Japan has proposed a road map for eliminating the world's nuclear arsenal in a draft resolution submitted to the disarmament committee of the U.N. Millennium General Assembly.
The draft resolution -- titled "A path to the total elimination of nuclear weapons" -- was submitted Friday in line with a pledge Foreign Minister Yohei Kono made to the United Nations in September.
The Japanese government worked on the proposal following a commitment the world's nuclear-armed nations made at the U.N. nuclear nonproliferation conference last May to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as an "unequivocal undertaking."
Amplifying a series of nuclear disarmament proposals Japan has made since 1994, the draft calls for putting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force by 2003 and an immediate start of negotiations for a "cutoff treaty" to ban production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, for adoption by 2005.