German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday called on the United States and Russia to make a stronger commitment to reducing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
"We call on countries with nuclear weapons, especially Russia and the United States, to fulfil their responsibilities and indicate they are ready for further talks over strategic nuclear weapons," Steinmeier and his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr-Store wrote in a joint article to be published in Saturday's Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.
"We are of the opinion that such negotiations could lead to an agreement to succeed the START-1 treaty on the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons which is due to expire in 2009."
The treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1991 limits each side to 1,600 delivery systems -- inter-continental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers and 6,000 nuclear warheads.
Steinmeier and Gahr-Store said North Korea's detonation last month of a nuclear weapon could be a defining moment in the fight for nuclear disarmament.
"The international community must decide whether the North Korea nuclear test will be a further and perhaps disastrous step on the road to the erosion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or give out a clear signal that the international community can agree on a lasting and credible consensus on the non-proliferation issue," they wrote.
The NPT, which came into effect in 1970 and was revised in 2000, was created to prevent new nuclear states emerging.
Germany will hold the presidency of the G8 in 2007.