UNITED NATIONS, March 31. /TASS/. Minsk urges NATO to stop the practice of joint nuclear missions and calls on the U.S. to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Europe and Turkey, Belarus' permanent representative to the UN, Valentin Rybakov, said on Friday.

"We are calling on Ukraine to strongly and courageously demand from NATO a stop to joint nuclear missions, and urging the United States to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey, which, in accordance with the vocabulary of Ukraine and some countries present here, should obviously be considered as occupied states or hostage countries," Rybakov told the UN Security Council.

The Belarusian ambassador also thanked Ukraine for "raising this issue (Russia's deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus - TASS) in the UN Security Council."

"We believe that both the UN Security Council and the whole international community should pay the closest attention to the real risks that NATO’s joint nuclear missions and the permanent deployment of the US nuclear weapons outside its national jurisdiction are fraught with," he said.

On Friday, the UN Security Council met in session to discuss the issue of Russia's deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.