Copyright Steve Bell 2004/All Rights Reserved: steve.bell@guardian.co.uk
Responding to yesterday's announcement to the City by Gordon Brown that he intends to back building a successor to the Trident nuclear weapons system, Greenpeace urged Gordon Brown not to ignore the real long term security needs facing the world.
Dr Dominick Jenkins, Greenpeace nuclear campaigner, said, "Brown may want the top job more than anything else in the world -- but is he really prepared for the global cost to be the destruction of international treaties and the kick-starting of a new nuclear arms race?"
He continued, "If he really wants to take difficult long term decisions and protect future generations then he should listen to the words of the people that are tasked with controlling WMD globally -- like Hans Blix and Kofi Annan -- who are urging nuclear weapons states not to build new nuclear bombs".
Hans Blix recently said to UK MPs, while outlining the findings of his recent Weapons of Mass Destruction report, that "it would send a positive echo around the world if Britain, one of the original five nations with nuclear weapons, did not renew Trident".(1)
Addressing the Conference on Disarmament in New York yesterday, Kofi Annan urged nuclear weapons states to act to prevent negotiations to ban nuclear weapons falling apart. He stated: "The core of the impasse [at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)] lies in the fact that the contract between the nuclear-weapon states and the rest of the international community, which is the basis of the NPT, has been called into question."
"These facts have engendered a self-defeating debate between those who insist on disarmament before further non-proliferation measures, and those who argue the opposite, while both are essential."
Annan further stated that nuclear weapons must be "devalued for security", citing Japan, South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Libya as countries that have realised that "security and status need not be equated with possession of nuclear weapons".
Dr Jenkins continued: "Rather than obsessing about how he politically best places himself to destroy the left wing of his party, Gordon Brown should be focusing on creating real long term security for Britain and the world."
"Long term security means working with the rest of the world to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction, not holding them up to the world as an essential way of getting a place 'at the top table'."
Greenpeace is proposing an alternative way forward for government that involves neither unilateral nuclear disarmament nor nuclear re-armament. This is that Britain should agree not to replace Trident, then remove its Trident submarines from patrol and store the warheads safely ashore. This move should then be used as both an inspiration and a bargaining chip within international treaty meetings to get other countries to follow suit.
Such a move would also free up some £25 billion to spend on tackling our real security threats -- like tackling climate change and developing secure alternatives to Middle East oil.
Greenpeace also described as "deeply disturbing" reports in the Sun newspaper that the atomic weapons establishment at Aldermaston is already developing new nuclear weapons, despite the fact that they and MP's have repeatedly been assured that no new weapons are currently being designed at Aldermaston.
For more information contact Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255.
(1) The UN Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Commission report launched in Britain on 12th June this year by Hans Blix recommended that nuclear weapons be outlawed completely and highlights the importance of Britain's decision whether or not to replace Trident. It states:
"Any state contemplating replacement or modernisation of its nuclear-weapon systems must consider such action in the light of all relevant treaty obligations and its duty to contribute to the nuclear disarmament process. As a minimum, it must refrain from developing nuclear weapons with new military capabilities or for new missions. It must not adopt systems or doctrines that blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons or lower the nuclear threshold."
"France and the UK... are now at a crossroads: going down one road would show their conviction that nuclear weapons are not necessary for their security, while the other would demonstrate to all other states a belief that these weapons continue to be indispensable."
For the full report see http://www.wmdcommission.org/
(2) Speaking to the Conference on Disarmament in New York yesterday Kofi Annan warned that the failure of governments to strengthen the foundations of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- first at the review conference in May, and then at the World Summit in September - was deeply worrying.
"This sent a terrible signal -- of waning respect for the Treaty's authority, and of a dangerous rift on a leading threat to peace and prosperity," he said.
He noted that the Conference and its predecessors have registered "some truly important gains", such as the major treaties on weapons of mass destruction it negotiated. "But the last such success -- the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty -- was nine years ago, I repeat, was nine years ago -- and it has still not entered into force," he said, once again urging those states whose ratification is still needed to take action as soon as possible.
The core of the impasse, he said, lies in the fact that the contract between the nuclear-weapon states and the rest of the international community, which is the basis of the NPT, has been called into question and that nuclear weapons worldwide still number in the thousands, many of them on hair-trigger alert.
These facts have engendered a self-defeating debate between those who insist on disarmament before further non-proliferation measures, and those who argue the opposite, while both are essential, he stressed.
He said nuclear weapons must be devalued for security, citing Japan, South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Libya as countries that have realised that security and status need not be equated with possession of nuclear weapons.
