Hungarian government calls for nuclear disarmament to continue

Nuclear disarmament must continue and dialogue between superpowers must be resumed, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said on Monday, marking the start of a review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in New York.

Péter Szijjártó noted on Facebook that the NPT came into force in 1970, with a view to curbing the further spread of nuclear weapons.

The signatories of the treaty include the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, he said. Under the treaty, the parties to the agreement pledged to continue talks on nuclear disarmament and refrain from making nuclear weapons available to other countries, he noted.

At the same time, dialogue among nuclear powers has come to a virtual standstill due to the war in Ukraine, “which could become a big problem in the current situation,” he said.

“For a long time we believed and hoped that the deployment of weapons of mass destruction would never again surface in international politics, but the war in Ukraine has put that hope in a very different light,” Szijjártó said.

For the talks on nuclear disarmament to continue, dialogue among superpowers must be resumed, at least on strategic security issues, he said.

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“We who live in the immediate vicinity of war expect large and strong countries — often situated quite far away — not to make geopolitical decisions to our detriment. We want peace as soon as possible, and an immediate ceasefire and peace talks.”

Until peace returns, the situation will escalate daily, and the danger of ever more destructive weapons being deployed will grow, “the consequences of which are unfathomable,” he said.

He called for the reinforcement of the final declaration of the 3rd NPT review conference in Geneva which states that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”.

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