The Non-Aligned Movement should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities through existing mechanisms, including the UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Thursday.

Zarif made the remarks in a speech to the NAM conference titled “Promoting International Peace and Security for Sustainable Development” in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“In the field of disarmament, the growing contempt of the U.S. government for international obligations and its plans to spend $1.2 trillion to modernize and build new nuclear weapons will lead to a new nuclear arms race. Our Movement should resolutely pursue its disarmament priorities through existing mechanisms, including the UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament,” noted the minister.

Zarif also called on the 120-member NAM to promote multilateralism.

“NAM must continue to be at the forefront of promoting multilateral decision-making, resisting the rising unilateralism. This is of great importance if NAM wishes to pursue its aim of creating a fair and equitable world order and global democratic governance,” he said.

Zarif pointed out that a paradigm shift toward regional cooperation and integration is imperative.

“We need to strengthen our neighborhoods through an inclusive paradigm of respecting the interests of each other and rejecting the outdated paradigm of hegemony and exclusion that only creates tension and leads to destructive arms race. For our immediate neighborhood, we have proposed a regional dialogue forum to redress the dialogue deficit through engagement and confidence-building measures,” Iran’s chief diplomat noted.

“The previous wave of unilateralism in early 2000s destabilized our region in catastrophic proportions, gave rise to violent extremism and terrorism and exacerbated tensions and crises in West Asia and beyond. Even today and despite the territorial defeat of Daesh (the IS terrorist organization) by the valiant resistance of the Iraqi and Syrian people, our region is still suffering from the remnants of terrorist groups as well as their suspicious relocations.”

Unpredictability - due to mutually reinforcing unilateral impulsive measures and continued extremism and terrorism – has exacerbated chronic challenges and uncertainties in West Asia and North Africa, said Zarif.

120 states are member to NAM. Seventeen states and 10 international organizations also have an observer status in the bloc.

(Source: Trend)