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.