UN adopts nuclear terror treaty

The UN hopes the text will prevent terror uses of nuclear material

The United Nations General Assembly has adopted an international convention aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism.

The Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism makes it a crime to possess nuclear material with the intent to cause death or injury.

The text, first introduced by Russia, also calls for stronger international co-operation and intelligence-sharing.

It is the UN's 13th anti-terrorism convention and the first completed since the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Dirty bomb fears

The General Assembly adopted the text by consensus.

It must now be ratified by 22 countries for it to become international law.

The document will be opened for signature during a high-level summit on 14 September in New York.

Russia's deputy UN ambassador Alexander Konuzin welcomed its approval, saying "it's the first time that an anti-terrorist convention has been developed on the basis of preventing - that is not after the fact, but before the terrorist acts which are criminalised by this convention".

The Russians first proposed the treaty in 1998 amid fears that nuclear bombs could fall into the wrong hands following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

More recently, there is the spectre of terrorist groups using radioactive materials to build so-called dirty bombs, says the BBC's Michael Voss at the UN.

The treaty is seen as strengthening the legal framework for countering nuclear terrorism, our correspondent says.