PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT NSW
HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT

AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT MUST SHOW REAL LEADERSHIP ON NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
ENGAGEMENT YES: BUT ENGAGEMENT MUST LEAD TO DISARMAMENT



In the wake of the Nayarit Conference on Catastrophic Humanitarian
Consequences of Nuclear Weapons Use, the need for  real leadership
toward the abolition of nuclear weapons from Australia has never been
clearer. Its absence also has never been clearer.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop just before the Nayarit Conference in Mexico
(13-14Febuary), published an article in which she said Australia
should 'engage, not enrage' the major nuclear powers.

The Nayarit conference was boycotted by the official nuclear weapons
powers, as was the previous such conference in Oslo.

According to People for Nuclear Disarmament and Human Survival Project
spokespeople John Hallam and Peter King:
“Julie is right to point to the need for engagement with the major nuclear
powers, but this mustn't become an excuse for inaction or for soft –
pedalling what is after all, a human survival issue.”

“Certainly we need to engage the nuclear powers in
'real and practical steps' to the elimination of nukes. 

We need to engage them on the pressing
necessity to get rid of their nuclear arsenals yesterday,  in
fulfilment of their clear legal obligations under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty article VI. Forty years of non-fulfillment
is forty years too much: It is forty years of  playing Russian and
American roulette with the habitability of the planet.”

“If Nayarit showed nothing else, it showed up the absolute necessity of
eliminating nuclear weapons. It has showed that large scale nuclear
weapons use has consequences that are so catastrophic that they put
the continuance of civilisation and even the species in question.
There can be no diplomatic or security issue more pressing than the
elimination of nuclear weapons.  Engagement with the Nuclear Weapon
States is not an excuse for going soft on this, or for inaction: it
must be a tool aimed at achieving abolition on an urgent and priority
basis.”

Contact:
John Hallam, People for Nuclear Disarmament  ph 9810-2598
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Prof. Peter King, Human Survival Project
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