India offers to put its nuclear no-first-use pledge into a binding global pact

India has again offered to turn its pledge never to be the first to use nuclear weapons into a binding multilateral agreement, in a statement to the United Nations General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament and international security.

The statement was delivered by Congress MP Manish Tewari in New York. He said India was willing to make both its no-first-use commitment and its pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states part of a multilateral legal arrangement.

Tewari restated the pillars of India’s nuclear doctrine: credible minimum deterrence, no first use and non-use against countries without nuclear weapons. He also reaffirmed India’s voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing and its commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and verifiable nuclear disarmament, reached through an agreed multilateral framework.

He raised a newer worry in the committee’s debates, the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear command and control. Decisions on the use of nuclear weapons, he said, must remain under human control.

He repeated India’s long-standing proposals for reducing nuclear danger, including taking nuclear weapons off high alert and negotiating an international convention that would prohibit the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.