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Co-sponsored by 57 nations, the resolution calls for a conference next year “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.”

“Opposing its call for a nuclear-free world is awkward for world leaders, and none more so than U.S. President Barack Obama,” Bloomberg news service noted in its article. “He’s preparing to leave office seven years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in large part for what the award panel called his ‘vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.’ ”

Peggy Mason, Former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN, now President of the Rideau Institute released the following statement after Canada’s UN vote today against Resolution L.41:

“The First Committee on Disarmament and International Security of the UN General Assembly today passed an historic resolution, mandating the launch in 2017 of negotiations for a legally binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons. Such a ban would reinforce customary international law against the threat or use of nuclear weapons and pave the way for further negotiations on their verifiable destruction and ultimate elimination.

Tensions between Russia and the USA are dangerously high. Massive nuclear weapons modernization programmes are underway. The negotiation to be launched by this resolution is the best hope the international community has to move away from the nuclear brink.