More than 120 nations were yesterday expected to adopt the first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons, despite a boycott by all nuclear-armed nations, including the US, which has pointed to North Korea’s escalating nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Costa Rican Ambassador to the UN Elayne Whyte Gomez, who is president of the UN conference that has been negotiating the legally binding treaty, on Thursday told reporters that “we are on the verge of adopting the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.”
“This will be a historic moment and it will be the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years,” Whyte Gomez said.
“The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,” since the use of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 at the end of World War II, she said.
Whyte Gomez said she hoped the treaty would be adopted by consensus, but she said the rules of procedure for the conference also allowed for a vote.
In December last year, UN member states overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for negotiations on a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons, despite strong opposition from nuclear-armed nations and their allies, who refused to participate in the talks.
Whyte Gomez said 129 countries signed up to take part in drafting the treaty, which represents two-thirds of the UN’s 193 member states.
However, all nuclear states and NATO members have boycotted the negotiations, except for the Netherlands, which has US nuclear weapons in its territory and was urged by its parliament to send a delegation to the negotiations.
Following Wednesday’s final review of the text after nearly three weeks of intense negotiations, Whyte Gomez said she was “convinced that we have achieved a general agreement on a robust and comprehensive prohibition on nuclear weapons.”
“I am really confident that the final draft has captured the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of those participating in the conference, including civil society,” she said.
The final draft treaty requires all countries that ratify “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices and the threat to use such weapons.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS