UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says the nations of the world should simultaneously seek to disarm nuclear powers and prevent additional nations from acquiring nuclear arms. He made the remarks on Tuesday in one of his last major addresses as chief of the United Nations.
 "Efforts are needed both to reduce arms and to reduce conflict. Likewise, efforts are needed to achieve both disarmament and non-proliferation. Yet each side waits for the other to move first. The result is that mutually assured destruction has been replaced by mutually assured paralysis."
Annan, whose second five-year term ends January 1st, also said progress cannot be made on the arms control objective either, unless the international community can keep in check the threat of terrorism, which increases the risk that weapons of mass destruction will be used.
"I said earlier this year that we are sleepwalking toward disaster. In truth, it is much worse than that. We are asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft. Unless we wake up and take control, the outcome is all too predictable."
Annan said governments of the world have wasted chances in recent years to strengthen the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty because they could not agree on which of the dual goals should receive a higher priority.
He stresses that the truth is that both goals are equally important.
Annan called for nations across the world with nuclear weapons to develop specific timetables for disarming the estimated 27,000 nuclear weapons currently believed to exist.
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Director: Liu Chi