Summary
We now have an extraordinary opportunity to deal with the threat of nuclear weapons. There is no military conflict between the great economic and technological powers. Indeed, they cooperate on a daily basis on trade, investment, health and many other issues. Moreover, the late 1980s and most of the 1990s saw the creation of a positive circle in which citizen action, political initiatives, disarmament treaties and independent verification reinforced each other.
But in May 2005, the impasse at the Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) showed that this opportunity may be slipping from our grasp. In these circumstances the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's subsequent timely call for all states to save the NPT by taking a strong stand on non-proliferation and disarmament is fatally undermined by the UK's continued deployment of its Trident nuclear weapon system and preparations to build a new nuclear weapon.
This is in direct contravention of the UK's commitment under the NPT to take progressive steps towards nuclear disarmament, and comes at a time when the Government has admitted that there is no direct military threat to Western Europe and that it does not foresee the emergence of such a threat.
