If You've Got Nuclear Weapons, You're Not Playing with a Full Deck

Greenpeace deals out the "Whose Got Nukes" deck to delegates at the NPT Preparatory Committee in Geneva this week. Order your own deck online

When in 1970, the UK, China, France, Russia, and the United States, agreed to strive for a world free of nuclear weapons, we were hopeful that the nuclear arms race was coming to a close. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, are still within the international consciousness, and should live on in our memories as a horror never to be repeated. Should any nation have the power to kill millions of people with the press of one button?

Currently, there are around 30,000 nuclear weapons globally, a 1500 bomb reduction since the original signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This puts the rate of disarmament at a dismally slow 42 per year, an unacceptable pace given the dangers this huge arsenal poses to all of us. If the nuclear powers are seriously concerned about weapons of mass destruction, there's no better place to start than with eliminating nuclear warheads. The Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee is currently meeting at the United Nations in Geneva, continuing through May 9, 2003.

Greenpeace is warning delegates of the critical nature of this meeting. Given the war in Iraq and North Korea's admission of possessing nuclear weaponry, Greenpeace advises the delegates to adopt the following measures:

• States should reject the use of military force to resolve proliferation concerns, and uphold the value of multilateral legal mechanisms.
• States should reject the "first strike" use of nuclear weapons, and agree legally binding security assurances.
• All nuclear weapon states should commit to the goal of eliminating their illegal nuclear arsenals and halting the development of new nuclear weapons or the "refurbishment" of existing ones.
• States should agree on an emergency mechanism to deal more swiftly and effectively with future crises such as North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT.
• The promotion of "dual use" nuclear technology, particularly reprocessing and enrichment technologies, which is permitted under the NPT, should be stopped and a comprehensive ban on the production and use of all fissile material agreed.