New York, 2 April 2018.During her statement at the Opening Session of the United Nations Disarmament Commission, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Cuba to the organization, Ambassador Ana Silvia Rodríguez Abascal, while recalling the concrete results achieved during 2017 in the area of disarmament, specifically nuclear disarmament, also referred to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which codified the illegitimacy and illegality of nuclear weapons in international law, prohibiting the existence, use and threat of use of such weapons and all types of nuclear tests.
She called for further efforts to achieve the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, calling on Member States to support and participate, at the highest level, in the United Nations High-level International Conference to Review Progress on Nuclear Disarmament, to be held in New York from 14 to 16 May 2018. She also encouraged the holding, without further delay, of the International Conference on the Establishment in the Middle East of a Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Rodriguez Abascal called on the Nuclear States and others protected by the so-called "nuclear umbrella" to show political will and commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. In this context, she denounced the attempts of this group of countries to legitimize the possession of nuclear weapons through the nuclear deterrence policy and a questionable concept of security, in clear breach of their legal obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in particular Article VI thereof and the agreements reached at its 1995, 2000 and 2010 Review Conferences.
The island's diplomat strongly advocated that nuclear disarmament should no longer be a postponed and relegated objective, with the Disarmament Commission being one of the bodies that provides the framework to give decisive impetus to this objective.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations.