We must also focus our efforts on preventing an arms race in outer space, where misunderstandings could easily trigger conflicts. We must also ensure that emerging technologies are used for good, not for ill. What we need is fresh thinking and new approaches. This is why the United Kingdom brought forward the Responsible Space Behaviours initiative. We call on all States to engage in this initiative, so we can reduce the growing threat. First and foremost, States should comply with the Outer Space Treaty, including the obligation not to place nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth. We must also focus our efforts on preventing an arms race in outer space, where misunderstandings could easily trigger conflicts. We must also ensure that emerging technologies are used for good, not for ill. What we need is fresh thinking and new approaches. This is why the United Kingdom brought forward the Responsible Space Behaviours initiative. We call on all States to engage in this initiative, so we can reduce the growing threat. First and foremost, States should comply with the Outer Space Treaty, including the obligation not to place nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth. We must also focus our efforts on preventing an arms race in outer space, where misunderstandings could easily trigger conflicts. We must also ensure that emerging technologies are used for good, not for ill. What we need is fresh thinking and new approaches. This is why the United Kingdom brought forward the Responsible Space Behaviours initiative. We call on all States to engage in this initiative, so we can reduce the growing threat. First and foremost, States should comply with the Outer Space Treaty, including the obligation not to place nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth. We must also focus our efforts on preventing an arms race in outer space, where misunderstandings could easily trigger conflicts. We must also ensure that emerging technologies are used for good, not for ill. What we need is fresh thinking and new approaches. This is why the United Kingdom brought forward the Responsible Space Behaviours initiative. We call on all States to engage in this initiative, so we can reduce the growing threat. First and foremost, States should comply with the Outer Space Treaty, including the obligation not to place nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth. Elsewhere, Iran’s escalating nuclear and ballistic missile programmes are threatening international security and undermining global non-proliferation. Through its development and proliferation of ballistic missiles, Iran, and I can speak quite specifically as the United Kingdom’s Minister for the Middle East, is destabilising the Middle East, threatening maritime security and increasing the risk of miscalculation. Iran is also refusing to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigations, preventing the Agency, that has been created for the purpose of looking at these particular issues, from assuring that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful. The United Kingdom remains committed to ensuring Iran never develops a nuclear weapon, and to using all available diplomatic levers and options to that end. Mr President, We believe that a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty would be a significant step towards a world without nuclear weapons. We call for such negotiations to commence immediately within this Conference. We reaffirm our existing unilateral negative security assurances regarding the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against Non-Nuclear Weapon States parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We also underscore our legally binding commitments to over 100 countries in the context of the nuclear weapon-free zones in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Central Asia and the Pacific Ocean. It would be fair to say that we live in what can only be termed extremely troubled, uncertain and indeed vulnerable times for many. When we look around the world today, international norms are being eroded, and the global security environment is deteriorating and these challenges, to put it quite bluntly and in a straightforward way, are too great for any single State to manage alone. They can only be addressed through effective cooperation between international partners. The United Kingdom and many others here today are working to preserve and strengthen the open international order that is so vital for all our futures. As I have said, this needs to be a collective effort. It is clear that Russia has a growing disregard for its nuclear responsibilities. It has undermined the work of this Conference by suspending its obligations under the New START Treaty and de-ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. It has trampled international law and the UN Charter through its barbaric and continuing war and illegal invasion against Ukraine. We ourselves are a nuclear power, but an invasion marked by irresponsible nuclear rhetoric is not the way to behave. The horrific targeting of civilians and the cruel weaponisation of energy and food supplies, to put it simply, is wrong.
