Iran: N-armed states not eliminating stockpiles

UNITED NATIONS: Asserting that nuclear-armed states have not made progress in eliminating their atomic weapons stockpiles, Iran has asked such countries to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernising and extending the life span of their nuclear arsenal.

US Secretary of State John Kerry departs following a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Iranian Permanent Residence in New York. AFP

United Nations, April 28

Asserting that nuclear-armed states have not made progress in eliminating their atomic weapons stockpiles, Iran has asked such countries to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernising and extending the life span of their nuclear arsenal.

“The nuclear weapon states have not made progress in eliminating their nuclear weapons. The role of nuclear weapons in security policies of the nuclear weapons-states has not diminished,” Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif said at the 2015 NPT Review Conference here yesterday.

“Some nuclear weapons-states are modernising their nuclear arsenals and planning research on new nuclear warheads, others have announced their intention to develop new delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons,” he said.

Speaking on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Zarif said the non nuclear weapons-states parties have not yet received unequivocal and legally binding security assurances.

Iran demanded that the nuclear-weapons countries immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernising and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities.

“We firmly believe that any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons would be a crime against humanity and a violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, in particular international humanitarian law,” he said. Zarif also called for the “complete exclusion” of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons from military doctrines.

“The nuclear-weapon states shall seriously refrain, under any circumstances, from the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the Treaty,” Zarif said, adding that reductions in deployments and in operational status cannot substitute for irreversible cuts and the total elimination of nuclear weapons. The 2015 Review Conference will run at UN Headquarters through till May 22. — PTI