Contact Alyn Ware, Wellington Aotearoa-New Zealand, 64-4-385-8192, alyn@pnnd.org
Excerpts from an article by Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Norwegian parliament.
Published in Dagsavisen (Oslo) 8 October 2004. Translated by Stine Rødmyr
With that I arrive at another important point concerning nuclear disarmament. If the original Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) do not resume disarming, more and more countries will argue exactly like the NWS do, i.e. that we also need nuclear weapons for our own security. This is the logic behind the nuclear weapons of the NWS. At the United Nations conferences in 1995 and 2000 (on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), the NWS admitted that this was the main problem. Therefore, they accepted that the main goal was total abolition of nuclear weapons.
Such a process did start. In terms of the START agreement considerable numbers of strategic nuclear weapons were destroyed. But the process has come to a stop. The NWS no longer destroy nuclear weapons. They store them. There has been no move to negotiate a treaty concerning thousands of warheads on short range tactical nuclear weapons. USA has, as we know, said that they are no longer bound by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and that they have plans for new types of nuclear weapons. The USA will also be spent billions on a shield in Space to protect USA and others against nuclear weapons.
All of this gives other countries good arguments for acquiring nuclear weapons - in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
That is why the key is in the hands of the old nuclear powers. They have to start disarming again. This will be a hot issue during this year's United Nations General Assembly (GA) and at the NPT Review Conference in 2005. Here it is necessary that Norway takes a clear stand. We should support demands from the countries in the New Agenda Coalition, which includes, among others, Sweden, South Africa and Egypt. They advocate total abolition of all strategic nuclear weapons, conclusion of an early agreement on abolition of the tactical nuclear weapons and immediate commencement of negotiations on a total ban of trade in material, components, technology and knowledge that can be used to produce nuclear weapons.
I have one important demand to the government. It has to take some brave stands at the GA this autumn and at the NPT Review Conference. If such steps are not taken, the whole non-proliferation regime will brake down and we will face a new nuclear arms race. |
