NEW YORK, April 28 — Signatories of the landmark nuclear non-proliferation treaty began a meeting Monday at the United Nations as fears of a renewed arms race escalate, with atomic powers again at loggerheads over safeguards.

In 2022, during the last review of the treaty considered the cornerstone of non-proliferation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned humanity was “one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”

On Monday he warned “the drivers” of nuclear weapons proliferation were accelerating.

“For too long, the treaty has been eroding. Commitments remain unfulfilled. Trust and credibility are wearing thin. The drivers of proliferation are accelerating. We need to breathe life into the treaty once more,” Guterres said in opening remarks.

With global geopolitical friction only heightened since the last meeting, it was unclear what the gathering at UN headquarters could achieve.

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told signatories that “never has the risk of nuclear proliferation been so high, and the threat posed by Iran’s and North Korea’s programs is intolerable for each and every state party to this treaty.”

Tempering expectations, Do Hung Viet, Vietnam’s UN ambassador and president of the conference, said “we should not expect this conference to resolve the underlying strategic tensions of our time.”

“But a balanced outcome that reaffirms core commitments and set out practical steps forward would strengthen the integrity of the NPT,” he said.

“The success or failure of this conference will have implications way beyond these halls,” Viet added. “The prospects of a new nuclear arms race are looming over us.”

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), signed by almost all countries on the planet – with notable exceptions including Israel, India and Pakistan – aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote complete disarmament, and encourage cooperation on civilian nuclear projects.

The nine nuclear-armed states – Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – possessed 12,241 nuclear warheads in January 2025, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported.

The US and Russia hold nearly 90 per cent of nuclear weapons globally and have carried out major programs to modernise them in recent years, according to SIPRI.

China has also rapidly increased its nuclear stockpile, SIPRI said, with the G7 raising the alarm Friday over Moscow and Beijing boosting their nuclear capabilities.

US President Donald Trump has indicated his intention to conduct new nuclear tests, accusing others of doing so clandestinely.

In March, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a dramatic shift in nuclear deterrence, notably an increase in the atomic arsenal, currently numbering 290 warheads.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi, just returned from 40th anniversary events at Chernobyl to mark the nuclear disaster there, said “there is a growing perception that perhaps having nuclear weapons could be good for national security.”

“Nothing is further from the truth,” he said.

‘Affront’ to NPT

“It is obvious that trust is eroding, both inside and outside the NPT,” Seth Shelden of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told AFP.

He questioned the likely outcome of the four-week summit.

Decisions on the NPT require agreement by consensus, with the previous two conferences failing to adopt final political declarations.

In 2015, the deadlock was largely due to opposition by Israel’s arch-ally Washington to creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

A 2022 impasse was due mainly to Russian opposition to references to Ukraine’s nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, occupied by Moscow.

This year’s summit could hit any number of stumbling blocks.

The ongoing war in Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program and the war there, proliferation fears and Pyongyang’s developing arsenal could all be deal-breakers.

The United States along with its allies Britain, the UAE and Australia spoke out at Iran’s appointment as a conference vice president.

Washington’s meeting envoy said conferring a leadership role on Tehran was an “affront” to countries that take the NPT “seriously.”

Artificial intelligence could be a prominent issue as some countries call for all sides to keep human control over nuclear weapons. — AFP

 

 

The century dawned with an impressive constellation of traditionally forged progressive leaders in Europe: Blair, Schroeder, D’Alema, Jospin, Guterres and Kok among others. The president of the European Commission was Romano Prodi and the managing director of the IMF was Michel Camdessus, a Frenchman who had ties to his country’s socialists and who, alongside Parisian consensus figures like Delors and Lamy, had a profound influence on the post-1989 world. In the United States, Bill Clinton was in power. The second quarter of the 21^st century, however, dawns with a bleak outlook for European progressives, who hold executive power in only two major countries: the United Kingdom and Spain. What happened?

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© ALBERTO ESTÉVEZ (EFE)

Hongkongers are set to endure a week-long heatwave from Friday, with highs of up to 30 degrees Celsius expected into next week, according to the Observatory (HKO).

It comes after the weather service reported record-breaking heat during March.

See also: How Hong Kong’s elderly face deadly heat inside cramped cage homes

“Under the influence of a southerly airstream, it will be hot over the coast of Guangdong in the next few days,” the Observatory said on Friday. “An anticyclone aloft will cover the northern part of the South China Sea and the coast of southern China early next week.”

By lunchtime on Friday, temperatures had already topped 30 degrees Celsius in some parts of the city.

Showers are expected across southern China and Hong Kong late next week and into next weekend.

Record heat in March

The Observatory noted last week that the city had experienced an unseasonably warm March.

Last month, Hong Kong saw a monthly mean temperature of 21.5 degrees Celsius – the second highest on record. The monthly mean maximum temperature of 24.5 degrees Celsius was the third-highest on record.

In March, the HKO said that the city had experienced its warmest winter on record, with an average temperature reaching 19.3 degrees Celsius.

Also last month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned that the planet’s climate is more out of balance than at any time in history, with Earth gaining much more heat energy than it can release.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the intensity and frequency of heatwaves have continued to increase since the 1950s due to human-caused climate change. The prevalence of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide – which trap heat in the atmosphere – raises the planet’s surface temperature, with hotter, longer heatwaves putting lives at risk.

See also: How extreme heat became the deadliest silent killer among world weather disasters

Hong Kong has already warmed by 1.7 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, research NGO Berkeley Earth says. Heat and humidity may reach lethal levels for protracted periods by the end of the century, according to a 2023 study, making it impossible to stay outdoors in some parts of the world.

“Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said on World Meteorological Day last month. “Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”