Greenpeace flagship the MV Rainbow Warrior blocks the Marchwood Military Port in Southampton today while activists paint an anti-war message on the stern of a military supply vessel as part of the global campaign to prevent a military attack on Iraq. Greenpeace believes the possibilty of war would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and increase the chances of weapons of mass destruction being used.
There is a need for global disarmament and the elimination of
weaponsof mass destruction, including by all five permanent members
of theSecurity Council and any other countries that possess them.
Disarmamentmust be achieved through diplomatic negotiations, not
through armedaggression, be it unilateral or multilateral.
The need for global disarmament has long been recognised by
theinternational community. Under the terms of the
nuclearNon-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in
1970, theUS and the four other acknowledged nuclear powers made a
bindingcommitment to nuclear disarmament. In exchange, the
non-nuclear weaponsstates agreed that they would not seek nuclear
weapons capability. Thusfar, the US and other nuclear powers have
been adamant in insistingthat non-nuclear weapons states live up to
their commitments, butsilent in the face of criticism about their
own failures.
Thirty years on, at the NPT review conference in the year 2000,
theUS and the other signatories agreed to end nuclear weapons
testing byenacting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as the
first ofthirteen specific disarmament commitments. Shortly
thereafter, the USSenate voted against ratification of the CTBT. In
2002, the USgovernment declared that it no longer agreed with the
commitments madein 2000, particularly the global ban on nuclear
testing, putting thefuture of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
in jeopardy.
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), a treaty aimed
ateradicating another weapon of mass destruction, entered into
force in1975. Since its inception, the BWC has been ineffective at
ensuringcompliance with its terms, largely because of its lack of
averification scheme. Five years of work to develop
effectiveverification measures were torpedoed by the US government
in June 2001.The Bush Administration refused at the last minute to
agree tointernational inspections, citing concerns about US
national securityand the need to protect US corporations'
industrial secrets. Thisdecision outraged the international
community, and is particularlyhypocritical in light of the current
demands on Iraq.
The Bush administration has also reneged on the
Anti-BallisticMissile (ABM) Treaty, announcing in December 2001
that it waswithdrawing from the Treaty in order to pursue its Star
Wars missiledefense programme.
Funding the safeguarding and destruction of nuclear weapons
andmaterials in the countries of the former Soviet Union by the
UnitedStates is crucial if the proliferation of nuclear weapons is
to becurtailed. Yet one of the first acts of the Bush
Administration when itcame into power in 2001 was to slash funding
for these programmes byalmost 21 percent while increasing nuclear
weapons funding by almostfive percent.
The story continues up to the present. As recently as 5
February2003, a key US Senate committee recommended ratification of
theBush-inspired US-Russia Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty
(SORT).The SORT treaty does not require the destruction of a single
weapon,representing another failure of the US (and Russia) to abide
bydisarmament commitments. The SORT treaty provides for cuts only
in"deployed" weapons and blatantly fails to meet the NPT test of
amultilateral disarmament treaty leading to the complete
elimination ofnuclear weapons. Coupled with Bush's planning for the
possible use ofnuclear weapons against Iraq (or any other possible
aggressor), and hisplans to build new nuclear weapons, this shows
that the US is inmaterial breach of the NPT as well as other
international nuclearnon-proliferation and disarmament treaties.
Furthermore, it clearlydisplays that the Bush Administration
presents an imminent threat toglobal security.
Greenpeace UK briefing:
Tackling weapons of mass destruction