Sunday, July 26, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
POLITICS: Nuclear States too Slow to Disarm, Nations Tell U.N.
Haider Rizvi
- A group of nations is taking the United States and seven other nuclear powers to task at the United Nations General Assembly for not paying closer attention to the issue of disarmament.
Last week, the Coalition for a New Agenda – Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden – adopted a unanimous resolution expressing its ”deep concern” over the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons and the continuing possibility of their use.
The Coalition says it is particularly concerned over the development of new types of nuclear weapons, a reference to U.S. policy to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons that are perceived to be more useable, so more likely to be used.
Recent reports indicate that the administration of President George W. Bush has already directed the U.S. military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, and to build smaller weapons for use in warfare.
Critics say these plans break U.S. promises made 30 years ago when the country signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and agreed to negotiate the elimination of its nuclear weapons.
Like other nuclear-armed countries, the United States renewed that promise in 2000, giving an ”unequivocal undertaking” to accomplish the ”total elimination” of its nuclear arsenals.
Bush also continues to oppose the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the United States has signed but refused to ratify. The treaty will be effective three months only after all 44 designated countries have ratified it.
France and Britain are the only two of the five original nuclear powers to have ratified the CTBT. The U.S. Senate rejected ratification in 1999.
It is widely believed that if the United States fails to ratify the treaty in the next few years, Russia and China are unlikely to do so. If they do not, India and Pakistan will almost surely not ratify the CTBT.
”At a time when the people of our planet desperately seeks ways to create a safer, more secure world, the U.S. strikes nuclear terror into all of our hearts,” says Abolition 2000, a global network of over 2000 citizen groups in more than 90 countries.
”The U.S. shows it will use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. That is a complete reversal of previous agreements.”
The resolution of the U.N. Coalition, which is currently being discussed at the General Assembly’s first committee, says, ”the indefinite possession of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the non-proliferation regime and with the broader goal of promoting international peace and security”.
”We would like to have speedy progress towards nuclear disarmament,” Philomena Murnaghan, a senior Irish diplomat told IPS, explaining why her country was pushing the resolution. ”There is a need for international momentum.”
Ireland is the current coordinator of the Coalition, created in 1998.
The world’s eight nuclear powers maintain over 17,000 nuclear warheads, with the United States and Russia accounting for 93 percent, according to Sipri, a Sweden-based think-tank that tracks weapon production and export.
China has nearly 400 warheads, France 348, and Israel and Britain about 200 each. India is believed to have more than 30 and Pakistan about 40 nuclear weapons.
The Coalition resolution demands that all nuclear weapons states increase the ”transparency and accountability” of their nuclear weapons arsenals and their implementation of disarmament measures.
”Formalization by nuclear weapon states of their unilateral declarations in a legally binding agreement including provisions ensuring transparency, verification and irreversibility is essential” it says.
”They should bear in mind that reductions of deployments are a positive signal but no replacement for the actual elimination of nuclear weapons,” adds the resolution.
The New Agenda countries are equally worried about the role of new nuclear states, such as India, Pakistan and Israel, who have refused to sign the treaty on non-proliferation.
They urge those three nations to accede to the Treaty as ”non-nuclear weapons states” and to place their facilities under comprehensive international safeguards.
India and Pakistan have gone to war three times in the past 50 years, and have recently averted a possible war over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
”We are concerned by the continued retention of the nuclear weapons option by those three states that operate unsafe guarded nuclear facilities and have not acceded to the NPT, as well as their failure to renounce that option,” says the Coalition.
Without naming the United States, the Coalition warned that development of strategic missile defences ”could impact negatively on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and lead to a new arms race on earth and outer space”.
The United States has spent more than 100 billion dollars on building missile defence systems while it plans to build weapons in outer space.
”No steps should be taken which would lead to the weaponisation of space,” the resolution said.
The General Assembly is likely to vote on the Coalition resolution by the end of this month.
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POLITICS: Nuclear States too Slow to Disarm, Nations Tell U.N.
Haider Rizvi
- A group of nations is taking the United States and seven other nuclear powers to task at the United Nations General Assembly for not paying closer attention to the issue of disarmament.
(more…)
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