Russia has submitted a UN draft resolution calling on all countries to take urgent action to prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space, a week after Moscow vetoed a US-Japanese resolution to halt the arms race in space, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
The Russian draft resolution goes further than the US-Japanese proposal, calling not only for efforts to stop the deployment of weapons in outer space, but also to prevent the "threat or use of force in outer space", and "for all time". The draft says this should include the deployment of weapons "from space to Earth and from Earth to objects in outer space."
Vetoking the resolution last week, Russia's UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, told the Security Council that the US-Japanese draft did not go far enough to ban all weapons in space. The vetoed resolution focused solely on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, and made no mention of other weapons in space, the AP notes. It would have called on all states not to develop or deploy nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in outer space, as prohibited under a 1967 international treaty ratified by the United States and Russia, and to agree to the need to verify compliance with that obligation.
Before the U.S.-Japan resolution was put to a vote on April 24, Russia and China proposed an amendment calling on all countries, especially those with space capabilities, to "permanently prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space and the threat of the use of force in outer space." However, it failed to garner the minimum number of nine votes in favor in the 15-member Security Council, the AP recalls.