A world without nuclear weapons is the historical imperative of our time, said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today at the opening of the UN Conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, warning that the world is approaching a dangerous return to the Cold War mentality.
The conference is attended by 190 signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, as well as Israel as an observer, for the first time in 20 years.
The secretary-general's message, read by his deputy Jan Eliasson, implicitly criticized the United States and Russia for not doing enough to make progress on nuclear disarmament.
"I am deeply concerned that in the last five years progress seems to have stalled," Ban said, adding that instead there was a "dangerous return to a Cold War mentality."
The agencies remind that the USA and Russia together possess 90 percent of the total stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appealed to countries that have nuclear weapons to abandon their modernization and accused Israel of posing a threat to the entire region because of its nuclear arsenal.
"We call on the nuclear powers to immediately suspend plans to invest in the modernization and extension of the life of their nuclear weapons and related facilities," Zarif said.
Israel, which is believed to be the only one in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons and has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has not participated in gatherings of signatories to the document since 1995, in protest at resolutions it considers biased.
On behalf of the 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement, Zarif told the signatories of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that there should be no limits on the transfer of nuclear technology and knowledge among them.
He stated that the members of the Non-Aligned Movement demand that "Israel, as the only country in the region that has not joined the NPT nor has shown any intention to do so, to give up its possession of nuclear weapons," AFP reported.
According to him, Iran and other countries of the Non-Aligned Movement are deeply concerned about the military and security doctrines of NATO and the states with nuclear weapons.
As expected, on the sidelines of the conference US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, which will be their first meeting after the marathon negotiations that ended with a framework agreement on Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
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