New York, 26 August, 2020. During her remarks at the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly to commemorate and promote the International Day against Nuclear Tests, Ambassador Ana Silvia Rodríguez Abascal, Deputy Permanent Representative and Charge d'Affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations, warned that in the midst of a global pandemic such as the COVID-19, it is unsettling that some countries persist in their ambitions to modernize their atomic weaponry and develop state-of-the-art nuclear weapons. It is unacceptable, she added, that millions of dollars are spent to this end, to the detriment of the international cooperation needed to address the current global health and economic crisis.
The island's diplomat pointed out that it is regrettable that there exists approximately 13,400 of these lethal weapons, out of which 3,720 are deployed and 1,800 are on high operational alert; when today's world is characterized by serious and growing threats to international peace and security and by a progressive erosion of multilateralism, the architecture of disarmament and non-proliferation, and multilateral disarmament forums.
She drew attention to the fact that achieving the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons becomes more difficult when the United States, the only State that has used the nuclear weapon twice, the world leader in nuclear testing and the country that invests the most in such weapons, violates the spirit and letter of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while withdrawing from and failing to comply with other international agreements on disarmament and arms limitation, such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran.
Cuba, Rodríguez Abascal noted, is proud to be part of the first densely populated area in the world, declared as a Nuclear-Weapons-Free-Zone, which has reaffirmed the validity of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, adopted at the II Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
The island was the fifth state to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Furthermore, it supports the total and effective ban on all nuclear tests, those conducted by explosion, sub-critical tests and those carried out by other sophisticated methods; as well as the closure and dismantling of all facilities used for such purposes and their associated infrastructure.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations.