such as Osama bin Laden.
They also warn that North Korea would set a precedent for other
countries: claim to be producing nuclear energy, withdraw from
the NPT, and then create nuclear weapons.
"The 2005 NPT Review Conference is a vital opportunity for
the United States and the international community to recommit
to the treaty's goals," said Daryl Kimball of the Campaign
to Strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "It is
an opportunity we can't afford to squander."
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Those
five nuclear states are required to work toward reducing and eventually
eliminating their stockpiles. Progress is reviewed every five
years and an organization called the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) is in charge of enforcing the pact. 
"If
this conference ends without a consensus document, if it is seen
as a failure then that is a serious blow to the confidence that
all the other nations have in the nonproliferation regime,"
Joseph Cirincione of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace told Voice of America.
Last
year President Bush introduced a proposal that would end the sale
of nuclear enrichment equipment and technologies to countries,
like Iran, that do not already have full-scale enrichment resources.
The United States would like to pass the proposal at the conference
but experts say Iran is unlikely to agree to it and has the right
to veto the idea.
I think we've been witnessing violence for years, whether in reality through the media or through video games, and I don't think that's a first-hand effect.
