MORE THAN 50 EXPERTS from all over the world will converge in Manila on Monday for a two-day workshop on nuclear disarmament.

The workshop is preparatory to the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in New York in May, which will be chaired by the Philippines.

In cooperation with Norway and Austria, the Manila workshop will be attended by representatives of 37 NPT state parties, including the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Egypt, Cuba and Iran, six international organizations, and six global nongovernmental organizations.

Among the participants expected are Ambassador Sergio Duarte, United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs; United States Ambassador Susan Burke, special representative of US President Barack Obama to the NPT; and British Ambassador John Duncan, arms control and disarmament envoy of the UK.

Issues on the agenda include: The implications of the follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between Washington and Moscow; an action plan on nuclear disarmament; the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; negotiations on a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons; strengthening of safeguards; and the nuclear program of the Democratic People?s Republic of Korea and other areas.

Participants are also expected to push for the declaration of a nuclear-free zone in the troubled Middle East.

The NPT, which came into force in 1970, was designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology; to advance nuclear disarmament; and to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

The NPT stipulates that a conference be held every five years to review its implementation.

New formula

Ambassador Libran Cabactulan, president-elect of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, said he hoped the workshop would come up with a new breakthrough formula for nuclear disarmament.

Although not itself a nuclear power, the Philippines has a big stake in this issue, Cabactulan said, pointing out there are about eight million Filipino workers scattered all over the world.

?The Philippines has a large stake in the Middle East: 2.4 million Filipinos. We rue the day when any of these nuclear weapons, in the hands of either states or private individuals, whose number and location we know nothing about, is detonated,? he said in an interview with the Inquirer.

Not a remote possibility

Cabactulan said that in the US alone, the prospect of a terrorist crashing an airplane into a nuclear facility or detonating a powerful truck bomb near a nuclear plant is not a remote possibility.

?There are 2.7 million Filipinos in the US. The same scenario could happen anywhere in the world where there are Filipinos,? Cabactulan said, adding that the list of terrorist groups that have explored nuclear options includes Al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah, two groups known to have links to Philippine rebel groups.

?With well-knit linkages of terrorist groups, dirty bombs could be in our country,? Cabactulan said.

?We will not wait for the day when the Jemaah Islamiyah has transferred nuclear know-how to local militants,? Cabactulan said, referring to the Abu Sayyaf terror group in Mindanao.

Cabactulan said the number of countries that had acquired nuclear weapons continued to increase.

Philippine Ambassador to Japan Domingo Siazon, who is in Manila to attend the workshop, said nuclear weapons proliferation posed a more immediate threat to humankind than climate change.

?Anything can happen today or tomorrow,? he said, citing heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula which could affect the Philippines.