Joe Biden has urged Russia and China to enter nuclear arms control talks in light of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The Russian embassy in Lebanon has said it had no information regarding the cargo.Īn official from the Turkey-based company that owns the cargo, Loyal Agro Co LTD, told Reuters last week it was carrying 8,000 tonnes of flour and 1,700 tonnes of barley and denied the cargo was stolen from Ukraine. Moscow has denied the claims it had stolen grain from Ukraine. Ukraine says it is loaded with flour and barley taken by Russia from its stores. Both the ship, the Laodicea, and its cargo, were ordered seized by a Ukrainian judge on Friday. The Laodicea, which docked in the port of Tripoli on Wednesday, was carrying 5,000 tonnes of barley and 5,000 tonnes of flour taken from Ukrainian stores, it was claimed. Lebanon's top prosecutor on Friday ordered the Syrian-flagged ship be seized pending an investigation into the source of its cargo. The Ukrainian embassy said its request was backed up with evidence supporting its accusations.
Ukrainian prosecutor Ghassan Ouediat today requested the intelligence division of Lebanon's internal security forces to carry out a probe, a security source told Reuters. Ukraine has asked for "judicial cooperation" from Lebanon where a ship has been seized amid claims it contains grains Russia had stolen from Ukraine. The meeting, which has been postponed several times since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will run until August 26. "Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only guarantee they will never be used," Guterres said the conference held at the UN's headquarters in New York was "a chance to strengthen" the treaty and "make it fit for the worrying world around us," citing Russia's war in Ukraine and tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East.
The UN the secretary-general carried on to call on nations to "put humanity on a new path towards a world free of nuclear weapons". "Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation." Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict." "We have been extraordinarily lucky so far," he said at the opening 10th review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), an international treaty that came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. He told a conference that we were just "one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation". The world faces a "nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War", UN head Antonio Guterres has warned. The NPT came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. In January, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France - had pledged to prevent the further dissemination of nuclear weapons.Īt the last review conference in 2015, the parties were unable to reach agreement on substantive issues. The conference, which has been postponed several times since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will run until August 26. Citing Russia’s war in Ukraine and tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East, he called the conference "a chance to strengthen" the treaty and "make it fit for the worrying world around us”. “Humanity is just one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation," he said. Opening the conference in New York, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned that the world now faces a "nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War". Ties between Russia and the West have been unravelling over the course of the conflict, now five months in. The US, Britain and France had rebuked Russia for "irresponsible and dangerous" talk about possibly deploying nuclear weapons. It marked a change of tone from the start of his invasion of Ukraine, when the strongman leader made thinly veiled threats hinting at a willingness to deploy Russia's tactical nuclear weapons, which according to Russian military doctrine can be used to force an adversary to retreat. Mr Putin insisted that Moscow had "consistently" remained faithful to the Non Proliferation Treaty's (NPT) "letter and spirit" in his address to the Tenth NPT Review Conference.
He made the statement as a review of a keystone nuclear treaty opened at the United Nations. The Russian president warned on Monday that there could be "no winners" if such a conflict was to break out. No one can win from a nuclear war and it should "never be unleashed", Vladimir Putin has warned.