UN: Threat of nuclear weapons use growing

GENEVA: A top UN official sounded the alarm over a new, looming arms race and warned of the risk that devastating nuclear weapons could be used was on the rise. “The threat of the use, intentional or otherwise, of nuclear weapons is growing,” the UN’s representative for disarmament affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, told a preliminary review meeting of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT).

The United States, which holds one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, also warned the conference that the prospects for progress on disarmament was cur- rently “bleak”.

The NPT, negotiated at the height of the Cold War nearly a half century ago, seeks to prevent the spread of atomic weapons while putting the onus on nuclear states to reduce their stockpiles.

Speaking at the opening of the Geneva meeting, Nakamitsu warned that “the world today faces similar challenges to the context that gave birth to the NPT.” “Rhetoric about the necessity of nuclear weapons is on the rise,” she said, stressing that “modernisation programmes by nuclear-weapons states are leading to what many see as a new, qualitative arms race”.

The NPT treaty, which counts 191 member states, faces a comprehensive review every five years, with preparatory committees each year in between.

The next full review of the treaty is scheduled for 2020, 50 years after the NPT first took effect.

This year’s meeting comes after North Korea, which pulled out of the treaty in 2003, declared a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests and said it would dismantle its nuclear test site.

Many speakers at the Geneva meeting welcomed the announce- ment, but they also voiced caution.

European Union representative Jacek Bylica stressed, for instance, the need to “keep up maximum pressure (on North Korea) until it embarks on a credible path towards complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation”.

Christopher Ford, US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation, insisted that Pyongyang had “yet to return to compliance” with the NPT.

North Korea’s nuclear programme was one reason why “the nonproliferation regime today faces great threats”, Ford said. — AFP