UNITED NATIONS - Washington isn't taking "the common bargain" of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as seriously as it once did, and that's dimming global support for the U.S. campaign to shut down the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector said.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton, by questioning the value of treaties and international law, has also damaged the U.S. position, Hans Blix said.

Blix, now chairman of the Swedish government-sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, spoke with reporters in the second week of a monthlong conference to review the 1970 nonproliferation treaty.

Under the 188-nation pact, nations without nuclear weapons pledge not to pursue them, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear-weapons states - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.

The review conference has been stalled, without an agenda, because of a dispute over agenda language dealing with the very dissatisfaction Blix spoke of: the complaints by some that the nuclear-weapons states are moving too slowly toward disarmament.

Blix told reporters there is "a great deal of concern" about North Korea and Iran among states without nuclear weapons.

But "that feeling of concern is somewhat muted by the feeling that the United States in particular, and perhaps some other nuclear weapons states, are not taking the common bargain as seriously as they had committed themselves to do in the past," he said.

At the treaty conference Monday, private consultations appeared to make progress toward agreement on an agenda. The conference president, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte,hoped an agenda could be adopted as early as today.