UN Secy.General pleads for nuclear weapons-free world
(April 07,2010) United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday, pleaded
for a nuclear weapons free world. He made the appeal in Kazakhstan, on the last leg
of a five-nation Central Asian tour. Ban travelled by helicopter to the remote
former Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk, where he welcomed US President
Barack Obama’s new policy on restricting the U.S.use of nuclear weapons as an important
initiative towards a nuclear-free world. “I cannot think of a more fitting place
to hear this news,” Ban said from the site that had witnessed so many tests of devastating
power. “More than 450 nuclear bombs were tested here with a terrible effect on people
and nature. They have totally destroyed our environment; poisoned earth, rivers and
lakes, caused birth defects and cancer in children,”” said Ban. He praised Kazakh
President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s extraordinary leadership in closing the Semipalatinsk
test site and banishing all nuclear weapons in 1991 as “a visionary step. “Today,
this site stands as a symbol of disarmament and hope for the future” he said, citing
this Thursday’s summit in Prague in the Czech Republic, where Obama and Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev are to sign the treaty slashing their nuclear arsenals by a third,
and the new US nuclear policy announced by Obama. Ban said he would use next
week’s nuclear security summit in Washington to urge the leaders of Russia, the US
and other nuclear States to abandon all nuclear weapons. “To realize a world free
of nuclear weapons is a top priority of the United Nations and the most ardent aspiration
of human beings,” he declared.