Foreign Minister Retno: Southeast Asia Must Be A Nuclear Free Area

JAKARTA - Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi emphasized that Southeast Asia must be maintained as a nuclear weapons-free area.

While chairing the 56th Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta, Tuesday, he warned that the current risk of using nuclear weapons is higher in history. No weapon is stronger and more destructive than nuclear weapons. And with nuclear weapons, we are only one calculational error away from the global apocalypse and disaster," Retno said when delivering a speech at a meeting of Foreign Minister ASEAN who acted as the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone Commission (SEANWFZ) as reported by ANTARA, Tuesday, July 11. So far, SEANWFZ has been said to have contributed to efforts to maintain peace and stability of the region through the regime of arms cuts and global non-proliferation. However, Retno regretted 25 years after the signing of the SEANWFZ Contract Protocol, none of the nuclear weapons-owning countries signed it. In fact, the protocol was made to invite five nuclear weapons owners namely China, Russia, France, the UK, and the US to realize nuclear-free areas in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, Retno emphasized that ASEAN must continue to advance to achieve such a goal given the increasingly imminent threat'. We must unite to confront nuclear weapons owners... just so that we can pave the way towards a nuclear arms-free region,' said Retno.

The Southeast Asian Agreement as a Nuclear Free Zone or known as the Bangkok Agreement was signed in 1995 by all ASEAN member countries. The agreement stipulates that the countries that signed the treaty cannot "develope, make, or acquire, or have control of nuclear weapons", "place or transport nuclear weapons in any way", or "test or use nuclear weapons." A number of nuclear weapons-owning countries object to some parts of the SEANWFZ treaty protocol, in contrast to China, which states that it is ready to sign the agreement even though there has been no follow-up.

At the ASEAN 2022 Summit it was agreed that the owner of the nuclear weapon could sign the treaty separately. The agreement is one of the important capital to resume negotiations that have stalled more than a decade ago.