Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa pledged Monday to launch a new dialogue framework to start negotiations on a multinational treaty banning the production of nuclear materials that have the potential to be used in weapons.
With Japan holding the U.N. Security Council's monthly chair for March, Kamikawa said at an open briefing session in New York that the "Friends" meeting with like-minded countries aims to "enhance political attention" on the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.
"The international community has become even more divided over how to advance nuclear disarmament. Nevertheless, we must steadily advance realistic and practical efforts toward a world without nuclear weapons," Kamikawa said.
The move comes amid China's military and nuclear stockpile buildup, while fears linger that Russia might use such arms in its war with Ukraine and that North Korea may conduct its seventh nuclear test, the first since September 2017.
"Almost eight decades after the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons still represent a clear and present danger to global peace and security," U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, referring to the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities in the closing days of World War II in 1945.
Warning that the risk of nuclear warfare is at its most perilous in decades, Guterres urged the world body's key panel tasked with maintaining international peace and security to "look beyond today's divisions" and take action toward nuclear disarmament.
Kamikawa said the Japan-led initiative is a "new step" to realize Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's "Hiroshima Action Plan," first outlined in his speech to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's review conference at the United Nations in August 2022.
The FMCT, proposed by then U.S. President Bill Clinton at a U.N. General Assembly in 1993, is designed to prohibit the further production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, including highly-enriched uranium and plutonium. It has not been finalized due to long-standing differences among the countries involved.
Nuclear powers the United States, Britain and France, as well as non-nuclear states Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Germany, Nigeria, the Philippines and Brazil, will join the FMCT Friends talks, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
During the session on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, Kamikawa said a "rapid buildup of nuclear capabilities by certain countries could spark a nuclear arms race."
Kamikawa condemned Russia's nuclear threats in its war against Ukraine as "absolutely unacceptable." She also criticized Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs for endangering the peace and stability of the region and the international community.
Meanwhile, Kamikawa emphasized the importance of the peaceful use of outer space, while expressing concerns over the possible negative impacts of artificial intelligence and other state-of-the-art technologies on nuclear disarmament.
At the meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington, together with Tokyo, had introduced a resolution to the Security Council that would call on countries "not to develop nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction that are specifically designed to be placed in orbit around Earth."
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said last month that Russia was developing a capability that could not "cause physical destruction here on Earth" in an apparent reference to anti-satellite military technology.
Western media outlets, citing sources familiar with the U.S. intelligence, reported that the capability was related to efforts to place a nuclear weapon in space.
The use of nuclear weapons in outer space is forbidden under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which has been ratified by the five recognized nuclear weapons states.
It remains to be seen if the resolution will be adopted. Russia, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, voiced its opposition to the draft resolution, calling it a "propaganda stunt."
