Welcome
Press Statement of the co-hosts on the occasion of the 3rd Ministerial Meeting of the Stockholm Initiative for Nuclear Disarmament and the Non- Proliferation Treaty on 6 January 2021 in Amman
Today, at the invitation of the Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi, the German Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and the Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde, the members of the Stockholm Initiative for Nuclear Disarmament and the Non-Proliferation Treaty – Argentina, Canada, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland – met in Amman and over VTC (hybrid format) for their third Ministerial Meeting. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres honoured the initiative with a keynote.
Ahead of the 10th Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty re-scheduled for August 2021, the members of the Stockholm initiative underlined their resolve to advance nuclear disarmament and strengthen the NPT as a whole:
We renew our call on all Nuclear Weapon States to show leadership, address and reduce nuclear risks and advance nuclear disarmament by taking meaningful steps to implement the commitments under the NPT. Recalling our declaration ‘The NPT at 50- advancing nuclear disarmament, securing our future’, adopted last year in Berlin, we reaffirm the ’Stepping Stones’ contained therein as 22 concrete proposals to make progress on the road towards a world free of nuclear weapons. We invite all NPT State Parties to join us and support the Stepping Stones in word and deed. We will reach out to all groups and initiatives, both governmental and from civil society, aimed at strengthening the NPT and fully implementing its commitments. We will support the President-designate of the 10th NPT Review Conference, Ambassador Zlauvinen, in establishing the common ground needed to secure the future success of the treaty.
During the meeting, the Ministers discussed a broad range of topics, including their engagement on regional proliferation challenges; the perspectives for preserving and strengthening the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran and the denuclearization of North Korea; the establishment of a Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons, other Weapons of Mass Destruction and their delivery systems in the Middle East in line with the 1995 Resolution and the outcome of the 2010 NPT Review Conference; the perspective for the extension of the New START treaty and possible follow-on arrangements; their support for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the start of Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) negotiations and nuclear disarmament verification; the entry-into-force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Resolved to make full use of the months ahead of the 10th NPT Review Conference, the Ministers adopted a roadmap for further activities to promote their mission and join forces with other NPT State Parties. The Ministers expressed appreciation for the NPT State Parties, who have already formally expressed their support for the Stepping Stones document adopted in February 2020, and encouraged more to follow.