U.S. Sure It Has Votes to Extend Nuclear-Arms Treaty : Diplomacy: Delegates from more than 170 countries meet today at the United Nations to discuss permanent renewal of non-proliferation pact.

WASHINGTON —  Haunted by the specter of nuclear-armed suicide bombers capable of reducing whole cities to rubble, representatives of more than 170 nations will meet at the United Nations starting today to renew a 25-year-old treaty that so far has kept atomic bombs out of the hands of rogue governments and terrorists.

A senior Clinton Administration official said that Washington has already lined up enough public and private commitments to ensure a majority vote at the four-week conference to permanently extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The pact is meant to limit the world’s nuclear-weapons club to the five nations that were members in 1970.

“If the vote were held today, we believe we would have the necessary majority for indefinite extension,” John Holum, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said last week.

At first glance, extension of the treaty would seem an easy decision. After all, who wants regional wars such as the one in Bosnia-Herzegovina to be fought with nuclear weapons? Who wants to give terrorists the power to incinerate cities or blackmail leaders?

But it is not quite that simple. A handful of countries, including such U.S. allies as Egypt and Mexico, are skeptical about making permanent a treaty that allows five nations to maintain nuclear arsenals while denying that possibility to all others. Some non-government experts say the conference could become raucous before the vote is taken in early May.

Enacted a quarter of a century after the nuclear age dawned with the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the treaty imposed a peaceful stability that could scarcely have been imagined at the time.

In the 25 years between 1945 and 1970, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China joined the United States as nuclear states. Since the treaty took effect, not a single nation has acknowledged developing nuclear arms, although several countries are believed to have developed clandestine arsenals.

When the Soviet Union broke up, four new countries--Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus--inherited its nuclear weapons. Following an intense diplomatic campaign mounted by Russia and the United States, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus agreed to ship all the nuclear weapons on their territory to Russia. All three countries agreed to sign the non-proliferation treaty as non-nuclear nations, leaving Russia as the only Soviet successor state with a nuclear arsenal.

Without the treaty, experts estimate, the nuclear club could have grown to 50 or more countries and atomic bombs might have reached the weapons black markets.

The treaty “converted what had been a matter of national pride into a violation of international law,” said Thomas Graham Jr., chief of the U.S. delegation to the conference. He noted that before the treaty was signed, when France first tested a nuclear device, the event touched off celebrations throughout the country. But by 1974, when India conducted a test explosion, the government was subjected to so much censure that it denied the device was a prototype weapon.

The treaty has three major objectives: banning the spread of nuclear weapons, providing access to peaceful nuclear technology to countries that forgo nuclear weapons and requiring the nuclear-weapons states to make a “good-faith” effort to negotiate total nuclear disarmament.

Opponents of permanent renewal say that only the discipline of setting a new expiration date, which would require a similar renewal conference in 10 or 25 years, would keep the pressure on nuclear nations to live up to their promise to eventually get rid of their arsenals.

A senior U.S. official said the United States and Russia, which already have agreed on massive cuts in nuclear-weapons stockpiles, are far more likely to approve additional reductions if the treaty is permanent because that will give them greater confidence that there will not be a new nuclear arms race.

Iran is adamantly opposed to extending the pact, probably because the treaty has interfered with Tehran’s nuclear program, which the regime says is purely peaceful but which the United States and its allies contend is aimed at producing weapons. Iran is a party to the treaty, and its nuclear facilities are subject to international inspection, but the U.S. government claims that Tehran is trying to mount a clandestine arms program.

Iran plans to demand an amendment to the treaty guaranteeing signatories the right to buy nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The treaty permits such transfers, but it allows sellers to refuse to make deals that they believe will result in weapons proliferation.

Russia has agreed to sell Iran the technology it wants, but the United States is trying to persuade Moscow to pull out of the deal. Germany had agreed to make the sale but backed out because of concern that Iran plans to develop weapons.

Although Washington and Moscow are on opposite sides in the dispute over the Iran reactor sale, U.S. officials say Russia supports making the treaty permanent.

North Korea, Libya and Iraq, other nations accused by the United States of trying to obtain nuclear arms, are parties to the treaty. All three are expected to vote against making it permanent.

More than 170 of the 185 member nations of the United Nations have signed the treaty, and U.S. officials say the number may grow to 180. But three states believed to have nuclear-weapons capability--Israel, India and Pakistan--have refused to sign.

The treaty can be extended by a simple majority vote.