U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon renewed an appeal Monday for global nuclear disarmament, with a special plea to North Korea to divert its scant resources from nuclear weapons to improving living standards.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon renewed an appeal Monday for global nuclear
disarmament, with a special plea to
North
Korea
to divert its scant resources
from nuclear weapons to improving living standards.
"Some say nuclear disarmament is utopian...I say the illusion is that
nuclear weapons provide security," Mr. Ban said in
Seoul
,
where he was accepting a peace prize from his home country.
Stressing the inability of nuclear weapons to defend against the threats of
crime, terror and disease, the secretary general argued that their inherently
"destabilizing" presence was unwarranted in the post-Cold War era.
"How, then, do we explain that...amidst a global financial crisis, the
nuclear-weapon states seem intent on modernizing their arsenals for decades to
come?
"And more broadly, how can we justify global military spending that last
year was twice as much in a day as the U.N. spent on all its activities the
whole year?" he said.
Describing the situation on the Korean peninsula as "one of the most
challenging in the world," Mr. Ban challenged
Pyongyang
's
pursuit of nuclear weaponry at a time when its people suffered alarming rates
of malnutrition.
"I look forward to the day when (
North
Korea
) moves to heed the call for
denuclearization of the
Korean
Peninsula
, and
for improving the lives of its people through respect for universal values and
human rights," he said.
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