UN welcomes extension of New START treaty

The United Nations welcomed the extension of the New START treaty between the United States and Russia for five years.

"We very much welcome the extension, the five-year extension of the New START as a means of maintaining verifiable limits on the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and I think it's a first step of reinvigorating the nuclear arms control regime," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"From our point of view, we encourage both Russia and the United States to use these next five years to negotiate further reductions in their nuclear weapons, as well as new agreements that can address the emerging nuclear weapons challenges of our time and make the world a better place," he told a daily press briefing.

The spokesman expressed the hope that more countries that have nuclear weapons will join nuclear disarmament efforts.

"It is clear that the more countries that have nuclear weapons engage in disarmament talks and move towards a world free of nuclear weapons, the better we will all be," Xinhua cited Dujarric as saying.