New York, May 22 (V7N)- United Nations member states have failed to reach a consensus on global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament goals after four weeks of intensive negotiations, according to officials leading the conference.
The announcement was made on Friday (May 22) by the president of the high-level conference and Vietnam’s senior diplomat Do Hung Viet, reports Al Jazeera.
Speaking to reporters in New York, he said that despite extensive efforts by participating countries, the conference was ultimately unable to achieve a unified agreement on its core agenda. As a result, no final document would be presented for approval.
According to AFP, portions of the draft document indicated that Iran — which officially does not possess nuclear weapons — would have been required to commit to never developing or producing such arms. Analysts believe disagreements over such conditions, along with broader geopolitical tensions, contributed significantly to the collapse of the talks.
The conference was reviewing the long-standing Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, under which 191 countries agreed that only five states possessing nuclear weapons before 1967 — the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom — would officially retain them.
However, four additional countries — India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — are also widely recognized as nuclear-armed states outside the treaty framework.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world possessed approximately 12,241 nuclear warheads as of January 2025, with nearly 90 percent controlled by the United States and Russia.
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