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Indonesia warns nuclear weapons put Southeast Asia a ‘miscalculation away’ from a catastrophe

11 July 2023 14:00 (UTC +04:00)

Indonesia’s top diplomat warned Tuesday of the threat posed by nuclear weapons, saying that Southeast Asia is “one miscalculation away from apocalypse” and pressing for world powers to sign a treaty to keep the region free from such arms, APA reports citing Associated Press.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi raised the alarm ahead of a two-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which started later Tuesday in Jakarta. The agenda would spotlight Myanmar’s deadly civil strife, continuing tensions in the South China Sea and efforts to fortify regional economies amid the global headwinds set off by war in Ukraine.

Later in the week, the 10-nation bloc will meet Asian and Western counterparts, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese foreign policy overseer Wang Yi.

“We cannot be truly safe with nuclear weapons in our region,” Marsudi told fellow ASEAN ministers. “With nuclear weapons, we are only one miscalculation away from apocalypse and global catastrophe.”

In 1995, ASEAN states signed a treaty that declared Southeast Asia’s commitment to be a nuclear weapon-free zone, one of five in the world. However, Marsudi lamented that none of the world’s leading nuclear powers have signed on to the pact and called for renewed efforts to convince those states to sign up.

“The threat is imminent, so we can no longer play a waiting game,” she said.