Farnaz Fassihi and Michael Levenson
The secretary general of the United Nations warned on Monday that humanity was “just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” citing the war in Ukraine among the conflicts driving the risk to a level not seen since the height of the Cold War.
“All this at a time when the risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening,” the official, António Guterres, said. “And when crises — with nuclear undertones — are festering from the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Mr. Guterres was speaking at the opening session of a conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York about upholding and securing the 50-year-old global Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, aiming for eventual disarmament.
The conference took place after a two-year delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic and was attended by high-level representatives from member states, including the prime minister of Japan, the U.S. Secretary of State and dozens of foreign ministers and delegations.
The threat of a nuclear confrontation or a nuclear accident emerging from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a recurring theme in many of the day’s speeches.
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