UN General Assembly
1998

nuclear option even though, as a participant in the Manhattan Project, we had the technical capability and material capacity to build our own nuclear weapons. In 1968, the Government of Canada confirmed that decision and joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Every subsequent Canadian Government has reaffirmed that commitment, and we have spent much diplomatic effort to persuade others that nuclear weapons are the problem, not the solution. The non-proliferation regime has enhanced everyone?s security. The credibility of that regime has been severely tested over the years, but particularly over the past six months. India?s and Pakistan?s nuclear tests put the entire non-proliferation regime in jeopardy. Nuclear testing undermines the basic goals and objectives of the Non- Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test- Ban Treaty. Testing puts all of us, not least the people of the testing countries themselves, at greater risk. Therefore, there can be no condoning these actions. And there must be no rewards. We must not legitimize the claims of would-be nuclear Powers, or confer any new