UN General Assembly
1965

121. The spread of nuclear weapons and their transfer to other countries would inevitably lead to a still wider and more intensive race to manufacture these weapons of mass destruction and would, of course, increase the possibility of the outbreak of nuclear war. Under modern conditions, a nuclear war started in one part of the world could very quickly expand into a world-wide nuclear conflict, with all the frightful and fatal consequences which that would entail. We therefore welcome the submission by the Soviet delegation of a draft treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons [A/5976] for the consideration of the present session of the General Assembly. In that draft, principles which have already been generally accepted in previous resolutions of the General Assembly are formulated in precise terms, in the form of obligations which signatory States would assume. We have before us a draft treaty whose adoption could become a reliable guarantee that once concluded a treaty prohibiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons would leave no loop-hole for evasion.