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World top body adopts treaty banning nuclear weapons

NEW YORK, July 7 (KUNA) -- World's top body adopted on Friday with 122 votes a global treaty banning nuclear weapons agreeing to never, under any circumstances, develop, test, produce, manufacture or posses stockpile.
At the General Assembly, 122 states voted in favor of the treaty with the abstention of Singapore, and Netherlands voting against.
France, US and the UK have not taken part in the negotiation of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, as they announced that they do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it.
The adopted treaty calls each State Party to submit to the UN Secretary General- not later than 30 days after this Treaty enters into force for that State Party- a declaration whether it owned, possessed or controlled nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices and eliminated its nuclear-weapon program, including the elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear-weapons-related facilities, prior to the entry into force of this treaty.
The states agreed that each shall, at a minimum, maintain its International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards obligations in force at the time of entry into force of this Treaty, without prejudice to any additional relevant instruments that it may adopt in the future.
Further, each state shall take all appropriate legal, administrative and other measures, including the imposition of penal sanctions, to prevent and suppress any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty undertaken by persons or on territory under its jurisdiction or control. elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear- weapons-related facilities.
This Treaty shall be open for signature to all states at UN Headquarters as from September 20, 2017.
The UN convened a conference, by resolution 71/258, to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.
The decision to convene the Conference followed from the recommendation of the open-ended working group on taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations, convened pursuant to resolution 70/33. (end) mao.bs