Russia on Friday blocked the adoption of a joint statement at the end of the four-week UN review conference of the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT), denouncing “political” terms.
The 191 signatories of the NPT, which aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, promote complete disarmament and encourage cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, have been meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York since 1 August.
“The conference is not in a position to reach an agreement”
But despite a month of negotiations and a final session postponed for several hours on Friday, “the conference is not in a position to reach an agreement,” the conference president, Argentine Gustavo Zlauvinen, said after Russia intervened. .
Although decisions are made by consensus, the Russian representative, Igor Vishnevetsky, has denounced the lack of “balance” in the final draft text of more than 30 pages.
“Our delegation has a key objection to certain paragraphs that are blatantly political,” he said, repeating several times that Russia was not the only country to object to the text in general.
According to sources close to the negotiations, Russia was especially opposed to the paragraphs relating to the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhya, occupied by the Russian army.
The latest text on the table, seen by AFP, underlined “great concern” about military activities around Ukrainian power plants, including Zaporizhia, Ukraine’s “loss of control” over these sites and “the significant impact on security”. “.
A draft text that was already very weak and detached from reality
During these four weeks, other sensitive elements for certain States were also discussed, in particular the Iranian nuclear program and the North Korean nuclear tests.
At the last review conference in 2015, the parties were also unable to reach an agreement on substantive issues. In any case, “what is really problematic is that with or without text, it does nothing to reduce the level of nuclear threat at the moment”, Beatrice Fihn, who heads the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) .
The draft text was “very weak and far from reality”, he added, noting the absence of “concrete disarmament commitments”. Opening the conference, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said such a “nuclear danger (had) not been known about since the height of the Cold War.”
“Today, humanity is in a misunderstanding, a miscalculation of nuclear annihilation,” he warned.
Source: BFM TV
