NEW YORK — China’s President Hu Jintao on Wednesday called for a world without nuclear weapons and the destruction of all nuclear arsenals, a position similar to that of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Hu yesterday took part in the nuclear disarmament session of the United Nations Security Council, presided over by Obama.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Hu reiterated Beijing’s call for a “complete prohibition and thorough destruction” of nuclear weapons.

“We call on the international community to take credible steps to push forward the nuclear disarmament process, eradicate the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and promote peaceful use of nuclear energy and related international co-operation,” he said.

The United States, China, Russia, France and Britain are the world’s declared nuclear powers as well as UN Security Council permanent members with veto power.

But the U.S. and China have yet to ratify a key treaty in nuclear disarmament, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Obama has pledged Washington’s ratification, but Hu did not mention it in his address.

The session on nuclear disarmament was expected to give a political boost to stalled efforts to move toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Diplomats said the UN’s most powerful body would vote unanimously yesterday on a draft resolution, calling for stepped-up efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote disarmament and “reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism”.

Obama is the first U.S. president to chair a summit-level meeting of the council and he will be joined by 14 other world leaders, U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said.

Obama aides see the resolution that will be adopted at the meeting as an endorsement of the president’s entire nuclear agenda, as laid out in his April speech in Prague in which he declared his commitment to “a world without nuclear weapons”.

In that speech the president called for the slashing of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, adoption of the treaty banning nuclear tests, an international fuel bank to better safeguard nuclear material, and negotiations on a new treaty that “verifiably” ends the production of fissile materials used to make atomic weapons.