The vision of a world free of nuclear weapons is getting a little closer on Tuesday: almost a year and a half after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) came into force, the member states of this international agreement are meeting in Vienna for their first conference. At the start at 9 a.m., Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, will speak in the Austria Center. The nuclear powers boycott the UNO conference.
The three-day meeting will be chaired by Austria’s top diplomat, Alexander Kmentt. It formally serves to fill the contract with life, for example by adopting rules of procedure. The nuclear weapons ban treaty has been part of international law since January 2021. It has been signed by 86 countries and ratified by 62. Austria is one of the driving forces behind the treaty.
The agreement provides for a complete ban on nuclear weapons along the lines of biological or chemical warfare agents. However, the nuclear threats made by Russian aggressor Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine war seem to support the argument of nuclear weapons advocates in the West that nuclear deterrence is essential. According to diplomats, the western nuclear powers have also exerted massive pressure on their allies to stay away from the agreement. It is therefore considered a success that two NATO countries, Germany and Norway, are present as observers in Vienna.
In the run-up to the UN conference, the State Department held an expert conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons on Monday. At the weekend, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) held its own expert conference in Vienna.
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