UNITED NATIONS, April 8: Pakistan has called for a new consensus on disarmament and non-proliferation to respond to new realities and challenges and has declared its opposition to arms race at regional and global levels.

“Unless there was broad agreement on goals and parameters that needed to be pursued, it would be difficult to achieve breakthroughs” for an agreement, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram told a meeting of the UN Disarmament Commission.

He said: “Such a new consensus should, among other things, revive the commitment by all states to the goal of complete nuclear disarmament, with no ambiguity on that objective.”

Mr Akram said any consensus must also reflect the importance of reducing and eliminating discrimination in the current non-proliferation regime and arrangement.

He said that the new consensus must stress the importance of seeking ways and means of normalising the relationship of the three nuclear-weapon states outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty — Pakistan, India and Israel — with the non-proliferation regime.

Mr Akram stressed the new consensus would need to address new issues, such as the danger of access to weapons of mass destruction by non-state actors, the need to agree on universal and non-discriminatory rules to ensure the right of every state to peaceful uses of nuclear energy and the importance of negative security assurance to non-nuclear-weapon states. It must also address the issue of missiles in its entirety, including their deployment, as well as the militarisation of outer space.

He added that the weapons possession by member states should flow from the security needs of those states, and not from any desire to dominate other United Nations member states. The Disarmament Commission could play an important role in clarifying issues and identifying possible areas for negotiation and, as such, helping revive genuine consensus for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Supporting the right of every state to security, as enunciated by the United Nations Charter, which enshrined equal security for all states, Mr Akram said Pakistan was convinced that credible security could only flow from a collective approach and a rule-based international order.

Exclusive approaches must, therefore, yield to agreed multi-lateral approaches to disarmament, he said.

Given the special circumstances in South Asia, Pakistan adhered to the policy of credible minimum deterrence, he added. The global consensus on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation had eroded during the last decade.