Russia Hopes UN To Adopt Project On WMD-Free Zone In Middle East - Official

Russia Hopes UN to Adopt Project on WMD-Free Zone in Middle East - Official

Russia hopes that the UN General Assembly will adopt the Arab states-sponsored project to establish a zone in the Middle East that is free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Russia's Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said on Monday.

VIENNA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th December, 2018) Russia hopes that the UN General Assembly will adopt the Arab states-sponsored project to establish a zone in the middle East that is free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Russia's Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said on Monday.

"If the draft decision is hopefully adopted and the conference is held in 2019, this will significantly defuse the situation at the Review Conference of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) parties in 2020," Ulyanov said in a video link-up at the Rossiya Segodnya news agency.

Ulyanov also noted that while the initiative of the Arab countries was well prepared, the countries that had abstained from voting on the issue in the General Assembly First Committee might wrongly interpret it, given that their follow-up statements explaining their decision contradicted the text of the draft decision.

Earlier in the year, the UN First Committee adopted a resolution introduced by Egypt on behalf of the Arab League to establish a conference promoting a WMD-free zone in the Middle East in 2019 and every year thereafter until such zone is created. Israel, Micronesia and the United States voted against the resolution, while 71 other countries abstained from the vote.