UN General Assembly
1999

Ukraine courageously chose to give up their nuclear weapons. America and Russia have moved forward with substantial arms reductions. President Yeltsin and I agreed in June, even as we await Russian ratification of START II, to begin talks on a START III treaty that will cut our cold- war arsenals by 80 per cent from their height. Brazil has joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), capping a process that has almost totally eliminated the threat of nuclear proliferation in Latin America. We have banned chemical weapons from the Earth, though we must implement that commitment fully and gain universal coverage. One hundred and fifty-two nations have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and, while India and Pakistan did test nuclear weapons last year, the international reaction proved that the global consensus against proliferation is very strong. We need to bolster the standards to reinforce that consensus. We must reaffirm our commitment to the NPT, strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention and make fast progress on a treaty to ban production of fissile