UNITED NATIONS, November 5. /TASS/. The United States along with Georgia, Israel and Ukraine has voted at the United Nations against the resolution on no first placement of arms in outer space.
The vote on the document was held on Tuesday at the First Committee of the UN General Assembly.
The resolution, submitted to the UN General Assembly by Russia and co-authored by more than 25 countries, including Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Pakistan and Syria, was adopted by the majority of votes.
A total of 122 countries backed the resolution while 47 others, mostly the EU countries, abstained.
The document confirms the importance and urgency of the task to prevent arms race in space and the readiness of states to make a contribution to achieve this goal.
The resolution also calls for launching substantive efforts based on the updated draft treaty on prevention of deployment of weapons in outer space, the threat or use of force against outer space objects, introduced by China and Russia at the conference on disarmament in 2014.
In an explanatory note on Wednesday, the US delegation said Russia’s initiative has several serious problems. Firstly, the initiative fails to define weapons in outer space. So, the states have no common understanding on the terms that are used, the US stressed. The second point is that it is impossible to verify efficiently the political commitments of states on no first placement of arms in outer space.
The initiative is also devoted to only space-based weapons without mentioning anti-satellite land-based weapons. Therefore, this may contribute to growing mistrust, the US said.