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Five global nuclear powers pledged today to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons and to avoid nuclear conflict, in a rare joint statement that sets aside rising West-East tensions to reaffirm a goal for a world without nuclear weapons.
“We strongly believe that the further proliferation of such weapons must be prevented,” said Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. “Nuclear weapons can never be won and must never be fought.”
Despite recent recent tensions between China and Russia and their Western partners, the five world powers said they saw “avoiding war between nuclear-armed states and reducing strategic risks as our top responsibilities.” The statement also promised to adhere to a key article in the NPT Treaty, under which states pledged for future full disarmament of nuclear weapons, which were used only in conflict in the US bombing of Japan in end of World War II.
According to the UN, a total of 191 states have joined the treaty. The provisions of the treaty require a review of its functioning every five years. The statement comes as tensions between Russia and the US have reached peaks rarely seen since the Cold War over a gathering of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border.
Meanwhile, China’s rise under President Xi Jinping has also raised concerns that tensions with Washington could lead to conflict, particularly over the island of Taiwan. Russia welcomed the declaration of nuclear powers and expressed hope that it would reduce global tensions. China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying that the commitment “will help boost mutual trust and replace competition between the major powers with coordination and cooperation.”
“The idea that any nuclear war would be unprofitable was evoked by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US President Ronald Reagan in 1985, but this was the first time that these five powers had arisen,” said Marc Finaud, head of the proliferation near the Center for Security Policy in Geneva.
The statement also came as world powers sought to reach an agreement with Iran to revive the 2015 deal over its controversial nuclear effort, which was shattered by the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018. In an article in international media published in late last year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the existence of 13,000 nuclear weapons worldwide as a growing threat, with the risk that they could be used more than at any time since the Cold War.
Jean-Marie Collin of the French branch of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) welcomed the “positive” statement. The NPT recognizes China, France, Russia, Great Britain and the United States as nuclear weapons powers. These three states are not signatories to the NPT. North Korea, which has also developed nuclear weapons, withdrew from the NPT in 2003.
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