Cyprus will not join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) for the time being, Foreign Minister Konstantinos Kombos has said, despite the country’s stated support for nuclear disarmament.
The issue was raised in parliament by Greens MP Stavros Papadouris, who marked five years since the treaty entered into force and asked the government to clarify Cyprus’s position and whether it intended to sign or ratify the agreement.
Kombos said Cyprus had weighed a number of factors in reaching its position. “At the present stage there is no prospect of accession to this convention, without this being excluded at a later stage,” he said.
The minister said Cyprus has long supported nuclear disarmament through its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which it ratified in 1970, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
On the TPNW specifically, Kombos pointed out that no nuclear-armed state has signed or ratified it, making a full ban on nuclear weapons impossible to implement in practice. He also noted reluctance among several EU member states to join, citing concerns that accession could create tensions with existing security arrangements and disrupt the current balance in an unstable international environment.
Cyprus ratified the NPT on 13 February 1970, following a Cabinet decision of 11 December 1969. The treaty had been signed in New York on 12 June 1968 and simultaneously in Washington, London and Moscow.
When parliament approved ratification at the time, it cited the risk of “the devastation which a nuclear war could inflict on humanity” and the need to take “every measure to safeguard the security of peoples”.
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