Foreign ministers from signatories to an international treaty to ban nuclear tests urged North Korea to stop conducting nuclear tests and to completely abandon nuclear weapons while calling upon all states to join the treaty.

The ministers made the demands in a joint statement adopted at the end of their meeting in support of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly gathering in New York on Thursday.

In his remarks at the biennial ministerial meeting, UN Secretary General Bank Ki Moon repeated his call for “the international community to set the goal of bringing the treaty into force by 2012.”

The statement echoed the UN chief’s demand that all governments “that have not yet done so…sign and ratify the CTBT without further delay.”

Of the 44 states whose ratifications are required for the treaty to enter into force, nine have yet to either sign or ratify it.

The nine are China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States.

The statement also urged all states to maintain existing moratoriums on nuclear weapon test explosions.

The ministerial meetings and CTBT conferences are held in alternating years.

Led by seven countries including Australia, Canada, Japan and Morocco, this year’s meeting was attended by 72 countries.

From Japan, Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara participated and expressed in his speech Tokyo’s resolve to spare no efforts in contributing to global endeavors toward realising a world free of nuclear weapons.