MOSCOW, April 27: The possibility of reducing nuclear arsenals and completely eliminating them by the P5 countries under current conditions is minimal, Andrey Belousov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large and head of the Russian delegation to the NPT Review Conference, said in an interview with Sputnik.
The Eleventh Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will be held in New York from April 27 to May 22.
Belousov emphasised that Russia fully shared humanity’s common desire to eliminate nuclear weapons and establish a “nuclear-free and safer world for all.”
“Another matter is the practical possibility of advancing in reducing nuclear arsenals to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Progress on this track requires creating a favourable military-political climate. It must be acknowledged that in the current challenging conditions of growing destabilisation of the international situation, rising tensions, and the deterioration of relations between nuclear states caused by our opponents, such a possibility is negligible,” the Russian diplomat said.
Furthermore, it’s already time to talk about a rollback in this area, he added.
“The plans of the Western ‘nuclear trio’ to increase their nuclear arsenals, create new infrastructure for nuclear needs, including on the territory of non-nuclear allies, and involve the latter in increasingly destabilising military-nuclear interaction schemes can hardly be interpreted as a willingness or an invitation to move toward ‘nuclear zero,'” Belousov believes.
(UNI)
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