UNITED NATIONS, September 18 (RIA Novosti) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called on Nuclear-Weapon-Free countries to remain nuclear-weapon-free, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General Stephane Dujarric told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
Dujarric has stressed that the UN Secretary General's position on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is very clear and that he has called on Nuclear-Weapon-Free countries to retain this status.
On September 14, Ukrainian Defense Minister Valery Geletey said that Ukraine plans to revise its non-nuclear status and thus protect itself from further threats to its sovereignty.
On September 17, commenting on the possibility of such a revision, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that nobody, including the western states, would allow Ukraine to revoke its non-nuclear status.
On December 1994, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances providing security assurances against the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territory or political independence.
Ukraine, which had the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union, abandoned nuclear weapons and joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a nuclear-weapon-free state.
