Bangladesh’s parliament has adopted a resolution giving full support to the U.N. secretary general’s proposal for a total nuclear disarmament plan, media reports said on Tuesday.
The resolution, moved by Speaker Abdul Hamid and approved unanimously by oral vote, called on the United Nations Conference on Disarmament to immediately begin negotiations on the proposed Nuclear Weapons Convention.
“Any use of nuclear weapons would constitute international crimes, including crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, war crimes and genocide, with catastrophic global elects,” the New Age newspaper quoted the declaration as saying.
The resolution further urged all world governments and national parliaments to support the UN initiative. The resolution reflected Bangladesh’s policy for a world free of nuclear weapons, the report said. It reiterated the nation’s full support for nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy, it added.
The resolution also called upon nations with nuclear weapons capacities to divert the 100 billion US dollars spent annually on nuclear weapons programmes to climate change adaptation programmes and to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals instead.
Bangladesh, which was elected chair of the rotating presidency of the UN Conference on Disarmament earlier this year, approved the resolution ahead of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference scheduled May 3 to 28 in New York.
The NPT, which currently counts 189 signatories, was established in 1970 with the aim of limiting the spread of nuclear arms.
