3 May 2010 – The world is looking to the more than 100 nations gathered today at United Nations Headquarters for a major nuclear non-proliferation conference to build a safer world, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to say at the start of the event.

Since taking office in 2007, disarmament has been one of the top priorities of the Secretary-General, who last month visited Semipalatinsk, or the “ground zero” former nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, which was shut down in 1991 as a step towards abolition of 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 said while visiting the site, which endured over 400 atomic blasts.

The five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) kicks off today in New York, and will hear addresses from Mr. Ban, UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, among others.

In his speech, the Secretary-General is slated to lay out what he sees as benchmarks for the success of the latest conference.

Over the weekend, he told a meeting at New York’s Riverside Church that the last review summit in 2005 failed “utterly” and the world cannot afford to be disappointed again given that there more than 25,000 nuclear weapons on the planet and nuclear terrorism continues to pose a threat.

“We know that nuclear disarmament is not a distant, unattainable dream,” Mr. Ban told the audience, which included Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima.

“It is an urgent necessity, here and now. We are determined to achieve it.”

The review conference of the NPT, which forms the foundation of the world’s nuclear non-proliferation regime, is scheduled to wrap up on 28 May.

Source: UN News Centre