Havana, Cuba.-The permanent mission of Cuba at the UN headquarters in Geneva stressed today that worldwide nuclear disarmament is a priority that deserves attention at the highest level.

In the context of the celebration, this Monday, of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, the Caribbean island’s delegation sent a letter on the subject to: the members and observers of the Conference on Disarmament, the Director General of the UN Office in Geneva and President of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In the text, Cuba stated that they shared the ‘growing global concern over the serious threat that the existence of nuclear weapons and their possible use or threat of use pose to humanity’.

The letter argues that ‘the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of such weapons is their total prohibition and elimination’.

Latin America and the Caribbean was the first densely populated region on the planet to be established as a zone free of nuclear weapons under the Tlatelolco Treaty.

The letter also emphasized that the region was the world’s first to be formally proclaimed as ‘Zone of Peace’, during the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean, held in Havana in January 2014.

The Cuban mission in Geneva called, for the first time in the history of the UN, for an International High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, which must be held no later than 2018 to review progress on the matter.