US snubs UN disarmament conference

The United States has walked out of the UN's Conference on Disarmament (CD) as Venezuela assumed the body's rotating presidency.

Wood walked out immediately after Venezuela's ambassador, Jorge Valero, began addressing the conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva to begin his presidency.

"Whatever is discussed in there, whatever is decided, has absolutely no legitimacy because it is an illegitimate regime presiding over that body," the US ambassador to the conference, Robert Wood, told reporters outside the conference on Tuesday.

The US government has been making efforts to change the leftist government in Venezuela led by Nocolas Maduro.

It has -- along with more than 50 other states -- recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as acting president.

"A representative of Juan Guaido, the interim president, should be in this body, should be sitting in that chair right now," Wood said.

The disarmament conference had been a key UN forum for negotiating major arms control pacts before its work was hampered by a series of diplomatic impasses.

Wood described Venezuela’s CD presidency as "another tragic day in the history of the CD", after Syria last year assumed the body's chair, which rotates on alphabetical order among member states.

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