Disarmament debate: At UN, Pakistan assails ‘nuclear doublespeak’

UNITED NATIONS:

Pakistan has assailed the double standards practiced by some states, which preach nuclear disarmament but fail to take necessary steps themselves.

Speaking in a session of the UN Disarmament Commission, a subsidiary of the General Assembly, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said that a handful of nuclear weapon states advocate abstinence for others but are unwilling to give up their large inventories of nuclear weapons or their modernisation.



“This doublespeak has only aggravated the sense of insecurity among other states,” she told the 35-member commission.

“Instead of fulfilling their legal disarmament obligations, these States have exclusively pursued non-proliferation with messianic zeal,” she said. “This gap between legality and reality has eroded faith in these processes.”

With obviously US-India nuclear pacts in mind, Ambassador Lodhi said that some nuclear weapon states have also concluded discriminatory nuclear cooperation agreements and helped grant waivers in an unfortunate departure from long held non-proliferation principles.

She said progress towards nuclear disarmament is being delayed by some who wish to divert the Conference on Disarmament’s focus to partial non-proliferation measures such as a Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT).

Reiterating Pakistan’s position on the FMCT, she said a treaty that is discriminatory in nature and does not address the existing stockpiles of fissile material would impinge on the security of some states while being cost free for those with the largest amounts of fissile stocks.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th,  2016.