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The United States, France and the United Kingdom ask Russia to end its “dangerous” nuclear rhetoric
The specter of a nuclear war due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has hovered over the opening of the tenth follow-up conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). On the one hand, the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, has stressed that the world is “one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”, while the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in his restrained version, has said that “ There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed.” On the other front, France, the United Kingdom and the United States have issued a statement calling on Russia to end its “dangerous and irresponsible behavior” and nuclear rhetoric.
At the opening of the conference of the 191 signatory countries of the NPT at the United Nations headquarters, Guterres stressed that the world has had “extraordinary luck so far. But luck is not a strategy or a shield to prevent geopolitical tensions from degenerating into a nuclear conflict. “Today, humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” he warned, urging the world to “get rid of its nuclear weapons,” weapons that, he has said, have no place on the planet. “Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only guarantee that they will never be used”, he recalled, after denouncing that “nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons” are stored in the world “at a time when the risks of proliferation are increasing and the safeguards to prevent this escalation are weakened”.
After Guterres’ intervention, a letter from the Russian president has been released, in which Vladimir Putin recalls that in the event of a nuclear war, there would be no winners. “We proceed from the fact that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it should never be triggered and we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the international community.” His comments contrast with some other statements after the invasion of Ukraine, after which he put the Russian nuclear military forces on high alert.
This rhetoric is precisely what the statement made public by Washington, London and Paris refers to in connection with the conference on Monday, in which they call on Moscow to put an end to its aggressive drift. “In the context of Russia’s unprovoked and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, we call on Russia to end its nuclear rhetoric and irresponsible and dangerous behavior.”
In part, their statement is identical to Putin’s, when they point out that “a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be unleashed.” However, far from Guterres’s demand to eradicate them, the three countries, atomic powers, affirm that “nuclear weapons must, from their birth, serve defensive, dissuasive and war prevention purposes.” In a parallel note issued by US President Joe Biden, he calls on the governments of Russia and China to engage in dialogue to control nuclear weapons. (Agencies)
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