UN General Assembly
1999

our primary security concerns. Yet let me also state with full conviction that India’s commitment to global nuclear disarmament stands undiluted. India is the only nuclear- weapon State ready to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention that will prohibit for ever the development, production, stockpiling, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons and provide for the elimination of all existing weapons under international verification. If this can only be a step-by-step process, the first step at a technical level is for all countries possessing nuclear weapons to take measures that will reduce the dangers of, and provide added safeguards against, any unintended or accidental use. Coupled with this is the political step of reorienting nuclear doctrines, towards no-first-use, and then non-use, thus delegitimizing nuclear weapons globally. Independent expert opinion across the globe has spoken strongly in favour of such measures. In fact, every single study that has been published since the end of the cold war on the measures to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world has highlighted the need for shifting to doctrines based on