The Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) began this Monday at the United Nations headquarters in New York, and will take place from March 3 to 7.
In his speech, Ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations, stressed the urgent need for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In this regard, he recalled the atrocities committed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, adding that the mere existence of nuclear weapons constitutes a permanent threat to life on the planet.
He said that the NPT is a beacon of hope in the grim panorama of the continuous modernization of nuclear weapons, the persistence of military doctrines based on nuclear deterrence, and the growing waste in the arms race of exorbitant resources that are indispensable for the development of peoples.
Mr. Soberón Guzmán proudly acknowledged the contribution of Latin America and the Caribbean to the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons, stressing that the region has the largest number of States Parties to the NPT. In this regard, he called for the urgent universalization of this international instrument.
He concluded by calling for a redoubling of efforts to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons for the sake of present and future generations.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations