UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 (APP): Reaffirming that international peace and security depended on stability at the regional levels, Pakistan has called for preservation of balance in the defence capabilities of states at lowest level of armaments and military forces.
Speaking in a thematic debate in the General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament and international security issues, Ambassador Khalil Hashmi also underscored the special responsibility of states with larger military capabilities in promoting agreements for regional security and undiminished security for all.
Pakistan, he said, has continued to advance these principles and proposed bilateral or regional initiatives that build confidence, reduce risks, and conform to the cardinal principle of equal and undiminished security for all.
In this regard, Ambassador Hashmi, who is Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN offices in Geneva, drew attention to new technologies inducting new levels of sophistication to the existing weapons and their means of delivery.
Emerging technologies are outpacing existing norms on Earth, in outer space and in the cyberdomain, the Pakistani envoy said. They afford new means of waging war, he added, cautioning that some troubling developments increase the prospect of symmetric and asymmetric responses.
Noting that Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) and cyberweapons represent substantial risk, Ambassador Hashmi warned that, faced with possibility of being overwhelmed by LAWS, states possessing weapons of mass destruction will be reluctant to give them up, while other States will seek to acquire them.
Given such dangers for regional and global safety, he said the international community must develop commensurate norms, rules and laws to control and regulate them in all their dimensions.
“The risks and dangers are too grave to be ignored,” the Pakistani envoy warned.
