‍The future role of the European Union (EU) as a global actor and its relations with Russia and the United States are among the key focuses of the 54th Munich Security Conference (MSC), which officially opened in Germany's Munich Friday afternoon.

"For the first time since the end of the Cold War, we are now facing a nuclear threat, a threat of a nuclear conflict," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, addressing world leaders and top officials at the gathering in the southern Bavarian city.

"I'm naturally referring to the development in relation to nuclear weapons and long-range missiles by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the development made in total contradiction with the will of international community and in clear violation of several resolutions of the [UN] Security Council," Guterres added.

The comments came on the first day of the conference, which runs through Sunday. The participants include British Prime Minister Theresa May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, US national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Chinese congresswoman and senior diplomat Fu Ying and the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Amid the concerns about nuclear weapons, Guterres warned that other security challenges also remained at a critical level.

He said ongoing conflicts in the Middle East like the war in Syria are “more and more interrelated” and now have implications far beyond the region, whether it be through global terrorism or the mass numbers of displaced people seeking refuge in Europe and elsewhere.

He said there are many “fault lines” stoking the conflict, including the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslim nations and “the memory of the Cold War that is still there.”

"All these different fault lines crossing each other have created the situation that there’s an authentic quagmire,” he said.