A treaty on strategic arms reduction should eventually unite all the nations having such weapons, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu has said in an interview with Sputnik
UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th January, 2020) A treaty on strategic arms reduction should eventually unite all the nations having such weapons, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu has said in an interview with Sputnik.
"Eventually, if you are really serious about reducing the number of nuclear weapons, it would make sense at the end of the day, that the treaty should be joined by all nuclear-weapon states and nuclear possessor states. But we are not there yet, unfortunately," Nakamitsu said.
She also voiced the belief that it was necessary to first address the extension of the Russian-US Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), expiring early next year, and only then discuss the possibility for other nuclear nations to join some future strategic arms reduction deals.
"New efforts to 'multilateralize' this kind of an arrangement would be a difficult task. It would not happen overnight. And therefore, it will probably not be a good idea to take all these things � the extension issue, which is a very immediate issue, together with the question of whether China and others should join. We should probably separate these issues because we want the extension to happen before the treaty expires," Nakamitsu said, adding that extending the New START by five years is the key task for today.
The New START, signed in 2010, is the last remaining arms control treaty in force between Russia and the United States. Washington has not yet announced whether it plans to extend the pact. US President Donald Trump has instead proposed working on a new trilateral nuclear deal, which could unite the US, Russia and China. However, Beijing has rejected the idea.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Yermakov, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, told Sputnik in November that further strategic arms reduction was not possible without the United Kingdom's and France's participation.
