Kumaratunga expresses concern over increasing nuclear threat

She was speaking at 'India Ideas Conclave 2017' organised by the India Foundation here.

"Recently the nuclear threat has become very serious with North Korea threatening nuclear warfare. Our South Asia region will have to work out a mechanism to manage this aspect because two major powers in our region are nuclear-armed," she said.

Referring to the threat emerging from nuclear-armed North Korea, she said some leaders were making all kinds of statements, and "the United Nations (UN) seems helpless".

"The other nations are silent," Kumaratunga said.

"This is not how the leadership should act at this moment in a world which is enlightened and which is highly technologically advanced and which has every possibility of working together as never before to resolve this kind of issues," she said.

"Another challenge for leaders is climate change. We talk of political terrorism, but threat posed by climate change to countries and the world is also a form of natural terrorism," she said.

The threat of climate change was created by humans, especially our generation and that of our parents and grand-parents, she said.

A few powerful nations refuse to accept that this threat exists, she said.

"They feel if they can unlimitedly adopt any measures to develop their countries, maybe to eliminate poverty, to give economic development to their people...I don't see how leaders can think like this, but this is happening," she said.