Geneva, March 22, 2022.- The first deputy minister of Foreign Affairs Gerardo Peñalver reiterated this Tuesday at the installation of the Cuban presidency of the Conference on Disarmament the island’s call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
Speaking in Geneva at the opening session of his country’s presidency at the multilateral forum, the senior official stressed that the eradication of lethal devices of mass destruction is and must continue to be the highest priority in the field of disarmament and The conference.
This is the only guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, said Peñalver, who advocated a process of total elimination materialized in a transparent, verifiable and irreversible manner.
We express deep concern and alarm at the latent danger of a nuclear conflagration, from which no nation will escape its devastating effects, he warned.
In this sense, the First Deputy Foreign Minister described as encouraging the decision to reactivate the work of the Conference on Disarmament, as a key component of the United Nations disarmament machinery.
“It is now necessary to fulfill its negotiating mandate, ensure its vitality and preserve its procedures and practices,” he called at the forum.
According to Peñalver, Cuba is convinced that the Conference has the capacity to simultaneously negotiate important norms to prevent and protect humanity from danger.
In this regard, he mentioned a legally binding instrument that prohibits the arms race in outer space; another that provides security guarantees for States that, like Cuba, do not possess nuclear weapons; and a third, that prohibits the production of fissile material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other devices of the same nature.
In his speech, he also ratified the island’s commitment to promoting the universalization of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which he considered a materialization of the humanist thought of the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.
We are proud to be the fifth State to ratify it, to integrate the first Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in a densely populated area of the planet and to belong to the first region in the world proclaimed as a Zone of Peace, he affirmed in reference to the position of Latin America and the Caribbean.
