ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the main attempts in international forums to abolish nuclear weapons. Three phases can be discerned in these attempts: initial serious proposals for full international control, much more modest steps of partial measures and a return to radical solutions. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place after the United Nations (UN) Charter was signed in San Francisco, in June 1945, but before the first meeting of the UN General Assembly in London, in January 1946. At the first meeting of the Commission, on 14 June 1946, the United States representative, Bernard Baruch, presented the United States proposals for international control. Echoing the concerns, the General Assembly of the United Nations, at its session in 1969, declared general and complete disarmament to be its basic goal, and called for measures towards this goal to be taken in the shortest possible time. Important partial measure is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
