PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 29 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says nuclear weapons are the gravest of all threats facing the world today.
In a lecture Tuesday at Princeton University he focused on "the danger of nuclear weapons, and the urgent need to confront that danger."
While almost everyone feels insecure, Annan said, "probably the largest number would give priority to economic and social threats, including poverty, environmental degradation and infectious disease."
He said "others might stress inter-state conflict; yet others internal conflict, including civil war," while many people, "especially but not only in the developed world, would now put terrorism at the top of their list."
The secretary-general said all threats are interconnected, cutting across borders, calling for "common global strategies to deal with all of them."
However, noting the recent failure to update the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, he said the one area where there is no common strategy "is the one that may well present the greatest danger of all ... nuclear weapons."
Annan said they "present a unique existential threat to all humanity (and) the nuclear non-proliferation regime now faces a major crisis of confidence. North Korea has withdrawn from the treaty, while India, Israel, and Pakistan have never joined it.
"There are ... serious questions about the nature of Iran's nuclear program," he said, adding that "the rise of terrorism, with the danger that nuclear weapons might be acquired by terrorists, greatly increases the danger that they will be used."
The only way forward is to tackle the objectives of non-proliferation and disarmament simultaneously and equally vigorously, the secretary-general said.
Fierce disagreement between countries over which objective was more urgent, he said, meant the world was stuck without a common strategy for dealing with the nuclear problem.
