PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

EMBARGOED TO MONDAY 17JUNE

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

 

HUMANSURVIVAL PROJECT

OBAMA,PUTIN MEET IRELAND MON 17: WILL THEY DARE TO TAKE THE APOCALYPSE OFF THE GLOBAL AGENDA?


AsPresidents Obama and Vladimir Putin meet on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th , nuclear disarmament must be on the
table.  It is, as it has always been, potentially at least, a matter of human survival.

Thenuclear disarmament issue has gone 'off the boil' in recent decades,
with most people concluding incorrectly either that the cold war is
'over' (it isn't), or else that there is nothing they can do about it.

In fact, the US and Russia, who have 95% of all the nuclear warheads
that exist, continue to maintain close to 1000 warheads each on
permanent high alert, able to be launched in less than a minute,
while there are now more fingers on more and more wobbly buttons.

At the very least, Presidents Obama and Putin, when they meet in Ireland
on Monday 17th, should talk about taking those warheads off high alert, as Obama promised  prior to his first election.

The UN General Assembly has now four times voted to lower the operational
readiness of nuclear weapon systems, most recently adopting its resolution 161-4.  

Other measures they could take include a mutual pledge of 'no first use' of nuclear weapons.

Further deep reductions in nuclear arsenals, to the low hundreds with a clear
commitment to go quickly to zero, would help to fulfill the clear
obligations that Russia and the US have as nuclear weapon states
under article VI of the NPT to which they are signatories.

If they fail to do this, the 'apocalypse', most probably as a result of
malfunction or miscalculation, remains terrifyingly on the global
agenda.  

 

John Hallam
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