U.S. opposition has sunk moves to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty is on thin ice and prospects for the entry into force any day soon of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are bleak.

``Whether one looks at the big weapons or the little ones, the facts are alarming,'' Jayantha Dhanapala, U.N. Under-Secretary General for disarmament, said in a speech in Sydney.

The UN Department for Disarmament Affairs is headed by Under-Secretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka. Mr. Dhanapala, a career diplomat in the Foreign ministry of Sri Lanka, held several positions with bodies concerned with disarmament prior to his appointment. (Biography of Jayantha Dhanapala)

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military spending last year reached $800 billion, or $130 for every person in the world.

Dhanapala said that represented a ``major increase'' on 1999.

The biggest increases in spending were by developing nations -- the ones which can least afford it -- and ``Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia are two major sub regions of concern,'' he said.

To put things in perspective, he told a seminar at Sydney's Macquarie University that the Washington-based Brookings Institution think-tank had calculated that total U.S. spending on nuclear weapons amounted to some $5.8 trillion.

If you stacked those dollars, the pile would reach to the moon and almost all the way back to the Earth.

DISAGREEMENT RUBS OUT HARMONY

But it's not just the growing stock of military hardware that has the U.N. disarmament chief concerned.

Dhanapala told Reuters earlier on Thursday that a palpable sense of a ``certain harmony, a certain unity'' that existed among U.N. Security Council members just after the end of the Cold War, when everyone agreed over Iraq for instance, had ''worn thin.''

``We are beginning to see disagreements,'' he said.

In most of the points he makes, a common thread is the United States of President Bush.

Bush says he will abandon the ABM treaty, regarded as the cornerstone of nuclear stability for three decades and affirmed as such by the prior Bill Clinton administration, so Washington can pursue plans to develop a missile shield.

Clinton was on board during a 6- year international attempt to give more teeth to the Biological Weapons Convention. The Bush administration has jumped ship.

And the new U.S. President has indicated he is unlikely to resubmit the CTBT to the U.S. Senate for ratification after the upper house voted it down.

In weapons sales, Dhanapala said the United States alone was responsible for half of last year's arms trades.

Yet he said people should not become disheartened.

``In disarmament the glass is always either half full or half empty depending on how you look at it. I think we must not be totally pessimistic,'' Dhanapala said in the Reuters interview.

``It is true that we are facing a number of challenges particularly to multilateral disarmament. But I do know that the United States upholds the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, it upholds several other treaties, it would want to continue in several of our disarmament fora.''

Dhanapala said ``a la carte multilateralism'' was an in-word in Washington and the Bush administration was likely to pick and chose which multilateral agreements it would like to adhere to.

``But it will soon be realized that that is a game that other countries can also play and therefore it is not in the global interest for countries to limit their engagement,'' he said.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited.

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