UN delegates urge nuclear risk safeguards after New START expiry

The UN General Assembly’s First Committee opened its nuclear-weapons debate on 16 October with calls for better communication between nuclear powers and renewed arms-control negotiations. The proposals were not new agreements. Their urgency was sharpened by the expiry in February of New START, the treaty that limited US and Russian strategic nuclear forces. [1] [4]

Adedeji Ebo, a senior UN disarmament official, urged countries to update existing transparency and confidence-building measures and consider further steps, from political commitments to technical arrangements. Such measures can include crisis hotlines and advance notice of ballistic-missile launches. They are intended to reduce the risk of miscalculation, but are not a substitute for binding limits on weapons. [1] [4]

Vietnam, speaking for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, called on the US and Russia to negotiate a new, legally binding framework for arms reductions. South Korea proposed crisis communication channels, pre-launch notifications and closer military contact among the five permanent members of the Security Council. [1] [2]

The US representative invited Russia and China to put forward proposals on risk reduction, nuclear testing and mutual transparency. China called for a treaty under which nuclear powers would agree not to use nuclear weapons first. But its representative later said it would be unfair and unworkable for China to join three-way nuclear disarmament negotiations with the US and Russia at this stage. That objection does not rule out every form of risk-reduction discussion, but it underscores the gap between an invitation to talk and agreement on who should negotiate arms cuts. [1] [3]

The debate also exposed a difference over what practical safeguards can achieve. Egypt argued that reducing strategic risks cannot replace the total, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.