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Belarusian FM urges reliable security guarantees for all to avoid nuclear escalation

 MINSK, 26 September (BelTA) - To prevent further nuclear escalation, we need to develop reliable security guarantees for all countries without exception, Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxim Ryzhenkov said at the high-level plenary meeting on the occasion of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons at the UN headquarters in New York on 26 September, BelTA has learned.

Maxim Ryzhenkov asked the question of why more and more countries today are talking about the growing role of the nuclear factor in the world. “Because, in the absence of reliable security guarantees and tangible confidence-building measures for states, nuclear weapons are becoming the ultimate deterrent capable of restraining a potential aggressor even without being used. And we see how this works,” he noted.

The minister emphasized that nuclear weapons possess monstrous destructive power, and there will be no winners in a nuclear war. It is no coincidence, he noted, that American physicist Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb, during the first atomic bomb test in 1945, said: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Until the last years of his life, he strove to ensure international control over nuclear arms by the international community, including the UN.

“And he was right! It's quite simple to prevent further nuclear escalation. What is needed is purposeful work to develop reliable security guarantees for all countries without exception. If there are guarantees, there will be trust, and the need for nuclear weapons will disappear on its own. We are ready to follow this path,” Maxim Ryzhenkov stated.

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