UN chief calls for new global consensus on cooperation to ensure collective security

APD NEWS

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday stressed the need to re-forge a global consensus around the cooperation required to ensure collective security.

"Our collective security demands that we seize every moment to forge a common understanding of the threats and challenges before us – and most importantly, to shape united responses to them," he told a Security Council briefing on promoting common security through dialogue and cooperation.

Guterres noted that many of the systems established decades ago are now facing challenges that were unimaginable to our predecessors such as cyber warfare, terrorism, and lethal autonomous weapons. And the nuclear risk has climbed to its highest point in decades.

"We need to re-forge a global consensus around the cooperation required to ensure collective security, including the work of the United Nations."

Guterres highlighted his proposal for a New Agenda for Peace contained in his report on Our Common Agenda.

The New Agenda for Peace explores the diplomatic toolbox of the UN Charter to end conflicts, especially Chapter VI's provisions around negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration and judicial settlement, as well as a focus on prevention and peace building, he said.

He said the ongoing 10th Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons must demonstrate that progress is possible.

Countries with nuclear weapons must commit to the "no first use" of those weapons. They must also assure states that do not have nuclear weapons that they will not use – or threaten to use – nuclear weapons against them, and be transparent throughout. Nuclear saber-rattling must stop, he stressed.

He said that there is a need for all states to recommit to a world free of nuclear weapons and to spare no effort to come to the negotiating table to ease tensions and end the nuclear arms race, once and for all.

(Xinhua)