UN chief cites ‘madness’ of nuclear arms race, as North Korea warns of war

UNITED NATIONS – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Tuesday against a new atomic arms race bringing the threat of “annihilation” to the world, as North Korea charged that its peninsula was on the brink of nuclear war.

With nuclear-armed nations expanding and modernising their arsenals, the UN chief called for a revitalised push to reduce and eventually eliminate those weapons.

“A worrisome new arms race is brewing. The number of nuclear weapons could rise for the first time in decades,” Mr Guterres told the General Assembly on the final day of its yearly session.

“Any use of a nuclear weapon – anytime, anywhere and in any context – would unleash a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions,” he said.

“Nuclear sabres are again being rattled. This is madness. We must reverse course.”

Russia and the United States have by far the largest arsenals, but China’s has been growing quickly. North Korea has also defied the world with its nuclear programme and repeated missile tests.

In its own speech, one of the last of the UN General Assembly’s week-long marathon session, North Korea accused arch-rival the US of driving the peninsula “closer to the brink of nuclear war”.

Mr Kim Song, North Korea’s Ambassador to the UN, denounced South Korea’s actions under President Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative who has worked to build tighter cooperation with the US as well as historic rival Japan.

“Due to its sycophantic and humiliating policy of depending on outside forces,” Mr Kim said, “the Korean peninsula is in a hair-trigger situation with imminent danger of nuclear war.”

He pointed to the recent

formation of the Nuclear Consultative Group,

through which the US hopes to integrate its nuclear capacity better with South Korea’s conventional forces, with the two allies increasing information sharing and contingency planning.

Mr Kim alleged that the group was “committed to the planning, operation and execution of pre-emptive nuclear strike against the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)”, the official name of North Korea.

Rising nuclear investment

An envoy from South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea (ROK), took the floor to object to the remarks by North Korea, which routinely lashes out at the UN.

“Do you really believe, as the DPRK pretends, the Republic of Korea together with the United States conspires to provoke a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula without reasons that will cause catastrophic casualties?” he asked.

Hours earlier, South Korea staged its first military parade in a decade, with some 4,000 troops marching through a rainy Seoul.

“If North Korea uses nuclear weapons, its regime will be brought to an end by an overwhelming response from the ROK-US alliance,” Mr Yoon warned at an airbase north of Seoul as he hailed the expansion of US ties.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) reported in June that the world’s nuclear powers, and China in particular, increased investment in their arsenals for a third consecutive year in 2022.

While the total number of nuclear warheads held by Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the US had fallen by about 1.6 per cent to 12,512 warheads over the previous year, Sipri said the declining trend was on the cusp of a reversal.

Excluding warheads slated for dismantling, the number of usable nuclear weapons had actually increased, according to Sipri.

The bulk of the increase was in China, which increased its stockpile from 350 to 410 warheads.

Mr Guterres warned that nuclear powers are making their arsenals faster, more accurate and more difficult to detect and called for the strengthening of treaties.

“The world has spent too long under the shadow of nuclear weapons. Let’s step back from the edge of disaster,” he said. AFP