United Nations – Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at the United Nations on Monday about what he called “a critical moment” in efforts to keep the world safe from nuclear threats.
Opening the 10th annual Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at the UN, Blinken noted North Korea’s “illegal nuclear program” and “ongoing provocations,” the “path of Iran’s nuclear escalation’ and Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. which has included taking control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
“We are deeply concerned about Russia’s takeover of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, particularly Zaporizhzhia, one of the largest nuclear facilities in Europe,” Blinken said.
“There are credible reports, even in the media today, that Russia is using this plant as the equivalent of a human shield, but a nuclear shield in the sense that it is firing at Ukrainians from around the plant and, of course, the Ukrainians cannot and will not fire so that there is no terrible accident with a nuclear power plant,” Blinken added, saying it was “the height of irresponsibility.”
File photo of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine on July 9, 2019. Dmytro Smolyenko/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, and the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, are also at the United Nations headquarters in New York for the opening days of the nuclear review conference, which had been postponed since 2020, at a time when nuclear weapons threats and nuclear security are a growing concern among world leaders.
“Today, humanity is just a misunderstanding, a miscalculation of nuclear annihilation,” said the UN Secretary-General.
Grossi, the head of the international watchdog, called the war in Ukraine “so serious that the specter of a possible nuclear confrontation, or accident, has reared its terrifying head again.”
Grossi warned more specifically about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, saying “the situation is becoming more dangerous every day.”
“It is urgent,” he said last week, as the agency has not been able to visit the site since before the conflict began five months ago. On Monday, Grossi was clear about the dangers: “While this war is wreaking havoc, inaction is inconceivable.”
“If an accident occurs at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, we will not be to blame for a natural disaster; we will only have ourselves to answer for,” Grossi said, adding: “We need everyone’s support.”
Blinken told CBS News at a press conference that “Ukraine had the confidence to give up the (nuclear) weapons it inherited when the Soviet Union dissolved because of the commitments Russia made to respect and protect its sovereignty , its independence, its structural integrity.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to the media after attending the 10th annual review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at UN headquarters on August 1, 2022 in the city from New York. Getty Images
“The fact that Russia has now done the exact opposite, that it has attacked Ukraine, unprovoked, in an effort to erase that sovereignty and independence sends a terrible message to countries around the world who are making decisions about whether or not to seek nuclear weapons,” Blinken said.
He was referring to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, an agreement in which the United States, Russia and Britain pledged “to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and “to refrain from the threat”. or the use of force” against him — assurances that convinced Ukraine to give up “what was the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, consisting of some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads,” according to a Brookings analysis.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, established in 1968 to prevent the spread of weapons technology, was intended to reduce the number of nuclear states to a minimum, but keeping the nuclear genie in the bottle has been an uphill battle. The nuclear weapon states at the time were Britain, China, France and Russia (the Soviet Union at the time), and the number of nuclear weapons they possessed has declined since the peak of the Cold War. But in the years since, India, Pakistan and North Korea have developed nuclear weapons, and Israel is believed to have a nuclear arsenal, although it has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of a program.
Iran has been moving forward with its nuclear program since the US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, but has yet to produce any weapons. Iran’s atomic energy chief said this week that Iran has the ability to build a nuclear weapon but has no plans to do so.
The UN conference will continue throughout August and the nuclear activities of North Korea and Iran are sure to be discussed daily.
North Korea “continues to expand its illegal nuclear program and continues its ongoing provocations against the region,” Blinken said. “As we meet today, Pyongyang is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.”
The Secretary-General’s assessment of nuclear threats was chilling: “Proliferation risks are growing and the barriers to prevent escalation are weakening.”
Guterres heads to Hiroshima at the end of the week, marking the anniversary of the US nuclear bombing in World War II, an event not lost on the event’s speakers. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Russia’s indirect warning that it could use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war has added “to global concern that another catastrophe from the use of nuclear weapons is a real possibility”.
Blinken also responded to threats China has made about the possibility of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, a self-governing island that China is determined to reunite with the mainland.
Blinken said: “The speaker will make his own decisions about whether or not to visit Taiwan. Congress is an independent, co-equal branch of government – the decision is entirely up to the speaker.”
“If the speaker decides to visit and China tries to create some kind of crisis, or escalate tensions, that would be entirely on Beijing,” Blinken said. “We are looking for them, in the event that she decides to visit them, to act responsibly and not engage in any escalation in the future.”
On Monday, China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, said China will defend its security and sovereignty if Pelosi visits Taiwan. He described the possible visit as “provocative and serious”.
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Pamela Falk is a CBS News correspondent covering the United Nations and an international attorney.