Humanity is only a “misunderstanding” or “error of judgement” away from “nuclear annihilation,” the UN secretary-general warned on Monday, saying such a “nuclear threat” has not been known since the height of the cold. War’.
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“We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy or a shield to prevent geopolitical tensions from escalating into nuclear conflict,” Antonio Guterres said at the opening of the conference of 191 signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“Today, humanity is under a misunderstanding, a miscalculation of nuclear annihilation,” he said, calling for a world “without nuclear weapons.”
After several postponements from 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 10th Review Conference of the NPT, an international treaty that came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, is being held at the United Nations until August 26. Headquartered in New York.
Antonio Guterres declared that the meeting was “an opportunity to strengthen this treaty and bring it into line with today’s world”, hoping to reaffirm the non-use of nuclear weapons, but also for “new commitments to reduce the arsenal.
“Abolition of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee that they will never be used,” he added, adding that he would travel to Hiroshima in a few days on the anniversary of the bombing.
“Almost 13,000 nuclear weapons are stored in arsenals around the world. At a time when risks of proliferation are growing, safeguards to prevent this escalation are weakening,” he stressed, noting in particular “crises” in the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula and Russia’s aggression on Ukraine.
In January, the five members of the Security Council (the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France), all nuclear powers, pledged to “prevent further proliferation” of nuclear weapons. Study Conference.
At the last review conference in 2015, the parties were unable to reach agreement on key issues.
