Cuba's DPR to the UN, Yuri Gala. File photo.

United Nations, August 3 (RHC)-- Cuba ratified at the UN its defense in favor of a world free of nuclear weapons and warned that political manipulation, selectivity, and double standards in non-proliferation must cease.

The only sustainable solution to the existential problem represented by nuclear weapons is their total elimination, said Yuri Gala, deputy permanent representative of Cuba, during his intervention at the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The diplomat expressed regret over the lack of concrete progress on nuclear disarmament, particularly on fulfilling the obligations and commitments the nuclear powers undertook 52 years after the treaty's entry into force.

"It is unacceptable that the nuclear states use resources that should be devoted to confronting the multidimensional effects of Covid-19 and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals while developing new types of nuclear weapons," Gala stressed on the second day of the general debate.

He noted that it is neither fair nor acceptable that one group of States Parties strictly comply with all NPT obligations while others do not.

Nor is it fair that certain countries are condemned and demonized for alleged violations of the non-proliferation regime by the same States that continue to improve their nuclear arsenals, supplying and transferring technologies, the Cuban ambassador said.

Comprehensive progress must be made in implementing the NPT, and, in this sense, the Conference must conclude with an unmistakable call to the possessor states and those protected by the so-called "nuclear umbrella" to comply with their obligations, he added.

Gala called for answers to the long-standing demand of non-possessor states for irreversible security assurances against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.

The possessor states must be required to provide such assurances through a legally binding, universal, and unconditional instrument, he said at the five-yearly meeting, which concludes on August 26.

At the opening of the Conference on Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that humanity "is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation."

The NPT entered into force in 1970 and has been acceded to by 191 states, including the five nuclear-weapon states, making it the multilateral disarmament agreement with a binding commitment and the most significant number of consents.