US is developing its own nuclear weapons and won't sign a committment to disarm, yet is attending the Nuclear Arms Control Meeting.

Jonathan Granoff, president of U.S.-based Global Security Institute, assailed the Bush administration for renouncing the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which Washington signed during the Clinton administration but had not ratified.

"Why should anyone expect that any commitments we make now would be treated any differently five years from now, if the commitment we made 10 years ago can be so readily dispensed with," Granoff said.

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the Bush administration would never agree to a pact like the test ban treaty "that limits our options in a state of war."

Some analysts condemned this as irresponsible. "The principle that the U.S. is establishing is that governments can renege on the commitments of their predecessors in office," observed Joseph Cinincione, an arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.