Envoy urges cooperation on nuclear disarmament

China's top ambassador to the United Nations called on countries to resist Cold War thinking and promote nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation together.

"Nuclear weapons are a product of history, and nuclear disarmament will naturally have a historical process," Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the UN, told a Security Council meeting on Monday.

Expecting countries with different nuclear policies and numbers of nuclear weapons to follow identical disarmament and transparency rules "is not consistent with the logic of history and reality, nor is it in line with international consensus, and as such will only lead international nuclear disarmament to a dead end", Zhang added.

The US "should continue to fulfill its special and priority responsibility to further reduce the nuclear arsenals in a drastic and substantive manner, so as to create conditions for other nuclear weapons states to join the nuclear disarmament process and play a lead role by example recognized by all parties," he said.

Zhang noted that in 2022, leaders of the five nuclear-armed countries agreed that nuclear war "cannot be won and must never be fought".

On that basis, said Zhang, nuclear weapons states should explore feasible measures to reduce strategic risks, negotiate and conclude a treaty on no first use of nuclear weapons against each other and provide legally binding, negative security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states.

The countries concerned "should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their national and collective security policies", he said.

They should also "renounce the deployment of a global missile defense system, refrain from seeking the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region or in Europe and stop nuclear sharing and the so-called extended deterrence, so as to maintain the global strategic balance and stability through practical actions," Zhang emphasized.

AI technology

In addition, he urged countries to enhance the controllability of AI technology and "ensure that relevant weapon systems are under human control at all times".

In terms of recent hot spot issues such as the nonproliferation of the Korean Peninsula and Iran, they "have a complex historical background and are closely linked to the continuity of the nonproliferation policies of a relevant country", said the ambassador.

"The United States should abandon the threat of use and the use of sanctions and pressure," said Zhang. He said the US nuclear submarine cooperation with certain countries "carries a high risk of nuclear proliferation".

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday also underscored the urgent need for disarmament to eliminate the looming threat of nuclear conflict. He said that "states possessing nuclear weapons are absent from the table of dialogue".

minluzhang@chinadailyusa.com