Beijing: China today claimed that the United States and the United Kingdom were set to transfer tons of nuclear weapons materials to Australia. While both the US and the UK are nuclear-weapon states, Australia is a non-nuclear-weapon state. China further claimed that the existing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards arrangement “cannot effectively” monitor the transfer.
“This is in explicit violation of the object and purposes of the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] NPT,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, said here.
China further refuted charges by the US diplomat Kurth Campbell, who is America’s top envoy to the Pacific, that Washington’s Indo-Pacific security partnership with the UK and Australia, which some people refer to as AUKUS, is more of a stand against China’s actions than a technology-sharing agreement.
With regard to AUKUS, Wenbin stressed that along ideological lines, the US, the UK and Australia were forging a new military bloc, which will heighten the risk of military conflicts and increase geopolitical tensions.
“It is a typical illustration of the Cold War mentality,” he said, claiming that the trilateral cooperation “exposes the three countries’ flagrant double standard” on the nuclear non-proliferation issue and will spur other non-nuclear-weapon states to follow suit and cause seriously negative impact to the settlement of regional nuclear hotspot issues.
“This is extremely irresponsible. We once again urge the three countries to correct their mistakes,” Wenbin said.
