New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday used her first major foreign policy address to announce she is establishing a ministerial position for disarmament amid tensions over North Korea’s weapons programs.
Ardern, whose Labour-led government took the helm in October last year, said that her deputy prime minister and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters would take up the new Cabinet role.
“Risks to global peace and security are growing. The greatest challenge we have today comes from North Korea, situated right here in our region,” she told a foreign affairs conference in Wellington.
The US on Friday last week announced that it was imposing its largest package of sanctions yet aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for a new global effort to get rid of nuclear weapons, drawing a cautious response from envoys of atomic-armed powers at odds for decades over nuclear disarmament.
“The portfolio ... is an acknowledgment of the emphasis this government places on our long-held anti-nuclear stance and the role we must play now and in the future,” Ardern said.
New Zealand has long adopted a firm line in opposing development of nuclear capabilities, which at times puts the small Pacific nation at odds with some allies.
In the mid-1980s, the Labour government announced its decision to ban ships that were either nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed, prompting the US to suspend security treaty obligations to New Zealand.
Peters is among a handful of Western politicians to have visited North Korea in 2005 during his tenure as foreign minister.
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