Category: ARMAMENTS

By Jayantha Dhanapala

“ . . . and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” – Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Note: The first Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet from May 2 to 12, 2017 in Vienna, Austria. Following the text of a Policy Brief Jayantha Dhanapala – a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka – did for the Asia Pacific Leaders Network (APLN) middle of March 2017. It is being reproduced with the permission of the author who currently serves as the 11th President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, These are his personal views.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Rocket launches galore in North Korea. Colours and flames in the sky. It’s all a bit like a peacock spreading his tail.

Murders abound. Is this a butcher’s shop – an uncle, a half-brother and a couple of high-placed generals and no doubt others?

Kim Jong-Un, the president, is no Hamlet and murder seems not to give him doubts. The day after he is photographed at some event, smiling the smile of a psychopath who ditched his conscience somewhere at the top of the Alps when he was out for a hike organised by the school in Switzerland he was sent to.

SAN FRANCISCO (IDN) – On March 15, 2017 at 9:00 AM, the appeal of the dismissal of the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ case in the U.S. Federal District Court will be heard in the Ninth District Court of Appeals.

The case, initially filed on April 24, 2014, alleges that the United States failed to uphold its legal obligation under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law to begin negotiations “in good faith” for an end to the nuclear arms race “at an early date” and for nuclear disarmament.

By Rodney Reynolds

WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – The 193-member UN General Assembly is to hold two key sessions – in March and in June – in what is expected to be a do-or-die attempt towards the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

“Whether 2017 will be the year that sees nuclear weapons being banned or whether the effort to achieve this gets turned into a form of “fake news” remains to be seen?,” says a sceptical Tariq Rauf, Director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The dark shadow that looms large over the upcoming General Assembly sessions will be the imposing figure of US President Donald Trump – whose trigger-finger is dangerously close to over 7,000 nuclear weapons, and whose views on nuclear disarmament appear consistently inconsistent, ranging from proliferation to strengthening existing arsenals.

By Jamshed Baruah

BERLIN | VIENNA (IDN) – Japan, by far the only country to experience atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has decided to make the largest ever extra-budgetary contribution to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

The funds amounting to about USD 2.43 million will support a range of verification related activities to improve the detection capabilities of the Organisation – and thus pave the way for a world free of nuclear weapons.

A voluntary contribution of this size must be recognized as a strong signal of Japan’s commitment to ‘finish what we started’ – getting the Treaty into force and finalizing the International Monitoring System, said CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo.

By Lassina Zerbo

Lassina Zerbo is the Executive Secretary of Preparatory Commission for the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Following are excerpts from his statement at the XXV Session of the General Conference of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL) in Mexico City on 14 February 2017.

VIENNA (IDN) – Mexico’s historical role in advancing non-proliferation and disarmament is well recognized, not least through the work of Nobel peace prize laureate Alfonso García Robles in the creation and adoption of the Treaty of Tlatelolco.

Let me also highlight the excellent relationship between the CTBTO and OPANAL in the context of the agreement that both entities concluded in 2002.

By Jayantha Dhanapala*

KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) – The commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Tlatelolco could not have come at a more opportune moment. In the UN General Assembly last year, Mexico and a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries joined with countries from other regions – including my own Sri Lanka – to ensure the adoption of the Resolution “Taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations”.

This Resolution decided that a UN conference should be convened in 2017 “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons leading towards their total elimination”. The Conference will meet from March 27-31 and from June 15 – July 7, 2017.

By Sergio Duarte and Jenifer Mackby*

On February 14, 2017 the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean – Treaty of Tlatelolco – celebrated its 50th anniversary. The Treaty prohibits the testing, use, manufacture, production or acquisition of nuclear weapons. All 33 countries in the region are party to it. This article casts a close look at the vital importance of the treaty.

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS | TRANSCEND Media Service) – As the first of its kind in a populated area, the Treaty made a fundamental contribution to both global and regional disarmament, peace and security. It includes a number of innovative provisions, such as indefinite duration, prohibition of reservations, a definition of nuclear weapon, a commitment by nuclear-weapon States to respect the militarily denuclearized status of the Zone through negative security assurances and the engagement of its Parties to utilize nuclear energy exclusively for peaceful purposes.

By Samantha Sen

LONDON (IDN) – Now that the new world order some of us were talking about threatens to collapse into a new world disorder, the emerging fear is what the U.S and Russia could agree on, rather than what they disagree about. U.S President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have discovered one another as political twins looking in the same direction from opposite sides – what were thought to be opposing sides anyhow. Nowhere does this union of vision appear more deadly than in the business of nuclear armament, and business it is.

Both leaders have said yes to all the weapons they have, and nodded in the direction of yet more. Both have spoken of “strengthening” their nuclear capabilities. Strengthen how much more to what end? Dire arithmetic abounds on how many times over each can destroy the world. Skip the count; once would be enough.