Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez assured today that his country will continue to support efforts to universalize the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by giving top priority to disarmament progress, Prensa Latina reports today.
Speaking at the high-level meeting organized by the United Nations to commemorate and promote the International Day to Eliminate this Threat, the minister described the end of its use as a matter of survival.
“The threat that nuclear weapons pose to the existence of the human species can only disappear through the complete elimination of these arsenals, as advocated by the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz,” he stressed.
The Cuban minister recalled that last year, the owners of this weapon continued to modernize their arsenals and deploy new nuclear weapons systems, while global military spending reached the scandalous sum of $2.24 billion.
While exorbitant resources were wasted, official development aid commitments were not kept and millions of people around the world continued to die from hunger, curable diseases and poverty, he rejected it.
In this sense, he viewed the adoption and entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as progress.
He said this is the first international legal norm that prohibits their existence and use in all circumstances and provides for their total elimination, while expressly qualifying their use as an act violating international law and international humanitarian law.
“The path to nuclear disarmament in a transparent, verifiable and irreversible manner must continue to be a very high priority,” emphasized the Chancellor.
Achieving this is a matter of survival; Now is the time to take action for the benefit of future generations, he added.