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
weapons of mass destruction, including by all five permanent
members of the Security Council and any other countries that
possess them. Disarmament must be achieved through diplomatic
negotiations, not through armed aggression, be it unilateral or
multilateral.
The need for global disarmament has long been recognised by the
international community. Under the terms of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970,
the US and the four other acknowledged nuclear powers made a
binding commitment to nuclear disarmament. In exchange, the
non-nuclear weapons states agreed that they would not seek nuclear
weapons capability. Thus far, the US and other nuclear powers have
been adamant in insisting that non-nuclear weapons states live up
to their commitments, but silent in the face of criticism about
their own failures.
Thirty years on, at the NPT review conference in the year 2000,
the US and the other signatories agreed to end nuclear weapons
testing by enacting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as the
first of thirteen specific disarmament commitments. Shortly
thereafter, the US Senate voted against ratification of the CTBT.
In 2002, the US government declared that it no longer agreed with
the commitments made in 2000, particularly the global ban on
nuclear testing, putting the future of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty in jeopardy.
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), a treaty aimed at
eradicating another weapon of mass destruction, entered into force
in 1975. Since its inception, the BWC has been ineffective at
ensuring compliance with its terms, largely because of its lack of
a verification scheme. Five years of work to develop effective
verification measures were torpedoed by the US government in June
2001. The Bush Administration refused at the last minute to agree
to international inspections, citing concerns about US national
security and the need to protect US corporations' industrial
secrets. This decision outraged the international community, and is
particularly hypocritical in light of the current demands on
Iraq.
The Bush administration has also reneged on the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty, announcing in December 2001 that it was
withdrawing from the Treaty in order to pursue its Star Wars
missile defense programme.
Funding the safeguarding and destruction of nuclear weapons and
materials in the countries of the former Soviet Union by the United
States is crucial if the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to be
curtailed. Yet one of the first acts of the Bush Administration
when it came into power in 2001 was to slash funding for these
programmes by almost 21 percent while increasing nuclear weapons
funding by almost five percent.
The story continues up to the present. As recently as 5 February
2003, a key US Senate committee recommended ratification of the
Bush-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 by disarmament commitments. The SORT treaty provides for
cuts only in "deployed" weapons and blatantly fails to meet the NPT
test of a multilateral disarmament treaty leading to the complete
elimination of nuclear weapons. Coupled with Bush's planning for
the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq (or any other
possible aggressor), and his plans to build new nuclear weapons,
this shows that the US is in material breach of the NPT as well as
other international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament
treaties. Furthermore, it clearly displays that the Bush
Administration presents an imminent threat to global security.
Greenpeace UK briefing:
Tackling weapons of mass destruction