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NAM should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities, says Iran’s Zarif

Politics Materials 5 April 2018 14:49 (UTC +04:00)
The Non-Aligned Movement should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities through existing mechanisms, including the UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament.
NAM should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities, says Iran’s Zarif

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 5

By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:

The Non-Aligned Movement should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities through existing mechanisms, including the UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

He made the remarks addressing the Mid-Term Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), titled “Promoting international peace and security for sustainable development” in Baku April 5.

“In the field of disarmament, the growing contempt of the US government for international obligations and its plans to spend $1.2 trillion to modernize and build new nuclear weapons will lead to a new nuclear arms race. Our Movement should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities through existing mechanisms, including the UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament,” noted the minister.

Further, Zarif called on the NAM to promote multilateralism.

“NAM must continue to be at the forefront of promoting multilateral decision-making, resisting the rising unilateralism. This is of great importance if NAM wishes to pursue its aim of creating a fair and equitable world order and global democratic governance,” he said.

Zarif pointed out that a paradigm shift to regional cooperation and integration is imperative.

“We need to strengthen our neighborhoods through an inclusive paradigm of respecting the interests of each other and rejecting the outdated paradigm of hegemony and exclusion that only creates tension and leads to destructive arms race. For our immediate neighborhood, we have proposed a regional dialogue forum to redress the dialogue deficit through engagement and confidence-building measures,” he added.

“The previous wave of unilateralism in early 2000s destabilized our region in catastrophic proportions, gave rise to violent extremism and terrorism and exacerbated tensions and crises in West Asia and beyond. Even today and despite the territorial defeat of Daesh (IS terrorist organization) by the valiant resistance of the Iraqi and Syrian people, our region is still suffering from the remnants of terrorist groups as well as their suspicious relocations.”

Unpredictability -- due to mutually reinforcing unilateral impulsive measures and continued extremism and terrorism – has exacerbated chronic challenges and uncertainties in West Asia and North Africa, said Zarif.

NAM participating states, representatives of observer states and international organizations, countries and institutions invited as special guests will take part in the Mid-Term Ministerial Conference, which will be held on April 5-6.

NAM includes 120 states. Seventeen states and 10 international organizations have an observer status in NAM.

NAM Mid-Term Ministerial Conference, to be held in Baku, is expected to be attended by 800 participants.

In 2011, the Republic of Azerbaijan joined the movement at the 16th Ministerial Conference held in Bali.

In 2019, the Republic of Azerbaijan will host the 18th Summit of the NAM and will be chairing NAM in 2019-2022.

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