POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Nukes Back in Fashion, Hiroshima Mayor Warns

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 15 2003 (IPS) - The mayor of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, is convinced that 58 years after his city was laid waste by an atom bomb, the world is about to use nuclear weapons once again.

According to Akiba, the world has become sufficiently inured to the horrors of nuclear weapons as to change its justification for the building up and maintenance of nuclear stockpiles from one of ‘deterrence’ to one of talking in terms of ‘usable nuclear weapons’ and ‘pre-emptive options’.

”The policy (of the United States) has now shifted to something which will be used,” Akiba, who is on an anti-nuclear campaign in South Asia’ s nuclear-armed states, India and Pakistan, told IPS in an interview on Tuesday.

The Bush administration plans to resume the design, production and testing of a new generation of ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons (called mini-nukes) and nuclear ‘bunker busters’, which are deemed to be more ‘usable’.

But Washington’s plans to develop mini-nukes have come under widespread criticism as being violative of the 1968 nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). to which the other recognised nuclear-power states, Britain, China, Russia and France are signatories.

Among those critics is Mohamed El Baradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who has warned that Washington’s example may encourage other countries that have nuclear weapons to violate the NPT – not to mention those that are not signatories to the treaty.

The IAEA, tasked with monitoring the NPT and its violations, has at present trained its sights on Iran and given that country an Oct. 31 deadline by which to prove that it does not have an atomic weapons programme as alleged by Washington.

Iran has begun releasing details of components imported unofficially for its nuclear programme. But Iranian Foreign Minister Karnal Kharrazi was quoted as telling religious leaders earlier this month: ”We will not allow anyone to deprive us of our legitimate right to use nuclear technology, particularly enrichment for providing fuel for nuclear power stations.”

There are many who think that countries like Iran are being unfairly targeted by the United States and the IAEA acting at Washington’s behest, and that they are meantime allowing countries like Israel – known to have a sizeable nuclear arsenal without ever acknowledging it – to go scot-free.

India and Pakistan fall in a class by themselves as self-declared nuclear powers that are not among the 190-odd signatories to the NPT or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). They consider these accords discriminatory.

While Pakistan is a close ally of the United States in its ‘war against terror’ in neighbouring Afghanistan, India has, under a five-year-old, right-wing government, openly sought military alignment with the United States and more recently with Israel.

”The United States and other nuclear weapon states have failed to take any clear action to abolish nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan, while chronic tension between these two countries make their continued possession of these horrific weapons intolerable,” said Akiba, who ended a two-day visit Wednesday and left for London.

On his tour of the subcontinent, Akiba is carrying with him a message for the leaders of India and Pakistan, urging them to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ”see with their own eyes what nuclear weapons have in store for humanity”.

”I urge President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the strongest terms to rid their countries of these heinous, inhumane, illegal and evil weapons,” said Akiba, who is going to Pakistan later in October.

But while here, Akiba failed to catch the eye of senior Indian leaders. A meeting with the usually accessible Defence Minister George Fernandes was cancelled at the last minute, leaving him with less than influential interactions with members of the academic community at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Akiba said he expected to do no better in Pakistan but still hopes to meet Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, if not Musharraf himself, to convey his anti-nuclear message and promote the ‘Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons’.

When India and Pakistan carried out tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests in 1998, their governments were enthusiastically cheered on by supporters who took to the streets with raucous celebrations that betrayed ignorance of the devastation they faced from a possible all-out nuclear war.

Also. far from acting as deterrents, the possession of nuclear weapons seemed only to have goaded the neighbours into open warfare at Kargil in 1999 and a dangerous military standoff in 2002 when the leaders of both countries announced readiness to engage in nuclear warfare.

Currently, the South Asian neighbours are engaged in an arms race that can only further any possibility of a peaceful settlement of the their territorial dispute in Kashmir.

On Friday last week, India signed a billion dollar deal with Israel to buy Phalcon early-warning radar systems that would enable it to look deep within Pakistan territory when mounted on its Russian-built IL-76 bomber aircraft.

Phalcon systems can act as airborne surveillance systems capable of spotting hostile aircraft round-the-clock, regardless of weather conditions, and take measures to intercept them.

Pakistan’s answer to the Phalcon deal has been the test-firing this month of a series of nuclear-capable missiles, the last of which was fired on Tuesday.

Akiba said he could not understand how the leaders of Pakistan and India could consider their nuclear weapons as guarantors of peace. ”All they have to do is come and visit the Hiroshima Museum and talk to the ‘hibakusha’ (survivors of the 1945 nuclear bombs).”

”Once the bomb is let loose, it will be pointless talking about academic concepts such as ‘deterrence’ and ‘nuclear umbrellas’,” he pointed out.

”If you want to know the truth about N-weapons come to Hiroshima and talk to the ‘hibakusha’ – while there is still time” is Akiba’s message to Vajpayee and Musharraf.