Multilateral treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons may be adopted on Friday
MOSCOW. July 7 (Interfax) - The first multilateral treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons may be adopted on Friday without Russia and the United States.
Following intergovernmental negotiations between 129 UN member states, they managed to agree upon a draft of the treaty, and its text will be presented to the participants in a conference to negotiate a legally-binding agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons on Friday, the UN News Center said with reference to Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez of Costa Rica, the conference president.
Gomez said she hoped the text would be passed by consensus at a plenary session on Friday.
"This will be a historic moment and it is the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years," Gomez was quoted as saying.
The UN General Assembly decided to draw up the text of the treaty last December. The relevant resolution was supported by 123 countries, while nuclear powers, including Russia, and about 30 other countries voted against it. China was the only one of the five permanent UN Security Council members that abstained.
The resolution stipulated that a conference be held to draw up "a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination."
Intergovernmental negotiations on drawing up a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, which were started in March 2017, have proceeded without a number of countries, including the United States and Russia.
