The United States has drafted a UN Security Council resolution calling on all countries with atomic weapons to get rid of them.

The 15-nation council will debate the draft resolution on September 24 on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the General Assembly, which will be chaired by Barack Obama, the US president, as Washington holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council during September.

The draft resolution was circulated to the full council on Friday, diplomats said.

The text, obtained by Reuters news agency, calls for signatories of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to begin talks on nuclear arms reduction and to negotiate "a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and calls on all other states to join in this endeavor".

International threat

It also urges those countries outside the NPT to join it. Becoming a party to the NPT would require scrapping their nuclear arsenals, something the nuclear powers outside the pact have refused to do so far.

The draft resolution does not name specific countries, but it clearly has North Korea and Iran in mind when it says the council "deplores in particular the current major challenges to the nonproliferation regime that the Security Council has determined to be threats to international peace and security".

Without referring to any specific regions, the draft resolution has the council "welcoming and supporting the steps taken to conclude nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties".

Egypt and other Arab states have long called for the establishment of such a zone in the Middle East, which would mean Israel would have to get rid of any atomic bombs it possesses.

The draft resolution also calls for the creation of a treaty that would ban the production of fissile material made specifically for nuclear weapons.