Asking the international community to move towards an atomic weapons free world in a time-bound fashion, India on Friday proposed "global, verifiable and non-discriminatory" nuclear disarmament.
In a major initiative on nuclear disarmament presented in a United Nations Committee, its delegate Balasaheb Vikhe Patil demanded the unequivocal commitment of the nuclear weapons states for complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
He said India was for global, verifiable and non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament.
The initiative is based on the Action Plan presented by former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in the United Nations General Assembly in 1988, which called for complete elimination of nuclear weapons within a specified timeframe.
Among other steps, India asked the nuclear weapons states to negotiate a convention on complete prohibition of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.
The initiative was presented in the form of working papers to the committee when Patil addressed it.
It also urges nuclear weapons states to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in security doctrines; reduce nuclear danger, including the risks of accidental nuclear war, by de-alerting of nuclear-weapons to prevent unintentional and accidental use of nuclear weapons.
It asks them to negotiate a universal and legally binding agreement on non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states; negotiate a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons and on their time-bound destruction, leading to the global, non-discriminatory and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
Presenting the working paper, Patil expressed the hope that it would spur dialogue among the member states on both the need and the means to nuclear disarmament.
The list of the steps is not exhaustive and does not exclude other measures for achieving the goal but it does reaffirm India's abiding commitment to the goal of "global, verifiable and non discriminatory nuclear disarmament," he said.
Commending the Indian initiative, he said the growing possibility of terrorists gaining access to the weapons of mass destruction has added a "new and dangerous dimension" to world security.
Without naming any country, Patil said the existence of networks of proliferators, aided and abetted by elements within state structures, has further aggravated this threat.
"It is, therefore, of paramount importance that states renew their commitment to fulfill their responsibility to fully abide by their non-proliferation and disarmament obligations, assumed voluntarily under various legal instruments; states take seriously requisite measures to deny non-State actors, including terrorists, access to weapons of mass destruction as well as related equipment, materials and technologies," he added.
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