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364881
Fri, 04/24/2015 - 16:26
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China ratifies protocol to Treaty on Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia

BEIJING, April 24. /TASS/. China’s top legislature ratified on Friday the protocol to the Treaty on Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Friday. "All explanations and applications of the clauses in the protocol shall support the goal of the building of the Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone in Central Asia. No security protocol or treaty will undermine the status of the Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone in Central Asia," the National People's Congress Standing Committee said in a statement after the ratification. The additional Protocol on Security Guarantees to the Treaty on Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia was signed by representatives of the world’s five nuclear powers comprising China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States at the UN headquarters in New York on May 6, 2014. Russia’s permanent representative at the UN Vitaly Churkin said at the time "a big step was thus made towards completing the zone’s formalization in accordance with international law." The Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia was signed in Semipalatinsk on September 8, 2006 by representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and came into force on March 21, 2009. All the participants to the Treaty undertake not to develop, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over any nuclear weapon, not to allow its stationing or transportation by any means, its testing or use, and also undertake not to allow in their territory any such actions by other states. The Treaty does not prohibit developing civilian nuclear energy in the region. The Treaty includes the Protocol open for signature by states possessing nuclear weapons. Under the Protocol, these countries, in particular, undertake not to use or threaten to use a nuclear weapon against any party to the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia. Russia signed the Protocol on May 6, 2014 simultaneously with all the states possessing nuclear weapons but made some reservations in it. In particular, Russia made a traditional reservation that it will not consider itself bound by the obligations stipulated in the Protocol in the event of an attack against it, its Armed Forces or other troops, "against its allies or against a state, with which it is bound by security obligations, carried out or supported by a state not possessing nuclear weapons jointly with a state possessing nuclear weapons, or upon the existence of allied obligations to this state." Russia’s other reservation says the Russian Federation reserves the right not to consider itself bound by the Protocol, if any party to the Treaty "allows foreign military vessels and aircraft with nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices aboard to call at its ports and landing at its aerodromes, or any other form of transit of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices through its territory." Similar nuclear-weapon free zones exist in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Read more

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